- Signs of the Times for Mon, 11 Dec 2006 -

• Signs Editorials
• Climate On The Edge
• America - Looking In
• America - Looking Out
• Priming The Middle East
• Starting With Lebanon And Palestine
• Far Out
• Euro Trash
• Fascists Live Too Long
• Wakey Wakey!

Gold closed at 631.00 dollars an ounce on Friday, down 3.2% from $651.20 at the close of the previous Friday. The dollar closed at 0.7574 euros Friday, up 1.0% from 0.7498 euros at the end of the week before. That put the euro at 1.3202 dollars compared to $1.3338 the Friday before. Gold in euros would be 477.96 euros an ounce, down 2.1% from 488.23 for the week. Oil closed at 62.03 dollars a barrel Friday, down 2.6% from $63.67 at the close of the previous Friday. Oil in euros would be 46.99 euros a barrel, down 1.6% from 47.74 euros for the week. The gold/oil ratio closed at 10.17 Friday, down 0.6% from 10.23 at the end of the week before. In the U.S. stock market, the Dow closed at 12,307.49 Friday, up 1.0% from 12,194.13 at the end of the previous Friday. The NASDAQ closed at 2,437.36, up 1.0% from 2,413.21 for the week. In U.S. interest rates the yield on the ten-year U.S. Treasury note closed at 4.55%, up 12 basis points from 4.43 for the week.

Let's take a little break from the housing bubble, debt levels and the impending currency collapse of the dollar to think some more big picture thoughts about the end of the neoliberal era. Where are we? Where should we want to go?

Believe it or not, classical economics, the foundation of neoliberal ideology, was inspired by satanism. I'm not referring to Adam Smith, but to the poet who inspired him, Bernard de Mandeville. Mandeville was said to be a member of the notorious Hellfire Club in London. Mandeville's poem, The Grumbling Hive (also appearing in The Fable of the Bees), published in 1705, puts the argument for individual selfishness at most basic.

The Grumbling Hive: or, Knaves Turn'd Honest... tells of a wealthy and powerful beehive whose inhabitants act only in pursuit of gain and esteem. Nevertheless, they espouse an ethic that condemns this behaviour and frequently lament that their society is full of sin. Irritated by their constant complaining, their god decides to make them all virtuous. In a flash, their society comes to a stop: commerce and industry are abandoned, and the bees leave their once flourishing hive and withdraw to live simply in the hollow of a tree. The moral is that virtue can only lead to a poor, ascetic society, whereas the vices are the necessary engines of a wealthy and powerful nation.

In 1714, the poem reappeared as part of The Fable of the Bees, or: Private Vices, Publick Benefits, in which Mandeville explains and defends the claim that private vices lead to public benefits. Mandeville does so by examining human nature in the same meticulous way "a surgeon studies a carcass". This uncompromising examination leads him to conclude that man is "a compound of various Passions, that all of them, as they are provoked, come uppermost, and govern him whether he will or no." The gratification of these passions, Mandeville writes, is wholly selfish. Mandeville defines vice as "every thing, which [...] Man should commit to gratify any of his Appetites," and virtue as "every Performance, by which Man, contrary to the impulse of Nature, should endeavour the Benefit of others, or the Conquest of his own Passions out of a Rational Ambition of Being good." But, since on Mandeville's view of human nature, man is a selfish creature, wholly governed by his passions, people's behaviour will always be vicious, and true virtue can have no role in managing people's destructive desires. Should people become virtuous through divine grace, no one would pursue temporal success and society would go the way of the bees. Thus, virtue has no connection with maintaining society or worldly success. (http://www.philosophers.co.uk/...)

Serving others by serving self. (the alternative: serving self by serving others). In the eighteenth century such thoughts may have seemed novel and promising. Indeed the vice of greed and self-interest did release huge amounts of energy. But now, at the end of that run, some of us may ask ourselves: Is that the best we can come up with?

Can there be an economic and social system based on serving self by serving others that still unleashes creative energy?

As we wrote last week, the main problem with all the modern economic systems, capitalist or socialist, comes from the presence of perhaps 6% of the population with no conscience: psychopaths:

[N]eoclassical ideology has been a boon to those in our midst who are incapable of moral reasoning: psychopaths, those with no conscience. In fact, it could be argued that Neoclassical economics could only be the basis of organizing society if either no one were psychopathic or if everyone were. In our mixed world, where perhaps 6% of the people have no conscience, neoclassical economics is a way station to tyranny since it simultaneously provides a way for the unscrupulous to gain wealth and power while inhibiting the natural conscience-based morality of normal humanity.

What economic system can work if 6% of the population has no conscience whatsoever and no ability to develop one?

All economic systems in recorded history have been exploitative. These can be divided into two types: those based on tribute and those based on capitalism. In the latter can be included all types of socialism that have actually existed from European-style social democracy to Stalinism or Maoism, since they have existed only during the period in which capitalism has been the dominant mode of production.

A word here about "exploitation." Economic exploitation occurs when one group of people expropriates the surplus produced by another group. If we think back to a primarily agricultural economy, that surplus would be food grown or slaughtered. The person who produces the food, the peasant farmer or herder, needs to produce more than his family eats in order for the society to support people like priests or warriors or bureaucrats who don't produce food. Marxist theorists have developed the concept of 'mode of production' to describe the predominant way that surplus is extracted. The 'means of production' are the ways that things are produced.

The difference between capitalism and earlier, tribute-based modes of production is that capitalism extracts the surplus through the normal rules of economic behavior. It is axiomatic. By going to work, borrowing money, buying things we need, surplus is extracted from us workers under capitalism. By 'workers' I mean most of us. That doesn't mean 'blue collar' only, but all those who need a paycheck and who can't survive on their investments alone. If you can survive on your investments, you are part of the bourgeoisie. Other systems, such as feudalism, extract the surplus through extra-economic means, such as at the point of a sword. When surpluses are extracted at the point of the sword, you have a tribute-based mode of production (see John Haldon, The State and the Tributary Mode of Production, London:Verso Press, 1993).

But, if all economic systems in recorded history have been exploitative, what about those before recorded history? The great American anthropologist, Marshall Sahlins, published a book in 1972 called Stone Age Economics. In it, he argues that hunter-gatherers, long thought to live lives "nastry, brutish and short," in fact lived in "the original affluent society," as he titled a chapter of the book.

Hunter-gatherers consume less energy per capita per year than any other group of human beings. Yet when you come to examine it the original affluent society was none other than the hunter's - in which all the people's material wants were easily satisfied. To accept that hunters are affluent is therefore to recognise that the present human condition of man slaving to bridge the gap between his unlimited wants and his insufficient means is a tragedy of modern times.

..."Mere subsistence economy", "limited leisure save in exceptional circumstances", incessant quest for food", "meagre and relatively unreliable" natural resources, "absence of an economic surplus", "maximum energy from a maximum number of people" so runs the fair average anthropological opinion of hunting and gathering

The traditional dismal view of the hunters' fix goes back to the time Adam Smith was writing, and probably to a time before anyone was writing. Probably it was one of the first distinctly neolithic prejudices, an ideological appreciation of the hunter's capacity to exploit the earth's resources most congenial to the historic task of depriving him of the same. We must have inherited it with the seed of Jacob, which "spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north", to the disadvantage of Esau who was the elder son and cunning hunter, but in a famous scene deprived of his birthright.

Current low opinions of the hunting-gathering economy need not be laid to neolithic ethnocentrism. Bourgeois ethnocentrism will do as well. The existing business economy will promote the same dim conclusions about the hunting life. Is it so paradoxical to contend that hunters have affluent economies, their absolute poverty notwithstanding? Modern capitalist societies, however richly endowed, dedicate themselves to the proposition of scarcity. Inadequacy of economic means is the first principle of the world's wealthiest peoples.

The market-industrial system institutes scarcity, in a manner completely without parallel. Where production and distribution are arranged through the behaviour of prices, and all livelihoods depend on getting and spending, insufficiency of material means becomes the explicit, calculable starting point of all economic activity.

The entrepreneur is confronted with alternative investments of a finite capital, the worker (hopefully) with alternative choices of remunerative employ, and the consumer... Consumption is a double tragedy: what begins in inadequacy will end in deprivation. Bringing together an international division of labour, the market makes available a dazzling array of products: all these Good Things within a man's reach- but never all within his grasp. Worse, in this game of consumer free choice, every acquisition is simultaneously a deprivation for every purchase of something is a foregoing of something else, in general only marginally less desirable, and in some particulars more desirable, that could have been had instead. That sentence of "life at hard labour" was passed uniquely upon us. Scarcity is the judgment decreed by our economy. And it is precisely from this anxious vantage that we look back upon hunters. But if modern man, with all his technological advantages, still lacks the wherewithal, what chance has the naked savage with his puny bow and arrow? Having equipped the hunter with bourgeois impulses and palaeolithic tools, we judge his situation hopeless in advance.

According to Sahlins, one reason for misconceptions about hunter-gathers comes from observation of surviving hunter-gatherer tribes. Sahlins argues that agriculture-fueled civilizations have pushed hunter-gatherers off the best land and on to marginal lands. But even contemporary hunter-gatherers in Australia or the !Kung in the Kalahari desert have been shown to enjoy a plentiful and varied diet. Not only that but the average amount of time it takes a person to meet their needs is no more than about four hours a day. The rest of the time is spent in dancing, ritual and mythologizing.

Despite a low annual rainfall (6 to 10 inches), Lee found in the Dobe area a "surprising abundance of vegetation". Food resources were "both varied and abundant", particularly the energy rich mangetti nut- "so abundant that millions of the nuts rotted on the ground each year for want of picking". The Bushman figures imply that one man's labour in hunting and gathering will support four or five people. Taken at face value, Bushman food collecting is more efficient than French farming in the period up to World War II, when more than 20 per cent of the population were engaged in feeding the rest. Confessedly, the comparison is misleading, but not as misleading as it is astonishing. In the total population of free-ranging Bushmen contacted by Lee, 61.3 per cent (152 of 248) were effective food producers; the remainder were too young or too old to contribute importantly In the particular camp under scrutiny, 65 per cent were "effectives". Thus the ratio of food producers to the general population is actually 3 :5 or 2:3. But, these 65 per cent of the people "worked 36 per cent of the time, and 35 per cent of the people did not work at all"!

For each adult worker, this comes to about two and one - half days labour per week. (In other words, each productive individual supported herself or himself and dependents and still had 3 to 5 days available for other activities.) A "day's work" was about six hours; hence the Dobe work week is approximately 15 hours, or an average of 2 hours 9 minutes per day. All things considered, Bushmen subsistence labours are probably very close to those of native Australians.

... Also like the Australians, the time Bushmen do not work in subsistence they pass in leisure or leisurely activity. One detects again that characteristic palaeolithic rhythm of a day or two on, a day or two off- the latter passed desultorily in camp. Although food collecting is the primary productive activity, Lee writes, "the majority of the people's time (four to five days per week) is spent in other pursuits, such as resting in camp or visiting other camps":

"A woman gathers on one day enough food to feed her family for three days, and spends the rest of her time resting in camp, doing embroidery, visiting other camps, or entertaining visitors from other camps. For each day at home, kitchen routines, such as cooking, nut cracking, collecting firewood, and fetching water, occupy one to three hours of her time. This rhythm of steady work and steady leisure maintained throughout the year. The hunters tend to work more frequently than the women, but their schedule uneven. It 'not unusual' for a man to hunt avidly for a week and then do no hunting at all for two or three weeks. Since hunting is an unpredictable business and subject to magical control, hunters sometimes experience a run of bad luck and stop hunting for a month or longer. During these periods, visiting, entertaining, and especially dancing are the primary activities of men."

The daily per-capita subsistence yield for the Dobe Bushmen was 2,140 calories. However, taking into account body weight, normal activities, and the age-sex composition of the Dobe population, Lee estimates the people require only 1,975 calories per capita. Some of the surplus food probably went to the dogs, who ate what the people left over. "The conclusion can be drawn that the Bushmen do not lead a substandard existence on the edge of starvation as has been commonly supposed."

Possessions are more of a hinderance then a help:

In the non subsistence sphere, the people's wants are generally easily satisfied. Such "material plenty" depends partly upon the simplicity of technology and democracy of pro perty. Products are homespun: of stone, bone, wood, skin-materials such as "lay in abundance around them". As a rule, neither extraction of the raw material nor its working up take strenuous effort. Access to natural resources is typically direct- "free for anyone to take"- even as possession of the necessary tools is general and knowledge of the required skills common. The division of labour is likewise simple, predominantly a division of labour by sex. Add in the liberal customs of sharing, for which hunters are properly famous, and all the people can usually participate in the going prosperity, such as it is.

For most hunters, such affluence without abundance in the non-subsistence sphere need not be long debated. A more interesting question is why they are content with so few possessions for it is with them a policy, a "matter of principle" as Gusinde says, and not a misfortune.

But are hunters so undemanding of material goods because they are themselves enslaved by a food quest "demanding maximum energy from a maximum number of people", so that no time or effort remains for the provision of other comforts? Some ethnographers testify to the contrary that the food quest is so successful that half the time the people seem not to know what to do with themselves. On the other hand, movement is a condition of this success, more movement in some cases than others, but always enough to rapidly depreciate the satisfactions of property. Of the hunter it is truly said that his wealth is a burden. In his condition of life, goods can become "grievously oppressive", as Gusinde observes, and the more so the longer they are carried around. Certain food collectors do have canoes and a few have dog sleds, but most must carry themselves all the comforts they possess, and so only possess what they can comfortably carry themselves. Or perhaps only what the women can carry: the men are often left free to reach to the sudden opportunity of the chase or the sudden necessity of defence. As Owen Lattimore wrote in a not too different context, "the pure nomad is the poor nomad". Mobility and property are in contradiction. That wealth quickly becomes more of an encumbrance than a good thing is apparent even to the outsider. Laurens van der Post was caught in the contradiction as he prepared to make farewells to his wild Bushmen friends:

"This matter of presents gave us many an anxious moment. We were humiliated by the realisation of how little there was we could give to the Bushmen. Almost everything seemed likely to make life more difficult for them by adding to the litter and weight of their daily round. They themselves had practically no possessions: a loin strap, a skin blanket and a leather satchel. There was nothing that they could not assemble in one minute, wrap up in their blankets and carry on their shoulders for a journey of a thousand miles. They had no sense of possession."

Here then is another economic "peculiarity"- some hunters at least, display a notable tendency to be sloppy about their possessions. They have the kind of nonchalance that would be appropriate to a people who have mastered the problems of production.

"They do not know how to take care of their belongings. No one dreams of putting them in order, folding them, drying or cleaning them, hanging them up, or putting them in a neat pile. If they are looking for some particular thing, they rummage carelessly through the hodgepodge of trifles in the little baskets. Larger objects that are piled up in a heap in the hut are dragged hither and thither with no regard for the damage that might be done them.

The European observer has the impression that these (Yahgan) Indians place no value whatever on their utensils and that they have completely forgotten the effort it took to make them. Actually, no one clings to his few goods and chattels which, as it is, are often and easily lost, but just as easily replaced... The Indian does not even exercise care when he could conveniently do so. A European is likely to shake his head at the boundless indifference of these people who drag brand-new objects, precious clothing, fresh provisions and valuable items through thick mud, or abandon them to their swift destruction by children and dogs.... Expensive things that are given them are treasured for a few hours, out of curiosity; after that they thoughtlessly let everything deteriorate in the mud and wet. The less they own, the more comfortable they can travel, and what is ruined they occasionally replace. Hence, they are completely indifferent to any material possessions."

The hunter, one is tempted to say, is "uneconomic man". At least as concerns non subsistence goods, he is the reverse of that standard caricature immortalised in any General Principles of Economics, page one. His wants are scarce and his means (in relation) plentiful. Consequently he is "comparatively free of material pressures", has "no sense of possession", shows "an undeveloped sense of property", is "completely indifferent to any material pressures", manifests a "lack of interest" in developing his technological equipment.

. Economic Man is a bourgeois construction- as Marcel Mauss said, "not behind us, but before, like the moral man". It is not that hunters and gatherers have curbed their materialistic "impulses"; they simply never made an institution of them. "Moreover, if it is a great blessing to be free from a great evil, our (Montagnais) Savages are happy; for the two tyrants who provide hell and torture for many of our Europeans, do not reign in their great forests, I mean ambition and avarice... as they are contented with a mere living, not one of them gives himself to the Devil to acquire wealth."

In agricultural societies, however, the work is hard because the peasant not only has to provide food for himself and his household, but also has to turn over a good portion of the surplus to a landlord of some type. These landlords, then, spend the surplus on weapons, followers and social display. While we admire the fruits of the exploitation in museums, the peasant himself would be better off before agriculture. Those extra four to ten hours of work go to provide someone who doesn't work a sword and a horse to kill and burn the houses and fields of other peasants like himself.

The battles over who gets to share how much of the surplus production of the peasantry make up the history of human society until capitalism arrived in the 1600s. We should distinguish capitalism from commercialism or mercantilism, here. Capitalism did not arise until the 17th century, in spite of the prior millenia of buying and selling things. Capitalism resulted from the coming together of large fortunes with free wage labor to such an extent that it became the predominant mode of production.

We could say that hunter-gatherers didn't know how good they had it, but there is actually evidence that they did. Much of their social structure was designed to prevent the kind of concentration of power that would split off a class of exploitative landlords. Most people think that technological development led to agriculture, which created a surplus that "led" to the ancient urban societies with class divisions, etc. In fact, it may have been the other way around, concentration of power led to exploitation which increased the need for intensified production which led to technological development and agriculture.

If we are looking for a dynamic economic system that prevents accumulation of power by individuals and which allows for the most possible freedom and creativity, then really we are looking at anarchism. The only effective anarchism would have to be one that takes into account the presence of psychopaths. David Graeber offers some suggestions of just what such a system would look like in his Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology (Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press, 2004). If we take Peter Kropotkin's definition of anarchism, the impossibility of such a system without the awareness of the psychopaths among us become inescapable:

The name given to a principle or theory of life and conduct under which society is conceived without government - harmony in such a society being obtained, not by submission to law, or by obedience to any authority, but by free agreements concluded between the various groups, territorial and professional, freely constituted for the sake of production and consumption, as also for the satisfaction of the infinite variety of needs and aspirations of a civilized being. (Graeber, p. 2)

According to Graeber, anarchism,

is also a project, which sets out to begin creating the institutions of a new society "within the shell of the old," to expose, subvert, and undermine structures of domination but always, while doing so, proceeding in a democratic fashion, a manner which itself demonstrates those structures are unnecessary. (Graeber, p.7)

Graeber looks to the methods used by those societies that have found ways to prevent the concentration of power for clues. He points to the work of Marcel Mauss and Pierre Clastres in particular. Mauss, one of the founders of French sociology, opposed the view that "primitive" peoples acted economically much the way we do under capitalism (a view popular among classical economists). Mauss argued that goods were exchanged in archaic and primitive societies by complicated bonds of gift exchange. Graeber argues that these systems can help us find a way of mental prison of neoliberal ideology:

In the end, though, Marcel Mauss has probably had more influence on anarchists than all the other ones combined. This is because he was interested in alternative moralities, which opened the way to thinking that societies without states and markets were the way they were because they actively wished to live that way. Which in our terms means, because they were anarchists. Insofar as fragments of an anarchist anthropology do, already, exist, they largely derive from him.

Before Mauss, the universal assumption had been that economies without money or markets had operated by means of "barter"; they were trying to engage in market behavior (acquire useful goods and services at the least cost to themselves, get rich if possible...), they just hadn't yet developed very sophisticated ways of going about it. Mauss demonstrated that in fact, such economies were really "gift economies." They were not based on calculation, but on a refusal to calculate; they were rooted in an ethical system which consciously rejected most of what we would consider the basic principles of economics. It was not that they had not yet learned to seek profit through the most efficient means. They would have found the very premise that the point of an economic transaction - at least, one with someone who was not your enemy - was to seek the greatest profit deeply offensive. (Graeber, p. 21)

Clastres took this idea and applied it to political systems:

He insisted political anthropologists had still not completely gotten over the old evolutionist perspectives that saw the state primarily as a more sophisticated form of organization than what had come before; stateless peoples, such as the Amazonian societies Clastres studied, were tacitly assumed not to have attained the level of say, the Aztecs or the Inca. But what if, he proposed, Amazonians were not entirely unaware of what the elementary forms of state power might be like - what it would mean to allow some men to give everyone else orders which could not be questioned, since they were backed up by the threat of force - and were for that very reason determined to ensure such things never came about? What if they considered the fundamental premises of our political science morally objectionable?

The parallels between the two arguments are actually quit striking In gift economies there are, often, venues for enterprising individuals: But everything is arranged in such a way they could never be used as a platform for creating permanent inequalities of wealth, since self-aggrandizing types all end up competing to see who can give the most away. In Amazonian (or North American) societies, the institution of the chief played the same role on a political level: the position was so demanding, and so little rewarding, so hedged about by safeguards, that there was no way for power-hungry individuals to do much with it. Amazonians might not have literally whacked off the ruler's head every few years, but it's not an entirely inappropriate metaphor. By these lights these were all, in a very real sense, anarchist societies. They were founded on an explicit rejection of the logic of the state and of the market. (Graeber, pp. 22-3)

The crucial point for Graeber is that the way to counteract power is to prevent the very things that allow some to take power:

But Mauss and Clastres' argument suggests something even more radical. It suggests that counterpower, at least in the most elementary sense, actually exists where the states and markets are not even present; that in such cases, rather than being embodied in popular institutions which pose themselves against the power of lords, or kings, or plutocrats, they are embodied in institutions which ensure such types of person never come about. What it is "counter" to, then, is a potential, a latent aspect, or dialectical possibility if you prefer, within the society itself. (Graeber, p. 25)

Can a counter-power society be high-tech? Are such structures only possible with a low level of technological development? Who knows? It is clear that the exact type of technology we have now presupposed large concentration of power. A better question might be: How would we get there from here? Here is where the imagination comes in. Ran Prieur has been discussing this on his blog recently. In order to make such a thing happen we would need to think and act in new ways. Graeber discusses the role of imagination (and mentions the imagination that is required for empathy) in a "counter-power," or stateless society?

To sum up the argument so far, then:

1) Counterpower is first and foremost rooted in the imagination; it emerges from the fact that all social systems are a tangle of contradictions, always to some degree at war with themselves. Or, more precisely, it is rooted in the relation between the practical imagination required to maintain a society based on consensus (as any society not based on violence must, ultimately, be) - the constant work of imaginative identification with others that makes understanding possible - and the spectral violence which appears to be its constant, perhaps inevitable corollary.

2) In egalitarian societies, counterpower might be said to be the predominant form of social power. It stands guard over what are seen as certain frightening possibilities within the society itself: notably against the emergence of systematic forms of political or economic dominance.

2a) Institutionally, counterpower takes the form of what we would call institutions of direct democracy, consensus and mediation; that is, ways of publicly negotiating and controlling that inevitable internal tumult and transforming it into those social states (or if you like, forms of value) that society sees as the most desirable: conviviality, unanimity, fertility, prosperity, beauty, however it may be framed.

3) In highly unequal societies, imaginative counterpower often defines itself against certain aspects of dominance that are seen as particularly obnoxious and can become an attempt to eliminate them from social relations completely. When it does, it becomes revolutionary.

3a) Institutionally, as an imaginative well, it is responsible for the creation of new social forms, and the revalorization or transformation of old ones, and also,

4) in moments of radical transformation - revolutions in the old-fashioned sense - this is precisely what allows for the notorious popular ability to innovate entirely new politics, economic, and social forms. Hence, it is the root of what Antonio Negri has called "constituent power," the power to create constitutions. (Graeber, pp. 35-6)

How to get there from here? Graeber suggests that uprisings and revolts are counterproductive. Strategic withdrawals of energy from power institutions are more promising as tactics, especially when combines with strategic investments of energy in voluntary, free-will networks:

There is a way out, which is to accept that anarchist forms of organization would not look anything like a state. That they would involve an endless variety of communities, associations, networks, projects, on every conceivable scale, overlapping and intersecting in any way we could imagine, and possibly many that we can't. Some would be quite local, others global. Perhaps all they would have in common is that none would involve anyone showing up with weapons and telling everyone else to shut up and do what they were told. And that, since anarchists are not actually trying to seize power within any national territory, the process of one system replacing the other will not take the form of some sudden revolutionary cataclysm - the storming of a Bastille, the seizing of a Winter Palace - but will necessarily be gradual, the creation of alternative forms of organization on a world scale, new forms of communication, new, less alienated ways of organizing life, which will, eventually, make currently existing forms of power seem stupid and beside the point. (Graeber, p. 40)

And,

Autonomist thinkers in Italy have, over the last couple decades, developed a theory of what they call revolutionary "exodus." It is inspired in part by particularly Italian conditions - the broad refusal of factory work among young people, the flourishing of squats and occupied "social centers" in so many Italian cities... But in all this Italy seems to have acted as a kind of laboratory for future social movements, anticipating trends that are now beginning to happen on a global scale.

The theory of exodus proposes that the most effective way of opposing capitalism and the liberal state is not through direct confrontation but by means of what Paolo Virno has called "engaged withdrawal," mass defection by those wishing to create new forms of community. One need only glance at the historical record to confirm that most successful forms of popular resistance have taken precisely this form. They have not involved challenging power head on (this usually leads to being slaughtered, or if not, turning into some - often even uglier - variant of the very thing one first challenged) but from one or another strategy of slipping away from its grasp, from flight, desertion, the founding of new communities. One Autonomist historian, Yann Moulier Boutang, has even argued that the history of capitalism has been a series of attempts to solve the problem of worker mobility - hence the endless elaboration of institutions like indenture, slavery, coolie systems, contract workers, guest workers, innumerable forms of border control - since, if the system ever really came close to its own fantasy version of itself, in which workers were free to hire on and quit their work wherever and whenever they wanted, the entire system would collapse. It's for precisely this reason that the one most consistent demand put forward by the radical elements in the globalization movement - from the Italian Autonomists to North American anarchists - has always been global freedom of movement, "real globalization," the destruction of borders, a general tearing down of walls. (Graeber, pp. 60-1)

Graeber concludes with some practical suggestions on how to eliminate disparities of income between the developed and the less-developed countries:

Globalization and the Elimination of North-South Inequalities

As I've mentioned, the "anti-globalization movement" is increasingly anarchist in inspiration. In the long run the anarchist position on globalization is obvious: the effacement of nation-states will mean the elimination of national borders. This is genuine globalization. Anything else is just a sham. But for the interim, there are all sorts of concrete suggestions on how the situation can be improved right now, without falling back on statist, protectionist, approaches. One example:

Once during the protests before the World Economic Forum, a kind of junket of tycoons, corporate flacks and politicians, networking and sharing cocktails at the Waldorf Astoria, pretended to be discussing ways to alleviate global poverty. I was invited to engage in a radio debate with one of their representatives. As it happened the task went to another activist but I did get far enough to prepare a three-point program that I think would have taken care of the problem nicely:

• an immediate amnesty on international debt (An amnesty on personal debt might not be a bad idea either but it's a different issue.)

• an immediate cancellation of all patents and other intellectual property rights related to technology more than one year old

• the elimination of all restrictions on global freedom of travel or residence

The rest would pretty much take care of itself. The moment the average resident of Tanzania, or Laos, was no longer forbidden to relocate to Minneapolis or Rotterdam, the government of every rich and powerful country in the world would certainly decide nothing was more important than finding a way to make sure people in Tanzania and Laos preferred to stay there. Do you really think they couldn't come up with something?

The point is that despite the endless rhetoric about "complex, subtle, intractable issues" (justifying decades of expensive research by the rich and their well-paid flunkies), the anarchist program would probably have resolved most of them in five or six years. But, you will say, these demands are entirely unrealistic! True enough. But why are they unrealistic? Mainly, because those rich guys meeting in the Waldorf would never stand for any of it. This is why we say they are themselves the problem. (Graeber, pp. 77-9)

To be continued...

I can't remember if truth ever meant much in my life.  I can count on the fingers of one hand all the times when I really wanted to let someone know the truth, when it was extremely important.  It is rare that I am lacking attention so much that I would attempt to attract it using this extreme, irrational and ineffective method.  With all that, I get very upset if in such situation I am 'found guilty' of telling the truth. 

I began to tell the truth when I understood that no one has any criteria that would allow to distinguish the truth from a lie, with a high degree of precision.  This means that one can tell the truth without consequences, same as lying!  It was a real discovery that opened many extra doors:

- if someone didn't like my truth, I could say it was a lie, and enjoy peace and quiet.

- if someone didn't like my truth, I could maintain that it is truth, and fele [sic] proud of my principles. 

- if someone didn't like my lie, I could say it was truth, and enjoy the other persons's confusion. 

- if someone didn't like my lie, I could confirm it was a lie, and watch the other person felling is proud of his power of perception. 

- if someone liked my lie, I could say that it is nothing but the truth, and bask in the sun rays of another's person's happiness. 

- if someone liked my lie, I could say it is a lie, and have a nice juicy argument. 

- if someone liked my truth, I could say it was a lie, and enjoy the feeling of power and security.

- if someone liked my truth, I could admit it is the whole truth, and enjoy openness and mutual understanding. 

So it looks like I learned to use a truth as certain means, but still has no clue why anyone would need a truth as goal and an end, in and of itself. 

**

I usually say whatever comes to mind, without much thought as to whether it happen to be truth or lie.  It is indeed very simple.  Before, I used to wonder whether truth and lie have some special meaning and significance, but then, I settled on the thought that, from everything that is ever said, very little has any meaning and significance. 

However, if I get myself in the situation when what was said has great importance either for me, or for a person I am talking to - that's incredibly stressful.  Then I have to think, and there is no time to be lazy.  In such situations the truth brings about such an adrenalin [sic] rush, that no lie could stand the comparison.

In spite of their deficiencies in normal psychological and moral knowledge, they develop and then have at their disposal a knowledge of their own, something lacked by people with a natural world view. They learn to recognize each other in a crowd as early as childhood, and they develop an awareness of the existence of other individuals similar to them. They also become conscious of being different from the world of those other people surrounding them. They view us from a certain distance, like a para-specific variety. Natural human reactions - which often fail to elicit interest to normal people because they are considered self-evident - strike the psychopath as strange and, interesting, and even comical. They therefore observe us, deriving conclusions, forming their different world of concepts. They become experts in our weaknesses and sometimes effect heartless experiments. The suffering and injustice they cause inspire no guilt within them, since such reactions from others are simply a result of their being different and apply only to "those other" people they perceive to be not quite conspecific. Neither a normal person nor our natural world view can fully conceive nor properly evaluate the existence of this world of different concepts.

A researcher into such phenomena can glimpse the deviant knowledge of the psychopath through long-term studies of the personalities of such people, using it with some difficulty, like a foreign language. As we shall see below, such practical skill becomes rather widespread in nations afflicted by that macro-social pathological phenomenon wherein this anomaly plays the inspiring role.

A normal person can learn to speak their conceptual language even somewhat proficiently, but the psychopath is never able to incorporate the world view of a normal person, although they often try to do so all their lives. The product of their efforts is only a role and a mask behind which they hide their deviant reality. [Political Ponerology, pp. 127-128]

"I'm the decider, and I decide what's best."
George W. Bush, 43rd President of the United States

"The president has adopted a policy of 'anticipatory self-defense' that is alarmingly similar to the policy that imperial Japan employed at Pearl Harbor, on a date which, as an earlier American president said it would, live in infamy. Franklin D. Roosevelt was right, but today it is we Americans who live in infamy."
Arthur Schlesinger, American historian

"There were not sufficient reasons to unleash a war against Iraq. To say nothing of the fact that, given the new weapons that make possible destructions that go beyond the combatant groups, today we should be asking ourselves if it is still licit to admit the very existence of a 'just war'."
Pope Benedict XVI

On September 20, 2002, American President George W. Bush  enthusiastically and officially embraced a policy of world domination that his neoconservative advisors had drafted for him. In fact, it was a retake on a discarded foreign policy draft paper that Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz had written in 1992, for then Defense Secretary Dick Cheney in the George H. Bush administration.

The new foreign policy paper introduced by the White House in 2002 was entitled “The National Security Strategy of the United States”  and was dubbed by its authors the "Bush Doctrine" of preventive wars and of international unilateralism and militarism. Indeed, under the guise of spreading 'democracy', the new 'doctrine' called for the United States to place itself above international law, ratified treaties and international institutions, and initiate "preventive wars" each time American interests or those of close allies such as Israel, are threatened. The policy paper went even further and proclaimed that the "United States has, and intends to keep, military strengths beyond challenge", with the intent of preserving the United States' position as the world's sole military superpower, not only on Earth, but also in Space. The Bush-Cheney administration even declared its intention to keep the option of using nuclear weapons—not only preemptively but even preventively, whenever and wherever it saw fit to do so. The 'Bush Doctrine' could as well have been called 'How to herald in an era of world anarchy' since it was consciously throwing away more than half a century of efforts to build an international system based on law and due process.

In the 20th Century, two other nations openly embarked upon a policy of world domination, attempting to impose their will upon other countries through the use of military power. First, Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler; (1889-1945) and then the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin (1878-1953). —Hitler wanted to make Berlin the 'capital of the world', while Stalin, under the guise of spreading 'communism', hoped to create a world empire under his command. Both attempts collapsed into abject failures. During the process, however, the German and Russian peoples ended up paying dearly for their leaders' pompous and grandiose schemes, while millions of innocent victims in other countries suffered the dire consequences of insane government leaders gone awry.

The problem with megalomaniac dreams of world domination is that they inevitably lead to disasters. The reason is that such mad dreams of conquest, to be successful even in the short run, require the implementation of two dangerous and interrelated policies: first, the repression of civil liberties at the center of the would-be empire in order to crush dissent; and second, a policy of wars of aggression  abroad against countries that resist the new imperial vision. The end results are the loss of liberty at home for most people, all but the top nomenklatura, and a string of costly wars abroad that bankrupt both the state and its citizens. As former senator Barry Goldwater put it: "Now those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth, and let me remind you they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyranny."

The current Bush-led imperial push around the world is contrary to the very principles upon which the United States was established. Indeed, when the United States broke away from the British empire, in 1776, its founders swore to establish a democratic republic that would be the very opposite of an empire. They had a vision for "life, liberty and happiness" for all people of the United States and of the world and abhorred aggressive, despotic and oppressive empires which trampled on peoples' rights and pursue narrow special interests at the expense of the public good. In the words of Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), 3rd U.S. President, "The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite." In other words, men have always had to choose between despotism and democracy, and both cannot exist at the same time. That is why a country cannot be a democracy and an empire at the same time. It is because, first, running an empire needs a strong central authority with centrally concentrated powers. This is totally at variance with the democratic constitutional order of decentralized and responsible public decision making. And, second, maintaining an empire requires a situation of constant mobilization and of unending wars.

Jefferson's nemesis was Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton (1755–1804) who, just as Vice President Dick Cheney today, did not want a true democracy but a king-run presidency and a life-long nominated senate. Only the House of representatives, in his autocratic scheme of thought, would have had recurringly elected members and some input in the working of the government. True power would have remained in the hand of a property oligarchy. Even though Hamilton himself was opposed to arbitrary government and strongly defended the fundamental right of Habeas Corpus, his followers have been more openly inclined to favor the maximum concentration of power in the Executive branch, at the expense of the checks and balances that are required to preserve freedom and civil liberties.

Internationally, Hamilton's followers are now also supreme in formulating American foreign policy. They are back in force in Washington D.C., but this time they are called "Neocons". They not only harbor the view of a near dictatorial executive branch, as Hamilton did, but they have added the absurd and Jocobian pretentious twist that they have received some divinely given right to govern the world. In their insane and delusional brave new world, words do not mean anything and even reality is a mirage to be adjusted according to their own interests or wishes. Indeed, they have discovered within themselves a missionary zeal to spread ("export") American-style democracy and American-style capitalism to the four corners of the globe, irrespective of international law or international obligations under the United Nations Charter, and despite whatever the lucky targeted people think or wish.

For all these reasons, it can be said that the Bush-Cheney administration is more Hamiltonian in scope than Jeffersonian. President George W. Bush has begun to arrogate to himself some of the powers of an absolute monarch, that is, the power to be above the law and to modify unilaterally the democratically adopted laws by Congress. Some of his handy men have by necessity thus developed the theory that an American president can do just about anything, if his intentions are to further national security. For instance, George W. Bush has paved the way for exercising martial law powers, first by de-facto repealing the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act that forbids  the deployment of soldiers on American soil for domestic law enforcement, and, second, by signing last October the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (MCA: HR 6166). Through this act, the President granted himself almost-dictatorial powers to arrest and detain indefinitely any American citizen without constitutional protections. He can, indeed, suspend the right of Habeas Corpus of any person he designates as an "enemy combatant", not only in the United States but also all around the world.

In this neocon brave new world, the future is framed as some sort of a “Perpetual American-led War for a Lasting Peace.”  It is a world in which the United States can whimsically and preemptively, or even preventively, attack other countries with its sophisticated military gear, anytime one of them refuses to tow the line of American imperial interests. What is hallucinatory in all this is the idea that the Neocons have discovered a new Americentric "theory of the world", when in fact they have only stumbled upon a near exact replica of the 19th Century Eurocentric world of empires and of gunboat diplomacy. In fact, they are dreaming about a pre-1648-Westphalia world, where national self-determination and national sovereignty become a privilege reserved in exclusivity to those nations with the strongest armies. The Neocons' brave new world is really a blueprint for a non-democratic American empire, surrounded by puppet regimes all over the map. This could not be further from the democratic ideal of governments of law, not of men. Since the principles of the Peace of Westphalia date from 1648, it can be said that the Neocons' sick obsession with world domination is only three centuries and a half behind the times.

After Sept. 11 '01, when the rest of the world was in deep sympathy with the United States, the Bush-Cheney administration sould have done several things. –1. It should have worked to reinforce international law, instead of attempting to undermine it. –2. It should have been active in reforming the United Nations to make this essential international body more democratic, more representative and more efficient as a conflict solving mechanism, rather than shunning it aside. –3. It should have adopted a policy of isolating the small violent Islamist terrorists by assisting moderate and reformist elements in Muslim countries, rather than throwing gas on the fire of religious extremism. –4. It should have promoted a Helsinki Accords-like agreement in order to remove fears of illegitimate foreign military interventions, rather than whimsically invading sovereign nations. –5. It should have put forward an international Marshall-like plan to raise education and health standards in these countries, while facilitating productive investments and spuring economic development. –6. And, above all, it should have given the example, in behaving according to the fundamental humanist principles of non-aggression, lawful conduct and international generosity.

That it did none of the above is a tribute to its lack of vision and its lack of intellectual fortitude, not counting its lack of basic public morality.

Rodrigue Tremblay lives in Montreal and can be reached at  rodrigue.tremblay@yahoo.com

Also visit his blog site at www.thenewamericanempire.com/blog.

Author's Website: www.thenewamericanempire.com

The occupation forces besieged the homes of brothers Mohammed Hussein Jalmood and Mahmoud Hussein Jalmood, opened fire on members of the two families in the early hours today, to cover up the crime they air bombed the houses.

People of the area who rushed to the crime scene and removed the bodies from the rubble found that all victims had been shot at close range, which confirms that they were mass executed.

About 32 martyrs were targeted by the American forces intentionally among them 6 children and 8 women.

Comment on this Editorial

---

Editorial: Take nobody's word for it

Alison George
NewScientist.com news service
09 December 2006

You don't come across many Nobel prizewinners who believe in the paranormal, but Brian Josephson is one of them. After receiving the Nobel prize in physics for his research on superconductivity, his work has taken a very different direction. As well as using mathematics to describe how the brain carries out complex tasks, he is an advocate for cold fusion and other phenomena on the fringes of science. He talked to Alison George about why he thinks scientists have an irrational bias against unconventional ideas.

Why did you decide to give up your highly successful work on superconductors?

In the late 1960s I found my area of research less interesting, so I looked elsewhere for problems to work on. Investigating the mathematics of how the brain works is a much more difficult challenge. I also became interested in eastern philosophy and how that might fit in with physics. I read a book called The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra that pointed out the parallels between quantum physics and eastern mysticism.

I started to feel there was more to reality than conventional science allowed for, and some interesting ideas that it hadn't got round to investigating such as altered states of consciousness. At a conference in Toronto I saw demonstrations of psychokinesis - the influence of mind on matter - and it all pointed to some extension of what science knows at this time.

Did your Nobel prize allow you to investigate areas that are off-limits for other scientists?

It meant I was free to explore, and people felt less able to say "you can't work on that". However, I have had problems with getting funding for collaboration because of the areas I've chosen to work in.

You have become an advocate for unconventional ideas. How did that happen?

I went to a conference where the French immunologist Jacques Benveniste was talking for the first time about his discovery that water has a "memory" of compounds that were once dissolved in it - which might explain how homeopathy works. His findings provoked irrationally strong reactions from scientists and I was struck by how badly he was treated. To an extent, I realised that the way science is done by consensus could get things completely wrong. I feel that it's important to try and correct the errors that scientists are making.
What errors are these?

I call it "pathological disbelief". The statement "even if it were true I wouldn't believe it" seems to sum up this attitude. People have this idea that when something can't be reproduced every time, it isn't a real phenomenon. It is like a religious creed where you have to conform to the "correct" position. This leads to editors blocking the publication of important papers in academic journals. Even the physics preprint archive blocks some papers on certain topics, or by certain authors.

Do you believe that cold fusion and the memory of water are real, or are you just open to the idea of their being real?

In both cases there is evidence that makes me accept them as almost certainly real. They're probably connected with aspects of organisation that are difficult to deal with in the usual scientific way. I'm pushing in that direction. I look very carefully at things before I accept them as real.

You draw the line in a very different place to most scientists when it comes to hard-to-prove phenomena such as telepathy and cold fusion.

Can I take you up on something? These things are not hard to prove, they're just hard to get accepted. The evidence for these phenomena would normally lead to them being accepted, but they have an additional barrier in that they are "unacceptable" and often unpublishable. Some people are extraordinarily hard to convince. In particular, people who work in an area in which the phenomena are highly reproducible cannot envisage situations such as cold fusion where - as in many areas of materials science - things are not that reproducible. They take the illegitimate step from "hard to reproduce" to "non-existent". Science is often presented as an objective pursuit, but the history of science tells you that this is far from being the case.

Do you mean that scientists cannot accept these phenomena because it would ruin their view of the world?

It would mean an admission of error. Instead, sceptics can always say that there must have been something wrong with these experiments. This means that you can never really prove anything, and a sceptic doesn't actually have to discover anything wrong to dismiss an experiment.

Is this why you've posted the motto "take nobody's word for it" at the top of your website?

Yes. And the corollary of this motto is that if most scientists denounce an idea, this should not necessarily be taken as proof that the idea is absurd. It seems that anything goes among the physics community - cosmic wormholes, time travel - just so long as it keeps its distance from anything mystical or New Age-ish.

There are lots of pointers towards strange things, such as the quantum interconnectedness of entangled particles, but physicists are very prickly about them, saying you shouldn't read anything into these results. There are in fact a lot of scientists who believe telepathy exists, but they keep quiet about it.

I take it that means you pay a price for speaking out about things like cold fusion, telepathy and the paranormal.

Yes. If you say you accept the reality of the paranormal then this automatically affects your reputation. It's assumed that if a person believes in this kind of thing then his views are not worth considering. It has led to certain people being very prejudiced against me and assuming that there's something wrong with anything I do. I don't have the kind of support network that researchers usually have. But since I can do my research on the mathematics of the brain by myself this is less of a problem than it otherwise would be, though it slows down progress considerably.

Why do you speak out about these things when you know it causes difficulties for your own research career?

They are important for various reasons. For example, cold fusion may contribute significantly to solving the problem of generating clean energy. Had it not been ridiculed back in 1989, we'd probably all now be using energy generated by cold fusion. So it's really important to speed up the process. I reckon that cold fusion will be accepted in the next year or so.

If the evidence about cold fusion is so convincing, why do so few people believe in it?

You have to look properly at the evidence typically blocked from publication by journals such as Nature, and few people are willing to put in the effort to do that. Even better, go along to a laboratory where the work is being done. It's also hard to change how people think. People have vested interests, and their projects and reputations would be threatened if certain things were shown to be true.

Brian Josephson was awarded a Nobel prize for work on superconductivity he carried out as a 22-year-old graduate student at the University of Cambridge. The Josephson junction, which has many scientific and technical applications, is the legacy of this research. Today he leads the Mind-Matter Unification Project at the University of Cambridge (www.tcm.phy.cam.ac.uk/~bdj10).

From issue 2581 of New Scientist magazine, 09 December 2006, page 56-57
Comment on this Editorial

---

Climate On The Edge

---

Fireball Streaks Over Colorado At Dawn

The Denver Channel
08/12/2006

DENVER -- A bright fireball streaked across Colorado early Friday, prompting a number of e-mails to 7News, and calls to authorities and researchers, but no debris was immediately reported.

"It came in from the east, over the plains, and was seen to disappear over the mountains to the west," said Chris Peterson, a meteor researcher with the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.
The bright light was spotted at abut 6:45 a.m. and was bright enough to be categorized as a fireball, he said.
Click here to find out more!

"Meteors are called fireballs when they are brighter than Venus," said Peterson.

Meteors are common over Colorado but this one was unusual because it was so bright it could be seen as the sky was getting light, Peterson said.

"This one may have been much brighter (than most), more like the brightness of the moon," he said. "Events like that happen every year or so."

Peterson, who operates a Web site on meteors, said he received several witness reports but did not see the meteor himself.

"It was still burning as passed out of view at the lower horizon," wrote one 7News viewer from Dillon. "Normally they come down and flame out long before they get to the horizon."

Peterson said any debris from the meteor would be hard to find.

"You'd just be looking at a handful of rocks," he said. "The rocks would have probably fallen somewhere where there's a lot of other rocks."

Peterson said if any part of the fireball did make it to the ground it might be in northwest Colorado, in the vicinity of Meeker.



Comment on this Article

---

5.0 Quake Off Italian Coast

German Geosciences Research Center
10/12/2006

5.0 Quake Off Italian Coast

Region: Adriatic Sea
Magnitude: 5.0
Origin time: 2006/12/10 11:03:41 UTC





Comment on this Article

---

Typhoon roars out of Philippines, four killed

Reuters
11 Dec 06

MANILA - Typhoon Utor swept out of the Philippines killing four people, including three children, and stranding thousands on Monday after high winds and waves tore up power lines and communication links in the archipelago.

Utor, currently a category 1 typhoon with gusts of around 140 kph (93 mph), was forecast to weaken to a tropical storm by Friday on a path that peters out south of the Chinese island of Hainan by the weekend, according to www.tropicalstormrisk.com.

The National Disaster Coordinating Council (NDCC) said three children were confirmed dead, including a one-year-old girl whose house was struck by a falling tree in central Capiz province. Four were listed as missing.

Around 50 passengers were rescued when their boat capsized in stormy waters off Batangas province about 120 kilometers (75 miles) south of Manila. They piled onto the vessel despite the bad weather after being stranded on Mindoro Island for two days.

"We were irked at some of the foreigners. They tried to save their baggage first," one passenger, Sheryl Nartates, told a local radio station after three coast guard boats picked all the passengers up.

On the resort island of Boracay, the famous white sands were littered with debris after high winds tore up roofs and trees.

"Some people are crying because they are afraid and in shock," said Roselle Gallano, a waitress at a coffee shop close to the beach front. "Many houses were damaged, some have been tilted."

The governor of nearby Aklan province said one person had been killed on Boracay and at least four were still missing.

Authorities evacuated around 90,000 residents, most of them in Albay province, where more than 1,000 people are feared dead after Typhoon Durian wiped out villages in a torrent of landslides and flash flooding in late November.

Utor, the fifth typhoon to hit the Philippines since September, did not directly hit Albay but the bereaved remain stranded in schools and makeshift shelters and the province is still without power.

On Friday, the Philippines hastily postponed an annual summit of 16 Asian leaders until January, citing concerns the typhoon could wreak havoc at the venue on the central island of Cebu. Utor subsequently swept north of Cebu.

The NDCC said over 500 houses were destroyed and electricity was knocked out in wide areas in the Visayas region.

Storms regularly hit the Philippines. In one of the worst disasters in recent years, more than 5,000 people died on the central island of Leyte in 1991 in floods triggered by a typhoon.



Comment on this Article

---

U.S. Senate rejects earthquake repair money

Thursday, December 7th, 2006 9:06 AM HST Associated Press

HONOLULU (AP) _ The U-S Senate has cut 19 (m) million dollars in proposed earthquake assistance for Hawaii.

That has left the state scrambling to find other sources of federal money to assist agricultural water systems on the Big Island that are still recovering from the October 15th earthquakes.
Major General Robert Lee, the state's director of Civil Defense, says Hawaii is nowhere close to declaring an end to the disaster period.

Senator Daniel Inouye's office says the earthquake assistance money would have helped repair the Lower Hamakua Ditch, the Waimea Irrigation System and the Upper Hamakua Ditch on the Big Island.

Inouye blames majority Republicans for cutting the earthquake relief money after the White House issued a veto threat.

He says the matter will be addressed again next year when Democrats assume control of Congress.



Comment on this Article

---

Tsunami-like blast wave rips across the Sun

David Shiga
NewScientist.com news service
08 December 2006

A blast wave swept across the face of the Sun on Wednesday, rippling outward from the site of a large solar flare. Blast waves that spread all the way across the Sun like this one did are rare, especially when the Sun is in the quiet phase of its 11-year cycle, as it is right now.

The wave was imaged by the Optical Solar Patrol Network telescope at the National Solar Observatory (NSO) in Sunspot, New Mexico, US. Watch a video of the expanding blast wave. The wave compresses and heats the solar plasma as it passes, causing it to brighten.

The wave raced outwards from the site of the flare at 400 kilometres per second, says K S Balasubramaniam of NSO. It occurred near one edge of the Sun's face and traveled to the other edge in about 30 minutes, he says.
This was the second major flare from the same group of sunspots. Another flare spewed out from the group on Tuesday. The fact that this region of the Sun spewed out two major flares just a day apart "implies that there must have been some kind of tremendous energy buildup", Balasubramaniam told New Scientist.

The buildup of energy is thought to be related to the twisting of the Sun's magnetic field. Such a large buildup and release of energy on the Sun is a rare occurrence, and especially unusual around solar minimum, when the Sun is normally at its quietest.
Low point

The Sun appears to be just past the lowest point in its cycle, Balasubramaniam says. The last maximum was in 2000, but the exact time between maximum and minimum varies from cycle to cycle.

The last time a similar blast wave was seen by the NSO telescope was in November 2003, though it might have missed others if they occurred when the Sun was not visible from the site, he says.

The expanding blast wave also caused two dark filaments to disappear as it passed by, one at upper left and the other at lower middle. The filaments are arches of relatively cool material clinging to magnetic field lines above the Sun.

The passage of the wave may temporarily disperse this material, Balasubramaniam says. See a video showing the brief disappearance of the filaments.

Exactly how the release of magnetic energy leads to solar outbursts is not known. Whether flares provide the trigger for the waves or the relationship is more complicated is also not clear. "If we see a lot more of these, it will tell us a lot more about why these things happen at certain times," he says.



Comment on this Article

---

Four undersea volcanoes founded near Phuket

The Nation (Thailand)
11 December 2006

A team of Thai and German marine geologists has found four volcanoes under the sea about 200 kilometres away from Phuket, the team leader announced Monday.

Dr Anon Sanitwong na Ayutthaya of Chulalongkorn University, who headed the survey, said the survey was carried out for 15 days and ended on December 6 with support from the German government and from the National Marine Geology Institute in Keith.
The team survey the seabed for 1,500 square kilometres at the depth of 1,000 to 2,800 metres at the a continental rim about 3,00 kms away from Phuket.

He said the team detected four mud volcanoes in the area.

The first volcano is about 200 kms away from Phuket and its base is about 1-km long in diameter and is 100 metre high. It is located about 650 metres under the sea.

The second volcano is located 50 kms west of the first volcano and is about 1,000 metres under the sea. The third and fourth volcanoes are located about 60 kms northeast of the second volcano and are about 700 to 800 metres under the sea.



Comment on this Article

---

Swiss Halt Geothermal Experiment after Tremor

Planet Ark
December 11, 2006

ZURICH - Swiss engineers halted an experiment to extract geothermal heat from deep below ground after it set off a small earthquake in the nearby city of Basel, the Swiss news agency SDA said on Saturday.

The tremor late on Friday measured 3.4 on the Richter scale and caused widespread fear, prompting about 1,000 calls to emergency services, but caused no injuries or serious damage, the agency said.
Managers apologised for any fears aroused by the mishap, which occurred after water was injected at high pressure into a five-km-deep (16,000-feet-deep) borehole, but said the experiment posed no danger, SDA reported.

The Basel public prosecutor launched an investigation into the government-subsidised project after the quake in the historic city, it said.

The 80-million-franc (US$66.95 million) experiment, known as "deep heat mining", is designed to extract enough super-heated water to drive a power plant providing electricity for 10,000 homes and heat for 2,700 others.



Comment on this Article

---

The Consequences of Damming Rivers in the Developing World

By Bill McKibben
OnEarth Magazine
December 8, 2006

A review of author Jacques Leslie's new book, which lays bare the high environmental and social price that people in the developing world often pay for damming their rivers.
We forget now that the American environmental movement was born not in reaction to smog or to dirty water, but to dams. That John Muir, the great conservationist of the first half of the twentieth century, founded the Sierra Club to fight the dam at Yosemite's Hetch Hetchy, and that David Brower, Muir's successor, built the club into the prototype of modern activism in the struggles over dams at Dinosaur National Monument, Glen Canyon, and the Grand Canyon. We forget because our big-dam days are over -- almost everything that could be plugged with concrete long since has been. But the rest of the world is still deep in these fights. In fact, in many places they still define both environmentalism and development, as journalist Jacques Leslie's superb account, Deep Water: The Epic Struggle Over Dams, Displaced People, and the Environment (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006), makes clear.

Leslie has written a volume that is heir, both in organization and in power, to Encounters With the Archdruid, John McPhee's classic profile of Brower and his fight against dam-nation, much of which was written from deep within the canyons of the Colorado. Leslie chronicles three people whose lives have been shaped by the fight over dams. One is a full-out opponent, one an ambivalent expert, and one a bureaucrat trying to deal with the legacy left to him by a century of dams.

The first -- and most beautifully wrought -- portrait is of Medha Patkar, an Indian woman who has been battling the Narmada Dam for decades. Narmada has become the prototype of the big third-world dam: expensive, environmentally ruinous, and essentially impossible to stop. Patkar and her activist group, Narmada Bachao Andolan, came incredibly close -- they forced the World Bank for the first time to back down from funding a dam.

But India was too committed to the plan to be deterred. By a 2-to-1 vote of the Indian supreme court the project went ahead in 2000, and as Leslie's account opens, Patkar has been reduced to trying to keep the dam from going higher. Her favorite tactic: to chain herself to a piece of ground and wait for the waters to rise, daring the authorities to let her drown. This approach (used in California, too, in the fight over the Stanislaus River a quarter of a century ago) draws its inspiration from Gandhi, but Leslie's brilliant and unsparing portrait makes it clear that Patkar is not the happy warrior that we remember the Mahatma to be. Leslie searches for the source of her incredible courage and commitment, talking to her family and the friends of her younger life, and traces much of her relentless drive to the unhappiness of her early marriage, where her obvious talents were suffocated. When she finally left, says one friend, "she was at her lowest level, very depressed.... She couldn't see what she could do."

For Leslie, that description clicked. "Medha's suffering preceded her [Narmada] career. She did not suffer because anti-dam activism required suffering. She suffered first, then found a meaningful expression for it in the valley. Suffering became her fuel and her power and her validation, the proof of her commitment to the cause and the source of her magnetism."

This is convincing, and it describes a fair number of talented activists I've known over the years. It's also the stuff of a great novel, especially as it is deftly interwoven with the suffering of the people whose lives are being wrecked by the rising waters. Its operatic quality sets a bar that the rest of the book never quite meets; Leslie's other characters are less troubled, less charismatic. They retire, they don't try to kill themselves.

Still, their stories are remarkable. Thayer Scudder, "the world's leading dam resettlement expert," has spent an entire career studying dam resettlement as an anthropologist and working as a consultant for international agencies like the World Bank to evaluate new projects -- always hoping for what Leslie calls "one good dam." His first project, as a young anthropologist in the 1950s, was the Kariba Dam on the Zambezi River along what is now the Zambia-Zimbabwe border. It was the first big dam the World Bank ever financed, and it turned into a horror story of everything that could possibly go wrong, especially the resettlement project that Scudder chronicled. At first the Tonga tribespeople refused to believe their villages would be inundated -- how could a wall on the river accomplish that? When they were finally forced away (only after many of their spear-clutching men were massacred by police) it was to barren, unfamiliar, and droughty land. Leslie visits there 45 years later and finds the villagers are still hoping that the dam will be taken down and that they can return to their homes, or at least that Scudder will come back and explain how it all happened. (He can't bear to, perhaps because of the many children in the community named for him or his wife, Molly.) One old man summed up the mood: "There is nothing to do," he said. "Just sit and wait. Maybe die."

Though it's done the Tonga no good, their suffering, at least for a time, helped turn the tide of dam-building in Africa. Chastened by his experience, Scudder became more militant in demanding better resettlement plans before dams could be approved. In fact, he played a major role in blocking a dam slated for the Okavango Delta in Botswana, and he and Leslie revisit the scene of that semi-triumph. They also spend time in Lesotho, the mountainous country surrounded by South Africa, where at the end of his career Scudder is still trying to improve resettlement plans for people who will soon be displaced by a massive dam, even as the water rises. If Patkar is a picture of unflinching courage, Scudder is the emblem of good-hearted ambivalence. He believes, theoretically, in "development," even as he concedes that almost all the dams he's earned good money helping build are, in the end, disasters. "I haven't been associated with many success stories," he said, "and the few successes have been more about stopping something than creating something." That is a chastened epitaph.

The first two-thirds of Leslie's book are mostly about how dams affect the people around them. The third section, set on Australia's Murray River, is more ecological. It tells the tale of how a century's worth of dams have degraded this splendid land even as they helped enrich its people by allowing industrial farming in a dry country. Leslie follows a bureaucrat, Don Blackmore, as he attempts to restore a (quite possibly oxymoronic) "healthy, working river." In particular, Blackmore's task is to persuade the basin's many users to allow "environmental flows" down the main stream of the Murray -- that is, to surrender some of the water now used to irrigate crops so that the ever-saltier, ever-less-living river might have a fighting chance to make a comeback.

Though Blackmore has some success -- and his story in all its particulars will be familiar to those who have followed battles over California water rights in recent decades -- it's not at all clear that the fight began in time. Leslie writes stunning descriptions of vast tracts of dying trees, of dead lagoons where aboriginals lived for tens of thousands of years on the relative fat of the land.

In the end, this book implicitly asks a question that we've mostly ignored for the last hundred years: How hard can we make the planet work for us? A dam is a way to store up the power of the natural world -- to make it water our crops and power our lives at all times instead of periodically. But it comes at a much higher price than the dam pioneers would have guessed; not just the human cost of resettlement, but the ecological costs of stilling the earth's veins and arteries.

And now, though Leslie barely mentions it (one of the very few flaws in his account), we face yet another conundrum. Hydro power is in vogue again because it produces few greenhouse gases. This is not universally true -- build a shallow reservoir in a tropical climate and the rotting vegetation will give off vast quantities of methane, a gas 20 times better at trapping heat than CO2 -- but it is one more reason to dam, to overlook the enormous costs. In the end, there's never a way to get around the question of demand. It is possible -- it is likely -- that we are asking more of the world than the world can provide. In some places that is farce (Hoover Dam gave us Las Vegas) and in other places it is tragedy. How do you decide between the need of a Chinese peasant for electricity that doesn't come from coal, and the need of the Yangtze to flow to the sea?

In a bitter and incantatory epilogue, Leslie points out that the hulking dams of our lifetime won't last forever. Sediment is already piling up behind them, and some day either earthquake or neglect will rupture them, leaving just ruins behind. "They'll be relics of the twentieth century," he writes, "like Stalinism and gasoline-powered cars, symbols of the allure of technology and its transience, of the top-down, growth-at-all-costs era of development and international banks, of the delusion that humans are exempt from nature's dominion, of greed and indifference to suffering.... They'll be reminders of an ancient time when humans believed they could vanquish nature, and found themselves vanquished instead.Tra



Comment on this Article

---

UN downgrades man's impact on the climate

Richard Gray
Sunday Telegraph
10/12/2006

Mankind has had less effect on global warming than previously supposed, a United Nations report on climate change will claim next year.

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says there can be little doubt that humans are responsible for warming the planet, but the organisation has reduced its overall estimate of this effect by 25 per cent.
In a final draft of its fourth assessment report, to be published in February, the panel reports that the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has accelerated in the past five years. It also predicts that temperatures will rise by up to 4.5 C during the next 100 years, bringing more frequent heat waves and storms.

The panel, however, has lowered predictions of how much sea levels will rise in comparison with its last report in 2001.

Climate change sceptics are expected to seize on the revised figures as evidence that action to combat global warming is less urgent.

Scientists insist that the lower estimates for sea levels and the human impact on global warming are simply a refinement due to better data on how climate works rather than a reduction in the risk posed by global warming.

One leading UK climate scientist, who asked not to be named due to the sensitivity surrounding the report before it is published, said: "The bottom line is that the climate is still warming while our greenhouse gas emissions have accelerated, so we are storing up problems for ourselves in the future."

The IPCC report, seen by The Sunday Telegraph, has been handed to the Government for review before publication.

It warns that carbon dioxide emissions have risen during the past five years by three per cent, well above the 0.4 per cent a year average of the previous two decades. The authors also state that the climate is almost certain to warm by at least 1.5 C during the next 100 years.

Such a rise would be enough to take average summer temperatures in Britain to those seen during the 2003 heatwave, when August temperatures reached a record-breaking 38 C. Unseasonable warmth this year has left many Alpine resorts without snow by the time the ski season started.

Britain can expect more storms of similar ferocity to those that wreaked havoc across the country last week, even bringing a tornado to north-west London.

The IPCC has been forced to halve its predictions for sea-level rise by 2100, one of the key threats from climate change. It says improved data have reduced the upper estimate from 34 in to 17 in.

It also says that the overall human effect on global warming since the industrial revolution is less than had been thought, due to the unexpected levels of cooling caused by aerosol sprays, which reflect heat from the sun.

Large amounts of heat have been absorbed by the oceans, masking the warming effect.

Prof Rick Battarbee, the director of the Environmental Change Research Centre at University College London, warned these masking effects had helped to delay global warming but would lead to larger changes in the future.

He said: "The oceans have been acting like giant storage heaters by trapping heat and carbon dioxide. They might be bit of a time-bomb as they have been masking the real effects of the carbon dioxide we have been releasing into the atmosphere.

"People are very worried about what will happen in 2030 to 2050, as we think that at that point the oceans will no longer be able to absorb the carbon dioxide being emitted. It will be a tipping point and that is why it is now critical to act to counter any acceleration that will occur when this happens."

The report paints a bleak picture for future generations unless greenhouse gas emissions are reduced. It predicts that the climate will warm by 0.2 C a decade for the next two decades if emissions continue at current levels.

The report states that snow cover in mountainous regions will contract and permafrost in polar regions will decline.

However, Julian Morris, executive director of the International Policy Network, urged governments to be cautious. "There needs to be better data before billions of pounds are spent on policy measures that may have little impact," he said.



Comment on this Article

---

Vast African lake levels dropping fast

By CHARLES J. HANLEY,
AP Special Correspondent
Sat Dec 9, 2006

JINJA, Uganda - At Jinja pier the rusty red hull of a Lake Victoria freighter sat barely afloat in water just six feet deep - and dropping. "The scientists have to explain this," said ship's engineer Gabriel Maziku.

Across the bay, at a fish packing plant, fishermen had to wade ashore with their Nile perch in flat-bottomed boats, and heave the silvery catch up to a jetty that soon may be on dry land and out of reach entirely. Looking on, plant manager Ravee Ramanujam wondered about what's to come.
"Such a large body of water, dropping so fast," he said.

At 27,000 square miles, the size of Ireland, Victoria is the greatest of Africa's Great Lakes - the biggest freshwater body after Lake Superior. And it has dropped fast, at least six feet in the past three years, and by as much as a half-inch a day this year before November rains stabilized things.

The outflow through two hydroelectric dams at Jinja is part of the problem - a tiny part, says the Uganda government, or half the problem, say environmentalists. But much of what is happening to Victoria and other lakes across the heart of Africa is attributable to years of drought and rising temperatures, conditions that starve the lakes of inflowing water and evaporate more of the water they have.

An extreme example lies 1,500 miles northwest of here, deeper in the drought zone, where Lake Chad, once the world's sixth-largest, has shrunk to 2 percent of its 1960s size. And the African map abounds with other, less startling examples, from Lake Turkana in northern Kenya, getting half the inflow it once did, to the great Lake Tanganyika south of here, whose level dropped over five feet in five years.

"All these lakes are extremely sensitive to climate change," the U.N. Environment Program warned in a global water assessment two years ago.

Now, in a yet unpublished report obtained by The Associated Press, an international consulting firm advises the Ugandan government that supercomputer models of global-warming scenarios for Lake Victoria "raise alarming concerns" about its future and that of the Nile River, which begins its 4,100-mile northward journey here at Jinja.

The report, by U.S.-based Water Resources and Energy Management International, says rising temperatures may evaporate up to half the lake's normal inflow from rainfall and rivers, with "severe consequences for the lake and its ability to meet the region's water resources needs."

A further dramatic drop in Victoria's water levels might even turn off this spigot for the Nile, a lifeline for more than 100 million Egyptians, Sudanese and others.

"People talk about the snows of Kilimanjaro," said Aris P. Georgakakos, the study's chief author, speaking of that African mountain's melting glaciers. "We have something much bigger to worry about, and that's Lake Victoria."

Each troubled lake is a complex story.

Lake Chad's near-disappearance, for example, stems in part from overuse of its source waters for irrigation. Deforestation around Lake Victoria, shared by Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania, makes the area a less efficient rain "catchment" for the lake, and overfishing and pollution are damaging its $400-million-a-year fishing industry. Kenya's Rift Valley lakes, some just a few feet deep, have always fluctuated in size, even drying up with drought.

But African leaders say things are different this time, because long-term climate change may eclipse other factors.

"These cycles, when they've happened, they haven't happened under the circumstances pertaining now - the global warming, overpopulation, degradation," said Maria Mutagamba, Uganda's water and environment minister.

African temperatures rose an average 1 degree Fahrenheit in the 20th century - matching the global average - and even more in the past few decades in such places as Lake Tanganyika, climatologists say. If greenhouse gases continue to build in the atmosphere, temperatures may be several degrees warmer by this century's end.

At Lake Victoria's receding shoreline, a place of scavenging storks, weedy expanses of water hyacinth, fishing boats derelict on dried lake bed, people see what's happening but don't understand why.

"In just a few years, the lake pulled back from there, maybe 60 meters (200 feet)," said fisherman Patrick Sewagude, 24, pointing to old high-water marks at Ssese Beach, near Kampala, Uganda's capital.

Someone had planted a few rows of corn on the exposed lake bed. Grass was taking over elsewhere. "It's tough. The fish have gone way out. You pull up stones in your nets," Sewagude said.

Back in Jinja, 40 miles east of Kampala, researchers at the Lake Victoria Fisheries Organization said falling water levels are the latest blow to the dying biology of Lake Victoria, where pollution has helped kill off scores of unique species of tropical fish in recent decades. Now tilapia, once a prime food fish, are declining because their inshore breeding grounds are vanishing.

"People for many years haven't seen such a sudden change in the lake level," said the fisheries office's Richard Ogutu-Ohwayo, a biologist on the lake for 35 years. "Right now it's very difficult to say what will happen. It's a grim scenario, of worldwide climate change."

Around the lake shore, everyone has his own theories.

"The water's too hot, and the fish are going deeper, beneath the nets," said Modi Kafeel Ahmed, a Jinja fish processor. But the lake has been overfished, too, he said. "If it goes like this another five years, the lake will be empty of fish."

For 30 million people living in its basin, Lake Victoria is a vital source - of livelihoods and food, of water, of transportation, of electric power.

Almost 200 miles across the lake from here, Tanzanian authorities have reduced water supplies to the city of Mwanza because an intake pipe was left high and dry. The same is happening in Uganda, where German engineer Erhard Schulte is pushing work crews to finish refitting Entebbe's city water plant, extending its intake pipe 1,000 feet farther out into the lake.

"The old Britisher who designed the original plant never expected the lake would drop this way," Schulte told a visitor.

Perhaps the worst impact is on power supplies. Tanzanian factories have shut down because the rivers powering hydroelectric dams, and replenishing Lake Victoria, are running dry. Kampala, a city of more than 1 million, has endured hours-long blackouts daily.

Uganda's two big hydro dams, side by side on the Victoria Nile, the lake's only outlet, are victims and - some say - prime suspects in the crisis.

In 2003, facing growing Ugandan demand for electricity, the Nalubaale and Kiira dams produced a peak 265 megawatts of power. In the process, their operators began overshooting long-standing formulas regulating flow of water out of the lake, an independent hydrologist later concluded.

That outside study, cited by environmentalists, contends 55 percent of the lake-level drop since 2003 is traceable to excessive outflow. But the dams' private operators and Ugandan officials strongly dispute that.

Paul Mubiru, Ugandan energy commissioner, says the dams have had a "negligible" impact on Lake Victoria, and points to Lake Tanganyika's similar fall in levels - with no dams involved.

Earlier this year, the operators announced they were reducing the dam outflows, "but our observations show that even with the reduced outflow, the water loss is still on the increase," Mutagamba, the water minister, told the AP.

Falling lake levels, meantime, mean lower "head" pressure at the dams. Their output has dropped to 120 megawatts, pushing Uganda deeper into economic crisis.

It is such unanticipated ripple effects - from abrupt environmental change - that underlie the warnings worldwide about global warming. Scientists find another unexpected example in Lake Tanganyika, where they say warmer surface waters may be depleting fish stocks.

Many African lakes go unvisited by scientists, but what is known is troubling enough, says veteran researcher Robert E. Hecky, of Canada's University of Waterloo. "It is some of the most imperative data we have, that global climate change can be affecting these African water bodies," he said.

A "very comprehensive, very realistic" study of Lake Victoria is needed, preferably conducted by U.N. specialists, said Frank Muramuzi, the head of Uganda's leading environmental organization.

"Businesses are standing still, not working. Fishermen can't get enough fish. We do not have enough water supplies," Muramuzi said. "Rains alone won't bring back the lake levels, because there would still be climate change, a lot of heat, evaporation. It's reached a point where people don't know what to do."



Comment on this Article

---

Australian farmers struggling as drought crisis deepens

by Neil Sands
AFP
Sun Dec 10, 2006

WARRACKNABEAL, Australia - Farmer Marshall Rodda has an aerial photograph from the late 1990s hanging in the family homestead showing his property's two dams bursting with water and surrounded by green fields.

At the time, Rodda never suspected he was commissioning a record of the last time both his dams were full, with Australia's crippling drought reducing one to a cracked dustbowl and the other a shallow pool of muddy water.
"This might last me through to February if I use it wisely," Rodda says, gesturing to his meagre water resources. "Some of the other blokes haven't got any water at all and they've got to truck it in to keep their stock going.

"It's the worst I've seen it in 50 years. There's been pockets of drought around Australia for the last eight years or so but in the last 12 months it's intensified, even areas that are normally OK are having a dry time of it."

Rodda's farm is in Victoria state's Wimmera district, an area renowned for its rich soil that sits in the heart of south-eastern Australia's wheat belt.

But the prosperous rural lifestyle that brought his family here in the 1920s has been transformed into a grim struggle for survival as the worst drought in a century grips Australia.

A burly man, wearing a typical Australian farmer's outfit of flannelette shirt, jeans and elastic-sided boots, Rodda gives an exasperated sigh after climbing down into his empty dam.

"Look at it," he says, crushing a sod of earth to powder in his powerful hands. "Bone dry."

Around him on the dam floor are the remains of shellfish that once lived in the waters and the occasional sheep bone poking out from the cracked earth.

Some areas of Australia have been without significant rainfall for years and figures released last week showed the country's winter crop was down more than 60 percent on 2005.

Farm incomes have also plummetted 70 percent to their lowest levels in more than a decade and Treasurer Peter Costello has warned that Australia faces a rural depression if the situation does not improve.

Rodda has already written off this year's crop after his stunted wheat stalks, normally thigh high, managed only a few inches (centimetres) growth in the parched earth.

"It's not worth taking it to market," he said. "We'll use it as feed for the sheep so we can get some use out of it."

The drought has impacted on every aspect of life in rural Australia, with many small towns now facing a slow death as businesses close and young people move to the cities.

"There was a small motor workshop here that shut down last month," Rodda said. "When times are tough, people make do with what they've got and don't buy new equipment, so this fellow's business just wasn't viable any more."

Those who remain often suffer depression as the difficulties of drought are compounded by the isolation of Australia's vast distances. The mental health charity Beyond Blue has reported a steep rise in suicides among farmers.

Even country Australia's love of sport has been affected, with some local councils scrapping football tournaments because the drought meant players risked serious injury competing on rock-hard sports fields.

Rodda's farm hand, Gilbert Fryatt, sold his own property three years ago because of the drought and now makes his living hiring himself out as a handyman and sheep shearer.

"We weren't making any money and the kids weren't interested in taking over the farm, so me and the wife thought 'why are we going on with this?'," he said.

Asked if he misses working his own land, Fryatt gives a noncommittal shrug: "These things happen."

Fryatt said a major concern for the Wimmera's farmers was that if the drought continued, winds from Australia's desert interior would lift the region's topsoil into vast dust clouds and dump it offshore, permanently eroding the area's fertility.

Despite their hardships, both Rodda and Fryatt remain determined to stay positive in the face of drought.

"You get up in the morning and say 'well all right, we're not doing things that flash. It's not raining today but we can do some dry jobs'," he said, adding ruefully. "Jeez, we've been doing a lot of dry jobs."

He said when Lake Hindmarsh, the largest freshwater lake in Victoria, dried up, a group of farmers decided to make the best of the situation by driving out onto the lake bed and having a barbecue.

Fryatt said that generations of Australian farmers had endured the country's harsh climate and there was a belief that the latest crisis, while the most severe in living memory, would eventually end.

"There's always next year," he said. "We might be doing it tough now but it only takes a good bit of rain to turn it around."



Comment on this Article

---

Ancient global warming suggests high sensitivity to carbon dioxide

www.chinaview.cn 2006-12-10 10:33:59

LOS ANGELES, Dec. 9 (Xinhua) -- Global warming from 55 million years ago suggests that climates are highly sensitive to carbon dioxide, according to a study published by the latest issue of Science.

Scientific studies show that a massive release of carbon into the atmosphere caused the ancient global warming event known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) that began about 55 million years ago.
The resulting greenhouse effect heated the earth as a whole by about 9 Fahrenheit (5 Celsius) in less than 10,000 years, geologic records show.

The increase in temperatures lasted about 170,000 years, altering the world rainfall patterns, making the oceans acidic, affecting plant and animal life and spawning the rise of our modern primate ancestors, according to the study by Mark Pagani, associate professor of geology and geophysics at Yale University.

"The PETM is a stunning example of carbon dioxide-induced global warming and stands in contrast to critics who argue that the Earth temperature is insensitive to increases in carbon dioxide," said Pagani.

"Not only did the Earth warm by at least 9 Fahrenheit (5 Celsius), but it did so during a time when Earth average temperature was already 9 Fahrenheit (5 Celsius) warmer than today."

However, what has not been clear is how much carbon was responsible for the temperature increase and where it came from.

Scientists have speculated that it might have come from massive fires from burning coal and other ancient plant material, or from an increase of methane from the continental shelves that rapidly turned into atmospheric carbon dioxide.

"According to this work, if the PETM was caused by the burning of plant material then climate sensitivity to carbon dioxide is more than 4.5 times per carbon dioxide doubling. And if methane was the culprit, then Earth climate must be extremely sensitive to carbon dioxide increasing, over 10 Fahrenheit (5.56 Celsius) per carbon dioxide doubling," noted Pagani.

This finding contradicts the position held by many climate-change skeptics that the Earth climate is resilient to such carbon dioxide emissions.

"The last time carbon was emitted to the atmosphere on the scale of what we are doing today, there were winners and losers," said Ken Caldeira, a co-author from the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology.

"There was ecological devastation, but new species rose from the ashes. Our work provides even more incentive to develop the clean energy sources that can provide for economic growth and development without risking the natural world that is our endowment," he said.



Comment on this Article

---

Antarctica, a living global warming laboratory

www.chinaview.cn 2006-12-11 11:07:41

BEIJING, Dec. 11 -- For scientists at this ice-encircled outpost, global warming is not a matter of debate. It is a simple fact and crucial research questions centre on what its consequences will be.

Antarctica is a prime place for this research because it serves as an early warning system for climate change and is a major influence on global weather.
As about 90 per cent of the world's ice volume and 70 per cent of its fresh water is on the southernmost continent, any substantial warming could cause a rise in sea levels around the globe.

"It's a bellwether for the planet," Tom Wagner of the US National Science Foundation said in an e-mail interview. "Its ice sheets are the main player in sea level rise; there is already evidence that they are shrinking."

It was easy to imagine melting ice sheets this week around McMurdo Station, the biggest US science centre in Antarctica, with temperatures in the relatively balmy range of -2 C and the 24-hour-a-day spring sunshine causing pools of melted water atop a 3-metre layer of ice around the base.

Much of the sea ice is cracked and the nearby Barne Glacier has had several major collapses onto the sea ice in recent days. Still, heavy tracked vehicles can navigate the ice on designated pathways.

While these are not specifically signs of global warming, Antarctica and the Arctic are key places to look for such signals because even a slight rise in temperature can precipitate melting ice, which would have dramatic effects on living things and land, as well as global climate implications, Wagner said.

Reading ancient rocks

For Ross Powell, an environmental geologist, one way to figure out what the future of climate change might be is to look some 10 million years back in to Antarctica's past.

"We want to go back through time and see the changes that the Antarctic has been through," said Powell, who is based at Northern Illinois University but is working on an international geology project here.

"And one of the key things is finding the warm periods, because we are going into a warming phase now."

Powell is one of the chief scientists on the ANDRILL project shorthand for Antarctic Geologic Drilling Programme where a massive drill burrows down about 260 feet (78 metres) of sea ice, 2,700 feet (810 metres) of ocean water and then into the sediments beneath to see what clues earlier warm periods left behind.

"We need to read the rocks to understand when the ice was there and when it wasn't and what the conditions were in the marine environment associated with the movement of the ice forward and backwards," Powell said in an interview.

So far, ANDRILL researchers have found tantalizing clues about periods when the Antarctic ocean was swarming with marine algae called diatoms, which still exist as one of the most basic links on the planet's food chain.

The glimpse back in time could examine a period in Antarctica's history when levels of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide were high, but perhaps not as high as scientists predict it will get in the coming decades due to human activity.

If the ice sheets around Antarctica shrink substantially, that would not by itself cause the world's seas to rise, just as an ice cube melting in a glass of water would not cause much of a rise in the level of liquid in the glass.

But the ice sheets perform an important function by slowing down the flow of glacial ice. If the ice sheets go away, many scientists believe that glaciers will flow more swiftly, adding their ice to the oceans, and that could cause sea level rise.



Comment on this Article

---

America - Looking In

---

Physicist Steven Jones announces withdrawal from Jim Fetzer and Jim Fetzer's version of Scholars for 9-11 Truth

Steven Jones
7 Dec 06

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

This is to inform you that I (along with chemist Kevin Ryan and many others) have withdrawn from association with Jim Fetzer (JF) and "his" version of Scholars for 9/11 Truth, and to provide reasons for this action.
1. On the Scholars web site he manages ( www.st911.org ), Jim Fetzer casts aspersions on my research regarding the use of thermates at the World Trade Center on 9/11/2001 -- which is fine as long as he provides serious technical objections, which he has not done. At the same time, JF is promoting on the web site notions that energy-beams from WTC 7 or from space knocked the Towers down.

I have invited Jim repeatedly to view the video of my talk given 11/11/06 at the University of California at Berkeley which provides the latest physical evidences for thermate use, reinforcing the data in my published paper. He admitted this week that he has not done so. My UC-Berkeley talk is HERE.

In fairness, I list Jim's talk in Tucson (Nov. 13) also, which you may wish to compare.

Here you will find Jim's assertion that energy beams directed from WTC 7, or from space, may be the "fascinating" explanation for what caused the Twin Towers to collapse. He also here discusses "falling grand pianos." My sincere efforts to correct his evident errors/misinformation have been twisted and distorted until I want no more to do with such "tar-baby" discussions.

2. I support this statement made recently by Dr. Frank Legge, Kevin Ryan, Victoria Ashley, and other (previous) members of the Scholars for 9/11 Truth:

"Further, on the Scholars' web site, positions are being promoted which are disputed by the scientists specializing in physical sciences from Scholars For 9/11 Truth. Attempts to correct this situation have failed. As of this date the web site continues to promote assertions which many unsupported by the evidence (ray-beams from space caused the demolitions, mini-nukes were used in the WTC towers, real commercial jets did not hit the WTC towers, etc.). We feel that the promotion of these ideas functions to distract from and discredit much of the other basic strong material challenging the official story of 9/11 which already exists - the stand down, the war games, the insider trading, the many strong points of evidence on the demolitions, etc."

(This 'ad hoc' committee has sent out a letter you may have received; I have chosen their "option 1.")

3. On the Scholars' web site, Jim has posted an "Open Letter About Steven Jones" which contains the following:

"He is now planning to take control of the web site from me." "... his attempt to take over the site is morally, legally, and intellectually objectionable on many grounds, including that it qualifies as taking something that does not belong to him."

Jim's accusation against me is simply untrue and he provided no evidence for his assertion. I replied:

"What nonsense. As I have written to you privately . Jim, I have no interest at all "to take over the site." My work is research .. Your accusation that I attempt "to take over the site" is not only unfounded, it is bizarre."

The uncivil accusations and diatribes remain on the Scholars' web site (actually managed solely by Jim Fetzer) to this day, contrary to the strong objections of many members of the society. You may read my full reply and pleading with Jim to be reasonable, HERE.

I have asked Jim to promptly remove any papers which I authored from this web site, but he has not done so.

Jim Fetzer may keep his web site and whoever wishes to adhere to "his" version of Scholars for 9/11 Truth. Many of us thought this was going to be a collective effort where members could have a voice, not Jim's "sole proprietorship."

It is most unfortunate that others have been dragged into this situation, and I write out of concern for you to explain what has been going on. Of late, Jim F. refers often to his association now with Judy Wood and Morgan Reynolds. These two are noted for their no-planes-hit-the-Towers theories and for promoting the notion of ray-beams from space knocking down the Towers. (I and others have written evidence-based rebuttals to these notions.) These two have written caustic ad hominems about me in particular, and it possible that Jim's association with them explains some of his recent behavior.

I hope Jim will view the video of my lecture at UC-Berkeley and then re-evaluate his stance.

4. During Thanksgiving weekend, Jim F unilaterally dismissed me as co-chair of Scholars for 9/11 Truth. I felt that this action was improper and unfair. Later he hinted that unspecified legal action might be taken against me and/or Alex Floum, a fine researcher. To me, this was the last straw which led to my ending association with Jim F and "his" society.

5. I join Kevin Ryan and many others in withdrawing from the group so that my name will not be attached to the personalized attacks and ray-beams-from-space stuff on www.st911.org.

This I did by simply emailing to joinst911@gmail.com and stating that "I am withdrawing from this society."

(This very email is set up such that if you simply hit "Reply to all" and state "I withdraw from this society", it will send the message to the membership administrator for the society run now by Jim Fetzer.)

6. Some months ago, I initiated and now co-edit with Kevin Ryan the Journal of 9/11 Studies which publishes peer-reviewed papers which adhere to the scientific method. I hope you will take a look at some of the fine papers therein:

www.journalof911studies.com

I believe this is the proper way to proceed, with careful studies followed by peer-reviewed publication.

7. An ad hoc committee of scholars (from the old group) is forming a research society which will focus on use of the scientific method and peer-reviewed papers. Their website will be closely allied with the Journal of 9/11 Studies (which I co-edit) and will be managed by an elected committee, responsive to the group. Two sample websites are already available to give further information:

http://schol.digitalstyledesigns.com/ and http://www.taulbee.us/stj911/

This research group intends to keep in touch with its members and to use the scientific method along with civil and respectful discourse. (We won't spend much time on ray-beams from space knocking down the Towers!) If you wish to join this group, you may write to: stj911.info(at)yahoo.com




Comment on this Article

---

U.S. has most prisoners in world due to tough laws

By James Vicini
Reuters
Sat Dec 9, 2006

WASHINGTON - Tough sentencing laws, record numbers of drug offenders and high crime rates have contributed to the United States having the largest prison population and the highest rate of incarceration in the world, according to criminal justice experts.
A U.S. Justice Department report released on November 30 showed that a record 7 million people -- or one in every 32 American adults -- were behind bars, on probation or on parole at the end of last year. Of the total, 2.2 million were in prison or jail.

According to the International Center for Prison Studies at King's College in London, more people are behind bars in the United States than in any other country. China ranks second with 1.5 million prisoners, followed by Russia with 870,000.

The U.S. incarceration rate of 737 per 100,000 people in the highest, followed by 611 in Russia and 547 for St. Kitts and Nevis. In contrast, the incarceration rates in many Western industrial nations range around 100 per 100,000 people.

Groups advocating reform of U.S. sentencing laws seized on the latest U.S. prison population figures showing admissions of inmates have been rising even faster than the numbers of prisoners who have been released.

"The United States has 5 percent of the world's population and 25 percent of the world's incarcerated population. We rank first in the world in locking up our fellow citizens," said Ethan Nadelmann of the Drug Policy Alliance, which supports alternatives in the war on drugs.

"We now imprison more people for drug law violations than all of western Europe, with a much larger population, incarcerates for all offenses."

Ryan King, a policy analyst at The Sentencing Project, a group advocating sentencing reform, said the United States has a more punitive criminal justice system than other countries.

MORE PEOPLE TO PRISON

"We send more people to prison, for more different offenses, for longer periods of time than anybody else," he said.

Drug offenders account for about 2 million of the 7 million in prison, on probation or parole, King said, adding that other countries often stress treatment instead of incarceration.

Commenting on what the prison figures show about U.S. society, King said various social programs, including those dealing with education, poverty, urban development, health care and child care, have failed.

"There are a number of social programs we have failed to deliver. There are systemic failures going on," he said. "A lot of these people then end up in the criminal justice system."

Kent Scheidegger, legal director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation in California, said the high prison numbers represented a proper response to the crime problem in the United States. Locking up more criminals has contributed to lower crime rates, he said.

"The hand-wringing over the incarceration rate is missing the mark," he said.

Scheidegger said the high prison population reflected cultural differences, with the United States having far higher crimes rates than European nations or Japan. "We have more crime. More crime gets you more prisoners."

Julie Stewart, president of the group Families Against Mandatory Minimums, cited the Justice Department report and said drug offenders are clogging the U.S. justice system.

"Why are so many people in prison? Blame mandatory sentencing laws and the record number of nonviolent drug offenders subject to them," she said.



Comment on this Article

---

New Orleans to Raze Public Housing

By Julia Cass and Peter Whoriskey
Special to The Washington Post and Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 8, 2006; A03

NEW ORLEANS, Dec. 7 -- Public housing officials decided Thursday to proceed with the demolition of more than 4,500 government apartments here, brushing aside an outcry from residents displaced by Hurricane Katrina who said the move was intended to reduce the ability of poor black people to repopulate the city.

Residents and their advocates made emotional, legal and what they called common-sense arguments against demolition at the housing authority meeting. "The day you decide to destroy our homes, you will break a lot of hearts," said Sharon Pierce Jackson, who lived in one of the now-closed projects slated to be razed. "We are people. We are not animals."
She and others questioned why the Department of Housing and Urban Development would destroy affordable housing in New Orleans, saying it is essential to the city's recovery.

C. Donald Babers, the federally appointed administrator running the Housing Authority of New Orleans, did not respond to that question in tersely approving the demolitions.

Previously, HUD officials have said the old projects should be cleared out to make way for less dense, modern housing. But those new developments, to be constructed in partnership with private investors, would probably include far fewer apartments for low-income residents and would take years to complete. An unresolved lawsuit on behalf of residents charges that the demolition plan is racially discriminatory.

"This is a government-sanctioned diaspora of New Orleans's poorest African American citizens," said Bill Quigley of Loyola University's law school, who is representing the displaced. "They are destroying perfectly habitable apartments when they are more rare than any time since the Civil War."

The divide over public housing may be the most prominent skirmish in the larger battle over the post-Katrina balance of whites and blacks in New Orleans and how decisions on rebuilding shape the city's demographic future.

Before Katrina, the Census Bureau pegged the city's racial breakdown at about 67 percent black and 28 percent white. A more recent study conducted for the Louisiana Recovery Authority estimates that the city, still well under half its pre-storm population, is 47 percent black and 43 percent white.

When Katrina struck, more than 5,000 families, nearly all of them black, were living in New Orleans public housing, and a couple of thousand more units were vacant or uninhabitable. The waiting list for housing had 8,250 names.

Since the storm, most of the complexes have been closed, some surrounded by fences and razor wire. About 1,100 units were occupied as of July, according to HUD figures.

To repair the hurricane damage at the four largest complexes in question would cost $130 million, according to HUD figures. Residents and their attorneys say that those cost estimates are bloated and that many units now unavailable could be reoccupied with a little cleaning or minor renovation.

At Thursday's meeting, attended by about 40 public housing representatives and advocates, Stephanie Mingo, who had been a 43-year resident of the now-closed St. Bernard project, blinked back angry tears as she spoke during her allotted three minutes. "You are hurting people. You are killing people," she said. "I don't know how y'all can sleep at night."

The meeting, the last of a series of required "consultation meetings" with residents, appeared to be a formality. Babers thanked each person for his or her comments but made none himself. Nor did he answer any of the questions put to him. Residents called the process a sham.

HUD spokeswoman Donna White said public comments from the meetings will be reviewed by HUD in Washington, which can accept, reject or change the demolition plan.

The plans for redeveloping public housing in New Orleans resemble efforts in recent years in cities across the country. In response to critics who have said some of the old complexes deteriorated because they concentrated and isolated the poor, the replacement developments are typically less dense and only partly devoted to subsidized housing.

But in post-Katrina New Orleans, the idea of demolishing units that might be rehabilitated, and replacing them with fewer units, infuriates advocates of the poor.

They point to the former St. Thomas project in the city, which was originally designed to house approximately 1,500 families. Its demolition, in 2002, has been followed by the construction of 296 apartments, 122 of them for low-income families. When the project is completed, it is supposed to have 1,100 new residential units, but critics say far too few of the poor displaced by the demolition will ever be able to live there.

State Rep. Cedric Richmond (D) scoffed at the underlying logic of the new developments, saying it is audacious to blame residents' misery on the concentration of poverty in New Orleans. At a similar meeting last month, he said: "It was always concentrated. Because you can't get people to make beds and clean hotels if you educate them well and they expect a decent pay."

Whoriskey reported from Miami.



Comment on this Article

---

Four dead in Chicago skyscraper shooting

Reuters
10/12/2006

A gunman shot four people, killing three of them, in law offices on one of the top floors of a downtown skyscraper on Friday and took a hostage before he was shot by a police sniper, authorities said.

The shooting shut down a commuter rail station at the base of the 42-story office tower, stranding thousands of commuters as workers fled from the offices above.

The gunman, who was armed with a revolver, a knife and a hammer, entered the law office carrying an envelope as a ruse.

"We feel he did have previous encounters with the individuals in that office," said Police Superintendent Phil Cline, without being more specific about the motive.
Once inside the gunman opened fire, wounding three people fatally. He had taken a hostage and chained a door when a police sniper shot down a long hallway, striking the gunman.

"There were at least another 25 to 30 people on the floor and I think the Chicago police officer -- SWAT -- saved those people's lives," said Cline.

He said the gunman may have shot himself as well, but an autopsy would have to show which was the fatal wound.



Comment on this Article

---

US science teachers refuse climate DVDs

New Scientist Print Edition
07 December 2006

Psst! Want 50,000 free DVDs? The US National Science Teachers Association didn't, even though the DVDs in question were of An Inconvenient Truth, the climate change movie that is required viewing for all children in Norway and Sweden.

Why not? Because according to Laurie David, one of the film's producers, the NSTA has accepted millions of dollars from oil firms, including Exxon Mobil and Shell. The NSTA has even promoted oil companies' "special interests and implicit endorsements", David said in the The Washington Post on 26 November.
Not so, Jodie Peterson of NSTA told New Scientist. "Our board of directors has to approve our funding before it is accepted. No one has ever given us money with any stipulations attached; it's just never happened."

NSTA president-elect Jonathan Witsett said during a call-in to National Public Radio that NSTA would have accepted the donated DVDs if it hadn't been for the distribution costs, which he estimated at $250,000.

From issue 2581 of New Scientist magazine, 07 December 2006, page 6



Comment on this Article

---

McKinney Introduces Bill to Impeach Bush

By BEN EVANS
Associated Press
Dec 08, 2006

WASHINGTON - In what was likely her final legislative act in Congress, outgoing Georgia Rep. Cynthia McKinney introduced a bill Friday to impeach President Bush.

The legislation has no chance of passing and serves as a symbolic parting shot not only at Bush but also at Democratic leaders. Incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has made clear that she will not entertain proposals to sanction Bush and has warned the liberal wing of her party against making political hay of impeachment.
McKinney, a Democrat who drew national headlines in March when she struck a Capitol police officer, has long insisted that Bush was never legitimately elected. In introducing her legislation in the final hours of the current Congress, she said Bush had violated his oath of office to defend the Constitution and the nation's laws.

In the bill, she accused Bush of misleading Congress on the war in Iraq and violating privacy laws with his domestic spying program.

McKinney has made no secret of her frustration with Democratic leaders since voters ousted her from office in the Democratic primary this summer. In a speech Monday at George Washington University, she accused party leaders of kowtowing to Republicans on the war in Iraq and on military mistreatment of prisoners.

McKinney, who has not discussed her future plans, has increasingly embraced her image as a controversial figure.

She has hosted numerous panels on Sept. 11 conspiracy theories and suggested that Bush had prior knowledge of the terrorist attacks but kept quiet about it to allow friends to profit from the aftermath. She introduced legislation to establish a permanent collection of rapper Tupac Shakur's recordings at the National Archives and calling for a federal investigation into his killing.

But it was her scuffle with a Capitol police officer that drew the most attention. McKinney struck the officer when he tried to stop her from entering a congressional office building. The officer did not recognize McKinney, who was not wearing her member lapel pin.

A grand jury in Washington declined to indict McKinney over the clash, but she eventually apologized before the House.



Comment on this Article

---

Kirk Douglas calls on youth to stand up and be counted

Dan Glaister in Los Angeles
Monday December 11, 2006
The Guardian

The cleft chin may be familiar to some. But others may have difficulty placing the ageing Hollywood star.

"You may know me," he writes in an open letter published last Saturday. "If you don't ... Google me. I was a movie star and I'm Michael Douglas's dad, Catherine Zeta-Jones's father-in-law, and the grandparents of their two children. Today I celebrate my 90th birthday."

But Kirk Douglas has loftier things on his mind than summoning up the wind to blow out 90 candles. The man who led the slaves to revolt as Spartacus, the man who embodied the suffering of Van Gogh's art in Lust For Life is turning his attention to the fate of the planet.

"Let's face it," he writes to "America's young people", "THE WORLD IS IN A MESS and you are inheriting it.
"Generation Y, you are on the cusp. You are the group facing many problems: abject poverty, global warming, genocide, Aids, and suicide bombers to name a few. These problems exist, and the world is silent. We have done very little to solve these problems. Now, we leave it to you. You have to fix it because the situation is intolerable."

There is, however, a motive behind the altruism. In March Douglas publishes his 9th book, a non-fiction work entitled Let's Face It: 90 Years of Living, Loving and Learning. The open letter, more of a press release, has had the desired effect. Anyone who took the actor's advice at the weekend found that Kirk Douglas was the top entry on Google's news section

Douglas has devoted much of his life since the 1980s to good works. Eschewing what one critic described as the "cocky, intense, forceful and egocentric" roles that characterised his best performances, he has been a US state department Goodwill Ambassador, and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Now he has taken on the role of benevolent grandparent, giving homely advice to the world.



Comment on this Article

---

Reality show turns B-list into gun-toting cops

Friday December 8, 2006
The Guardian

Just when you thought that reality TV had reached the end of its natural life and the pot of mindless, vapid "concepts" had finally been emptied, along comes Armed and Famous.

The idea, courtesy of CBS television, is simple. Take a bunch of minor celebrities, give them guns, train them to use said weapons, give them a police uniform and badge, and send them out to uphold the law on the streets.
These new "recruits" as reserve officers are La Toya Jackson, Michael's sister, Jack Osbourne, son of Ozzy, and the skateboarder and Jackass star Wee Man. Also taking part are Erik Estrada, star of the television series CHiPs, in which he played a motorcycle cop, and Trish Stratus, a former wrestler . The series is being filmed in Muncie, Indiana (population 66,000), chosen for its quintessential middle-America features. The city's police are doing the training.

The celebrities are shown firing in the gun range and learning how to stop people in their cars and on the streets.

Muncie residents were allowed to view filming recently, during which Estrada joked with the crowd that he might not be recognisable as an officer as he would not be wearing his toupee. Associated Press reported that he wiggled his hairpiece.

Filming continues until mid-January, though a date has yet to be set for the broadcast. A few hiccups have already occurred. Jackson failed her fitness test, the Muncie Star Press revealed, because she was unable to do 25 press-ups.



Comment on this Article

---

Waiting for the Democrats (Editorial)

Fri. Dec 01, 2006
The Forward

Many of the movers and shakers who make it their business to speak truth to power [LOL!] in the name of the Jewish community are jittery these days. They've been watching the Democrats in Washington get ready to take over the reins of Congress, and trying to figure out what it will mean for the interests and values that they and their community hold dear. They sense that there's a lot at stake in the months ahead, and they're not sure what the new Democratic majority has in mind.
That alone should tell you quite a bit about the way things are today. When Jews are afraid of Democrats, something has changed.

Of course, many things have changed. The Democrats, out of power and leaderless for years, return to power chastened and convinced they need to do things differently. Just how differently, no one knows, but the buzzword on everyone's lips is economic populism. Since the 1970s, they have allowed themselves to be defined as the party of the outsider, the downtrodden, the oppressed and vulnerable minorities. That has allowed the Republicans to present themselves as the voice of the majority, which is a good way to win elections.

The Democrats seem to be aiming now to push their minority-rights agenda toward the background and emphasize their old New Deal-labor platform of economic egalitarianism, promising a better deal for society's have-nots.

This is a double-whammy for the Jewish community's traditional leadership. For one thing, they've carved out a political space for themselves in the past generation on a platform of defending Jews as a minority. For another, they've built a well-oiled machine that's mostly dependent - though they don't like to discuss it - on the donations of society's haves. Naturally they're nervous.

Then there's the matter of Israel. There's no real difference between Democratic and Republican elected officials on questions of Israeli security, but their grass-roots constituencies are a different story. Public opinion surveys show that self-identified Democrats are markedly less sympathetic to Israel than self-identified Republicans. The Democrats have some noisy constituencies on the left that identify openly with the Palestinians. Most party leaders don't pay much attention to those groups, but some do. Jewish activists have noticed this.

Many Jewish activists, for their part, have responded by rallying behind President Bush. They call him the greatest friend Israel has ever had, a title that's passed to nearly every president on entering the White House. What they really mean, though, is that he's the strongest proponent in memory of a strong-arm approach to extremism in the Muslim world. That's won him strong, vocal support from some very visible elements in the Jewish community, while most of the rest of the country tears its hair out. Democratic leaders don't like to talk about this, but they have noticed.

The Democrats won't abandon Israel. That's inconceivable in a party led by the likes of Chuck Schumer and Rahm Emanuel. But they might be just a little bit less receptive to Israel's main advocates here. Of course those advocates are worried.

There's a gentler, almost banal factor that's been at play, leading the Democrats and the Jewish communal advocates apart. The job of the advocates has been to get into the halls of power and make their case. Those halls of power have been occupied by Republicans - indeed, a special breed of Republicans who have made life difficult for pleaders who tried to remain friends with Democrats. So there hasn't been much communication in a while. The best-known Jewish agencies have narrowed their action agendas in the past few years to items they could hope to achieve - lots of Middle East and counter-terrorism stuff, not so much social gospel.

One could read that as a hijacking of the Jewish communal agenda by the rich and conservative. And indeed, there's something odd in Jewish advocacy agencies and representative bodies acting nervous at the triumph of a party that won the votes of nearly seven out of every eight Jews.

But one could also remember that the big agencies have, for the most part, just been doing their jobs as they understood them, in a time of great fear and uncertainty. Now things are changing, and we all have an opportunity to rethink our roles. We can remember that Jews live in the world - indeed, we're commanded to protect it - and that there's an opportunity now to get serious about saving the planet from the environmental catastrophe threatening it. We can look at the Democrats' economic agenda as an opportunity to make society right and to give back, as the saying goes. That could go a long way toward repairing the social fabric and reducing the hate we so fear. In short, we can start thinking about our values as well as our interests.

As for our representative bodies, they might start by taking time off to do some deep thinking about what it means to represent.

Comment from Jeff Blankfort: This is the usual needless concern periodically expressed in the Jewish media that American politicians may, at last, be forced by their constituents to represent the American people, those who pay their salaries, rather than the lobbyists who pay for their campaigns. Unfortunately, we know they have nothing to worry about. In the case of the Democrats, those lobbyists have largely been wealthy Jews followed by the trade union bureaucrats who have addicted their unions to blindly supporting Israel through the purchase of billions of dollars of State of Israel Bonds. In fact, bonds are exactly what they are. Do not expect them to be broken as long as what passes for a solidarity movement remains largely unwilling to challenge either the lobby or the union bureaucracy.-JB

Comment on this Article

---

U.S. reviews security after Algeria bombing

By William Maclean
Reuters
11 Dec 06

ALGIERS (Reuters) - The United States embassy urged Americans in Algeria to check their personal security on Monday after a bus carrying foreign oil workers was bombed in the first attack on Western expatriates in many years.

A Warden Notice for the estimated 800 U.S. expatriates said the embassy in the oil- and gas-exporting north African nation would be open for normal business "but is encouraging Americans in Algiers to review their security situation.

"The Embassy will limit movements on December 11 to official business only while evaluating the situation."
An existing U.S. travel warning says there is a significant security risk in many areas of Algeria, Africa's second largest country which is slowly pulling itself out of 14 years of conflict between Islamist rebels and government forces.

Sunday's attack in the upmarket Bouchaoui district, 10 km (six miles) west of Algiers, killed the Algerian driver and wounded nine people, including four Britons and an American, authorities said.

Some expatriate oil executives said they would step up security as a result of the late afternoon attack.

Residents said the bus was ferrying employees of Brown Root Condor, a joint venture of Halliburton subsidiary Kellog, Brown and Root (KBR) and Condor Engineering, an affiliate of Algerian state energy group Sonatrach.

The authorities were working on two hypotheses.

"If it is terrorism, that would indicate that the affiliate of Halliburton has been targeted for its role in Iraq. It has been seen as a firm that has hoarded Iraqi riches," a security source said.

"If it is criminality, that would mean that the local mafia wants to block the opening of the economy and economic transparency. This mafia wants the status quo and to preserve monopoly situations."

The government is trying to modernize the country's Soviet-style command economy, long dominated by loss-making state banks notorious for mismanagement, graft and inefficiency.

A KBR statement said: "KBR can confirm that a bus carrying employees of Brown & Root Condor (BRC), a joint venture between KBR and Sonatrach, was attacked in Algiers, Algeria, on Sunday, December 10 at approximately 4:45 p.m. local time.

"KBR's top priority remains the safety and security of our employees around the world. For this reason, we will not detail the measures undertaken to safeguard company personnel."

ELABORATE ASSAULT

The bombing took place in a heavily protected neighborhood that is home to some government ministers as well as the Sheraton Hotel, where several foreign firms have their offices.

Some residents spoke of a gunman who got out of a car parked at the curb and opened fire at the bus as it approached.

Sporadic clashes between Islamist guerrillas and security forces normally take place in isolated rural areas.

On October 30, three people were killed and 24 wounded in near-simultaneous truck bomb attacks on two police stations in what witnesses called the most elaborate assault by Islamist rebels in several years.

Islamists began an armed revolt in 1992 after the then military-backed authorities, fearing an Iran-style revolution, scrapped a parliamentary election that an Islamist political party, the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), was set to win.

Up to 200,000 people were killed in the ensuing bloodshed. The violence has sharply subsided in the past few years.

The biggest foreign operator is U.S. Anadarko Petroleum Corp and the biggest foreign investor is Britain's BP. Other investors include Royal Dutch Shell BHP Billiton, ENI, Hess Corp and Repsol.




Comment on this Article

---

Is Your Lipstick Safe?

By Anuja Mendiratta
Ms. Magazine
December 11, 2006

Personal care and hygiene products from toothpaste to eyeshadow contain thousands of largely unregulated chemicals that could pose serious damage to your health.
That lipstick or nail polish you may be wearing -- are they a danger to your health? How about your deodorant, toothpaste, body lotion, soap?

Seemingly innocuous personal-care products contain a host of largely unregulated chemicals and toxic ingredients. Some of those chemicals -- phthalates, formaldehyde, petroleum, parabens, benzene and lead -- have been variously linked to breast cancer, endometriosis, reproductive disorders, birth defects and developmental disabilities in children.

Women and girls should be particularly concerned, as our bodies are uniquely susceptible to certain environmental chemicals. Women have a greater percentage of fat in comparison to men, so fat-soluble chemicals such as parabens and toluene tend to be more readily absorbed and fatty breast tissue can be a long-term storage site for some of the more persistent toxic chemicals. Hormones also play a role: Synthetic chemicals such as alkylphenols (found in some detergents) and bisphenol A (found in hard plastics) can mimic natural estrogens in the body -- and excess estrogen can play a role in the development of breast cancer. Childbearing women may also pass toxins to fetuses in utero or to newborns when breastfeeding.

But U.S. consumers are left in the dark about vital safety information: Cosmetic companies are not required to label many of their products' ingredients, and the Food and Drug Administration does not mandate premarket safety testing of those ingredients.

And that's why the California Safe Cosmetics Act is such a landmark achievement.

Signed into law by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger last October and taking effect in 2007, it requires manufacturers to disclose product ingredients found on state or federal lists of chemicals that cause cancer or birth defects. The law further authorizes the state to investigate the health impacts of chemicals in cosmetics, and requires manufacturers to supply health-related information about their ingredients. Finally, the act enables the state to regulate products in order to assure the safety of salon workers.

California is the first state in the nation to pass such legislation, thus serving as a model for the other 49. "This is an important disclosure bill, and an important victory for women's health," says Jeanne Rizzo of the Breast Cancer Fund. "California has set the stage for states to assert regulatory authority around toxic chemicals in cosmetics, which the federal government has thus far refused to lead on."

Adds California state Sen. Carole Migden, who championed the legislation, "It is beyond belief that consumers are not being told whether or not they are putting carcinogens on their skin, in their hair or on their face. [The law] represents a triumph of grassroots efforts over money and power. Even in the face of a multinationally funded lobbying machine, common sense and the public good prevailed."

While many known toxic components have been banned in Europe from use in personal care products, similar ingredients remain legal in products marketed to the American public. Currently, the FDA does not review the ingredients in cosmetic and beauty-care products, but instead relies on self-regulation by the cosmetic industry's own Cosmetic Ingredient Review (CIR) panel. According to the watchdog Environmental Working Group, only 11 percent of the 10,500-plus ingredients that the FDA has documented in personal-care products have been assessed for safety by the CIR panel.

In response to the lack of government oversight, an international Campaign for Safe Cosmetics was initiated in 2002 to pressure the personal-care industry to phase out known toxic ingredients and replace them with safer alternatives. Manufacturers have been encouraged to sign the "Compact for Safe Cosmetics," and to date more than 300 have done so, including The Body Shop, Burt's Bees and Aubrey Organics.

Migden authored the California Safe Cosmetics Act (S.B. 484) in 2004, with co-sponsorship by Breast Cancer Action, Breast Cancer Fund and the National Environmental Trust. They joined with other public-health, environmental, consumer, Asian Pacific Islander, teen and faith-based groups in a yearlong organizing and lobbying campaign -- which met aggressive opposition from the Cosmetic, Toiletry and Fragrance Association. The industry group spent more than $600,000 trying to defeat the bill, even going so far as to host a website to capture searchers looking for the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics. In contradiction to a growing body of science, the website claims that the personal-care products sold in California are the safest in the world.

Julia Liou, of Oakland-based Asian Health Services, advocated particularly for provisions in the bill designed to protect the safety of nail-salon and cosmetology workers. "We realize that Asian nail-salon workers and owners are not fully aware of the long-term health risks facing their sector," says Liou. Currently, of the more than 83,500 manicurists in California, 80 percent are of Vietnamese descent, more than half of whom are of reproductive age.

Nail-salon and cosmetology workers handle solvents, chemical solutions and glues on a daily basis, yet little research has been conducted on the chronic health effects of such exposures. There is also a dearth of culturally and linguistically appropriate educational materials to build awareness about environmental exposures and help workers and salon owners implement safety precautions.

Most of the Vietnamese salon workers earn less than $15,700 a year, speak limited English and lack health coverage. Their voices went largely unheard in the safe-cosmetics debate, and some salon owners actually came out against the bill -- "based on misinformation and fear about how it might impact small immigrant-owned businesses," says Liou. "So it is important for us to work with salon workers and owners in a way that empowers them to be leaders and advocates themselves." In an effort to do so, the California Healthy Nail Salons Collaborative was formed, and now advocates for greater work- place safety, protective policies, research and community education.

The passage of the California Safe Cosmetics Act sets the stage for further advocacy around cosmetic safety, occupational exposures and chemical policy reform. Those who fought to pass it are now working to ensure its adequate funding and enforcement, and hope to see it replicated in other states.

For more information, visit: Campaign for Safe Cosmetics; California Health Nail Salons Collaborative, jliou@ahschc.org; Skin Deep, a database of the Environmental Working Group providing a safety assessment of personal-care product ingredients. To access the California Safe Cosmetics Act: www.leginfo.ca.gov/bilinfo.html.

Anuja Mendiratta is a senior program officer with the Women's Foundation of California and on the steering committee of the California Health Nail Salons Collaborative; she is also a freelance writer.



Comment on this Article

---

Night launch for shuttle 'Discovery'

By David Usborne
11 December 2006

Darkness briefly became day over Cape Canaveral on Saturday evening as the space shuttle Discovery made a rare night-time launch bound for the International Space Station where the crew, including the British-born Nicholas Patrick, will undertake a 12-day mission dedicated to re-wiring the facility.
A shower of sparks and flames from the shuttle's launch rockets provided a dramatic fireworks display at 8.47pm after the countdown ended on a launch that had been delayed earlier in the day because of low clouds. The shuttle left an arc of light across the horizon as it blasted off. It was the first night launch by Nasa in four years. "It just all came together perfectly," the launch director, Mike Leinbach, said. "Everything was just clicking today. Some days you feel good and you know it's going to come together."

After a day of orbiting Earth yesterday to allow astronauts to inspect their shuttle for any damage, docking with the space station should be completed this morning. Work will begin on rewiring the station and connecting a new power supply.

The American astronaut Sunita Williams will remain in the space station as part of its three-member crew, replacing Germany's Thomas Reiter of the European Space Agency.



Comment on this Article

---

America - Looking Out

---

US casts sole 'no' vote against proposed treaty restricting arms trade

By Kaleem Omar
12/09/06 "The News"

The United States, which is the world's biggest exporter of arms and accounts for more than 50 per cent of all arms exports, on Wednesday became the only country in the United Nations to vote against letting work begin on a new treaty to bolster arms embargoes and prevent human rights abuses by setting uniform worldwide standards for arms deals. The vote in the 192-nation UN General Assembly was 153-1, with the United States casting the sole "no" vote. Twenty-four other nations abstained, including major arms sellers Russia and China and emerging exporters India and Pakistan.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, whose term of office ends on December 31, welcomed the launch of a process that could lead to a treaty regulating international trade in conventional weapons. Unregulated trade in such arms "currently contributes to conflict, crime and terrorism, and undermines international efforts for peace and development," Annan spokeswoman Marie Okabe said.

The Reiuters news agency reported that the measure would give incoming US Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (South Korea's fotmer foreign minister), who succeeds Annan on January 1, a year to explore and report back to the General Assembly on the feasibility and scope of a binding international treaty establishing uniform standards for arms deals.

Work on the International Arms Treaty will begin immediately following Wednesday's vote in the UN General Assembly. The vote came just three years after the launch of the "Control Arms" campaign, which has seen over a million people in 170 countries calling for a treaty.

Three-quarters of the UN member nations voted in favour of the proposal, which was also supported by an overwhelming number of countries in the UN General Assembly's First Committee in October.

There was also strong support from the governments of Europe as well as the Pacific region and Latin America.

"Significant support for an Arms Trade Treaty has come from some of the world's most gun-affected regions; this indicates not only widespread recognition of the problem but also widespread political will," said Rebecca Peters, Director of The International Action Network on Small Arms (TANSA).

The Bush administration, remained the only government to vote against the proposal, despite a recent appeal by 14 US senators to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for the administration to reconsider its position.

Wednesday's vote in the UN General Assembly has been described as "historic" by TANSA. But it can only become historic in practical terms if the United States were to agree to sign the treaty, ratify it and agree to abide by its provisions. If the US does not do so, the world's biggest arms exporter would remain outside the purview of the treaty - reducing it, in effect, to just another piece of paper.

In December, 2001, the Bush administration withdrew from the US-Russia Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, with President George W. Bush calling the treaty a "relic" of the Cold War era which had "outlived its usefulness." Bush's remarks prompted Russian President Vladimir Putin to warn of a new arms race.

In May 2002, during a visit to Moscow by Bush, he and Putin signed a new arms control treaty. But the new agreement reached on May 13, 2002, is a treaty in name only because it allows for the continued escalation of American militarism with the acquiescence of the Russian government.

The main component of the treaty is a pledge by both sides to cut nuclear warheads to about a third of their 2002 levels over the course of the next decade. However, there is no timetable for the deactivation of the weapons. This means that the United States (as well as Russia) is free even to increase its stockpile during the intervening period, so long as the number does not exceed the limit in 2012.

And the loopholes don't end there. The treaty does not require the actual destruction of the deactivated warheads. Russia has indicated its opposition to assertions by the United States government that the US could reduce its stockpile by simply placing the weapons in storage, available for quick and easy reactivation - essentially an accounting trick. The agreement does not prohibit this method, and US officials have indicated that the plan to use it for at least a portion of the current stockpile.

Moreover, the agreement provides that either country will be allowed to withdraw from it with only 90 days' notice. The Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, from which the US announced plans to withdraw in December 2001, and most other arms-control agreements have twice as long a waiting period. And, in contrast to such agreements as START I, no restrictions are placed on the type of weapons that can be deployed.

Like Russia, the United States has enough nuclear warheads in its arsenal (more than 11,000) to wipe out humanity several times over. To make matters even worse, the Bush administration is now developing a new breed of US "mini" nukes, known as bunker-busters, for use on the battlefield.

The US's Los Alamos laboratory (which produced the atom bombs that wiped out the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, killing more than 200,000 innocent Japanese civilians in the process) has been given the go-ahead by the Bush administration to produce mini-nukes. The US is currently spending more than $ 5 billion a year on the production and upgrading of nuclear weapons.

What sort of insane philosophy lies behind this? Does the US now want to have the capability to wipe out humanity five times over, instead of its current capability to wipe out humanity three times over? The mind boggles.

Given the US's dismal track record on arms-control issues, there does not appear to be much hope that the proposed new International Arms Trade Treaty will actually work.

In this context, it is instructive to recall what Mary Robinson (former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, former President of Ireland, honorary President of Oxfam International and head of the Ethical Globalisation Initiative) said in a statement issued on December 10, 2003.

Robinson said, "On this 55th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, threats of new terrorist attacks and the dangers of weapons of mass destruction dominate the headlines. But the real weapons of mass destruction go largely unnoticed by those of us who live far from conflict and war. Those weapons are the 639 million small arms in circulation, and at least 16 billion units of military ammunition produced every year - enough to shoot every man, woman and child on the planet twice."

During her five years as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Robinson spent a huge proportion of her time meeting people who had been terrorised by armed violence.

She said: "I went to Colombia and met some of those caught in the crossfire. I witnessed the same in the Balkans, Sierra Leone, Cambodia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Time and again a tide of weapons fed the slaughter and kept the conflict going."

More than 300,000 people have been killed in Columbia in a largely unreported civil war between government forces and left-wing guerrillas that has been going on for more than 30 years.

The killing fields of Cambodia - where more than 2 million people died in the 1970s at the hands of the murderous, US-backed Pol Pot regime - are still littered with land mines which continue to claim thousands of lives each year. Pol Pot is dead, but the killing goes on.

More than 3 million people have been killed in the fighting in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where government forces, rebel groups and invading armies from several neighbouring countries have been embroiled in a bloody conflict for over a decade - a conflict the international community has done little to stop.

Numerous other conflicts in other parts of the world continue to claim more lives each year.

So where do the weapons used to deny people their most basic human rights come from?

According to the 2003 edition of the Small Arms Survey, 1,134 companies in at least 98 countries are involved in some aspect of small arms production. At least 30 countries are regarded as significant producers, with the United States and Russia dominating the global market. Between them, these two countries account for more than 70 per cent of total worldwide production of civilian firearms.

As the survey points out, "The majority of countries involved in the small arms trade still fail to produce comprehensive data on their annual arms exports and imports. A significant proportion of the global trade in small arms is conducted in secrecy, reinforcing an environment in which corruption and black markets thrive."

Mary Robinson said: "The lack of data on the arms trade makes it easy for many of the weapons traded legally to end up in the wrong hands."



Comment on this Article

---

Washington Don't Understand That America Is Unwelcome in Iraq

By Patrick Cockburn
The Independent UK
December 11, 2006

DC can't stop distorting the unpopularity of the occupation in Iraq: the Iraq Study Group revealed that on one day last July US officials reported 93 attacks or significant acts of violence. In reality, it added, "a careful review of the reports ... brought to light 1,100 acts of violence."
During the Opium Wars between Britain and China in the 19th century, eunuchs at the court of the Chinese emperor had the problem of informing him of the repeated and humiliating defeat of his armies. They dealt with their delicate task by simply telling the emperor that his forces had already won or were about to win victories on all fronts.

For three and a half years White House officials have dealt with bad news from Iraq in similar fashion. Journalists were repeatedly accused by the US administration of not reporting political and military progress on the ground. Information about the failure of the US venture was ignored or suppressed.

Manipulation of facts was often very crude. As an example of the systematic distortion, the Iraq Study Group revealed last week that on one day last July US officials reported 93 attacks or significant acts of violence. In reality, it added, "a careful review of the reports ... brought to light 1,100 acts of violence."

The 10-fold reduction in the number of acts of violence officially noted was achieved by not reporting the murder of an Iraqi, or roadside bomb, rocket or mortar attacks aimed at US troops that failed to inflict casualties. I remember visiting a unit of US combat engineers camped outside Fallujah in January 2004 who told me that they had stopped reporting insurgent attacks on themselves unless they suffered losses as commanders wanted to hear only that the number of attacks was going down. As I was drove away, a sergeant begged us not to attribute what he had said: "If you do I am in real trouble."

Few Chinese emperors can have been as impervious to bad news from the front as President George W Bush. His officials were as assiduous as those eunuchs in Beijing 170 years ago in shielding him from bad news. But even when officials familiar with the real situation in Iraq did break through the bureaucratic cordon sanitaire around the Oval Office they got short shrift from Mr Bush. In December 2004 the CIA station chief in Baghdad said that the insurgency was expanding and was "largely unchallenged" in Sunni provinces. Mr Bush's response was: "What is he, some kind of a defeatist?" A week later the station chief was reassigned.

A few days afterwards, Colonel Derek Harvey, the Defence Intelligence Agency's senior intelligence officer in Iraq, made much the same point to Mr Bush. He said of the insurgency: "It's robust, it's well led, it's diverse." According to the US political commentator Sidney Blumenthal, the President at this point turned to his aides and asked: "Is this guy a Democrat?"

The query is perhaps key to Mr Bush's priorities. The overriding political purpose of the US administration in invading Iraq was to retain power at home. It would do so by portraying Mr Bush as "the security president", manipulating and exaggerating the terrorist threat at home and purporting to combat it abroad. It would win cheap military victories in Afghanistan and Iraq. It would hold "khaki" elections in which Democrats could be portrayed as unpatriotic poltroons.

The strategy worked -- until November's mid-term elections. Mr Bush was victorious by presenting a false picture of Iraq. It is this that has been exposed as a fraud by the Iraq Study Group.

Long-maintained myths tumble. For instance, the standard stump speech by Mr Bush or Tony Blair since the start of the insurgency has been to emphasise the leading role of al-Qa'ida in Iraq and international terrorism. But the group's report declares "al-Qa'ida is responsible for a small portion of violence", adding that it is now largely Iraqi-run. Foreign fighters, their presence so often trumpeted by the White House and Downing Street, are estimated to number only 1,300 men in Iraq. As for building up the Iraqi army, the training of which is meant to be the centrepiece of US and British policy, the report says that half the 10 planned divisions are made up of soldiers who will serve only in areas dominated by their own community. And as for the army as a whole, it is uncertain "they will carry out missions on behalf of national goals instead of a sectarian agenda."

Given this realism it is sad that its authors, chaired by James Baker and Lee Hamilton, share one great misconception with Mr Bush and Mr Blair. This is about the acceptability of any foreign troops in Iraq. Supposedly US combat troops will be withdrawn and redeployed as a stiffening or reinforcement to Iraqi military units. They will form quick-reaction forces able to intervene in moments of crisis.

"This simply won't work," one former Iraqi Interior Ministry official told me. "Iraqis who work with Americans are regarded as tainted by their families. Often our soldiers have to deny their contact with Americans to their own wives. Sometimes they balance their American connections by making contact with the insurgents at the same time."

Mr Bush and Mr Blair have always refused to take on board the simple unpopularity of the occupation among Iraqis, though US and British military commanders have explained that it is the main fuel for the insurgency. The Baker-Hamilton report notes dryly that opinion polls show that 61 per cent of Iraqis favour armed attacks on US forces. Given the Kurds overwhelmingly support the US presence, this means three-quarters of all Arabs want military action against US soldiers.

The other great flaw in the report is to imply that Iraqis can be brought back together again. The reality is that the country has already broken apart. In Baghdad, Sunnis no longer dare to visit the main mortuary to look for murdered relatives because it is under Shia control and they might be killed themselves. The future of Iraq may well be a confederation rather than a federation, with Shia, Sunni and Kurd each enjoying autonomy close to independence.

There are certain points on which the White House and the authors of the report are dangerously at one. This is that the Iraqi government of Nouri al-Maliki can be bullied into trying to crush the militias (this usually means just one anti-American militia, the Mehdi Army), or will bolt from the Shia alliance. In the eyes of many Iraqis this would simply confirm its status as a US pawn. As for talking with Iran and Syria or acting on the Israel-Palestinian crisis it is surely impossible for Mr Bush to retreat so openly from his policies of the past three years, however disastrous their outcome.



Comment on this Article

---

Chinese Military Reports, 'America Is the Enemy!'

www.isecureonline.com

If you still think I'm just speculating... that this couldn't possibly be planned... maybe you haven't heard yet about a hugely popular book that's still making the rounds... first in Beijing... and now at the White House, the Pentagon, and CIA headquarters.

The book is called 'Unrestricted Warfare.' It's written by Colonels Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, two high-ranking officials in the People's Liberation Army of China (PLA).


America, says the book, is China's most likely enemy for at least the next two decades, if not for the whole 21st century. The battle, they say, will be fought everywhere.

Drug smuggling... attacks on America's computer networks... media manipulation... intellectual piracy... exploiting loopholes in international law... and one of the post powerful weapons of all, attacking America's financial base.

Here's a direct quote from page 51 of the book:

'Financial war is a form of nonmilitary warfare which is just as terribly destructive as a bloody war, but in which no blood is actually shed... When people revise the history books... the section on financial warfare will command the reader's utmost attention.'

Beijing takes this book seriously. So does Washington.

The book also recommends Chinese companies infiltrate the U.S. stock market.

Imagine if the U.S. government started building companies just to drain income from Dow and Nasdaq investors. Imagine the U.S. Army taking over Motorola or QUALCOM so they could suck technology secrets out of other nations. Maybe it wouldn't happen here.

But it's business as usual in Beijing. With companies like PetroChina, the huge state-owned Chinese oil company. Or Hutchison-Whampoa, the state-owned Chinese contruction conglomerate. Or COSCO, China's state-owned shipping giant.

The list goes on. As recently as 1999, the U.S. Congress named over 3,000 front companies for the Chinese army operating inside the United States!

Like I said...

Washington's got no grip on this. Neither does Wall Street. But you can do PLENTY to protect yourself. And make a handsome profit besides...



Comment on this Article

---

Afghanistan's opium poppies will be sprayed, says US drugs tsar - Yeah, probably with fertilizer

Declan Walsh in Kandahar
Monday December 11, 2006
The Guardian

Afghanistan has agreed to poppy-spraying measures in a desperate bid to deflate the soaring drugs trade, America's anti-narcotics tsar announced at the weekend.

The move was urgently needed to prevent Afghanistan becoming a narco-state, said John Waters, the head of the White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy. "We cannot fail in this mission."

But the prospect of herbicide use aroused criticism from other western officials, who are sceptical of its benefits and fear it will push farmers into the arms of the Taliban. "Nobody in the international community is loving this," said one.
Crop spraying is highly sensitive in Afghanistan. Government officials traditionally reject aerial spraying, saying low-flying planes dispersing clouds of herbicide could destroy licit crops and arouse painful memories of Soviet-era carpet bombing. Reports of limited aerial spraying, in which the US denied involvement, sparked health scare stories among villagers in Nangarhar and Uruzgan provinces.

To assuage those fears, Mr Walters ruled out the use of planes and said spraying would initially use ground-based techniques. President Hamid Karzai had approved herbicide use, he said. "I think the president has said yes, and I think some of the ministers have repeated yes."

But Mr Karzai's office was less sure. One official would not confirm the change. "We are thinking about the issue and looking to see how we might proceed," he said.

Britain, which leads anti-narcotics efforts in Afghanistan, firmly opposes aerial eradication but has no firm policy on ground spraying. Herbicide use this year could presage the introduction of aerial eradication in 2008 - which would bring Britain into conflict with the US.

The debate has been injected with fresh urgency by this year's record opium harvest. Production rose 49% to 6,700 tonnes in 2006, more than 90% of the world's supply. Taliban commanders have started to take a slice of drug profits, which fuel the insurgency. The money trail also leads to the higher echelons of government, where corruption at provincial and central levels has eroded public confidence in Mr Karzai.

The pressure for herbicides comes from US officials and politicians who signed off on a $600m (Ł300m) counter-narcotics budget this year but received little result for their money. Many are influenced by the alleged success of US-funded aerial spraying programmes in Colombia, where Farc rebels benefit from the cocaine trade.

Mr Walters said glyphosate, sold under the name Roundup in the US, would be used. He did not say when spraying would start, but poppy planting is under way in southern provinces including Helmand, where farmers harvested a record crop under the noses of British soldiers this year.



Comment on this Article

---

How US dollars disappear in Afghanistan: quickly and thoroughly

By Ann Jones

During the past five years, the US and many other donor nations pledged billions of dollars to Afghanistan, yet Afghans keep asking: "Where did the money go?"
Remember when peaceful, democratic, reconstructed Afghanistan was advertised as the exemplar for the extreme makeover of Iraq? In August 2002, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was already proclaiming the new Afghanistan "a breathtaking accomplishment" and "a successful model of what could happen to Iraq." As everybody now knows, the model isn't working in Iraq. So we shouldn't be surprised to learn that it's not working in Afghanistan either.

To understand the failure -- and fraud -- of reconstruction in Afghanistan, you have to take a look at the peculiar system of U.S. aid for international development. During the past five years, the United States and many other donor nations pledged billions of dollars to Afghanistan, yet Afghans keep asking: "Where did the money go?" American taxpayers should be asking the same question.

The official answer is that donor funds are lost to Afghan corruption. But shady Afghans, accustomed to two-bit bribes, are learning about big bucks from the masters of the world.

Other answers appear in a fact-packed report issued in June 2005 by Action Aid, a widely respected nongovernmental organization headquartered in Johannesburg. The report studies development aid given by all countries worldwide and says that only part of it -- maybe 40 percent -- is real. The rest is phantom aid. That is, it never shows up in recipient countries at all.

Some of it doesn't even exist except as an accounting item, as when countries count debt relief or the construction costs of a fancy new embassy in the aid column. A lot of it never leaves home; paychecks for American "experts" under contract to USAID go directly to their U.S. banks. Much of the money is thrown away on "overpriced and ineffective technical assistance," such as those hot-shot American experts, the report said. And big chunks are tied to the donor, which means that the recipient is obliged to use the money to buy products from the donor country, even when -- especially when -- the same goods are available cheaper at home.

To no one's surprise, the United States easily outstrips other nations at most of these scams, making it second only to France as the world's biggest purveyor of phantom aid. Fully 47 percent of U.S. development aid is lavished on overpriced technical assistance. By comparison, only 4 percent of Sweden's aid budget goes to technical assistance, while Luxembourg and Ireland lay out only 2 percent.

As for tying aid to the purchase of donor-made products, Sweden and Norway don't do it at all. Neither do Ireland and the United Kingdom. But 70 percent of U.S. aid is contingent upon the recipient spending it on American stuff, including especially American-made armaments. The upshot is that 86 cents of every dollar of U.S. aid is phantom aid.

According to targets set years ago by the United Nations and agreed to by almost every country in the world, rich countries should give 0.7 percent of their national income in annual aid to poor ones. So far, only the Scandinavian countries, the Netherlands and Luxembourg (with real aid at 0.65 percent of its national income) even come close.

At the other end of the scale, the United States spends a paltry 0.02 percent of national income on real aid, which works out to an annual contribution of $8 from every citizen of the wealthiest nation in the world. (By comparison, Swedes kick in $193 per person, Norwegians $304, and the citizens of Luxembourg $357.) President Bush boasts of sending billions in aid to Afghanistan, but in fact we could do better by passing a hat.

The Bush administration often deliberately misrepresents its aid program for domestic consumption.

Last year, for example, when the president sent his wife to Kabul for a few hours of photo ops, the New York Times reported that her mission was "to promise long-term commitment from the United States to education for women and children." Speaking in Kabul, she pledged that the United States would give an additional $17.7 million to support education in Afghanistan. But that grant had been announced before; and it was not for Afghan education (or women and children) at all but for a new private, for-profit American University of Afghanistan. (How a private university comes to be supported by public tax dollars and the Army Corps of Engineers is another peculiarity of Bush aid.)

Ashraf Ghani, former finance minister of Afghanistan and president of Kabul University, complained, "You cannot support private education and ignore public education." But that's typical of American aid. Having set up a government in Afghanistan, the United States stiffs it, preferring to channel aid money to private American contractors. Increasingly privatized, U.S. aid becomes just one more mechanism for transferring tax dollars to the pockets of rich Americans.

In 2001, Andrew Natsios, then head of USAID, cited foreign aid as "a key foreign policy instrument" designed to help other countries "become better markets for U.S. exports."

To guarantee that mission, the State Department recently took over the formerly semi-autonomous aid agency. And because the aim of U.S. aid is to make the world safe for U.S. business, USAID now cuts in business from the start. It sends out requests for proposals to the short list of usual suspects and awards contracts to those bidders currently in favor. (Election time kickbacks influence the list of favorites.) Sometimes it invites only one contractor to apply, the same efficient procedure that made Halliburton so notorious and so profitable in Iraq.

The criteria for selection of contractors have little or nothing to do with conditions in the recipient country, and they are not exactly what you would call transparent.

Take, for example, the case of the Kabul-Kandahar Highway, featured on the USAID Web site as a proud accomplishment. (In five years, it's the only accomplishment in highway building in Afghanistan -- which is one better than the U.S. record building power stations, water systems, sewer systems or dams.) The highway was also featured in the Kabul Weekly newspaper in March 2005 under the headline, "Millions Wasted on Second-Rate Roads."

Afghan journalist Mirwais Harooni reported that even though other international companies had been ready to rebuild the highway for $250,000 per kilometer, the Louis Berger Group got the job at $700,000 per kilometer -- of which there are 389. Why? The standard American answer is that Americans do better work. (Though not Berger, which at the time was already years behind on another $665 million contract to build schools.)

Berger subcontracted Turkish and Indian companies to build the narrow two-lane, shoulderless highway at a final cost of about $1 million per mile; and anyone who travels it can see that it is already falling apart. (Former Minister of Planning Ramazan Bashardost complained that when it came to building roads, the Taliban did a better job.)

Now, in a move certain to tank President Hamid Karzai's approval ratings and further endanger U.S. and NATO troops in the area, the United States has pressured his government to turn this "gift of the people of the United States" into a toll road and collect $20 a month from Afghan drivers. In this way, according to U.S. experts providing highly paid technical assistance, Afghanistan can collect $30 million annually from its impoverished citizens and thereby decrease the foreign aid "burden" on the United States.

Is it any wonder that foreign aid seems to ordinary Afghans to be something only foreigners enjoy?

At one end of the infamous highway, in Kabul, Afghans disapprove of the fancy restaurants where foreigners gather -- men and women together -- to drink alcohol and carry on, and plunge half-naked into swimming pools. They object to the brothels -- 80 of them by 2005 -- that house women brought in to serve foreign men.

They complain that half the capital city lies in ruins, that many people still live in tents, that thousands can't find jobs, that children go hungry, that schools are overcrowded and hospitals dirty, that women in tattered burqas still beg in the streets and turn to prostitution, that children are kidnapped and sold into slavery or murdered for their kidneys or their eyes.

They wonder where the promised aid money went and what the puppet government can do.

Ann Jones is the author of "Kabul in Winter," a memoir of Afghanistan, where she lived for several years.



Comment on this Article

---

Psy-Ops Gatekeeper asks: Is 9/11 Paranoia Bad for the Country?

By Christopher Hayes
The Nation
December 11, 2006

This Far-Right Gatekeeper proposes that the biggest threat posed by the 9/11 Truth Movement is the danger that it will discredit the healthy skepticism Americans increasingly show toward their leaders.

He has a point, but he takes that point way too far. It is true that some of the really far-out theories about 9/11 are a discredit to "9/11 Truth." But it is clear that there was a conspiracy, that there was controlled demolition, and that there was no Flight 77 hitting the Pentagon. That's enough to require an independent investigation assuming that such a thing is possible.
According to a July poll conducted by Scripps News Service, one-third of Americans think the government either carried out the 9/11 attacks or intentionally allowed them to happen in order to provide a pretext for war in the Middle East. This is at once alarming and unsurprising. Alarming, because if tens of millions of Americans really believe their government was complicit in the murder of 3,000 of their fellow citizens, they seem remarkably sanguine about this fact. By and large, life continues as before, even though tens of millions of people apparently believe they are being governed by mass murderers. Unsurprising, because the government these Americans suspect of complicity in 9/11 has acquired a justified reputation for deception: weapons of mass destruction, secret prisons, illegal wiretapping. What else are they hiding?

This pattern of deception has not only fed diffuse public cynicism but has provided an opening for alternate theories of 9/11 to flourish. As these theories -- propounded by the so-called 9/11 Truth Movement -- seep toward the edges of the mainstream, they have raised the specter of the return (if it ever left) of what Richard Hofstadter famously described as "the paranoid style in American politics." But the real danger posed by the Truth Movement isn't paranoia. Rather, the danger is that it will discredit and deform the salutary skepticism Americans increasingly show toward their leaders.

The Truth Movement's recent growth can be largely attributed to the Internet-distributed documentary Loose Change. A low-budget film produced by two 20-somethings that purports to debunk the official story of 9/11, it's been viewed over the Internet millions of times. Complementing Loose Change are the more highbrow offerings of a handful of writers and scholars, many of whom are associated with Scholars for 9/11 Truth. Two of these academics, retired theologian David Ray Griffin and retired Brigham Young University physics professor Steven Jones, have written books and articles that serve as the movement's canon. Videos of their lectures circulate among the burgeoning portions of the Internet devoted to the cause of the "truthers." A variety of groups have chapters across the country and organize conferences that draw hundreds. In the last election cycle, the website 911truth.org even produced a questionnaire with pointed inquiries for candidates, just like the US Chamber of Commerce or the Sierra Club. The Truth Movement's relationship to the truth may be tenuous, but that it is a movement is no longer in doubt.

Truth activists often maintain they are simply "raising questions," and as such tend to focus with dogged persistence on physical minutiae: the lampposts near the Pentagon that should have been knocked down by Flight 77, the altitude in Pennsylvania at which cellphones on Flight 93 should have stopped working, the temperature at which jet fuel burns and at which steel melts. They then use these perceived inconsistencies to argue that the central events of 9/11 -- the plane hitting the Pentagon, the towers collapsing -- were not what they appeared to be. So: The eyewitness accounts of those who heard explosions in the World Trade Center, combined with the facts that jet fuel burns at 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit and steel melts at 2,500, shows that the towers were brought down by controlled explosions from inside the buildings, not by the planes crashing into them.

If the official story is wrong, then what did happen? As you might expect, there's quite a bit of dissension on this point. Like any movement, the Truth Movement is beset by internecine fights between different factions: those who subscribe to what are termed LIHOP theories (that the government "let it happen on purpose") and the more radical MIHOP ("made it happen on purpose") contingent. Even within these groups, there are divisions: Some believe the WTC was detonated with explosives after the planes hit and some don't even think there were any planes.

To the extent that there is a unified theory of the nature of the conspiracy, it is based, in part, on the precedent of the Reichstag fire in Germany in the 1930s. The idea is that just as the Nazis staged a fire in the Reichstag in order to frighten the populace and consolidate power, the Bush Administration, military contractors, oil barons and the CIA staged 9/11 so as to provide cause and latitude to pursue its imperial ambitions unfettered by dissent and criticism. But the example of the Reichstag fire itself is instructive. While during and after the war many observers, including officials of the US government, suspected the fire was a Nazi plot, the consensus among historians is that it was, in fact, the product of a lone zealous anarchist. That fact changes little about the Nazi regime, or its use of the fire for its own ends. It's true the Nazis were the chief beneficiaries of the fire, but that doesn't mean they started it, and the same goes for the Bush Administration and 9/11.

The Reichstag example also holds a lesson for those who would dismiss the very notion of a conspiracy as necessarily absurd. It was perfectly reasonable to suspect the Nazis of setting the fire, so long as the evidence suggested that might have been the case. The problem isn't with conspiracy theories as such; the problem is continuing to assert the existence of a conspiracy even after the evidence shows it to be virtually impossible.

In March 2005 Popular Mechanics assembled a team of engineers, physicists, flight experts and the like to critically examine some of the Truth Movement's most common claims. They found them almost entirely without merit. To pick just one example, steel might not melt at 1,500 degrees, the temperature at which jet fuel burns, but it does begin to lose a lot of its strength, enough to cause the support beams to fail.

And yet no amount of debunking seems to work. The Internet empowers people with esoteric interests to spend all kinds of time pursuing their hobbies, and if the Truth Movement was the political equivalent of Lord of the Rings fan fiction or furries, there wouldn't be much reason to pay attention. But the public opinion trend lines are moving in the truthers' direction, even after the official 9/11 Commission report was supposed to settle the matter once and for all.

Of course, the commission report was something of a whitewash -- Bush would only be interviewed in the presence of Dick Cheney, the commission was denied access to other key witnesses and just this year we learned of a meeting convened by George Tenet the summer before the attacks to warn Condoleezza Rice about Al Qaeda's plotting, a meeting that was nowhere mentioned in the report.

So it's hard to blame people for thinking we're not getting the whole story. For six years, the government has prevaricated and the press has largely failed to point out this simple truth. Critics like The New Yorker's Nicholas Lemann might lament the resurgence of the "paranoid style," but the seeds of paranoia have taken root partly because of the complete lack of appropriate skepticism by the establishment press, a complementary impulse to the paranoid style that might be called the credulous style. In the credulous style all political actors are acting with good intentions and in good faith. Mistakes are made, but never because of ulterior motives or undue influence from the various locii of corporate power. When people in power advocate strenuously for a position it is because they believe in it. When their advocacy leads to policies that create misery, it is due not to any evil intentions or greed or corruption, but rather simple human error. Ahmad Chalabi summed up this worldview perfectly. Faced with the utter absence of the WMD he and his cohorts had long touted in Iraq, he replied, "We are heroes in error."

For a long time the credulous style has dominated the establishment, but its hold intensified after 9/11. When the government speaks, particularly about the Enemy, it must be presumed to be telling the truth. From the reporting about Iraq's alleged WMD to the current spate of stories about how "dangerous" Iran is, time and again the press has reacted to official pronouncements about threats with a near total absence of skepticism. Each time the government announces the indictment of domestic terrorists allegedly plotting our demise, the press devotes itself to the story with obsessive relish, only to later note, on page A22 or in a casual aside, that the whole thing was bunk. In August 2003, to cite just one example, the New York dailies breathlessly reported what one US official called an "incredible triumph in the war against terrorism," the arrest of Hemant Lakhani, a supposed terrorist mastermind caught red-handed attempting to acquire a surface-to-air missile. Only later did the government admit that the "plot" consisted of an FBI informant begging Lakhani to find him a missile, while a Russian intelligence officer called up Lakhani and offered to sell him one.

Yet after nearly a dozen such instances, the establishment media continue to earnestly report each new alleged threat or indictment, secure in the belief that their proximity to policy-makers gets it closer to the truth. But proximity can obscure more than clarify. It's hard to imagine that the guy sitting next to you at the White House correspondents' dinner is plotting to, say, send the country into a disastrous and illegal war, or is spying on Americans in blatant defiance of federal statutes. Bob Woodward, the journalist with the most access to the Bush Administration, was just about the last one to realize that the White House is disingenuous and cynical, that it has manipulated the machinery of state for its narrow political ends.

Meanwhile, those who realized this was the White House's MO from the beginning have been labeled conspiracy theorists. During the 2004 campaign Howard Dean made the charge that the White House was manipulating the terror threat level and recycling old intelligence. The Bush campaign responded by dismissing Dean as a "bizarre conspiracy theorist." A year later, after Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge retired, he admitted that Dean's charge was, indeed, the truth. The same accusation of conspiracy-mongering was routinely leveled at anyone who suggested that the war in Iraq was and is motivated by a desire for the United States to control the world's second-largest oil reserves.

For the Administration, "conspiracy" is a tremendously useful term, and can be applied even in the most seemingly bizarre conditions to declare an inquiry or criticism out of bounds. Responding to a question from NBC's Brian Williams as to whether he ever discusses official business with his father, Bush said such a suggestion was a "kind of conspiracy theory at its most rampant." The credulous style can brook no acknowledgment of unarticulated motives to our political actors, or consultations to which the public is not privy.

The public has been presented with two worldviews, one credulous, one paranoid, and both unsatisfactory. The more the former breaks apart, the greater the appeal of the latter. Conspiracy theories that claim to explain 9/11 are wrongheaded and a terrible waste of time, but the skeptical instinct is, on balance, salutary. It is right to suspect that the operations of government, the power elite and the military-industrial complex are often not what they seem; and proper to raise questions when the answers provided have been unconvincing. Given the untruths to which American citizens have been subjected these past six years, is it any surprise that a majority of them think the government's lying about what happened before and on 9/11?

Still, the persistent appeal of paranoid theories reflects a cynicism that the credulous media have failed to address, because they posit a world of good intentions and face-value pronouncements, one in which the suggestion that a government would mislead or abuse its citizens for its own gains or the gains of its benefactors is on its face absurd. The danger is that the more this government's cynicism and deception are laid bare, the more people -- on the left in particular and among the public in general -- will be drawn down the rabbit hole of delusion of the 9/11 Truth Movement.

To avoid such a fate, the public must come to trust that the gatekeepers of public discourse share their skepticism about the agenda its government is pursuing. The antidote, ultimately, to the Truth Movement is a press that refuses to allow the government to continue to lie.

Comment: People need to really think about who's running the U.S. (and other countries on the planet), and get it firmly in mind that it is big business. Now, think of RUTHLESS MEN. Ponder it long and carefully. Some people will do anything for money and to protect their interests/wealth. Oil has ruled American politics for a very long time and the profits of the Oil business are almost incomprehensible to the average person. And so it is that whoever controls the oil business controls America. They either control or install the U.S. government and have done so for a very long time.

That is, until John Kennedy was elected.

After he was dead, they were back in charge.

The oil companies control governments and policy, the military and political parties across the board; republicans AND democrats. They own nearly everyone. They have the power to make and break people.

Nobody with that kind of power is going to give it up easily.

And Kennedy threatened that power.

It is oil companies that want war.

It is important to remember that behind the office of the President, there are ruthless men who will do anything at all to maintain and increase their power and to attain their ends.

Doing "anything at all" means killing people who get in the way and creating situations where they can stampede populations in the way they want them to go.

The history of the White House is the history of puppets who do what they are told to do.

People sometimes ask how such conspiracies as the JFK assassination and 9/11 could be "covered up without someone from the inside talking." This is a naive question. If someone is a witness to a murder done by professionals, do you really think they are going to go around blabbing about it? And if the victim is a president, or the people in the World Trade Center towers and 4 airliners, it is clear that it has been committed by those with great power. Anybody with two firing neurons can figure out that such perpetrators are in such a strong position that protesting or blabbing puts the whistle-blower in the gravest of danger - particularly if they have an audience.

Further, it is unlikely that exposing the crime would even result in justice being done. (Assuming that there is any justice to be had). Who would they turn to? Who would protect them?

If the witness goes to the media, they might as well jump off a cliff and be done with it. Because, most certainly, the impression that the media gives of "truth seeking" is only window dressing. Now and again they expose the truth, but that is only to shore up the illusion of a democracy and a free press.

The media is, in fact, under the same control as politicians and politics. In short, the media is under the control of the perpetrators of the crime. (Including, it seems, Christopher Hayes).

So, with no media to form an opposing power base, who ya gonna tell? Who's going to believe you?

Further, in the case of crimes of state, which the JFK assassination and 9/11 certainly were, enough other people are killed to insure the silence of everyone in the conspiracy. The additional deaths (or character assassinations) send a loud and clear message to everyone who might know something: keep your mouth shut!

Read: The Radical Right and the Murder of John F. Kennedy by Harrison E. Livingstone.

And to understand what kind of people are in control of our world, read Political Ponerology: The Science of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes.

Comment on this Article

---

Boomerang Effect: When Will the First IED Strike Cleveland?

By William Lind
12/09/06 "Military.com"

Last week, one of my students, a Marine captain, asked whether I had heard a news report about an "IED-like device" supposedly found near Cincinnati, and if I thought we would soon start seeing IEDs here in the U.S. I replied that I had not heard the news story, but as to whether we would see IEDs here at home, the answer is yes.

One of the things U.S. troops are learning in Iraq is how people with little training and few resources can fight a state. Most American troops will see this within the framework of counterinsurgency. But a minority will apply their new-found knowledge in a very different way. After they return to the U.S. and leave the military, they will take what they learned in Iraq back to the inner cities, to the ethnic groups, gangs, and other alternate loyalties they left when they joined the service. There, they will put their new knowledge to work, in wars with each other and wars against the American state. It will not be long before we see police squad cars getting hit with IEDs and other techniques employed by Iraqi insurgents, right here in the streets of American cities.
I know this thought -- not to speak of the reality when it happens -- will be shocking to some readers. To anyone who really understands Fourth Generation war, it should not be. Fourth Generation war does not merely work on the will of a state's political leaders, as some theorists have said. It does something far more powerful. It pulls an opposing state apart at the moral level.

We saw this phenomenon in the effect the defeat in Afghanistan had on the Soviet Union. Just as that defeat led to the disintegration of the USSR, so defeat in the current Afghan war will bring the disintegration of NATO. We are seeing 4GW pull Israel apart today, to the point where a leaden blanket of Kulturpessimismus now oppresses that country.

We will see the same thing here, powerfully I think, as a result of our defeat in Iraq. It will manifest itself in many ways, and one of those ways will be the progression of inner-city and gang crime into something close to warfare, including war against the state.

Police will not be surprised by this prediction. I have talked with cops about Fourth Generation war, and they "get it" much better than do American soldiers and Marines. Many have told me that they already recognize elements of war in what they are encountering, especially in inner cities. Cops have been killed while just sitting in their cruisers, because they represent the authority of the state. How big a step is it for those cruisers to get hit with IEDs instead of pistol shots?

The Bush administration, as usual, has it exactly backwards. The danger is not that the "terrorists" we are fighting in Iraq will come here if we pull out there. Rather, American involvement in 4GW in Iraq will create "terrorism" here from among the people we have sent to fight the war there. Well educated in the ways of successful insurgency, they will come home embittered by a lost war, by friends dead and crippled for life to no purpose. Thanks to America's de-industrialization, they will return to no jobs, or lousy "service" jobs at minimum wage. Angry, frustrated and futureless, some of them will find new identities and loyalties in gangs and criminal enterprises, where they can put their new talents to work.

It will, of course, be only a small minority of returning troops who will go this route. But something else they will have learned from the Iraqi insurgents, along with how to make and deploy IEDs, is that it takes very few people to create and sustain an insurgency.

The boomerang effect is a central element of Fourth Generation war. When a state involves itself in 4GW over there, it lays a basis for 4GW at home. That is true even if it wins over there, and all the more true if it loses, as states usually do. The toxic fallout from America's 4GW defeats in Iraq and Afghanistan will be far greater than most people expect, and it will fall most heavily on America's police.

Copyright 2006 William Lind

Comment: Join in the thread about this article on the Signs Forum.

Comment on this Article

---

A Perfect Failure

Weekly Standard (Volume 12 Issue 13)
December 11, 2006
By Robert Kagan & William Kristol

Certainly, the election results were a strong signal that Americans are unhappy with the war in Iraq. At the same time, we were struck by exit polls that showed the public was equally concerned with a too precipitous pullout from Iraq, suggesting the American people know quite well what is at stake in the war there. Many Americans, it would seem, are still open to a plan for Iraq that has a chance of working--if the president acts soon.
In the frenzied final week of the Iraq Study Group's deliberations, co-chairmen James Baker and Lee Hamilton took time out to pose for a photo spread for a fashion magazine, Men's Vogue. This might seem a dubious decision given the gravity of the moment and their self-appointed roles as the nation's saviors. The "wise men" who counseled Lyndon Johnson during Vietnam and the members of the Kissinger Commission who tried to reshape Ronald Reagan's Central American policies did not sit for Annie Leibovitz in the middle of their endeavors. Nor did they hire a mega-public relations firm to sell their recommendations (supposedly intended for the president) to the public at large, as Baker and Hamilton have done.

But we think the chairmen's self-promotion and big-time product marketing are perfectly understandable. They have to do something to distract attention from two unpleasant facts.

The first is that after nine months of deliberation and an unprecedented build-up of expectations that these sages would produce some brilliant, original answer to the Iraq conundrum, the study group's recommendations turn out to be a pallid and muddled reiteration of what most Democrats, many Republicans, and even Donald Rumsfeld and senior military officials have been saying for almost two years. Thus, according to at least six separate commission sources sent out to pre-spin the press, the Baker-Hamilton report will call for a gradual and partial withdrawal of American forces in Iraq, to begin at a time unspecified and to be completed by a time unspecified. The goal will be to hand over responsibility for security in Iraq to the Iraqis themselves as soon as this is feasible, and to shift the American role to training rather than fighting the insurgency and providi ng security. The decision of how far, how fast, and even whether to withdraw will rest with military commanders in Iraq, who will base their determination on how well prepared the Iraqis are to take over. Even after the withdrawal, the study group envisions keeping at least 70,000 American troops in Iraq for years to come.

To say that this is not a new idea is an understatement. Donald Rumsfeld and top military officials have from the beginning of the occupation three years ago aimed to do precisely what the Baker-Hamilton group now recommends. In 2003, the Pentagon set a goal of reducing the forces from 130,000 to 30,000 by the end of the year, handing responsibility for Iraq to the newly formed Iraqi army. Every year since, the Pentagon has aimed to reduce U.S. forces substantially. This time last year, defense officials announced their intention to reduce the force of 150,000 to well under 100,000 by the end of 2006.

So now here comes the Iraq Study Group suggesting that the present force of about 140,000 should be reduced to around 70,000 by early 2008. But as with all similar plans previously devised by the Pentagon, the timing, according to the Washington Post's sources, "would be more a conditional goal than a firm timetable, predicated on the assumption that circumstances on the ground would permit it." As Democratic senator Jack Reed noted, the group's recommendations repeat "what some of us have been saying for a while." But, of course, the Baker plan will face the same challenges as all previous such suggestions. In the past, Pentagon desires to draw down the force foundered precisely because "circumstances on the ground" did not permit a reduction of American forces. Despite efforts to make it appear otherwise, then, the real recommendation of the Baker-Hamilton Ira q Study Group is "stay the course." For this we waited nine months?

One of the more striking aspects of the Iraq Study Group's report is that these recommendations are clearly not anyone's idea of the right plan. As the New York Times put it, they represent "a compromise between distinct paths that the group has debated since March." One commission source declared, "We reached a consensus, which in itself is remarkable." "Everyone felt good about where we ended up," said another. We're happy for them. But reaching consensus among the 10 members of the group was presumably not the primary goal of this exercise. The idea was to provide usable advice for the Bush administration that would help it move toward an acceptable outcome in Iraq. In that, the commission has failed.

There is another problem for Baker, of course, which justifies the money the commission is spending to hire the Edelman public relations firm. It is that the Baker commission report is, as the press likes to say, dead on arrival. Over the course of the past few weeks, and especially this past week, President Bush has made clear that he has no intention of following the commission's recommendations. In his press conference with the Iraqi prime minister this past Thursday, Bush took a direct slap at the Iraq Study Group. "I know there's a lot of speculation that these reports in Washington mean there's going to be some kind of graceful exit out of Iraq," he told reporters. But "this business about graceful exit just simply has no realism to it at all."

As for Baker's other significant and more original recommendation--that the United States hold direct talks with Iran and Syria to get their help in Iraq--Bush nixed that idea, too. In Estonia last Tuesday, the president said, "Iran knows how to get to the table with us, and that is to do that which they said they would do, which is verifiably suspend their [uranium] enrichment programs." This the Iranians have steadfastly refused to do, of course. As for Syria, Bush continues to accuse Syria, rightly, of trying to retake control of Lebanon by means of assassination and support of terrorist violence. He gave no indication that he was willing to begin direct talks with Syria on Iraq.

It's not as if the Baker commission has accomplished nothing, however. Although its recommendations will have no effect on American policy going forward, they have already had a very damaging effect throughout the world, and especially in the Middle East and in Iraq. For the Iraq Study Group, aided by supportive American media, has successfully conveyed the impression to everyone at home and abroad that the United States is about to withdraw from Iraq. This has weakened American allies and strengthened American enemies. It has exacerbated the problems in Iraq, as all the various factions in that country begin to prepare for the "inevitable" American retreat. Now it will require enormous efforts by the president and his advisers to dispel the disastrous impression that the Baker commission has quite deliberately created and will continue to foster in the weeks ahead. At home and abroad, people have been led to believe that Jim Baker and not the president was going to call the shots in Iraq from now on.

Happily, that is not the case. Although neither the American media nor many observers of the American political scene seem to realize it, there is nothing the Baker commission can do to force Bush to take a different course than the one he chooses. Nor is it easy for a Democratic majority in Congress to call the shots in Iraq. In the American system, the president always has enormous authority in foreign policy, if he wants to exercise it. President Bush clearly does. He intends to pursue steadfastly his own course in Iraq. He is determined not to withdraw before it becomes stable and, yes, democratic. He will not be buffeted by conventional wisdom or by Baker and his colleagues, no matter how much they employ public relations tactics to defeat him.

Yet there is one "power broker" that still matters: the American public. Unfortunately, and dangerously, the president appears to have largely lost their confidence. Certainly, the election results were a strong signal that Americans are unhappy with the war in Iraq. At the same time, we were struck by exit polls that showed the public was equally concerned with a too precipitous pullout from Iraq, suggesting the American people know quite well what is at stake in the war there. Many Americans, it would seem, are still open to a plan for Iraq that has a chance of working--if the president acts soon. If not, no matter how strong a position he has constitutionally, he will not be able to sustain his Iraq policy.

We remain dissatisfied with the way the president has allowed his Pentagon and top military officers to persist in what has proved to be an ineffective strategy in Iraq. We hope that he will now take the steps necessary to accomplish his stated objectives in Iraq, including a substantial increase in the number of U.S. forces in Baghdad and throughout the contested parts of the country, as well as a long overdue increase in the total size of American ground forces so that higher force levels in Iraq can be sustained. But right now we can only applaud the president's courage and determination and his willingness to resist the pressures of those who would now sound the retreat.

--Robert Kagan and William Kristol

These are two of the nastiest ziocons who did their utmost, propaganda wise to produce the war in Iraq and are still doing it.  They would rather continue the blood bath than acknowledge their role in this massive ongoing crime. Baker, of course, is their favorite villain as he is the bogeyman of the Jewish lobby for never having genuflected them. This doesn't make him a "good guy." There are none in this business, but people need to know where the different players stand. As for the ISG plan, much of what Kagan and Kristol write about is correct. There is no plan that will resolve the situation in Iraq and bring a halt to the continuing  lost of lives. At this point even an immediate US withdrawal would not bring it to an end. It would, however, eliminate the the basis for the presence of outside fighters from the region -JB

Comment on this Article

---

The Blitcon supremacists

Ziauddin Sardar
Saturday December 9, 2006
The Guardian

Amis, Rushdie and McEwan are using their celebrity status to push a neocon agenda

The names of the most famous contemporary writers have become international brands. When they speak, the world listens. And increasingly, they speak not just through their fiction, but also via newspaper opinion pages, influential magazines, television chat shows and literary festivals. Novelists are no longer just novelists - they are also global pundits shaping our opinions on everything from art, life and politics to civilisation as we know it.
What we want from them is clear: insight into the human condition. From the most favourable conditions in human history we have generated terror, war and a proliferation of tensions grounded in mutual fear and hatred. Humanity is unquestionably in need of help. But is it amenable to literary soundbites? Do literary pundits provide us with the best insight into our conundrums or serve as useful guides to the future?

The British literary landscape is dominated by three writers: Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie and Ian McEwan. All three have considered the central dilemma of our time: terror. Indeed, Amis has issued something of a manifesto on the subject he terms "horrorism". In their different styles, their approach and opinions define a coherent position. They are the vanguard of British literary neoconservatives - or, if you like, the "Blitcons".

Blitcons come with a ready-made nostrum for the human condition. They use their celebrity status to advance a clear global political agenda.

The Blitcon project is based on three one-dimensional conceits. The first is the absolute supremacy of American culture. Blitcon fiction is orientalism for the 21st century, shifting the emphasis from the supremacy of the west in general to the supremacy of American ideas of freedom.

If we are to read McEwan's beliefs and intentions through his fiction, the western canon is the very essence of humanity. His novel Saturday is set on 15 February 2003, when almost two million people marched in London to protest against the imminent invasion of Iraq. Its neurosurgeon protagonist, Henry Perowne, is a "professional reductionist" who cannot appreciate great literature. In order to cure him, his daughter Daisy spoonfeeds him Flaubert, Tolstoy and other "great writers". We are supposed to see this as a joke. But the joke evaporates as soon as we realise that Saturday really assigns a mystical dimension to western literature: the poetry of Matthew Arnold not only serves as an antidote to brutish violence, but literally saves the day at the end of the novel. As a corollary, we are forced to conclude, those who have never read War and Peace, for example, are not fully human.

The second Blitcon conceit is that Islam is the greatest threat to this idea of civilisation. Rushdie's suspicion of and distaste for Islam is obvious in his novels Midnight's Children, Shame and The Satanic Verses. In Shame, Rushdie describes Islam as a mythology that cannot survive close examination, but in The Satanic Verses it becomes an abomination. The novel imagines a rival life of the Prophet Muhammad, complete with historical details and every orientalist stereotype imaginable. As the product of the paranoid delusions of a violent, sexually perverted businessman, The Satanic Verses suggests, Islam runs contrary to every decent value known to man.

The third Blitcon conceit is that American ideas of freedom and democracy are not only right, but should be imposed on the rest of the world.

There is an exercise beyond the reach of any of the Blitcons. There are exotic creatures they cannot imagine in their fictions and diatribes: the generality of Muslims, people who believe in something other than the Blitcons' understanding of Islam; people who live humdrum lives on the streets of Bradford, Karachi or Jakarta; people far removed from the festering imagination of the Blitcon. Amis has never even met an ordinary Muslim in his life.

But I lie. He has met one. In The Age of Horrorism, Amis tells us that in Jerusalem he came face to face with the "maximum malevolence" of an Islamist, the gatekeeper at the Dome of the Rock. Amis writes that he wanted to enter the mosque in contravention of some "calendric prohibition" - there are none, actually - which led to a transformation in the gatekeeper: "His expression, previously cordial and cold, became a mask; and the mask was saying that killing me, my wife, and my children was something for which he now had warrant." By the simple observation of facial expression, Amis was able to divine the entire plot. But might it not be that the humble gatekeeper had never encountered such an obnoxious, arrogant and ignorant tourist?

The real world is not a fiction. The ideology of mass murder has a history and a context in all its perversity and evil. But the wild imaginings of the Blitcons are not an appropriate guide to the eradication of this horror. Turned to this end, the manipulative power of literary imagination is nothing but spin. And such spin is simply hatred answering, mirroring and matching hatred. Like minds reach across intervening swaths of the world and, in their hatred, embrace each other. That is all Blitcons tell us. But it is hardly enlightening for those of us desperate to find a sustainable path from destruction and slaughter.

- Ziauddin Sardar has been appointed a commissioner of the Commission for Equality and Human Rights.

This is an edited version of an article in the current issue of the New Statesman.



Comment on this Article

---

Jailed media worldwide hits record: U.S. watchdog

By Michelle Nichols
Reuters
7 Dec 06

NEW YORK - The number of journalists jailed worldwide for their work rose for the second year with Internet bloggers and online reporters now one third of those incarcerated, a U.S.-based media watchdog said on Thursday.

A Committee to Protect Journalists census found that a record 134 journalists were in jail on December 1 -- an increase of nine from the 2005 tally -- in 24 countries with China, Cuba, Eritrea and Ethiopia the top four nations to imprison media.

While print reporters, editors and photographers again made up the largest number of jailed journalists -- with 67 cases -- there were 49 imprisoned Internet journalists, making them the second biggest category, the New York-based committee said.
"We're at a crucial juncture in the fight for press freedom because authoritarian states have made the Internet a major front in their effort to control information," Committee Executive Director Joel Simon said in a statement.

"China is challenging the notion that the Internet is impossible to control or censor, and if it succeeds there will be far-ranging implications, not only for the medium but for press freedom all over the world."

Among those jailed in China were Zheng Yichun, a Chinese freelance contributor to overseas online news sites who wrote a series of editorials criticizing the Communist Party.

The census also found there were eight television journalists, eight radio reporters and two film/documentary makers in jail.

Other countries where journalists were imprisoned were Algeria, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Burma, Burundi, Cambodia, Colombia,
Democratic Republic of Congo, Gambia,
Iran, Maldives, Mexico, Russia, Sri Lanka, Tunisia, Turkey, United States, Uzbekistan and Vietnam.

The Committee to Protect Journalists said 84 journalists were jailed for "anti-state" allegations like subversion and divulging state secrets, with many of those imprisoned in China, Cuba and Ethiopia.

The census also showed 20 imprisoned journalists were held without any charge or trial and that Eritrea accounted for more than half those cases.

The committee said the United States imprisoned two journalists without charge or trial -- Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein, now held for eight months in
Iraq, and Al Jazeera cameraman Sami al-Haj, jailed for five years and now held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Joshua Wolf, a freelance blogger who refused to turn over video of a 2005 protest to a U.S. federal grand jury, was also in jail.

For the eighth year in a row, China led the way in jailing journalists with a total of 31 imprisoned on December 1, the census found, followed by Cuba with 24 reporters behind bars, Eritrea with 23 in jail and Ethiopia with 18 journalists jailed.



Comment on this Article

---

Six-party talks on Korean nuclear issue to resume from Dec.18

www.chinaview.cn 2006-12-11 16:01:30

BEIJING, Dec. 11 (Xinhua) -- The six-party talks on the Korean peninsular nuclear issue will be resumed in Beijing on Dec.18, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman announced on Monday.

"As a result of the consultations of the parties concerned, the second phase of the fifth round of the six-party talks on the Korean peninsular nuclear issue will be resumed in Beijing on Dec.18," spokesman Qin Gang said.
This will be the first talks since the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) conducted an underground nuclear test on Oct. 9, triggering protests from the international community and complicating the Korean nuclear issue.

"At this discussion, we expect that the parties will discuss ways to implement the September 2005 joint statement," the U.S. State Department spokeswoman Joanne Moore said.

Monday's announcement came after a flurry of brisk diplomatic engagements among the parties concerned over the past months.

At the end of October, chief negotiators of China, the DPRK and the United States held a closed-door meeting in Beijing and agreed to resume the talks a time convenient to the six parties.

In late November, chief negotiators of the DPRK, the United States, the Republic of Korea (ROK) and Japan came to Beijing, aiming at laying the groundwork for the resumption of the talks.

Analysts are divided on the prospect of the upcoming talks.

Some experts hailed the resumption an opportunity to break the current stalemate.

"I find it hard for the forthcoming six-party talks to produce substantive progress," said Yang Bojiang, a researcher with China Institute of Contemporary International Relations.

Yang said the difficulty lies in the deep-rooted mistrust between the DPRK and the United States.

Launched in 2003, the six-party talks, involving China, the DPRK, the United States, the ROK, Russia and Japan, are aimed at finding a solution to the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue.

However, the talks have been stalled since last November as the DPRK refused to return to the talks because of U.S. sanctions against it.

Over the past 13 months, the parties concerned have made continuous efforts to restart the talks.



Comment on this Article

---

Priming The Middle East

---

Gulf summit opens with warning of regional explosion

by Suleiman Nimr and Wissam Keyrouz
AFP
Sat Dec 9, 2006

RIYADH - Saudi King Abdullah opened the annual summit of Gulf leaders with a warning that the Arab world was on the brink of exploding because of conflicts in the Palestinian territories, Iraq and Lebanon.
"Our Arab region is besieged by a number of dangers, as if it was a powder keg waiting for a spark to explode," he told the rulers of the oil-rich monarchies gathered in Riyadh for a two-day meeting to the backdrop of mounting sectarian violence in neighboring Iraq.

The Palestinians were reeling from "a hostile and ugly occupation" by
Israel while the international community watched their "bloody tragedy like a spectator," Abdullah said.

But "most dangerous for the (Palestinian) cause is the conflict among brethren," he said in a reference to the differences between Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas's
Fatah faction and the Islamist Hamas movement that have blocked the formation of a unity government.

In Iraq "a brother is still killing his brother," Abdullah said of the tit-for-tat killings between the Sunni Arab former elite and the ruling Shiite majority.

Abdullah also warned that Lebanon, which was rocked by civil war in 1975-1990, risked sliding into renewed civil strife as a result of the current standoff between pro- and anti-Syrian camps.

"In Lebanon, we see dark clouds threatening the unity of the homeland, which risks sliding again into... conflict among the sons of the same country," he said.

The heads of state of Gulf Cooperation Council members Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates were present alongside the Saudi monarch, the first time in several years that all six rulers have attended the bloc's year-end summit.

Gulf Arab leaders are also concerned about Shiite
Iran's growing role in Iraq and its standoff with the West over Tehran's nuclear program, although GCC Secretary General Abdulrahman al-Attiyah said the GCC states do not feel threatened by the Islamic republic.

"The United States talks openly of the danger of Iranian military activity in the region, but our countries do not feel threatened by Tehran. Iranian officials assure us that their nuclear program is peaceful," Attiyah said.

In his opening speech, King Abdullah said there remained "outstanding issues" and "ambiguity surrounding some policies" in the Gulf.

He did not elaborate, but called for the GCC states to "stand as one" to tackle the problems confronting the Arab world.

A GCC source told AFP that the recommendations put forward to the heads of state by the bloc's ministerial committees focus on the potential fallout of the mayhem in Iraq.

The recommendations call for "instructing security agencies (of GCC states) to draft a joint plan of action" to deal with the risks arising from the situation in Iraq, including "population displacement, terrorist and criminal acts and the smuggling of weapons... and infiltration (of militants)" across common borders.

The recommendations also call for protecting the GCC states from the potential "sectarian repercussions" of the conflict in Iraq.

The Sunni-dominated Gulf Arab states have Shiite minorities of various sizes -- except Bahrain where Shiites form a majority.

Attiyah earlier told AFP that repercussions of "developments in Iran's nuclear program and the dangerous security situation in Iraq on the six GCC members will be the focus of the summit."

GCC officials have said in the past they fear a radioactive leak from Iran's nuclear facilities would be catastrophic for the Gulf environment.

"Gulf states are worried by the possibility of a US-Iranian confrontation" over Tehran's nuclear ambitions, the GCC source said Saturday, adding that "a strike on Iran's nuclear facilities would create environmental dangers" for the region.

During their summit, GCC leaders will also discuss steps toward economic integration, chiefly moves to establish a common market by 2007 and launch a monetary union and a single currency by early 2010.



Comment on this Article

---

Jimmy Carter Can't Say What Jewish Critics of Israel Are Free to Say

Phil on December 8, 2006 12:29 PM

The paddling Jimmy Carter is receiving for making criticisms of Israel that are common in Israel demonstrates a law of the Israel conversation: It is one thing for Jews to criticize Israel, but it's not O.K. for non-Jews to do so. This law is demonstrated by the Hillel chapters I wrote about the other day: it's OK for Jewish groups to host the Israel veterans Breaking the Silence, but those same groups will criticize Palestinian organizations when they sponsor the very same program—as if the Arab groups are doing so as the first step toward a pogrom.

Jews feel that they can claim this exclusivity as a (historically) persecuted people. In the same way it is O.K. for blacks to use the n-word, but Michael Richards ended his career by using the word.

The law came to mind after I got a small book published by the American Jewish Historical Society, called "Essays on American Zionism." (1980). There is an essay in this book by Abba Eban, the famously eloquent Israeli Ambassador to the U.N.

Eban's essay is about Jewish influence on the White House. "Influence" is his word, so is "pressure." In fact Eban describes as absolutely key to Israel's emergence the very thing that the Times recently dismissed as an antisemitic delusion—Jewish influence on Harry Truman.

Some statements from Eban:

—"Public influence" by the American Zionist movement leader Rabbi Abba Silver "would have failed if other avenues of pressure and influence had not been brought to bear on presidential decisions."

—Before the 1944 Democratic Convention, Jewish leaders were told that Senator Harry Truman needed $25,000 for publicity so that he might replace FDR's then-VP Henry Wallace. "I told Boyle that I didn't know Senator Truman,' [Zionist and manufacturer Dewey] Stone later recalled, 'but... if he wanted me to take a gamble I would make the $25,000 available'... When President Roosevelt died in 1945 Harry S. Truman succeeded him and Dewey Stone was among the few to whom he owed a political debt."

—In '48, Truman feared losing, and Stone raised crucial funds, along with his friend Abe Feinberg, another leading Zionist; and they "thereafter had fairly free access to Truman in times of crisis."

—Also in '48, when Truman complained of pressure from Zionists, Jewish leaders arranged for the visit to the White House by Truman's former haberdashery partner Eddie Jacobson in order that Jacobson might become "a lever of influence in the central international predicament of the age."

—The "need for Israel's friends to have a permanent link with the White House arose again" in the case of JFK. Stone and other friends of Israel did not trust JFK because of his father's equivocal views of Nazi Germany. In Aug. 1960, Kennedy came to Feinberg's apartment at the Hotel Pierre and met with "a group of influential Jewish leaders [who] interrogated Kennedy stringently on matters affecting Jews and Israel." As a result, Stone had a "close, personal relationship" with Kennedy till he died.

—Indeed, "without the support of American Jewry" Israel would not have been able to emerge from "vulnerability and weakness into sovereignty." This "extraordinary solidarity and kinship... enlarged Israel's power beyond the limited dimensions of its space and size."

God bless him, Eban is merely describing the workings of part of the Israel lobby. For statements less emphatic than Eban's, Walt and Mearsheimer have been described in the press as antisemites. Keep in mind that one of the key things these influencers were trying to influence was Truman's decision to support the formation of a Jewish state in '47 and recognize Israel in '48. If he hadn't done so, English control of Mandatory Palestine would have gone over to a United Nations trusteeship of the territory. You have to wonder if a more deliberate process might not have worked out better.

Comment on this Article

---

Actually, the 'bad news' from Iraq is "significantly underreported"

by Joshua Holland
December 9, 2006

Just as a child -- say, an emotionally-fragile, mentally-challenged child -- might embrace a comforting blanky for protection against monsters lurking under the bed, so conservatives cling, desperately, to the idea that the media is exaggerating the extraordinary suckiness in Iraq in order to avoid facing the smoldering, blood-stained consequences of the invasion they championed with such zeal.
Consider this recent gem from Mark Noonan at Blogs for Bush, in a post reacting to the Iraq Study Group's report:

[...The] report asserts things are deteriorating in Iraq: to me, this is just conforming the report to the phony story of Iraq produced by the MSM. I think it was more of a, "ya know, if we tell the truth about all the good things that are happening in Iraq, no one will believe us because the MSM has spent the past two years broadcasting enemy propaganda".

Yes, he is that dumb (Noonan trusts what Gavin at Sadly No! calls "an official Department of Defense 'information warfare' propaganda site" for his info about Iraq).

Anyway, Editor and Publisher noted that the Baker-Hamilton report has some bits that are sure to create some serious cognitive dissonance among the wing-nut set:

[The report says], bluntly, that "there is significant underreporting of the violence in Iraq" by the U.S. military. "The standard for recording attacks acts as a filter to keep events out of reports and databases," the report continues.

Looking at one day, the report found undercounting of violent attacks by more than 1000 percent.

"A murder of an Iraqi is not necessarily counted as an attack," the report explained." If we cannot determine the source of a sectarian attack, that assault does not make it into the database. A roadside bomb or a rocket or mortar attack that doesn't hurt U.S. personnel doesn't count. For example, on one day in July 2006 there were 93 attacks or significant acts of violence [officially] reported. Yet a careful review of the reports for that single day brought to light 1,100 acts of violence.

"Good policy is difficult to make when information is systematically collected in a way that minimizes its discrepancy with policy goals."

Indeed.

Baghdad and its environs are far too dangerous for most reporters to go visit, for example, hospitals or morgues in the country's worst hot spots -- most of the info we get from the media is based on these official data. So if the military is underreporting the 'bad news' the dreaded EM-ES-EM is as well.

And then there's the very real likelihood that the "good news" about the status of reconstruction projects in Iraq coming from USAID and other agencies is quite significantly overreported. That suggests that, if anything, the commercial media is painting a better picture of Iraq than the facts on the ground warrant, which is a scary thought.

The right's ridiculously vitriolic reaction to the Baker-Hamilton report is largely explained by the fact that it is blunt in its condemnation of the preznit's conduct of the war and that it calls for talking with Iran and Syria. But I would imagine that this part about the underreported violence has something to do with it as well.

Joshua Holland is a staff writer at Alternet and a regular contributor to The Gadflyer.



Comment on this Article

---

Iran hosts int'l conference to discuss Holocaust

www.chinaview.cn 2006-12-11 19:51:18

TEHRAN, Dec. 11 (Xinhua) -- Iran on Monday opened a two-day international conference to discuss the Holocaust, a move that has sparked widespread controversy.

But Iran has insisted that the conference was aimed at providing a venue for free discussions on "a historical issue" and discussing the scale of the Holocaust and whether the Nazis really used gas chambers to kill Jews.
"The objective of the conference is not to deny or prove the Holocaust. Its main aim is to create an atmosphere for thinkers to discuss freely the Holocaust," Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki told the opening ceremony.

There was "no logical reason for opposing this conference," Mottaki said.

The conference, dubbed "Study of the Holocaust: A Global Perspective," was initiated by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who had called the Holocaust, in which 6 million Jewswere killed, a "myth."

The Iranian Foreign Ministry's Institute for Political and International Studies (IPIS), which organized the conference, said67 researchers from 30 countries would attend the meeting.

"Some people who had been asked to attend refused, saying it aims to deny the Holocaust. Others assumed the international conference was politically motivated and were reluctant to attend," IPIS chief Rassoul Moussavi said.

"Officials in charge of organizing the conference do not intendto deny or confirm it (the Holocaust). The duty of the IPIS is to create a suitable atmosphere for discussing historical issues," hesaid.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has strongly opposed any attempt to question or deny the Holocaust, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said on Thursday, underlining that Annan will deeply deplore any conference whose purpose is to question or deny the reality of the Holocaust.

The conference has also aroused criticism from the United States and Germany.

U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said on Friday that "this meeting is really focused on highlighting those people who deny that there was, in fact, a Holocaust."

"In that regard, it's just yet another disgraceful act on this particular subject by the regime in Tehran," he added.

The German Foreign Ministry called in Iran's top envoy in Berlin on Friday in protest against the conference.



Comment on this Article

---

Iran's denial of Holocaust harms Arab cause, Palestine activist tells president

By Angus McDowall in Tehran
10 December 2006

Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has come under attack for his views on the Holocaust from an unexpected quarter - a Palestinian activist recently freed after 18 years in an Israeli jail.

Mr Ahmadinejad was widely reviled in the West last year for saying the Holocaust was "a myth" and that Israel should be "wiped off the map". Later he said he did not know if the slaughter of six million Jews really happened, condemned laws in some European countries against Holocaust denial, and said that if Europe felt guilt about the Jews, it should create a homeland for them on European soil.
Against this background, a two-day conference on the Holocaust, starting in Tehran tomorrow, has attracted considerable suspicion abroad. The Foreign Affairs Ministry, which is running the event, says 67 international researchers will attend, including some from Britain and Germany. It is not yet clear whether they will include known revisionists or respected academics, but Khaled Mahameed, a lawyer who set up the Arab world's first Holocaust museum in Nazareth, said he had been invited to speak.

However, Mr Ahmadinejad has been condemned on the eve of the conference by Mahmoud al-Safadi, who was sentenced to 27 years by Israel for throwing Molotov cocktails during the 1988 intifada. In an open letter to the Iranian president, he says that Mr Ahmadinejad's stance is a "great disservice to popular struggles the world over".

"Perhaps you see Holocaust denial as an expression of support for the Palestinians," he writes. "Here, too, you are wrong. We struggle for our existence and our rights, and against the historic injustice that was dealt us in 1948.

"Our success and our independence will not be gained by denying the genocide perpetrated against the Jewish people, even if parts of this people are the very forces that occupy and dispossess us to this day."

Mr Safadi says that reading the works of Arab intellectuals helped convince him that the Holocaust was a historical fact.



Comment on this Article

---

Iran sets conditions for talks with U.S. on Iraq

By Mohammed Abbas
Reuters
9 Dec 06

MANAMA - Iran will only hold direct talks with the United States on Iraq if Washington announces plans to pull its troops out, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said on Saturday.

Mottaki was responding to this week's U.S. Iraq Study Group report, which recommended Washington should directly engage with Iran and Syria to try to stabilize Iraq.

President Bush has said he will not talk to Iran unless it suspends its nuclear program.
On the question of direct talks, "the first and most essential step ... is the United States announce they have decided to withdraw from Iraq", Mottaki told reporters at a security conference in Bahrain.

"Iran is ready to help the administration to withdraw its troops from Iraq," he said, but his country did not "see such political will yet in the United States".

Washington has said it will keeps its troops in Iraq as long as the Iraqi government wants.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said last month his country's forces would be able to assume security command by June 2007 -- which would allow the United States to start withdrawing troops.

U.S. and Iraqi officials at the conference were skeptical about any Iranian help for U.S. troop withdrawal.

"I don't know how Iran can help the United States withdraw from Iraq peacefully. They should define that ... What about the Iraqis? Nobody asked them," said Saadoun Dulaimi, adviser to Maliki.

Washington blames Iran and Syria for stirring up conflict in Iraq nearly four years after the U.S.-led invasion toppled Saddam Hussein.

"The biggest help Iran can make is to stop what they're doing in Iraq right now," a senior U.S. military official, who did not want to be named, told Reuters.

"The Iranians are good chess players ... and they are going to find a way to prolong this effort and help discredit the United States ... to gain more influence and possibly work on their nuclear program," he said.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has suggested Tehran would demand some payback in return for any help on Iraq, probably over its nuclear program, which the West fears could include nuclear weapons. Iran says it has no intention of acquiring nuclear weapons.

Asked if Iran would ask for concessions if it helped the U.S. withdraw, Mottaki said: "When they announce they have decided to withdraw from Iraq, then we will explain how the region can help the Americans to withdraw."

Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari said Syria or Iran would demand payback for any help they offer the United States.

"No country will come and offer you good services free of charge. What's the price?" he said.



Comment on this Article

---

Iraqi leader calls ISG report an 'insult'

By David Usborne in New York
11 December 2006

The President of Iraq, Jalal Talabani, has broadly condemned the findings of President George Bush's Iraq Study Group as an "insult to the people of Iraq".

Mr Talabani, who is Kurdish, said he would write to Mr Bush explaining his objections to the findings of the panel, headed by former US secretary of state James Baker and retired congressman Lee Hamilton. Aides to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said that he had yet to reach an opinion.

President Bush has stopped short of rejecting the report issued last week, which includes recommendations that the US withdraw its combat brigades from Iraq by early 2008 and engage in direct talks with Syria and Iran.
But he has indicated that he has no plans to embrace the report wholesale and will spend most of this week pondering options with his national security advisers for tackling America's increasingly calamitous engagement in the country.

Mr Talabani indicated his agreement on the need to talk with Damascus and Tehran, but denounced other recommendations which he sees as setting conditions for future support for Iraq's government.

He rejected changing the law to allow former Baathist members of the Saddam government to return to the civil service, for example, and criticised a proposal to increase the number of US troops embedded with the Iraqi army to train its soldiers. The report, he said, "is not fair, is not just, and it contains some very dangerous articles which undermine the sovereignty of Iraq and the constitution. It is not respecting the desire of the Iraqi people to control its army and to be able to rearm and train Iraqi forces under the leadership of the Iraqi government.

"If you read this report, one would think that it is written for a young, small colony that they are imposing these conditions on. We are a sovereign country."



Comment on this Article

---

Iraq president slams study group report

Last Updated: Sunday, December 10, 2006 | 8:41 PM ET
The Associated Press

The Iraqi president on Sunday sharply criticized the bipartisan U.S. report calling for a new approach to the war, saying it contained dangerous recommendations that would undermine his country's sovereignty and it was "an insult to the people of Iraq."

President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd and one of the staunchest U.S. supporters within the Iraqi leadership, also said U.S. training of Iraq's army and police had gone "from failure to failure."
He criticized the recommendation by the Iraq Study Group calling for increasing the number of U.S. troops embedded with Iraqi units to train Iraq's forces from 3,000 to 4,000 currently to 10,000 to 20,000.

"It is not respecting the desire of the Iraqi people to control its army and to be able to rearm and train Iraqi forces under the leadership of the Iraqi government," he said during an interview with several reporters in his office in Baghdad.

Talabani was the most senior government official to take a stand against the report, which has also come under sharp criticism from American conservatives who claim it amounts to a veiled surrender in the war against terror.

Talabani said the Iraqi government planned to send a letter to President George W. Bush "expressing our views about the main issues" in the report. He would not elaborate.

"I believe that President George Bush is a brave and committed man and he is adamant to support the Iraqi government until they've reached success," Talabani said. He said setting conditions was "an insult to the people of Iraq."

A key area

Talabani's criticism of U.S. training was directed at a key part of the study group's recommendation, which called for accelerated training of Iraqi forces and the withdrawal of most U.S. combat troops by the first quarter of 2008.

Some U.S. military experts have expressed concern that Iraqi forces will not be ready to assume full responsibility for the fighting by then. However, opposition to the war is rising within the United States, increasing pressure on Bush to shift strategy.

Talabani said the 2008 date was realistic if the Iraqi government is given more responsibility for security.

"If we can agree with the U.S. government to give us the right of organizing, training, arming our armed forces, it will be possible in 2008 [for U.S.-led forces] to start to leave Iraq and to go back home," he said.

"If you read this report, one would think that it is written for a young, small colony that they are imposing these conditions on," Talabani said. "We are a sovereign country."

He also pointed to the report's call for the approval of a law that would allow thousands of officials from Saddam Hussein's ousted Baath party to return to their jobs.



Comment on this Article

---

US Soldiers Murder Iraqi Women and Children In Reprisal Attack

Reuters
10/12/2006

Angry Iraqi villagers fired into the air on Saturday as they buried more than a dozen victims of a U.S. airstrike that Sunni leaders condemned as a massacre.

Hundreds of chanting residents of Jalameda marched through Ishaqi on Saturday firing shots and carrying banners that read: "The people of Ishaqi condemn the mass killing by the occupation forces."

The bodies, wrapped in white cloth, were laid out in rows on the ground before being buried.

"We ask the Americans to be merciful. They kill civilians alleging they are terrorists. Ishaqi is a catastrophe," said Adnan al-Dulaimi, head of the biggest Sunni political bloc in parliament.




Comment on this Article

---

Baker's Cake

Uri Avnery
9.12.06

NO ONE likes to admit a mistake. Me neither. But honesty leaves me no choice.

A few days after the collapse of the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001, I happened to go on a lecture tour in the US.

My message was optimistic. I expected some good to come out of the tragedy. I reasoned that the atrocity had exposed the intensity of the hatred for the US that is spreading throughout the world, and especially the Muslim world. It would be logical not only to fight against the mosquitoes, but to drain the swamp. Since the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was one of the breeding grounds of the hatred - if not the main one - the US would make a major effort to achieve peace between the two peoples.
That was what cold logic indicated. But this is not what happened. What happened was the very opposite.

American policy was not led by cold logic. Instead of drying one swamp, it created a second swamp. Instead of pushing the Israelis and Palestinians towards peace, it invaded Iraq. Not only did the hatred against America not die down, it flared up even higher. I hoped that this danger would override even the oil interests and the desire to station an American garrison in the center of the Middle East.

Thus I committed the very mistake that I have warned others against many times: to assume that what is logical will actually happen. A rational person should not ignore the irrational in politics. In other words, it is irrational to exclude the irrational.

George W. Bush is an irrational person, perhaps the very personification of irrationality. Instead of drawing the logical conclusion from what had happened and acting accordingly, he set off in the opposite direction. Since then he has just insisted on "staying the course".

Enter James Baker.


SINCE I am already in a confessional mood, I have to admit that I like James Baker.

I know that this will shock some of my good friends. "Baker?!" they will cry out, "The consigliere of the Bush family? The man who helped George W steal the 2000 elections? The Rightist?"

Yes, yes, the very same Baker. I like him for his cold logic, his forthright and blunt style, his habit of saying what he thinks without embellishment, his courage. I prefer this style to the sanctimonious hypocrisy of other leaders, who try to hide their real intentions. I would be happy any time to swap Olmert for Baker, and throw in Amir Peretz for free.

But that is a matter of taste. More important is the fact that in all the last 40 years, James Baker was the only leader in America who had the guts to stand up and act against Israel's malignant disease: the settlements. When he was the Secretary of State, he simply informed the Israeli government that he would deduct the sums expended on the settlements from the money Israel was getting from the US. Threatened and made good on his threat.

Baker thus confronted the "pro-Israeli" lobby in the US, both the Jewish and the Christian. Such courage is rare in the United States, as it is rare in Israel.


THIS WEEK the Iraq Study Group, led by Baker, published its report.

It confirms all the bleak forecasts voiced by many throughout the world - myself included - before Bush & Co. launched the bloody Iraqi adventure. In his dry and incisive style, Baker says that the US cannot win there. In so many words he tells the American public: Let's get out of there, before the last American soldier has to scramble into the last helicopter from the roof of the American embassy, as happened in Vietnam.

Baker calls for the end of the Bush approach and offers a new and thought-out strategy of his own. Actually, it is an elegant way of extricating America from Iraq, without it looking like a complete rout. The main proposals: an American dialogue with Iran and Syria, an international conference, the withdrawal of the American combat brigades, leaving behind only instructors. The committee that he headed was bi-partisan, composed half and half of Republicans and Democrats.


FOR ISRAELIS, the most interesting part of the report is, of course, the one that concerns us directly. It interests me especially - how could it be otherwise? - because it repeats, almost word for word, the things I said immediately after September 11, both in my articles at home and in my lectures in the US.

True, Baker is saying them four years later. In these four years, thousands of American soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians have died for nothing. But, to use the image again, when a giant ship like the United States turns around, it make a very big circle, and it takes a lot of time. We, in the small speed-boat called Israel, could do it much quicker - if we had the good sense to do it.

Baker says simply: In order to stop the war in Iraq and start a reconciliation with the Arab world, the US must bring about the end of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He does not say explicitly that peace must be imposed on Israel, but that is the obvious implication.

In his own clear words: "The United States will not be able to achieve its goals in the Middle East unless the United States deals directly with the Arab-Israeli conflict."

His committee proposes the immediate start of negotiations between Israel and "President Mahmoud Abbas", in order to implement the two-state solution. The "sustainable negotiations" must address the "key final status issues of borders, settlements, Jerusalem, the right of return, and the end of conflict."

The use of the title "President" for Abu Mazen and, even more so, the use of the term "right of return" has alarmed the whole political class in Israel. Even in the Oslo agreement, the section dealing with the "final status" issues mentions only "refugees". Baker, as is his wont, called the spade a spade.

At the same time, he proposes a stick and carrot approach to achieve peace between Israel and Syria. The US needs this peace in order to draw Syria into its camp. The stick, from the Israeli point of view, would be the return of the Golan Heights. The carrot would be the stationing of American soldiers on the border, so that Israel's security would be guaranteed by the US. In return, he demands that Syria stop, inter alia, its aid to Hizbullah.

After Gulf War I, Baker - the same Baker - got all the parties to the conflict to come to an international conference in Madrid. For that purpose, he twisted the arm of then Prime Minister Itzhak Shamir, whose entire philosophy consisted of two letters and one exclamation mark: "No!" and whose slogan was: "The Arabs are the same Arabs, and the sea is the same sea" - alluding to the popular Israeli conviction that the Arabs all want to throw Israel into the sea.

Baker brought Shamir to Madrid, his arms and legs in irons, and made sure he did not escape. Shamir was compelled to sit at the table with representatives of the Palestinian people, who had never been allowed to attend an international conference before. The conference itself had no tangible results, but  there is no doubt that it was a vital step in the process that brought about the Oslo agreement and, more difficult than anything else, the mutual recognition of the State of Israel and the Palestinian people.

Now Baker is suggesting something similar. He proposes an international conference, and cites Madrid as a model. The conclusion is clear.


HOWEVER, THIS baker can only offer a recipe for the cake. The question is whether President Bush will use the recipe and bake the cake.

Since 1967 and the beginning of the occupation, several American Secretaries of State have submitted plans to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. All these plans met the same fate: they were torn up and thrown in the trash.

The same sequence of events has been repeated time after time: In Jerusalem, hysteria sets in. The Foreign Office stands up on its hind legs and swears to defeat the evil design. The media unanimously condemns the wicked plot. The Secretary of State of the day is pilloried as an anti-Semite. The Israeli lobby in Washington mobilizes for total war.

For example: the Rogers Plan of Richard Nixon's first Secretary of State, William Rogers. In the early 70s he submitted a detailed peace plan, the principal point of which was the withdrawal of Israel to the 1967 borders, with, at most, "insubstantial alterations".

What happened to the plan?

In face of the onslaught of "the Friends of Israel" in Washington, Nixon buckled under, as have all presidents since Dwight D. Eisenhower, a man of principle who did not need the Jewish votes. No president will quarrel with the government of Israel if he wants to be re-elected, or - like Bush now - to end his term in office with dignity and pass the presidency to another member of his party. Any senator or congressman who takes a stand that the Israeli embassy does not like, is committing Harakiri, Washington-style.

The fate of the peace plans of successive Secretaries of State confirms, on the face of it, the thesis of the two professors, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, that caused a great stir earlier this year. According to them, whenever there is a clash in Washington between the national interests of the United States and the national interests of Israel, it is the Israeli interests which win.


WILL THIS happen this time, too?

Baker has presented his plan at a time when the US is facing disaster in Iraq. President Bush is bankrupt, his party has lost control of Congress and may soon lose the White House. The neo-conservatives, most of them Jews and all of them supporters of the Israeli extreme Right, who were in control of American foreign policy, are being removed one by one, and this week yet another, the American ambassador to the United Nations, was kicked out. Therefore, it is possible that this time the President may listen to expert advice.

But that is in serious doubt. The Democratic Party is subject to the "pro-Israeli" lobby no less than the Republican Party, and perhaps even more. The new congress was indeed elected under the banner of opposition to the continuation of the war in Iraq, but its members are not jihadi suicide bombers. They depend on the "pro-Israeli" lobby. To paraphrase Shamir: "The plan is the same plan, and the trash bin is the same trash bin." 

In Jerusalem, the first reaction to the report was total rejection, expressing a complete confidence in the ability of the lobby to choke it at birth. "Nothing has changed," Olmert declared. "There is no one to talk with," - immediately echoed by the mouth and pen brigade in the media. "We cannot talk with them as long as the terrorism goes on," a famous expert declared on TV. That's like saying: "One cannot talk about ending the war as long as the enemy is shooting at our troops."

On the Mearsheimer-Walt thesis I wrote that "the dog is wagging the tail and the tail is wagging the dog." It will be interesting to see which will wag which this time: the dog its tail or the tail its dog.

Comment from Jeff Blankfort: For more than 20 years, Israeli journalist Uri Avnery has been observing and commenting on the ability of the Jewish lobby to determine US policy regarding the Israel-Palestine conflict. Here he spells it out again in commenting on the Baker-Hamilton Report. Note: Baker was backed in the actions Avnery describes by Pres. George Bush St., who also refused to knuckle under to the lobby and paid a political price for it. JB

Comment on this Article

---

British Troops under investigation for Kandahar shooting spree

Saturday December 9, 2006
The Guardian

Fury in Afghan city after targeted British convoy kills civilians

British military authorities are investigating allegations that Royal Marines shot indiscriminately on Afghan bystanders following a suicide bombing last weekend.

At least two people died and five were wounded by shots fired from a supply convoy that raced through Kandahar after coming under attack. The incident has sparked widespread public anger in the southern city, where recent suicide bombs have frayed nerves and shortened tempers among Nato forces.
Squadron Leader Jason Chalk, a spokesman for Nato regional command in Kandahar, described the reports as "disconcerting" and promised a thorough investigation by Royal Military police. "If people are found to have acted outside the rules of engagement, they will be held to account for their actions," he said.

But Lieutenant Colonel Andy Price, spokesman for the UK taskforce in Helmand, said the troops acted within their rules of engagement. "I can categorically state that we did not indiscriminately open fire," he said.

The extent of the allegations has only emerged in Guardian interviews with medics, witnesses, local journalists and western officials in Kandahar.

The suicide bomber struck at about 11am last Sunday as the British convoy passed on its way to Camp Bastion in Helmand. The blast flung an open-topped vehicle near the rear of the convoy on to a central reservation. Three Afghan labourers were killed, witnesses said, and three British soldiers suffered life-threatening injuries. The convoy security detail moved the wounded into two vehicles and started towards an evacuation point. Seconds later gunfire erupted.

Abdul Wali, 26, a baker, was cowering inside when he heard the first bullets. Stepping into the street, he saw a taxi driver with apparent bullet wounds being pulled from his car. "The British were shooting and shouting 'Go! Go! Go!'" he said yesterday. "They were scared and they were taking their revenge."

The British convoy pressed towards the city centre. At the busy Martyrs Square junction Abdul Rahim stopped his motorcycle to let it pass. More gunfire rang out, sparking panic. Bystanders dived into shops for cover, he said. Abdul Rahim tried to push his motorcycle back but it was too late. The first bullet passed through his upper back. The second pierced his side and lodged near his spinal cord. Grimacing with pain, the 35-year-old spoke softly from his bed at Kandahar hospital. "The British say they came to bring peace to our country. What kind of peace is this?" he said.

Noor Khan, a reporter for Associated Press, who was sitting in his car nearby, feared he would also be shot. "They aimed their guns straight at me. I immediately raised my hands," he said.

The convoy pushed towards the Helmand road. But as they left the city the British soldiers allegedly opened fire again, more than five miles from the suicide attack site, on a taxi carrying three men. "The taxi was trying to park along the road. The driver and one passenger were wounded," said Rahmatullah, 19, a security guard, who witnessed it.

At Kandahar hospital the third man in the car, Dost Muhammad, said: "Our driver reduced his speed and tried to stop on the side of the road. The British passed by very close and started firing."

Colonel Price said the Marines believed they were under threat from a possible secondary attack. Bullet marks on two vehicles in the convoy indicated possible hostile fire from Taliban marksmen, he said. He said the British soldiers fired more than 300 warning flares as the Marines raced through the city carrying their wounded. But civilian cars drove up one-way streets and blocked their escape.

"It's very regrettable that civilians got hurt. But the Taliban detonated a bomb that killed innocent people on a busy street. That is not our fault," he said.

Gunfire and secondary attacks do not usually follow suicide bombings in Afghan towns. Suicide bombers have struck six times in the past 12 days.

In the latest attack, a bomber killed one Afghan and wounded nine, including a six-year-old girl, but a Canadian convoy nearby escaped unscathed. The driver said the fleeing Canadians had shot the boy. But the British incident stirred the most emotion. Mourners at funerals on Tuesday spoke of a jihad against British soldiers. On Thursday the deputy commander of Nato forces in southern Afghanistan, Col Tim Bevis, spoke on local television to explain the events.

"The foreigners should leave," declared Fida Muhammad. "Some say they are our enemy. I agree," he said. But others said the alternative - a return to Taliban rule or internecine bloodshed - was a worse prospect. "At the bottom of their hearts they don't want the coalition to leave," said Noor Khan.



Comment on this Article

---

Saddam's nephew escapes prison with guard's help

Reuters
Sat Dec 9, 2006

BAGHDAD - Saddam Hussein's nephew, accused of financing the Sunni insurgency against U.S. forces, escaped from prison in northern Iraq on Saturday with the help of a guard, Iraqi officials said.
Ayman al-Sabawi, the son of Saddam's half brother, Sabawi Ibrahim al-Tikriti, escaped from Badoush prison northwest of the northern city of Mosul at 4 p.m. (13:00 GMT), a senior police officer told Reuters.

Brigadier Mohammad al-Waqaa, the head of the Mosul police operation room, said the nightwatch commander had helped Sabawi to escape. It was unclear how they made their getaway.

Sabawi's father was head of the Iraqi secret service in 1991 and head of the General Security Directorate from 1991 to 1996. After Saddam's overthrow in 2003, Washington offered a $1 million reward for information leading to his capture or death.

It is believed that Syria turned over Sabawi's father, who had been in hiding, to the Iraqi authorities in February 2005.



Comment on this Article

---

Starting With Lebanon And Palestine

---

New Hezbollah rally set to pose greatest challenge to Siniora

by Reuters

BEIRUT - Hundreds of thousands of opposition protesters, led by the militant group Hezbollah, are expected to stage a rally on Sunday aimed at ousting Lebanon's anti-Syrian government.

Opposition supporters have been camping out in central Beirut since December 1, paralyzing the heart of the capital and vowing not to budge until Prime Minister Fouad Siniora bows to their demands for a government of national unity.
"Opposition to rally largest crowd today," pro-opposition Ad-Diyar newspaper's frontpage headline read Sunday. It said the opposition would escalate its campaign from Monday by calling strikes that would lead to a civil disobedience campaign.

Thousands of Lebanese soldiers and police tightened security in the capital hours before the rally. One Shi'ite protester has been killed and several people hurt in shooting incidents, riots and clashes between supporters of both sides over the past week.

Siniora and the Sunni-led ruling majority refuse to give in, accusing the Shi'ite Hezbollah of trying to stage a coup in the wake of their 34-day war against Israel earlier this year.

Commentators have warned that the worsening stand-off could degenerate into wide-scale violence in a country that is still trying to recover from its last civil war that spanned 1975 through 1990.

However, political sources in Siniora's government say no political solution or compromise is in sight. Several pro-government rallies were held in various areas across Lebanon on Saturday, highlighting the deep divisions among the Lebanese.

A U.S. State Department official on Saturday accused Syria and Iran, Hezbollah's allies, of trying to destabilize Lebanon and said the situation was of "very significant concern".

Dark clouds

Saudi Arabia strongly backs the Siniora government and is worried by the rising influence of Shi'ite power Iran through support for Lebanese group Hezbollah, Shi'ite parties in Iraq and Tehran's alliance with Damascus.

"Our Arab region is surrounded by a number of dangers, like a powder keg ready to explode," King Abdullah said, adding that "dark clouds" were threatening civil strife in Lebanon.

The struggle is between two broad alliances, with the ruling coalition made up of Sunni Muslim, Druze and some Christian parties confronting Hezbollah, another Shi'ite group and a Christian party headed by former General Michel Aoun.

"Mr prime minister go home, it's better for you because you cannot captain the ship," Aoun said on Saturday, repeating opposition accusations that Siniora was a U.S. vassal.

When the opposition launched their protest 10 days ago, hundreds of thousands took to the street in a country with an estimated population of around four million.

In the following days there have been regular rallies in the tent city that has sprung up in two central squares but no further mass mobilization of opposition forces. Sunday's protest is due to start at 3 P.M.

Lebanon's pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud refused on Saturday to endorse plans for the court, saying the depleted cabinet had acted unconstitutionally last month when it had moved to approve the project.

Comment from Jeff Blankfort: Notice how the Reuters article is framed from the beginning, as if the Siniora government which has been toadying to the US since the US supported and financed Israeli war on Lebanon is defending the country against Lebanese who are working in Syria's behalf, but who have been, in fact, the protector's of Lebanon from its main enemy, Israel since Hizbollah was formed in 1982 in response to Israel's invasion that summer.

Comment on this Article

---

Protestors gather in Beirut for huge rally

www.chinaview.cn 2006-12-11 02:17:40

BEIRUT, Dec. 10 (Xinhua) -- Hundreds of thousands of protestors gathered in central Beirut on Sunday for an "unprecedented" rally called by Hezbollah-led opposition to topple the current government led by Prime Minister Fouad Seniora.

Waving Lebanese white-and-red national flags and chanting anti-government slogans, protestors swarmed to Squares of Riyadh al-Solha and Martyr in Downtown Beirut for the gathering which officially began at 3 p.m. (1300 GMT).
Hezbollah's Al-Manar television said the protest promised to be larger than the Dec. 1 rally that kicked off the opposition campaign.

An army spokesman said that the demonstration was "unprecedented in the history of Lebanon", expecting that "hundreds of thousands" people had gathered in the heart of Beirut.

Lebanese TV stations' footage showed that thousands of soldiers and police, backed by armored personnel carriers, tightened the security in Beirut.

Meanwhile, hundreds of heavily-armed police and combat troops unfurled barbed wire and erected barricades around Seniora's office in case of possible attack by the demonstrators.

The mass rally was mobilized on Wednesday and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah also called on his supporters to take part in the rally during a speech on Thursday.

Opposition supporters have been camping out in central Beirut since Dec. 1, paralyzing the heart of the capital, to put pressure on Seniora to set up a government of national unity.

In spite of the promise given by the opposition that the rally was "peaceful", one Shiite protester was killed and about 20others were wounded in shooting incidents, riots and clashes between pro- and anti-government supporters over the past week.

Lebanese sectarian tension in the cabinet began to escalate last month when six pro-Syrian ministers resigned after Seniora and the anti-Syrian majority in the parliament rejected the opposition's demand for a new national unity government.

In the wake of their resignation, the opposition said Seniora's government had lost its legitimacy since Shiite Muslims are no longer represented.

However, the anti-Syrian ruling parliamentary majority has accused the opposition of doing Damascus's and Tehran's bidding and seeking to undermine the formation of an international tribunal for the trial of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri's killing.



Comment on this Article

---

Revolution in the air as Lebanon's rift widens

Robert Fisk
11 December 2006

With Fouad Siniora's cabinet hiding in the Grand Serail behind acres of razor wire and thousands of troops - a veritable "green zone" in the heart of Beirut - the largely Shia Muslim opposition, assisted by their Christian allies, brought up to two million supporters into the centre of the city yesterday to declare the forthcoming creation of a second Lebanese administration. A "transitional" government is what ex-general Michel Aoun called it, while Naeem Qassem, Hizbollah's deputy chairman, spoke ominously of the mass demonstrations as "the separatist day".
So, is the Hizbollah militia, which withstood Israel's disastrous bombardment of Lebanon last summer, really planning a coup on behalf of its Iranian and Syrian backers, as Mr Siniora suspects? Or are Mr Siniora and his cabinet colleagues - Sunni Muslim, Christian and Druze - working on behalf of the Americans and Israelis, as Hizbollah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, proclaims?

Already, Mr Siniora's administration is being referred to in the American press as Lebanon's "US-backed government", the virtual kiss of death for any Arab leader these days, while Mr Aoun's split with his fellow Christians could prove fatal to him. Only because of his weird alliance with the Hizbollah can the latter claim that their opposition represents Christians as well as Muslims. True to the ironies of Lebanese politics, it was the same former general Aoun who fought a "war of independence" with Hizbollah's Syrian friends in 1990, a conflict which he lost at the cost of 1,000 lives.

But even supporters of Mr Siniora's administration were taken aback by the vast numbers of Lebanese that Hizbollah could mobilise yesterday, men and women who in many cases came from the villages and urban slums which suffered near-total destruction in this summer's war.

Their speakers played the role of representatives of the poor - "the people of the street" is how one foolish Sunni prelate called them on Friday - who had no time for the privileged classes or feudal pretentions of the government's supporters: Amin Gemayel, father of the murdered industry minister, Nayla Moawad, widow of a murdered Lebanese president, Saad Hariri, son of the assassinated ex-prime minister Rafik Hariri, and Walid Jumblatt, son of the murdered Druze leader Kamal Jumblatt.

If Lebanon's politics and history were not so tragic, there would be an element of Gilbert and Sullivan about all this. Mr Siniora, now regularly visited by America's busy little ambassador Jeffrey Feltman, was told by one of Mr Feltman's predecessors only a few years ago that his multiple re-entry visa to the United States was invalid because he, Mr Siniora, was believed to have donated money to a charity associated with - yes - the Hizbollah. And there was more than a hint of sarcasm yesterday when Mr Qassem announced that Mr Siniora worked for the Americans and the Israelis.

"Death to America - Death to Israel," he roared and, of course, the mass of demonstrators repeated this tired rhetoric. To the Arab nations which supported Mr Siniora's government, Mr Qassem had a simple message: "We are in the hearts of the Sunnis of the Arab world - not you!"

And the danger for Mr Siniora is that Mr Qassem's conviction is probably correct. Indeed, there was a hint of revolution in the air yesterday as the poor and the village youths and the people of the Beirut slums converged on Martyrs' Square where Hariri's tomb was cordoned off. Leila Tueni, the daughter of another of Lebanon's murdered political leaders, the journalist Jibran Tueni (like all the victims, anti-Syrian), stated in a hall only a few hundred yards from the protests that the real reason why Mr Nasrallah wanted to overthrow Mr Siniora's government, from which all Shia ministers have resigned, was to prevent it giving its approval to the UN tribunal intended to try Hariri's killers, whom Ms Tueni and the rest of Mr Siniora's supporters believe to include some of Syria's senior intelligence apparatchiks.

But something even more dangerous was getting loose yesterday. The sheer size of the crowds apparently permitted Mr Qassem and Mr Aoun to demand a different - or a rival - government. But it was not Shias but Mr Siniora's supporters who won the last elections in Lebanon. If that election result were no longer valid, what did this say about the Hizbollah's respect for electoral politics and Lebanon's constitution?

And the growing Shia-Sunni divisions here mirror, in faint, pale but frightening form, the tragedy of the two sects in Mesopot-amia. Shias have twice attacked the Beirut Sunni suburb of Tarek al-Jdeide, a Shia has been murdered and turned into an opposition "martyr", and the mufti of the Sunni Qoreitem mosque is reported as attacking the historic Shia imams, Ali and Hussein.

Mr Jumblatt has now called for students at the Lebanese University to study at home after a brawl on campus between Shia and Sunni undergraduates. "This university is for all Lebanese," Mr Jumblatt insisted. But is Lebanon?



Comment on this Article

---

Beirut protests reach new height

Clancy Chassay in Beirut
Monday December 11, 2006
The Guardian

Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators poured into the centre of Beirut yesterday as 10 days of protest for a national unity government in the country threatened to come to a head.

The demonstrators, largely Shia Muslim and Christian, came from across the country to take part in what the army described as the largest mobilisation in Lebanon's history. Many had arrived the night before and joined a sprawling tent city which has been in place for nearly two weeks. Lebanese of all ages, many with their families, waved flags and chanted slogans calling for the resignation of the western-backed government of the prime minister, Fouad Siniora. Veiled Muslim women and fashionably dressed Christian students intermingled while many protesters wore combinations of scarves and caps bearing the emblems of the various Muslim and Christian parties present.
The opposition, spearheaded by Hizbullah, has declared the government ineffective, unrepresentative and corrupt, and seeks inclusion in the cabinet.

"These are the people of Lebanon, not those men in expensive suits sitting in that building," said 32-year-old chef Qasim Fouad, pointing to the government building behind him. "Siniora is Washington's man, not the leader of the Lebanese people. The Arabs and the Americans support him, but what is the point if he has lost the Lebanese people? We will succeed here today; this government will fall."

Addressing the crowds, Sheik Naim Qasim, Hizbullah's second in command after Hassan Nasrallah, said the opposition would stay on the streets for months if necessary. "Does Bush want popular expression in Lebanon? Do the west and the Arabs want to hear the voice of the people in Lebanon? Tell them 'Death to America!' Tell them 'Death to Israel!'"

The Christian opposition leader, Michel Aoun, a former army chief, told Mr Siniora he had days to either accept a national unity government or face actions that would lead to a transitional government and early elections. "What we hope for today is for them to understand that their era is over," he announced via a broadcast on giant screens.

Political unrest has split the country along dangerous sectarian lines, with most Sunni Muslims supporting the Sunni prime minister and Shiite Muslims backing the militant Hezbollah. Christian factions are split between the two camps.

Mr Siniora, bolstered by support from Washington and much of the EU, as well as pro-western Arab regimes, remained defiant. "What is the great cause for this tense political clamouring and the open sit-ins?" he said. "Is this the ideal way to achieve demands, whatever they are?"

The army has deployed thousands of troops to the city centre in a move the army commander, Michel Suleiman, says it is unable to sustain indefinitely.

Backstory

Tensions have been escalating since six ministers resigned from the cabinet last month and joined the opposition, after the announcement it was to vote on an international tribunal to try Lebanese and Syrian security officials accused of killing former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri.



Comment on this Article

---

Gunmen kill children of Hamas critic

Staff and agencies
Monday December 11, 2006
Guardian Unlimited

Three children of a leading Hamas critic were killed in a drive-by shooting today, raising fears of an escalation in Palestinian infighting.

Palestinian gunmen in two vehicles fired up to 60 bullets into the car of Baha Balousheh, a senior intelligence officer loyal to the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, as it passed through a street crowded with schoolchildren in Gaza City.

Security officials said they believed Mr Balousheh, who was not in the car, had been the target of an assassination attempt, noting that the car had blacked-out windows which blocked any view of passengers. The seats, school bags and a plastic bag with a sandwich in it were splattered with blood.
Three of Mr Balousheh's children, aged between six and 10, and an adult passerby were killed, hospital officials said. Another four people were wounded in the shooting in Palestine Street, which is lined with nine schools. Children dropped to the ground or fled screaming during the attack.

Mr Balousheh, a lead interrogator during a crackdown on Hamas, is considered one of the main enemies of the ruling Islamic movement.

At midday, thousands of angry Fatah supporters joined a mass funeral procession for the children that snaked through the city streets. Hundreds of Fatah security officers were in the crowd, firing their rifles in the air.

Mr Balousheh arrived surrounded by bodyguards, wiping his eyes as he fought back tears. Two of his dead sons, still wearing their school uniforms, were carried in the arms of family members. One of the boys had 10 bullet holes in his head, it was reported.

"I have no words. Words stop at the extent of this crime," Mr Balousheh said. "I am a father who has lost his children ... This crime is a part of the terrorism which continues on Palestinian streets."

Fatah activists burned tyres, blocked roads and shut down the city's commercial market in protest. Intelligence officers gathered at the Balousheh home, near the scene of the attack, in a show of support.

"This is an ugly and inhuman crime perpetrated by a bunch of lowlifes," Mr Abbas said at his West Bank office in Ramallah. "We condemn it vehemently."

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, and a Hamas spokesman, Fawzi Barhoum, condemned the attack as an "awful, ugly crime against innocent children". He said the assailants were undermining Palestinian interests by creating chaos and confusion.

An aid to Mr Abbas, the Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, said he was concerned the attack would lead to a large-scale confrontation. "If this continues, it will lead to our worst nightmare, internal fighting," Mr Erekat said.

Gaza has been plagued by factional violence in the past, with dozens killed and hundreds wounded. Earlier this month, Mr Abbas announced that talks on forming a unity government between Hamas and Fatah had broken down. He has also raised the possibility of calling early elections, drawing angry protests from Hamas which said he did not have the authority to dissolve the Hamas-dominated parliament.

Comment: Israel's False Flag Ops are getting more transparent every day.

Comment on this Article

---

3 children of Fatah officer shot dead in Gaza City

Last Updated: Monday, December 11, 2006 | 7:32 AM ET
CBC News

Gunmen in Gaza City killed three young children of a Palestinian intelligence officer in an attack in a street packed with children on their way to school on Monday.

Hospital officials said three children of Baha Balousheh, a loyalist of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and a member of the Fatah movement, were in a car when the unidentified gunmen opened fire. The children range in age from six to 10. An adult in the car was also killed.
Hospital officials said the attack injured four people. The car carrying the children was riddled with bullets.

Balousheh, who was not in the vehicle at the time, was involved in a crackdown on the militant group Hamas 10 years ago. Hamas is now the ruling party in the Palestinian parliament, while the Fatah movement is led by Abbas.

The attack comes amid growing tension between Fatah and Hamas. Fatah, a political party, lost its majority in the Palestinian parliament to Hamas in January elections.

After the attack, handfuls of Fatah supporters gathered in Palestine street, where the attack occurred and which is home to nine schools. "God help us take revenge against the killers," they shouted, according to a report by the Associated Press.

When the shooting occurred, children in the street ran away screaming or fell to the ground to get out of the line of fire.

"I was walking with my young brother, Wael, who is 9, and we just crossed the street in order to take him to the school when shooting took place," Fadwa Nabulsi, 12, told the Associated Press.

"We saw fire coming from one car. We started screaming and children started running. I was crying, and I lost Wael for about half an hour. Then I found him hiding in a falafel shop. I'm trying to find my father to take us back home."

Police tried to calm the children and tried to find their parents. Meanwhile, hundreds of parents went to the Shifa Hospital in Gaza City to find out if their children survived the attack.

Talks between Hamas and Fatah to form a unity government broke down earlier this month, according to Abbas.

Recently, Abbas mentioned the possibility of early elections, but the suggestion prompted angry protests by Hamas supporters who say Abbas is not in a position to dissolve parliament.



Comment on this Article

---

World's Jews are horrified

Shaul Goldstein
12.08.06, 17:48

When the Olmert-led government was sworn in, I spoke with friends who are among the leaders of the US Jewish community, and all they said was: "This isn't serious." The appointment of "friends" or "coalition considerations" to senior government posts in a country facing strategic and tactical threats is an irresponsible, immature act.

This isn't the only point where Israel's image as reflected in the world does not attest to stability. This image is also starting to frighten our friends, who are becoming concerned.
Last week I returned from the GA conference in Los Angeles. Once a year, the heads of North America's Jewish federations convene for important discussions on matters of Judaism, pluralism, education, and Israel. This year they devoted much attention to the war and its results. The Iranian threat and its implications were also there. Yet the slogan behind the speakers was the one that drew my attention - the same slogan also used by the Jewish Agency - Peoplehood.

About three years ago I participated in a convention of the "Kol Dor" organization. The group is made up of young Jews from across the world. Those are good, idealistic people in their thirties who seek to develop the connection to Judaism at "eye level."

Because of my familiarity of the state of Jewish communities in the world, I thought that was a wonderful opportunity. Until I realized their objective: Israel is no longer the center, but rather, just another community - at eye level...there are communities in Paris, Sydney, New York, and also in Israel. And now, one of the heads of the Jewish federations told me this week: Israel is not a unique community.

Soros bypassing AIPAC

The term "peoplehood" says in fact that the Jewish people is at the center, rather than the nationalism that was expressed through the establishment of the State of Israel. This attitude is reminiscent of the ultra-Orthodox community's alienation to the State and its institutes. The motive is different, yet the result is similar.

What happened to make part of world Jewry no longer see Israel as the center of Jewish aspirations? We can say, as I was told by Israeli officials, that they are "looking for an excuse to remain in the Diaspora."

Yet we have to understand: Most Jews who live across the ocean do not think they are in the Diaspora. Those of them who are interested have access to Jewish education, synagogues are flourishing in all branches, the communities and community institutions are brimming with activity, and the economic situation is excellent (mostly in developed countries.). From there, they examine the alternative.

The Jews who live abroad view Israel through the international media's prism, and are horrified. They see existential threats on the outside and government and moral chaos on the inside. If that's the country, and if that's its leaders' morality, the British press may indeed be right to hold discussions on Israel's survivability.

This analysis also has practical implications: More and more communities are investing their resources internally - more Jewish education, more local welfare, more community development. Investment in Israel is declining.

It goes up when we have an emergency call-up, and even then an analysis of the donors shows almost all the money comes from the large, traditional donors. Almost no money comes from the communities themselves. An emergency convention of a federation that raised USD 2.8 million drew hundreds of members. The venue was filled to capacity. Zero dollars were raised...

I believe the State of Israel isn't doing enough to boost the connection between us and our brothers overseas. I think there's great willingness there, and by adopting the current approach we're missing out on it. Yet we should be listening to the new voices: Billionaire George Soros is establishing an organization that would compete with the Jewish lobby, AIPAC. Its objective is to tell the Administration in Washington that not every Israeli requests is commensurate with American interests; Not every AIPAC request should be accepted.

Soros, who is known for his blatantly leftist views, could greatly weaken the strategic alliance. He's also undermining the mutual trust between the nations.

Stop apologizing

Where is all this leading and what should we be doing? Our true security does not start in the Defense Ministry; It starts at the Education Ministry, passes through welfare, continues through our connection to communities overseas (that is, the way we present ourselves to the outside), and is expressed during times of security crisis.

Had Israel possessed genuine deterrence, we would not need to use military power. This repair must be undertaken on two fronts: The "What" and the "How." We must revive the belief in Zionism's righteousness in the past and present, with the presentation of a vision for the future - this is the "What".

We must stop apologizing: We came to establish a Jewish state in the Land of Israel, and our right to it is not subjected to a demographic test. The recognition of civil rights for a minority is a must, but personal human rights should not be leading to national rights. The fear of saying clear words does not allow us to present a clear position, and undermines our education and our ability to present ourselves to the outside world.

At the same time, as noted, we should be addressing the "How." The best people stopped going to the public service or to join politics. Regrettably, even some of the best IDF officers quit at early stages. The success of the high-tech industry comes thanks to those who are fed up with politics or the army.

We must present a vision for change in education in relation to the weak and different; boost law enforcement; fight for public integrity - a significant cultural change is required of us. The media, too, would have to change - to encourage and not only to seek controversy.

And the leadership, what about it? In his book, Altneuland, Herzl commented that the politicians would be those who do not desire the post. We have some people like this amongst us, yet today they are hiding and do not wish to enter the mire.

We have a wonderful people that looks like a herd without a shepherd. Only those who are shying away now can bring the change by joining the effort - a dramatic change in our situation in Israel and in the manner in which we are seen by communities abroad. But who has the courage to begin?



Comment on this Article

---

Words Even an Ex-President Can't Say in America: The Media Lynching of Jimmy Carter

By NORMAN FINKELSTEIN

It seems Israel's "supporters" have conscripted me in their lynching of Jimmy Carter. Count me out. True, the historical part of Carter's book, Palestine Peace Not Apartheid, contains errors in that it repeats standard Israeli propaganda. However, Carter's analysis of the impasse in the "peace process" as well as his description of Israeli policy in the West Bank is accurate - and, frankly, that's all that matters.
A wag once said that there is no Pravda (Truth) in Izvestia (News) and no Izvestia in Pravda. The same can be said of our Pravda (The New York Times) and Izvestia (The Washington Post). Today both party organs ran feature stories trashing Carter using Kenneth Stein's resignation from the Carter Center as the hook. (I was sitting in the airport when this earth-shattering story came on CNN.) But like John Galt, many people must have wondered, Who (the hell) is Kenneth Stein? Stein wrote exactly one scholarly book on the Israel-Palestine conflict more than two decades ago (The Land Question in Palestine, 1984). Even in his heyday, Stein was a nonentity. When Joan Peters's hoax From Time Immemorial was published, I asked his opinion of it. He replied that it had "good points and bad points." Just like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Later Stein wrote a sick essay the main thesis of which was, "the Palestinian Arab community had been significantly prone to dispossession and dislocation before the mass exodus from Palestine began" - so the Zionist ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948 was really no big deal ("One Hundred Years of Social Change: The Creation of the Palestinian Refugee Probem," in Laurence Silberstein (ed.), New Perspectives on Israeli History, 1991).

The Pravda ( NYT) story was written by two reporters who seem to have made a beeline for the newsroom from their bat mitzvahs. They quote Stein to the effect that Carter's book is "replete with factual errors, copied materials not cited, superficialities, glaring omissions and simply invented segments". I doubt there's much to this. Most of the background material is Carter's reminiscences. Maybe he copied from Rosalyn's diary (she was his note taker). Then Pravda reports that "a growing chorus of academics...have taken issue with the book". Who do they name? Alan Dershowitz and David Makovsky. Makovsky is resident hack at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the Israel Lobby's "think"-tank.

Pravda saw no irony in citing Dershowitz's expertise for a story on fabrication, falsification and plagiarism regarding a book on the Israel-Palestine conflict. As always, one can only be awed by the party discipline at our Pravda. It makes one positively wistful for the days when commissars quoted Stalin on linguistics.



Comment on this Article

---

Far Out

---

Man in black

Sunday, December 10, 2006
By ANDY NETZEL
Staff Reporter

The Press-Register's Craig Myers revisits alien territory

Craig Myers did what UFO-believers always say newspaper reporters never do when it comes to sightings: He investigated.

The deeper he dug, the more he found that called into question the legitimacy of purported spacecraft flying over Gulf Breeze, Fla.

In his first book, "War of the Words," Myers does more than try to prove the widely reported sightings were a hoax: He leads readers through the process of covering the story for the Pensacola News-Journal in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
"As a reporter, there are not many stories like this," he said. "These are the ones you remember. You don't talk to your neighbor across the fence about the utility board meeting."

Myers left the News-Journal in 1995 to join the Press-Register. He is now the Assistant Baldwin Editor.

This story, he said, stuck in his mind. He wanted to let enough time pass to let things cool down and sore feelings to be mended.

Apparently, 15 years still isn't long enough. One of the key characters in the book, Ed Walters, called Myers a "scam guy" when contacted by the Press-Register for this story.

Here's a synopsis of the Gulf Breeze UFO tale:

Sightings of some mysterious item in this Pensacola bedroom community began in 1987 with high-quality photos captured by resident Walters. Hundreds of people came to a field where they reported seeing the unexplainable.

Later, while investigating the claims, Myers discovered a model UFO that had been left in the attic of a home where Walters previously lived. The couple who owned the home handed it over, saying it was the only UFO they'd seen.

Investigation showed part of the model was made with drafting paper bearing Walter's handwriting. According to Myers' book, Walters never denied this but when asked about it by Pensacola News-Journal editors, claimed some drafting paper was stolen from his garbage.

Myers also spoke to a man who saw Walters constructing a UFO-like structure.

Walters said he stands by his story, and that he never faked the photos or lofted a structure in the air.

"I stand by what I saw," he said. "The test of time is on my side."

Walters said the paper was from a housing project that was dated 1989, well after the first sighting. Myers details his contention that the paper was actually from a 1987 project.

Myers said Walters is a smart man who likes practical jokes.

"He's a fascinating character," Myers said. "He had to have a genius IQ. My theory is that this started out as a joke, but he got carried away with it. At some point, he had to make a decision that he'd either be the crazy guy who took the photos of a UFO or be the crazy guy who faked the photos."

The author also touches on how a newspaper addresses a story like this, taking readers along on his own decisions on what to cover and what stories his editors decided not to run.

In "War of the Words," Myers tries to make it clear that he's written about the UFO story of a lifetime already.

Myers includes a plea to those who also have UFO sightings to share: "DON'T CALL ME, okay? It's not that I don't believe you. It's that my life is already filled with bizarre inexplicable phenomena, such as the way the right rear speaker in my car never works EXCEPT WHEN THEY PLAY SONGS I HATE."

Myers' book is available in hard cover for $27.89 and in paperback for $17.84 at www2.xlibris.com/bookstore/bookdisplay.asp?bookid=33539.



Comment on this Article

---

Before the Wright Brothers...There Were UFOs

B J Booth
December 8, 2006

Dayton, Ohio brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright were always interested in being able to soar in the skies. Being influenced by printed material of early German attempts with gliders, the two experimenters built their own glider in 1900. Early on, they tested different types of wing shapes, while honing their plane making skills. By 1903, the brothers had built a 12-horsepower engine and two propellers. Late in the year, on December 17, they finally made their first flight. Though tagged as a plane, their first success in flight was actually done in a motorized glider. The flying apparatus had no way to steer it. The two had gained experience in motors while experimenting with motorized bicycles operating their own bicycle shop. The first historic flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina lasted only twelve seconds, but it was a start. By 1905, the brothers could stay in the air for up to 30 minutes, and even steer their plane.
As far as we know, no one else had developed the capability of sustained air flight, at least on this planet. But early accounts of our first settlers included an occasional report of something flying in the sky. These happen chance sightings were normally made when one would check the sky for weather conditions, or see birds fly over. One of the very first American sightings of what could be a UFO occurred as early as 1865, over 35 years before the first known flight at Kitty Hawk. Fortunately, there are still newspaper accounts of this and other early sightings of days long since passed.

The Missouri Democrat dated October 19, 1865 gives an account of the sighting of an unknown flying object under the headline of "A STRANGE STORY-REMARKABLE DISCOVERY." The sighting was reported by one James Lumley, who was a trapper. The report states that "if" what Lumley reported was true, it would shake the foundations of the scientific world. Lumely states that in the middle of September, he was trapping in the mountains at a location about 75-100 miles above the Great Falls of the Upper Missouri River. Just after sunset, Lumley saw a "bright, luminous, body" in the skies. This body moved very quickly to the East. After five seconds, the unknown object burst into pieces. He soon heard a thunderous explosion followed by a "rushing sound ." This explosion shook the ground. He could smell sulphur in the air. Though impressed by what he had seen and heard, the next day would bring even more remarkable discoveries.

About two miles from his campsite, he could see a path cut through the forest. Whatever had come through the area had leveled everything in its path. He soon discovered the cause of the great destruction: a giant object which was made of a rock-like material. This object had been driven into the side of a mountain after ripping through the forest. This was much more that an asteroid or comet: the object was divided into compartments. Also, hieroglyphic-like symbols could be seen carved into the object's surface. He also discovered fragments of what appeared to be glass, and strange liquid-like stains located in several places on the object. Almost humorously, the newspaper account ascertains that the object "had" to be a meteor which was used by extraterrestrials. Their theory was that these other-worldly beings traveled on meteors, and would eventually land on Earth, and put mankind into servitude.

A second newspaper report on a strange airship was included in the Denison Daily News of Denison, Texas on January 25, 1878. A Texas farmer, John Martin, was credited with one of the first uses of the term "flying saucer." Martin had actually seen a "balloon-shaped" UFO, but used the saucer term to describe the size of the object from his perspective. Martin's sighting was on January 2. What he saw was a dark object high in the sky. The object was moving closer to him all the while. Because the object maintained a dark color, there was speculation that the object was solid and backlit.

The headlines of the 25th would read, "A STRANGE PHENOMENON." Some of the report is listed here:

"From Mr. John Martin, a farmer who lives some six miles south of this city, we learn the following strange story: Tuesday morning while out hunting, his attention was directed to a dark object high up in the southern sky. The peculiar shape and velocity with which the object seemed to approach riveted his attention and he strained his eyes to discover its character."



"When first noticed, it appeared to be about the size of an orange, which continued to grow in size. After gazing at it for some time, Mr. Martin became blind from long looking and left off viewing it for a time in order to rest his eyes. On resuming his view, the object was almost overhead and had increased considerably in size, and appeared to be going through space at wonderful speed."

Another early UFO report of 1896, only recently discovered, occurred at the now defunct Portsmouth, New Hampshire shipyard. Two security guards were guarding the bridge from the mainland to the dock where a navy ship was tied to a floating dock. At about 9 PM an object appeared flying over the ship and over the bridge. Both men shot at it and heard the "ping" of the bullets hitting the craft. The object brightened up and took off faster than when it flew over.

The most enduring account of early air ships occurred in the small Texas town of Aurora in 1897. This account would also be carried in newspapers, preserving details of an alleged UFO crash and the burial of an alien being. This ongoing legend would cause the state of Texas to declare the town a "historical site."

On April 19, 1897, a slow moving space ship crashed into a windmill, bursting into pieces. As the debris was searched through, supposedly the body of a small alien was discovered. Originally the alien pilot was dubbed the "Martian pilot." Some of the debris also revealed material sketched with a type of hieroglyphic. The town folk gave the poor little creature a proper burial in the local cemetery. This incident, whether true or not, had just enough publicity to stay afloat for over 100 years. It was even made into a movie, "The Aurora Encounter" in 1986, starring Jack Elam.

The news of the crash spread quickly, even for that time period. A newspaper article of the event still exists, written by E. E. Haydon, reporter for the Dallas Morning News. Below is the original article:

About 6 o'clock this morning the early risers of Aurora were astonished at the sudden appearance of the airship which has been sailing around the country. It was traveling due north and much nearer the earth than before. Evidently some of the machinery was out of order, for it was making a speed of only ten or twelve miles an hour, and gradually settling toward the earth. It sailed over the public square and when it reached the north part of town it collided with the tower of Judge Proctor's windmill and went into pieces with a terrific explosion, scattering debris over several acres of ground, wrecking the windmill and water tank and destroying the judge's flower garden. The pilot of the ship is supposed to have been the only one aboard and, while his remains were badly disfigured, enough of the original has been picked up to show that he was not an inhabitant of this world.

How much of the account was real, and how much pure story telling we will never know. The Aurora incident is still being studied today.

There are a number of other American reports, along with much evidence from around the world going back to early civilizations which indicate flying apparatus were being seen in the skies through the ages. There seems to be little doubt that even before mankind had mastered the art of flying, someone, somewhere had. Of course, UFO reports can often times be explained by conventional flying objects, but what known craft could we use for an explanation in the mid to late 1800's? The Wright Brothers had not yet created their new flying machine.



Comment on this Article

---

Exorcism: Psychiatry meets faith

BY MARK BARNA, Californian staff writer
e-mail: mbarna@bakersfield.com | Saturday, Dec 9 2006 8:35 PM

Alone in her bedroom, the black-dressed woman thumbed through her binder of spells and contemplated her next victim. The baritone voice of Satan rumbled in her mind, enticing her deeper into the dark side.


More video from Bakersfield.com:





Photos:


Photo by Felix Adamo
Worshippers during prayer at Operation Fresh Start Apostolic Church.


Photo by Felix Adamo
Guest preacher Edward Shotwell, left, and Senior Pastor Eldon Venable of Operation Fresh Start.

"Satan told me in a deep, demonic voice, 'You belong to me,'" said Samantha Wheeler, who believes she's been possessed since age 12.

But recently, Wheeler met a charismatic pastor from Kenya who promised her deliverance.
"When I first talked with her, I could see the manifestation of demons," said Paul Mbugua, a preacher and exorcist at Operation Fresh Start Apostolic Church in Oildale.

"Every Sunday, we were casting devils out of her," he said of the 18-year-old Bakersfield woman. "She was very possessed."

Belief in demonic possession has been part of the Christian walk since Jesus' exorcisms in the Gospels 2,000 years ago.

Once regarded as frightening procedures marked by form and ritual, as described by the Vatican and seen in Hollywood movies like "The Exorcist," many evangelical churches have sanitized and streamlined exorcisms for 21st-century parishes.

These days, Lucifer is being cast out somewhat easily during altar calls in the worship center, in group sessions at retreats and during private office visits -- with nary a sign of growling demonic voices, supernatural feats of strength or people freaking out at holy images.

Yet modern advances in psychology and medicine continue to scrape against the ancient practice.

Ethical issues have been raised about pastors' "divine gift of discernment," in which God reveals truth to the minister. Pastors like Mbugua use discernment to decide if a person requires psychiatric treatment or deliverance.

Lewis Ashmore, a Tehachapi pastor who performed hundreds of exorcisms at revivals in the 1950s and 1960s, said discernment can be tainted by a minister's biases.

Moreover, putting someone with major psychiatric issues through an exorcism, or deliverance as some pastors call it, can sometimes do more harm than good, he said.

"You tell a person they got a demon," Ashmore said, "how are they going to handle it?"

Casting out devils

At Operation Fresh Start, Carol Dill attends healing services that include exorcisms. The 47-year-old Oildale resident said during one of the services, the demons of cigarette and alcohol addictions left her.

"I was doing Satan's will by doing things that were damaging to me," Dill said. "I guess I was bound by the spirit of Satan."

Betty Colbert of Bakersfield attended a two-hour deliverance held by Pastor Max Van Dyke in his office at Christ Cathedral on White Lane.

She decided to go through the process because of "heaviness" within her she couldn't describe. "Something was amiss," she said.

When Van Dyke cast demons out of her, she felt rumbling in her solar plexus followed by repeated coughing.

This is typical of the way devils are ejected, Van Dyke said. "They seem to leave on a person's breath, through a sigh, a belch, a yawn, a cough," he said.

Three years later, thanks to vigilance, prayer and the Holy Spirit, Colbert remains free of the psychic oppression she lived with for most of her 60 years, she said.

Benign exorcisms?

Lack of drama during a deliverance is common, Van Dyke said. If the demons try to manifest themselves, Van Dyke tells them, "In the name of Jesus Christ, stop," and they do, he said.

Indeed, the trend toward benign exorcisms has blurred what is and what isn't a deliverance ministry.

An example is Cleansing Stream, an international program created by the evangelical Church on the Way in Van Nuys. Several Bakersfield churches offer the ministry, including New Life Center, Grace Assembly of God, Bakersfield Community Church and Valley Bible Fellowship.

Organizers don't want Cleansing Stream lumped in with deliverance ministries. New Life Center declined to comment about its program for this article.

Stella Webby of Valley Bible was the most forthcoming of Cleansing Stream coordinators interviewed. The months-long program, which features group sessions that culminate at a retreat, is "preparation for deliverance," she said.

Demonic spirits are real, Webby said. "We need supernatural help."

More than a feeling?

Many modern-day deliverers include psychology in their ministries. What's more, if they detect mental illness, they'll recommend psychiatric treatment over deliverance.

But it's a slippery slope. Pastors rely on their gift of discernment to determine what a person needs. Van Dyke said most of his clients, no matter their diagnosed psychiatric condition, go through "whole personality deliverance."

By contrast, Mbugua said that of dozens of people he counsels showing signs of mental illness, only one might require an exorcism. Most recently that one was Wheeler, whom Mbugua has subjected to numerous exorcisms based on his subjective reactions to her.

"I can feel it, I can see it," Mbugua said.

Wheeler started casting spells in her youth, she said. Visions of winged devils breathing fire and conversations with Satan happened nearly every day.

About 91/2 months ago, she walked into Operation Fresh Start, a small church of 25 members devoid of crosses and religious images as a hedge against idolatry. The church embraced her, and Wheeler is now staying with a church member.

The teenager said she's been depressed in the past and has been diagnosed with schizophrenia, one of its symptoms being hearing voices.

She also suffers from bipolar disorder and ADHD, or attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. In September, she took herself off psychotropic medication.

When told of Wheeler's schizophrenia, Steve Bacon, associate professor of psychology at Cal State Bakersfield, speculated that the voices she hears are probably not Satan's.

But Mbugua begs to differ. "When it's only psychological, that feeling" -- which he described as terrifying -- "isn't there."

Rebuking Satan

A Wednesday prayer service at Fresh Start was attended by a dozen church members. The service featured down-home gospel music, with Senior Pastor Eldon Venable singing and playing guitar.

Guest preacher Edward Shotwell gave a sweaty and impassioned sermon on the wily devil, followed by an altar call where he laid hands on weeping parishioners.

During testimonies, Wheeler stood up from a pew, renounced the dark forces and recommitted herself to Christ.

"I feel happy," she said afterward, "a little depressed, but I rebuke Satan."

No consensus on exorcism; experts disagree on causes

There is no consensus among clergy, psychologists and religious scholars regarding the veracity of exorcisms.

Monsignor Ronald Swett, of St. Philip the Apostle Church in southwest Bakersfield, is a skeptic. He said apparent devil manifestations during exorcisms can be explained by mental disorders such as schizophrenia or psychological theories such as the power of suggestion.

"I think people should be very, very cautious," said Swett, a Catholic priest who has never witnessed an exorcism.

For decades Rev. Lewis Ashmore cast out devils during tent revivals in the Central Valley. People foamed at the mouth, talked back to him in a strange voice and writhed uncontrollably on the ground.

Today the 75-year-old reverend, who heads Tehachapi's Life Awareness Center, dismisses all of it.

"Back in Christ's day, these mental conditions weren't yet diagnosed," he said. "All exorcisms can be explained by psychology and science."

Meanwhile Stafford Betty, a religious studies professor at Cal State Bakersfield, is sympathetic toward exorcists.

Last year he published a study of demonic possession in an academic journal. Based on evidence of successful exorcisms within various religious traditions, Betty concluded that "spirit oppression" is real.

In some cases, Betty wrote, "spirits" may cause psychiatric conditions such as schizophrenia, in which sufferers hear voices.

"It may well be that the voices belong to realities we cannot see," Betty writes, "just as many schizophrenics claim."

Catholic exorcisms rare, but rules for rites ready

In the New Testament, Jesus and his disciples cast devils out of people. These exorcisms influenced the church to perform the practice and eventually create an official rite.

In various writings, the Vatican has outlined signs of possession and ways possession can occur, but these days, exorcisms in the Catholic Church are extremely rare.

Exorcisms rules

Created in the 17th century, the Roman Catholic Rite of Exorcism brims with rules, rituals and form. - Only a bishop trained by the church can perform an exorcism.

- The exorcist must wear specific holy clothing, such as an alb and a purple stole, and say certain prayers and quote Scripture at specific times.

- A rosary, crucifix, holy water, Bible and relics of a saint should be present.

- The exorcist presents holy objects to and speaks directly with the devils in the possessed person.

Signs of possession

- Speaking or understanding languages the person never learned

- Knowing things "that are distant or hidden"

- Ability to predict the future

- Intense hatred of holy things

- Physical strength beyond human capability

Causes of possession

- A curse

- Addictions to sex, drugs, alcohol, etc.

- Dabbling in the occult, black magic or witchcraft

- Proximity to evil places or persons



Comment on this Article

---

She hears dead people

BY EVON GABRIEL
The Star
10 Dec 06

WHEN I watched the movie The Sixth Sense, I thought it was impossible to see dead people.

I had never come across anyone talking about possessing this ability until a few weeks ago, when one of my students actually wrote about a similar extrasensory ability in her essay.

This student can actually hear dead people. Creepy, eh? It's true.
She has been having this "sixth sense" since she was a child, when she began to hear "dead people" whispering or even having a conversation around her.

She can only hear their voices but can't see them.

"Hearing their voices is creepy enough, if I start seeing them, I don't know if I could take it," she said when I questioned her after reading her essay.

She recalled how it all started at the age of eight when she stricken with a viral fever and hospitalised for weeks.

Eventually she recovered but, after that, she started hearing strange voices around her all the time.

At first, she found it difficult to handle the situation. She used to cry at night, afraid of the voices. Although "they" didn't harm her, she could feel their presence everywhere she goes. Eventually, she got over this fear.

I was impressed with her because she handled the whole situation on her own without much help from her parents.

Being illiterate, they didn't bother to take her for a proper medical check-up and simply concluded that she was hallucinating because of the medication she was taking.

Tired of being accused of telling lies, she stopped complaining to her parents, and she eventually got used to the situation.

Nowadays, she hears voices everywhere around her, when lessons are going on, when playing with her friends, when watching television and even when she goes to the toilet.

However, one good thing about it is she doesn't understand "their" language.

One day, in the wee hours of the morning, she heard someone crying in her room. I wonder what I would have done if I were in her situation.

Life was usual for her even with this strange situation which keeps haunting her.

But recently she heard her name being called: "Ling, Ling!" She turned around to find no one behind her. She felt a cold shiver running down her spine.

I advised her to consult a monk or, better still, to see a psychiatrist for help.

She's afraid "they" might harm her if she tries to get rid of the voices.

However she did go to a monk and she was given some talismans to ward off the spirits. But nothing happened.

One day, we were talking in the teacher's room at about 3pm, after school was dismissed. Only the two of us were there.

She suddenly stopped talking and stared right through me.

"What happened, why are you staring at me?" I asked her.

"Ma'am, I can hear someone talking behind you!" she said.

I just stared at her.

# We all love spooky stories, strange encounters and spine-tingling tales. If you have such an anecdote based on a real experience, e-mail it, in not more than 800 words, to starmag@thestar.com.my. Original contributions will be paid.



Comment on this Article

---

Predator might not be wolf

By MIKE STARK
Billings Gazette
December 09, 2006

BILLINGS, Mont. -- Was it a wolf, or wasn't it?

The mysterious, sheep-killing predator shot and killed a month ago between Jordan and Circle was initially thought to be a wolf.

But now, wildlife officials aren't so sure.

"Frankly, it has mixed characteristics," said Carolyn Sime, head of the wolf program for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks.
Some clues indicate that it's not a wolf from among the 1,200 or so that live in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho. The animal shot in Garfield County in early November had shades of orange, red and yellow in its fur, unlike the Northern Rockies wolves, which tend more toward browns, blacks and grays.

The orangish coat may be more indicative of wolves that roam the upper Great Lakes region, Sime said.

The animal also had long claws and teeth in good condition, somewhat unusual for a 4-year-old wolf, raising the possibility it might be a hybrid that had spent some time in captivity, Sime said.

On the other hand, the wolf was fairly large at 106 pounds with a big head and hunting skills, which may suggest it was wild, Sime said.

"Right now," Sime said, "we're just as curious as everyone else."

Whatever it was, it had landowners in McCone, Garfield and Dawson counties on alert for months. About 120 sheep were killed and others were hurt in a series of attacks that started about a year ago.

The animal roamed wide swaths of the landscape, occasionally attacking sheep before moving on only to circle back later. Several landowners were given permits to shoot if it was seen attacking livestock but it was never caught in the act.

The animal eluded trackers for months until this fall, when footprints were spotted in deep snow. Agents with Wildlife Services shot it from the air Nov. 2.

The animal was initially reported as a wolf, but closer inspection raised concerns about the identification.

Muscle tissue has been sent to the University of California Los Angeles, where scientists have been analyzing DNA from the Northern Rockies wolf population and putting together a sort of family tree.

The animal's carcass was sent to the National Fish and Wildlife Forensics Laboratory in Ashland, Ore., for genetic analysis.

The work could take several months to complete.

Sime said that if the animal is a wolf that came in from the Rockies or Canada or the upper Midwest, the genetic testing should provide clear evidence. It wouldn't be the first time that a wolf has wandered hundreds of miles. In recent years, wolves from Yellowstone have been found in Utah and Colorado.

"If it's neither of those, the question becomes 'OK, what is this animal and where is it from?"' Sime said. "The uncertainty level goes up a lot."



Comment on this Article

---

I Saw a Sea Monster

by Ralph Bandini
Esquire Magazine for Men
June 1934

Have any of you ever seen a sea monster? No? Very well-I have!

It is an amazing story-and true in every detail. I am quite aware that it takes square issue with science. I have no illusions as to inevitable scepticism. Nevertheless, I know what I saw-and I tell it as I saw it.
Just at the moment sea monsters constitute what is known in newspaper parlance as "hot copy." Almost any week in the daily papers, in Sunday supplements, in magazines, the reader can find some yarn telling of this or that strange creature seen in the sea. It is almost as though all the hidden monsters of the depths had suddenly taken it into their heads to pop up to the surface.

Of course there is nothing new in this matter of sea monsters. For hundreds, even thousands of years, sailormen have brought to port tales of sea serpents-but their stories have been scoffed at. Scientists have gravely declared that no such creatures exist. To a layman such certainty cannot help arousing wonder. We know that strange and monstrous forms of life existed on land when the world was young-and in the sea as well. Granted that the land creatures are long ago extinct by reason of revolutionary changes in living conditions, nevertheless, those same changes have not been so pronounced in the sea. It would not seem beyond the realm of possibility that some of them may have survived. For good and sufficient reasons, as will be seen, personally I believe they have.

Be all that as it may be, however, the fact remains that recently there seems to have been a sudden revival of these intriguing tales.

We have the serpentine creature allegedly seen by some hundred-fifty more or less reliable persons in Loch Ness, Scotland. There are those two with the Louisa Alcott names said to disport themselves off Juan de Fuca Straits. In Lake Okanagan, British Columbia, there is another one, sufficiently credited by the authorities that they offer facilities to anyone who will go after the thing in a spirit of true scientific research. Then, from Acapulco, comes that amazing story of the track of a great, three-toed creature coming up out of the sea and returning, all between tides; of the deep furrow plowed by its dragging tail; of the deep, barrel-like depression in the wet sand where it rolled and wallowed! I happen to know the man who saw those tracks. He is not a liar.

Quite probably some of the reported sea serpents-I do not mean those which I have specifically mentioned-are inventions pure and simple. Others may have been illusions. After all, a flight of low-flying birds along the horizon, bits of floating stuff (it's queer the shapes that flotsam on the surface sometimes takes), might, in poor light, take on the semblance of an undulating sea serpent. However, one would not go far amiss to accept that queer creatures have been seen upon the face of the sea.

Now most of the above mentioned beasties, with the possible exception of the one near Acapulco, have been given wide publicity. However, there is still another, about which little or nothing has been told or written. This is that huge Thing sometimes called the "San Clemente Monster"-and monster it truly is if ever there was one! I have seen it-and I know whereof I speak.

San Clemente Island is a lonely, wind-swept bit of rock and sand lying some fifty miles south of Los Angeles Harbor. It is little frequented except by fishermen. Its waters are lonely, too. Days can go by when one will never see a boat. The Thing, itself, appears to like this remote bit of the ocean-that windy channel between San Clemente and Santa Catalina.

Just why so little has been said about so strange a resident of so publicity-minded a community as Southern California it is hard to say. Certainly it has been seen by enough persons-some twenty-five or thirty that I know of and many of whom bear reputations for veracity beyond reproach. Furthermore, it has been seen periodically over the last fifteen or twenty years. Perhaps this paucity of detail is mainly due to the fact that the Thing is so monstrous, so utterly incredible, so impossible, that any sane man shuns the incredulity with which his tale is inevitably received. In fact, I know this to be true. Some of my intimate friends have seen it. They know that I have seen it. Yet, despite friendship, despite this mutual knowledge of one another's experience, I find most of them reluctant to talk, even to me. One interesting phase of the matter is this. Whenever I have been able to persuade one of these friends to do so, we have independently drawn sketches of what we saw. Barring differences in artistic skill these drawings show one and the same thing!

About fifteen or twenty years ago rumors began to be current around Avalon that there was something queer out in the Clemente Channel. There were guarded hints of some huge, unnameable Thing lifting up out of the sea. These rumors were shadowy, difficult to run down. No one credited with having seen the Thing would admit it. Still the rumors persisted. Perhaps the very evasiveness encountered was tantamount to admission.

I was out in the Southern California channels a lot during those days, fishing for tuna and swordfish. Naturally I heard about the Thing. Being by nature curious. I proceeded to ask questions-but learned nothing. My boatman, Percy Neale, an old timer at Avalon, was said to have seen it. I asked him. Percy looked out to sea-made some irrelevant remark-then, when pressed, muttered something about "eyes as big as dinner plates" and changed the subject.

Then came my first view of the Thing!

We were fishing for tuna about ten miles off Catalina in the Clemente Channel. It was a windy afternoon-the channel a welter of breaking seas. Suddenly Percy let out a yell.

"Look! Look! Over there!"

He pointed to seaward. I saw it! About a mile away something huge, wet and glistening, was lifting up out of sea! Higher and higher it raised until I felt my skin crawl. To this very day I vividly remember that queer, empty feeling in the pit of my stomach.

Why should I be scared! Just picture it for yourselves. A tumbled, broken sea, flecked with white, and stretching away to the horizon's edge. Catalina looming through the golden haze of afternoon. San Clemente a vague shadow far to southward. Sea birds wheeling, hovering, darting. That monstrous Thing rising up out of the sea!

I don't know how long he stayed up. Perhaps a minute-perhaps less. Fascinated, spellbound, we watched him. Then, before our very eyes, majestically, slowly, he sank back into the depths from whence he had come.

There was a scarcity of small talk aboard that ship from then on. Tuna fishing seemed to have lost a lot of its charm. Swiftly developed a multitude of perfectly good and sufficient reasons why we should forget further fishing for that day and go home early-leaving that particular bit of the world to whatever might care to claim it.

As we slipped up the coast toward Avalon through the quiet waters of the lee side-as we began to encounter other boats-to meet again man and his handiworks, the horror of what we had seen seemed to lessen and our tongues were loosed. We talked grandly about how we would go ashore and spread the wonder of what we had seen to the world at large-possibly make our everlasting fortunes out of it. But we did no such thing! Somehow or another, face to face with the orderliness of Avalon town, with the smug scepticism of the Tuna Club, we found our lips sealed. Words would not come. Instead we slunk furtively to the nearest bar and tossed down two stiff drinks.

Two or three years passed. Others saw the Thing. Some, braver than their fellows, talked. Little by little the earlier discoverers came out of their shells and talked, too. All accounts from those who had been really close to the Thing agreed upon three fundamentals: that it was enormous; that it possessed huge and horrible eyes; that it was something absolutely unknown to man. A composite description of the Thing was forwarded to the late Dr. David Starr Jordan of Stanford University. He replied by suggesting it probably was a sea elephant! Our descriptive powers must have been woefully weak. It was no more a sea elephant than I am. I have seen them, many of them-roaming around the sea-in their native rookery at Guadalupe Island. Sea elephants look like seals except that they are larger and have a prolonged, hooked upper nostril. This Thing was not a sea elephant nor did it remotely resemble one.

Then came my second and only close-up view of the Thing!

It was in September, 1920. I was fishing for marlin swordfish at San Clemente with the late Smith Warren. We were staying at Mosquito Harbor where the fish camp used to be. It was early in the morning-about 8:00 o'clock. We had worked close in shore the three miles from the camp down to the East End. We had then turned back up the coast and worked along about a mile and a half to two miles off shore. The sea was glassy with just a little roll coming down the island. Overhead it was overcast-one of California's summer fogs. Objects on the surface showed black in that light. The brown slopes swept up abruptly to almost meet the gray mist. We passed Mosquito and the white tents of the camp and were nearly abreast of White Rock. Smithy was down in the cockpit doing something or another. I was perched on top of the cabin looking for fish. My bait trolled along astern, the rod tied to the fishing chair.

Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of something huge lifting up out of the sea. Turning swiftly I was face to face with something I had never seen before-will probably never see again!

Here it is-just as I saw it. Take it or leave it.

A great barrel shaped Thing, tapering toward the top and surmounted by a reptilian head strangely resembling those of the huge, prehistoric creatures whose reproductions stand in various museums. It lifted what must have been a good twenty feet. Widely spaced in the head were two eyes-eyes such as were never conceived of even in the wildest nightmare! Immense, at least a full foot in diameter, round, slightly bulging, and as dead looking as though they had seen all the death the world has suffered since its birth! No wonder those who had seen it close by could speak of little else but the eyes!

This was the picture that came into the lenses of my seven power binoculars the moment I clapped them on to the Thing-knowing what I was looking at. At the same time I yelled to Smithy to head for it.

Through the glasses the head, those awful eyes, that portion of the body showing-and it must have been at least six feet thick, perhaps more, appeared scarcely a hundred feet away. It was covered with what looked like stiff, coarse hair, almost bristles. Strangely enough, considering the light, I gained a distinct impression of a reddish tinge. Remember that.

The bulk of the Thing simply cannot be told. To this day I don't believe that I saw anything but the head and a section of the neck-if it had a neck. What was below the surface only God knows. But listen to this. You will recollect that I mentioned a little roll coming down the island? The Thing did not rise and fall in that roll as even a whale would. The waves beat against it and broke.

As we drew nearer, the great head which had been slowly turning, stopped. The huge, dead eyes fixed themselves upon us! Even today, after fourteen years, I can still see them-yes-feel them. For seconds-it seemed like hours-they stared at us incuriously, dull and lifeless. Then, without convulsion of any sort, it started to sink, slowly, majestically-and disappeared beneath the surface. There was no swirl, no whirlpool, no fuss, no nothing. The waters closed over it and it was gone.

With its disappearance I think we breathed for the first time. I looked at Smithy-Smithy looked at me.

"J--!" I croaked.

He threw out the clutch and we lay to-staring at the empty sea. I was wringing wet and my knees shook. Smithy, normally a voluble man, was speechless. Mechanically he stooped down and picked up a little piece of wire leader from the cockpit floor, tossing it overboard. Around us was the same gray sea, the same sea birds, the same lonely, brown-sloped island. Overhead was the same gray fog. But everything was different. All the friendliness had gone. We, two frail humans, had looked into the eyes of the Past-and looking was not good.

Only a week later I was talking to N. B. Schofield, head of the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries of the California Division of Fish and Game. Schofield is an ichthyologist of considerable reputation and a pupil of the late Dr. David Starr Jordan. He suggested that I was said to have seen a strange monster and asked me about it. After I had described the Thing he was silent for a minute or two then went on to say that fishermen out of Monterey, California, swore that they had been seeing a similar creature only recently.

So frightened were some of them at what they had seen that they refused for days to go to sea. I drew a sketch of the Thing which Schofield pocketed to show to them. I haven't heard whether or not they identified it as one and the same thing. Mind you, Schofield in no wise accepted my story or theirs.

From my own experience and from those of others I will say unequivocally that the Thing is very shy.

I was never closer to the Thing than three hundred yards-perhaps more. I know two men who have been closer than that but there is no material variance in their stories and mine other than one of them thinks he saw a mouth with teeth. I am quite sure that I did not.

As to how large the Thing is-your guess is as good as mine. I have a feeling, probably a sort of sixth sense, which tells me that I saw only a small portion of the beast-that beneath the surface was a body greater than that of any known creature, a whale included. However, that is nothing more than an unprovable hunch. I do not know whether it was serpentine in form or not. I again have a feeling that it was not. If it was-then we had better revise our views on serpents.

I have told all I know about the Thing. Now, I will lay all my cards face up upon the table. Smith Warren is dead; his lips are sealed. Neale is still living but was never as close to the creature as were we. True, there are a number from out of the ranks of those twenty-five or thirty who have seen the Thing who are still alive. Some of them might come forward in defense of my story-but I shall not ask them to.

I shall never ask any man to put his neck into a noose of ridicule on my behalf. There is one man who has been closer to the Thing than any of us-but he refuses point blank to talk, even to me.

So-there you have it. Just as I wrote earlier-take it or leave it. It is all one to me. Smile if you want to-laugh if you want to. I have taken it before-I can take it again. But, when you laugh, if you do-just remember those old immortal lines- "There are stranger things," etc. Also, remember one other thing. You have not been out alone upon the sea and seen a monstrous Thing lift up out of the depths and close beside you-you have not felt the baleful stare of those awful eyes-you have not sensed the cold breath of ages past upon you. I have-and that's that. Adios.



Comment on this Article

---

Stan Friedman Discusses UFO Frauds and Bob Lazar

Paul Kimball
The Other Side of Truth

I interviewed Stan for 10 hours back in 2001 for the documentary Stanton T. Friedman is Real. As the film was only 48 minutes in length, obviously there was a lot of stuff that didn't make it in the final cut. Here's one of those clips, where Stan talks about the problem of frauds in ufology, and then Bob Lazar in particular.

VIDEO




Comment on this Article

---

David Deutsch: At play in the multiverse

Amanda Gefter
NewScientist.com news service
09 December 2006

In 1985, David Deutsch turned physics upside down by describing a universal quantum computer, pioneering the field of quantum information science. He explains to Amanda Gefter how this relates to notions of truth and reality in our universe - and even outside it
When you published your original paper on quantum computation, what was the general reaction?

I was expecting many people to be shocked and to say that no fundamentally new mode of computation can possibly exist, or it can't work, or there's this flaw you haven't noticed - but I got no reaction like that at all. The immediate reactions were either, yeah that's right, well done, or more usually to just ignore it altogether. People didn't take it on board as a new way of thinking. It took several years before the physics community began to work on quantum computation. There were a handful of people who saw the importance right away but the field didn't begin until several years later.

What motivated you to begin working on quantum computation?

It was a desire to understand the foundations of quantum theory, of physics, of everything. The foundations of one field tend to overlap with the foundations of others. Quantum computation, for instance, has implications not only for the foundations of quantum theory but also the foundations of physics in general, and mathematics and philosophy.

Why do you think the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, of which you are a proponent, is still only a minority view among physicists?

I don't know. I suspect it is related to a more general anti-rational phenomenon that was present in nearly all 20th-century philosophies, especially logical positivism, and reverberated into other fields. This was intended to be a retreat from metaphysics, which many philosophers considered meaningless, but really it was a retreat from reality and explanation. In physics, it took the form of deciding as a matter of principle that science is not about discovering how the world really is, but instead must confine itself to predicting the outcomes of observations. When quantum mechanics came along it required a drastic revision of people's conception of the world. Many physicists responded by denying that physics is about the world at all, only about what we see.

Logical positivism is a form of solipsism. If you say physics is only about predicting the outcomes of experiments, you can only really say it's about experiments that you personally do, because to you any other person is just another thing you're observing. But solipsism is a dead-end philosophy and when it comes to science it's a poison. It doesn't allow further progress from existing theories, and that's why I think applications of quantum theory, particularly quantum computation, were overlooked for decades. You could say people didn't really think the theory was true because they had rejected the idea of truth in science. Truth in science must mean correspondence to reality, or it means nothing.

How does quantum computation shed light on the existence of many worlds?

Say we decide to factorise a 10,000-digit integer, the product of two very large primes. That number cannot be expressed as a product of factors by any conceivable classical computer. Even if you took all the matter in the observable universe and turned it into a computer and then ran that computer for the age of the universe, it wouldn't come close to scratching the surface of factorising that number. But a quantum computer could factorise that easily in seconds or minutes. How can that happen?

Anyone who isn't a solipsist has to say the answer was produced by some physical process. We know there isn't enough computing power in this universe to obtain the answer, so something more is going on than what we can directly see. At that point, logically, we have already accepted the many-worlds structure. The way the quantum computer works is: the universe differentiates itself into multiple universes and each one performs a different sub-computation. The number of sub-computations is vastly more than the number of atoms in the visible universe. Then they pool their results to get the answer. Anyone who denies the existence of parallel universes has to explain how the factorisation process works.

This kind of theorising requires considerable creativity. What inspires your creativity?

It so happens that all of my creative work has come from trying to understand existing ideas better, rather than discovering new ideas altogether. Not from seeking new laws of nature or new particles - I have looked at existing theories and tried to understand them, and in some cases have come to understand them a little better than they were understood before. Quantum computers could have been discovered in the 1930s or 1950s, but people didn't take quantum theory seriously enough to understand what it is telling us about reality.

What advice would you give to a young physicist seeking to become a pioneer like you?

In fundamental physics research, progress is only made when people address problems within existing theoretical physics. A typical example is Einstein wondering how light is accommodated in the Newtonian universe. In the last few decades, many theoretical physicists have assumed that further progress can only come from looking at new mathematical models and then wondering if the models are true representations of nature. An example is string theory.

I think it's unlikely that a research programme of that kind can work. Even if you found the right mathematical object, you probably wouldn't even recognise it because you wouldn't know how it corresponds with the world. For example, if someone had invented quantum theory purely as a mathematical model, how would they ever guess that its multi-valued variables correspond with quantities that we measure with single values? After all, it assigns multiple values to observable quantities simultaneously. I would warn against expecting the answer to come from a new mathematical model. It should be the other way around: first find what you think might be the solution to a problem, then express it as a mathematical model, then test it.

Do you still come across sceptics who don't believe in the possibility of quantum computers?

Occasionally. At the beginning there were quite a few prominent physicists who thought a quantum computer couldn't be built. Today the sceptics are merely saying that this is much too hard, and it will take centuries. The prevailing view, I think, is that it will take decades to build a quantum computer. I've recently come to think that it might not take that long, perhaps as little as a decade.
From issue 2581 of New Scientist magazine, 09 December 2006, page 50-51

David Deutsch is a professor of physics at the University of Oxford's Centre for Quantum Computation. In 1998 he received the Institute of Physics's Paul Dirac prize and medal, and in 2005 was awarded the Edge of Computation Science prize for work that extended the boundaries of the idea of computation. He is author of The Fabric of Reality (Penguin, 1998).



Comment on this Article

---

How we know what we know

Harry Collins
NewScientist.com news service
09 December 2006


Science has always struggled to sift crackpot ideas from genuine maverick genius. If it were just a matter of combining unambiguous data with flawless theories, the task would be quite simple. Unfortunately, says Harry Collins, science is an all-too-human activity, and heroes and villains come in every possible guise.
I was at a closed conference with friends and acquaintances from the gravitational wave world, a group I have studied and written about for 30 years. The dress code was informal - T-shirts and jeans, or open-necked shirts and sports jackets for the older scientists. There at the podium was a medical doctor with a halo of white hair, in a smart grey suit and red bow tie, spouting management-speak. As far as we could tell, he seemed to be telling the group that it did not understand its $250 million interferometers, and that his microscale experiments showed they had missed something vital about the interaction of the mirrors. I swapped smirks with those around me. But we were wrong. A couple of stubborn scientists extracted the important bit of sense from the packaging, and the design was changed.

If science were a matter of combining unambiguous data from perfectly conducted experiments with flawless theories, assessing the claims of "outsider" scientists and their maverick ideas would not be that hard. But the logic of science is not so far removed from the logic of ordinary life (though admittedly ordinary life lived among extraordinary ideas and amazing machines) and so fallible human judgement still determines what happens at the heart of even the hardest science.

Since the 1960s, the tension between the canonical model of science (experimentation and theory) and the everyday practice of science (pottering around and hunch) has been explored by historians, philosophers and especially sociologists. One way to get a sense of how that tension compounds the problem of dealing with outsiders and their ideas is by comparing funding policies.

Consider, for example, that the US military spends around $1 million per year on anti-gravity research. This is best understood by analogy with the philosopher Blaise Pascal's famous wager. Everyone, he argued, should believe in God because the cost of believing was small while the cost of not believing could be an eternity in hell. For the military, the cost of missing a technological opportunity, particularly if your enemy finds it first, is a trip to the hell of defeat. Thus goes the logic of the military investigating anti-gravity.

The same rationale led to the funding of some unlikely experiments by University of Maryland physicist Joe Weber. Weber founded gravitational-wave research, but failed to find the waves. By 1975, he had lost most of his credibility, yet in the 1980s, the US military paid to test an implication of a theory he had invented in his struggle to regain his former glory. The implication was that it was possible to detect neutrinos emitted by the reactor of a nuclear submarine, using only a crystal you could hold in your hand rather than vast underground tanks. If the US navy ignored Weber's idea but the Russians used it to build technology that could detect US nuclear subs, the undersea deterrent would no longer deter.

The same logic drives companies such as Pirelli, which is still pursuing Weber's idea in the hope of transmitting modulated neutrino signals through the Earth to carry messages without cables (New Scientist, 17 April 2004, p 36), and Canon and Toyota, which funded cold fusion long after the research councils would not touch it.

The logic of state funding agencies such as the US's National Science Foundation or the UK's Engineering and Physical Science Research Council is quite the opposite. Here the pressures of accountability can make them too conservative. There are a few new agencies aiming to fill the ground between the wild logic of the military and certain companies, and the worthy work of "official" science. One such is Donald Braben's Venture Research, which plans to back projects by picking promising researchers rather than wading through research applications (see his book Pioneering Research, Wiley, 2004).

But even multiple funding styles cannot address the problem that it is impossible to explore every new scientific idea to the standard set by science: there are just too many. Many scientists in the public eye are deluged by self-styled pioneers claiming to have found the fundamental flaw in relativity or a new energy-free method of transport. Discriminating between them requires a mixture of the "green-ink and no margins" test, and more sophisticated short-cuts, such as knowing that papers in Physical Review that describe new physics tend to be taken more seriously than articles in New Scientist doing the same, and that scientists from major institutions are trusted more than scientists from obscure colleges. No one has time to track everything to the bitter end.

Ironically, even exploring an idea to the bitter end may prove impossible. For example, after a hundred years, no one has absolutely proved the non-existence of extrasensory perception. If anything, the findings run very slightly in its favour. Weber's claims that his early detectors caught high fluxes of gravitational waves and that his crystals could detect neutrinos have also never been disproved to the standards of logic. The reason that the US military finally abandoned both strands of research was sociological: Weber had had a good run and it was time to move on. There is no logic that says that Pirelli is completely crazy for taking another look.

The irreducible tension in science is to maintain enough "social control" over new ideas and spending to ensure science isn't engulfed by seas of possibilities, while leaving room for new ideas. Tossed on the waves of these possibilities are people such as Martin Fleischmann (cold fusion), Eric Laithwaite (anomalous gyroscopes), Albert Einstein (relativity), Linus Pauling (vitamin C), Alfred Wegener (plate tectonics), Thomas Gold (origin of oil), David Duesberg (non-viral causes of AIDS), and Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (black holes). The list goes on and on. Such ideas eventually wash up on one shore or the other, but only 20:20 foresight will tell you which one.

However, sometimes what looks like "outsider science" has content of quite a different sort. Take the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism affair in the UK. Andrew Wakefield, the doctor behind the furore, published some evidence in The Lancet suggesting a link between autism and measles-related virus particles in the gut. But these particles were never linked to MMR vaccine. There was word-of-mouth testimony from some parents, but no link between MMR and autism has ever been proved. Wakefield simply speculated about a relationship at a press conference - and no one has ever gone further than to hypothesise about it.

This case was presented to the public as a genuine scientific controversy, and, to my discomfort, the MMR story as told by many social scientists is one of struggle between wise parents and uncomprehending, authoritarian medical authorities. There have been (and will be) many real struggles of that sort, but this was not one of them. The only usable scientific evidence was epidemiological - and that pointed to the safety of MMR. Because it is so hard to prove a negative, none of this shows that there is not a hidden link between MMR and autism lurking below the statistics. But there is no evidence to show there is.

The energy it took to deal with Wakefield's claims, and to persuade parents to vaccinate their children at all after the scare, could have been much better spent. Wakefield was not behaving as a scientific outsider: he was simply not providing scientific evidence at that press conference.

In addition to the difficulty of proving a negative, scientists are also very unwilling to face up to the social and financial logic that drives their choices. A tentative claim about, say, telepathy, can provoke a sort of fundamentalist zeal among some scientists refuting the claim, which in turn undermines their claims for science as an exemplar in a divided world. They should say merely this: "Well, it's not inconceivable, I can't absolutely prove you wrong, but my time is better spent doing things I judge to have more potential."

Scientists, then, are not always their own best friends when it comes to helping others navigate the loss of absolute certainty about our world. I am also not sure how it helps if they assume omnipotence in the name of science, as Richard Dawkins did recently when he insisted that scientists must be atheists. And Stephen Hawking has been turned into a new kind of religious icon, with his books taking the place of the incomprehensible Latin Bible in our homes.

Here science becomes "revealed truth", obscuring the long hours of tedious work, the experiments open to reinterpretation (and failure), and theories with their infinities and arbitrary variables that can never quite be tamed. The Dawkinses and the Hawkings threaten to make the hard-won victory of science over religion a pyrrhic victory by replacing old faiths with new.

If science is essentially ordinary life albeit conducted in extraordinary circumstances, it must contradict literal interpretations of texts that clash with its findings, but it should not claim the right to address deeper questions of existence.

The biggest danger for science is that in missing its footing on the tightrope of certainty, it crashes to the ground. In the social sciences, this danger is best represented by the romantic value today placed on the instincts of the general public: the folk are said to be as wise, or wiser, than experts. It is a political necessity and responsibility in a democratic society to take account of the technological "preferences" of the people, but this should never be confused with technological or scientific "wisdom". That road leads to a society none of us would want to inhabit.

There is no easy and sure scientific way to sift every claim, but there are good and bad judgements. That is the safety net protecting us against scientific populism. This populism is a way of evading the hard search for the grounds of knowledge by giving equal weight to everyone's frame of reference. We must keep hold of the idea that judgement, though never perfect, is generally done better by those who know what they are talking about.

From issue 2581 of New Scientist magazine, 09 December 2006, page 46-48

Harry Collins is Distinguished Research Professor at the school of social sciences of Cardiff University, UK. His books include: The Golem: What everyone should know about science (with Trevor Pinch, published by Cambridge University Press); Gravity's Shadow, and Dr Golem (with Trevor Pinch), published by University of Chicago Press. His next book (with Rob Evans) will be Rethinking Expertise.



Comment on this Article

---

Peer-reviewed Journals in the Field of Parapsychology

Public Parapsychology
10 Dec 06

The following are the primary peer-reviewed journals in the field of parapsychology:

Australian Journal of Parapsychology
European Journal of Parapsychology
International Journal of Parapsychology
Journal of Near-Death Studies
Journal of Parapsychology
Journal of Scientific Exploration
Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research
Journal of the Society for Psychical Research

The following journals have published papers on parapsychological topics, including the psychology of anomalous experience and paranormal belief:
Anthropology of Consciousness
British Journal of Psychology
Consciousness and Cognition
Cortex
Imagination, Cognition and Personality
International Journal of Neuroscience
Journal for Transpersonal Psychology
Journal of Abnormal Psychology
Journal of Consciousness Studies
Perceptual and Motor Skills
Personality and Individual Differences
Psychological Bulletin
Psychological Reports
Transcultural Psychiatry



Comment on this Article

---

The Mad Gasser of Mattoon - "It was that young fool Farley!"

The Blog That Goes Ping
8 Dec 06

I've been meaning to post about this since I read it, but it's all old media, you know. I read it on paper, in issue 216 of the Fortean Times. It's an article by Jonathan Downes, a musician, cryptozoologist, and author, who's been interested in the story of the Mad Gasser of Mattoon, IL (aka the "Anesthetic Prowler") for many years.

It happened back in September, 1945. For about a week there were reports of families waking up to a weird sweet smell that caused nausea and lightheadedness. The incident is commonly cited as an example of mysterious, spontaneous hysteria in a community, arising out of nowhere and disappearing just as quickly.
Anyway, Downes recently got a chance to visit Mattoon, and was surprised to find out that as far as the residents of the town are concerned, there is no mystery.

The journey was a real pilgrimage for Downes:

It was a strange experience standing in the warm, early summer rain outside the home where, 60 years before, the Kearney family had been attacked. For the first time, I understood why generations of American tourists would fly to London and stand in awe outside a building society in Baker Street, as they searched for the authentic Sherlock Holmes experience. I may have been six decades too late, but I was looking at one of the real 'Mad Gasser' locations, and nobody could take that away from me.

In one of his first encounters with a local from that neighborhood, an old man tending a grocery store, he passed himself off at first as a journalist researching life in the Midwest in the war years, but eventually dared to ask a question about his real interest:

I gritted my teeth and asked the old man whether he had heard of the Mad Gasser. Fully expecting ridicule, I was amazed by his answer. "Yeah, sure. It was that young fool Farley. His family used to own this store." [...]

It has always been implied that, like Jack the Ripper or Spring-heeled Jack, the culprit was never identified or caught, but this is simply not true. Everywhere I went in Mattoon I was told the same thing. Yes, of course they knew about the Mad Gasser - and they all knew who he was: a tragically disturbed young man called Farley Llewellyn.

This conclusion had already been publicized by Illinois historian Scott Maruna, in his 2003 book The Mad Gasser of Mattoon: Dispelling the Hysteria. Farley had lived in a trailer behind his parents' store. He had been a chemistry major at the University of Illinois before coming home. He was alcoholic, and homosexual, and the target of rumor and gossip in the town because of this and because of his increasingly erratic behavior, which included chemistry experiments in his trailer which at one point, shortly before the attacks, caused an explosion that damaged the trailer badly. "Farley would never reveal what had caused the explosion, but Maruna believes that he had been synthesizing 1,2,2,2-tetrachloroethane(C2H2Cl4), which, as he writes, 'is a clear, oily liquid that is extremely volatile, with a sweet, fruity odour. Breathing high levels of this can cause fatigue, vomiting, dizziness, and possibly unconsciousness.'"

If it was Farley's gas behind the attacks, it couldn't have been Farley behind all of them, because he was arrested on the 10th of September and there was one attack on the 11th. However, that attack was reportedly committed by someone short, plump, and wearing women's shoes, which describes neither Farley nor the previous Gasser descriptions, but which does describe Farley's two sisters, who were about as well integrated into the community as Farley himself was.

If the explosion did arise when Farley was synthesizing that gas, the gas would have degraded beyond any effectiveness in about the time between the explosion and September 11th, 1945.

Downes continues:

..I visited several shops and spoke to a number of the older members of the community I found there. Everybody knew of the Mad Gasser; everybody knew that it was Farley; and everybody told me that, because Farley's father had been such a well-loved and popular member of the community, nobody had been prepared to pillory the family in public just because his son was insane. In order to protect the reputation of Farley's family, the whole town had put up with 50 years of visiting UFO freaks, conspiracy theorists, and assorted nutcases...

Now there were no longer any living relatives, people were prepared to talk, and several told me they were happy to do so because - at long last - the myth of Mattoon's Mad Gasser could be laid to rest.

It's hard to describe how big a deal this is in terms of American Forteana, at least as I know it. It would be up there with discovering the ape suit used to fake the Patterson Bigfoot film (if it was faked...) - or, I don't know, finding out that there was a secret military balloon project which was responsible for the "saucer crash" at Roswell but which couldn't be discussed for decades because it was classified... No, wait. That actually happened. (Unless of course there's something more sinister or strange behind that story...)

Anyway, there was no version of this article on the web to link to or I would have gratefully done so. I hope I haven't over-quoted but I think this is information that should be more widely available, at least for those few people interested in such a topic.



Comment on this Article

---

If not from space, where?

Mac Tonnies
PostHuman Blues
11 Dec 06

Cryptoterrestrial lore is replete with allusions to underground habitats, subterranean labyrinths navigable only to an enlightened few, and even modern-day below-ground facilities staffed, in part, by government operatives. From Richard Shaver's fancifully paranoid tales of the "Deros" to Bob Lazar's depiction of S-4 (allegedly a supersecret base a stone's throw away from Area 51), the "alien" meme challenges us with the prospect that our world is separated from the other by the merest of partitions . . . and that the CTs are almost as comfortable in our bedrooms and on our roadsides as they are in their own realm.

The image of a "Hollow Earth" populated by beings remarkably like ourselves is by no means new, yet the modern UFO phenomenon has infused it with a newly conspiratorial vigor. Stories of alien bases below the unassumingly bleak surface of the American Southwest surfaced in the wake of the MJ-12 controversy, carving the mythos into irresistible new shapes. In "Revelations," Jacques Vallee recounts a memorable exchange with the late Bill Cooper and fringe journalist Linda Moulton Howe. Told matter-of-factly about the existence of a sprawling subterranean base near Dulce, New Mexico, Vallee asked his hosts where the presumed aliens disposed of their garbage -- a sensible question if one assumes that the "Grays" in question are physical beings burdened with corresponding physical requirements.
Vallee's question is of obvious importance to the cryptoterrestrial inquiry. If we really are sharing the planet with a "parallel" species, searching for underground installations becomes imperative for any objective investigation. Our failure to find any blatant "cities" beneath the planet's surface invites many questions. Could the CTs have colonized our oceans, potentially explaining centuries of bizarre aquatic sightings? Have they intermingled to the point where they're effectively indistinguishable from us? (And, if so, how might such a scattered population summon the resources to stage UFO events?)

Finally, we're forced to consider that at least some CTs have achieved genuine space travel, throwing our definitional framework into havoc. Space-based CTs wouldn't be extraterrestrials in the sense argued by ufological pundits, but they would be something engagingly "other," even if the difference separating them from their Earth-bound peers is as substantial as that distinguishing astronauts from humans of more mundane professions.

Still, the prospect of an underground origin beckons with the inexorable logic that colors our most treasured contemporary myths. Given our yawning ignorance of our own planet -- especially its oceans, which remain stubbornly mysterious -- it remains worthy of consideration. From the lusty politics of Mount Olympus to Shaver's pulp cosmology (complete with telepathic harassment and other ingredients later found in "serious" UFO abduction literature), even a cursory assessment of subterranean mythology indicates a nonhuman presence of surprisingly human dimensions.

This striking familiarity -- so unlikely in the case of genuine extraterrestrial contact -- meshes with modern occupant reports, which typically depict humanoid beings seen in the context of extraordinary technology. Villas-Boas had sex with a diminutive female who, while strangely mannered, can hardly be termed "alien." The alarming fact that intercourse was possible at all smacks of an encounter between two human beings -- an observation routinely dismissed by proponents of the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis, who seem inordinately enamored of Villas-Boas' own conviction that he had been used as breeding stock for a race of apparent space people.

The beings encountered by Betty and Barney Hill seem at least as human when addressed safely outside the confines of ETH dogma; even Betty's dialogue with the "leader" has the nuanced, bantering quality of two strangers attempting to come to grips with a mutual predicament. Indeed, the beings' puzzlement when confronted with dentures tends to argue in favor of the Indigenous Hypothesis. We might reasonably expect bona fide ET anthropologists to set aside the minor mystery of artificial teeth with clinical detachment; instead, Betty's ability to note her abductors' astonishment (feigned or genuine) detracts from the ETH by indicating a suspiciously human rapport.



Comment on this Article

---

Euro Trash

---

Cyprus warns as EU puzzles over Turkey offer

By Michele Kambas and Ingrid Melander
Reuters
8 Dec 06

NICOSIA/BRUSSELS - Cyprus fired a warning shot across the bows of its European Union partners on Friday as ambassadors met to consider an apparent softening of Turkey's refusal to open its ports to trade with the Greek Cypriots.

Foreign Minister George Lillikas signaled that Nicosia would block all EU membership talks with Ankara, as it has done since September, if other members of the bloc let Turkey off the hook because of its offer to open one port to ships from Cyprus.

"Nicosia will revert to a harder line if some in the European Union attempt to use this to restrict the sanctions which should be imposed on Turkey for non-compliance," he told state radio.
Uncertainty deepened over the Turkish proposal, which diplomats said had been made only orally by Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul to his Finnish counterpart, Erkki Tuomioja, and still did not exist in writing.

Finland holds the EU's rotating presidency and Tuomioja said on Thursday he would seek clarification on whether the Turkish offer was unconditional.

"Our ambassador doesn't have any additional information to give to his colleagues," a Finnish official said as the 25 EU envoys met to prepare for Monday's foreign ministers' meeting, due to decide on the future of Turkey's accession talks.

Other diplomats said the Finnish envoy had reported that the presidency still had no written text or clarification to offer.

Cyprus, meanwhile, blocked an effort to have foreign ministers call next week for an early resumption of
United Nations peace talks on the divided island. Diplomats said Nicosia had successfully argued that the EU did not issue statements about its own member states.

TOO HARSH?

The executive
European Commission has recommended a partial suspension of the negotiations because Turkey has not met a treaty obligation to open its ports and airports to traffic from Cyprus, one of the 10 new members which joined the EU in 2004.

"We still need to seek further clarification to know what exactly the Turkish offer on the table is," a Commission spokeswoman said. "For the time being our recommendations of November 29 remain on the table."

Turkey's supporters, led by Britain, called those too harsh and seized on Ankara's latest move to urge the EU to wait before acting against the Turks.

Cyprus, represented in the EU by the Greek Cypriot government in Nicosia, has already rejected the Turkish offer, saying it comes with conditions unacceptable to their side.

"It was a big bang from Ankara, which I think has now deflated," Lillikas said.

Ankara has previously said it will only comply if the EU makes good on a promise to ease the economic isolation of Turkish Cypriot northern Cyprus, which the Greek Cypriot government in Nicosia has so far prevented.

Its latest proposal appeared to offer the opening of one port provisionally for a year, while stating readiness to open an airport to flights from Cyprus if the EU allowed direct trade with northern Cyprus through a port and an airport.

Nicosia has categorically ruled out allowing the opening of Ercan airport for international flights, which could bring a tourism bonanza to the economically backward north of the divided island.

Turkish Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat, whose self-declared state is recognized only by Ankara, was in Brussels on Friday to urge EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn not to go ahead with sanctions against Turkey, his office said.

Cyprus has been divided since Turkish troops invaded in 1974 in response to a coup by Greek Cypriot militants seeking union with Greece.

The EU admitted the divided island as a member in 2004, represented only by the Nicosia government, which Turkey does not recognize. The Turkish Cypriot administration, by contrast, is recognized only by Turkey.



Comment on this Article

---

Britain stops talk of 'war on terror'

Jason Burke
The Observer
Sunday December 10, 2006

Cabinet ministers have been told by the Foreign Office to drop the phrase 'war on terror' and other terms seen as liable to anger British Muslims and increase tensions more broadly in the Islamic world.

The shift marks a turning point in British political thinking about the strategy against extremism and underlines the growing gulf between the British and American approaches to the continuing problem of radical Islamic militancy. It comes amid increasingly evident disagreements between President George Bush and Tony Blair over policy in the Middle East.

Experts have welcomed the move away from one of the phrases that has most defined the debate on Islamic extremism, but called it 'belated'.
'It's about time,' said Garry Hindle, terrorism expert at the Royal United Services Institute in London. 'Military terminology is completely counter-productive, merely contributing to isolating communities. This is a very positive move.'

A Foreign Office spokesman said the government wanted to 'avoid reinforcing and giving succour to the terrorists' narrative by using language that, taken out of context, could be counter-productive'. The same message has been sent to British diplomats and official spokespeople around the world.

'We tend to emphasise upholding shared values as a means to counter terrorists,' he added.

Many senior British politicians and counter-terrorism specialists have always been uneasy with the term 'the war on terror', coined by the White House in the week following the 9/11 attacks, arguing that the term risked inflaming opinions worldwide. Other critics said that it was too 'military' and did not adequately describe the nature of the diverse efforts made to counter the new threat.

Eliza Manningham-Buller, the head of MI5, recently stressed the threat from growing radicalisation among young British Muslims. Whitehall officials believe that militants use a sense of war and crisis and a 'clash of civilisations' to recruit supporters, and thus the use of terms such as 'war', 'war on terror' or 'battle' can be counter-productive.

Though neither Blair nor Margaret Beckett, the Foreign Secretary, has used the term 'war on terror' in a formal speech since June, President Bush continues to employ the term liberally. The American leader spoke of how he hoped that Iraq would become 'an ally in the war on terror' during a joint press briefing with Blair in Washington last Friday.

A spokesman for the US State Department yesterday told The Observer that there was no question of dropping the term. 'It's the President's phrase, and that's good enough for us,' she said.

The White House website has a page devoted to explaining the 'war on terrorism', the terminology preferred by the Pentagon, and how it will be won. In April this year Bush compared the 'war on terror' to the Cold War in a keynote speech.

Not all British government figures are abiding by the advice, issued by the Foreign Office's Engaging with the Islamic World Unit. Writing in the Sun recently, Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, referred to 'our police and armed forces in the front line of the war on terror'.

'One of the problems will be getting all parts of government to abide [by the new guidelines],' said Hindle, the RUSI expert. 'Whether the Home Office will want to follow remains to be seen. And politicians all have their own agendas.'



Comment on this Article

---

French Politics: Where Extremes Meet

Patrice de Beer
December 4, 2006

The potency of radical right and left movements in France's political kaleidoscope makes the dynamics of the presidential election hard to predict, says Patrice de Beer.

France's political system in one important respect has a different character than its counterparts in Britain, Germany or the United States - with the result that its electoral dynamics operate by different rules.
The key variable is the power of political parties. In these three countries, competition between two hegemonic parties tends to squeeze opponents to the margins or subordinate them to alliance-seeking with one of the major players (as with the Die Grunen or Freie Demokratische Partei in Germany) in a coalition government system. The result is that the political extremes are eliminated, ostracised or co-opted.

France, by contrast, is characterised more by a rainbow spectrum of political parties in which even the leading players face more-or-less-serious competition from those to their right and left. The influence of these currents, moreover, derives less from ideological conviction (albeit a minority of adherents do zealously uphold the respective causes of exclusivist nationalism or doctrinal Marxism) than from the desire to protest.

The massive numbers voting in France for "fringe" parties reflect the embitterment of the politically, economically or socially disenfranchised: those who feel that an incestuous political system only interested by its own survival has marginalised them and establishment parties seeking only to woo the centre and the social "insiders" have discarded them. In the United States, such alienated citizens may stay at home in sullen indifference; in Britain, they might adapt Shakespeare and rail "a plague on all your houses"; in France, they tend to express their anger through the ballot-box.

This participating opposition is well-entrenched tradition which, from the 19th century, has nurtured populists who have tried to ride on a wave of discontent by making loads of promises that they would never be in a position to have to deliver.

They exist, too, on both right and left. In the mid-1950s, the small-business and peasant populism of Pierre Poujade briefly shook the establishment in the febrile years of the fourth republic. A protest vote that both predated and outlasted the Poujadistes, however, was that of the Parti communiste fran�ßais (PCF); after the second world war, the communists regularly garnered 20%-25% of voters, though for the most part its electoral supporters wished to express their dissatisfaction - knowing the party had no chance of winning power - than to see France being made a laboratory of the Stalinist paradise.

The allure of communism began gradually to crumble with the revelations (following Nikita Khrushchev's "secret speech" of February 1956) about Stalin's crimes. It took a long time, however, for its rival (and occasional partner) on the left, the Parti Socialiste (PS), to reap electoral dividends from the PCF's decline.

The slow renovation of the PS was accelerated after the accretion of several leftist republican groups at the Epinay congress in 1971 that brought Francois Mitterrand to the leadership, and the agreement on a "common programme" with the PCF that followed. The party established itself as the dominant force in a Union de la Gauche (Union of the Left) which helped win Mitterrand the presidency in May 1981, and proceeded to eclipse its communist allies (whose ministers resigned from the government in 1984 and went into enfeebled opposition).

The debilitation of the communists - the PCF's vote in presidential elections declined from 21% (Jacques Duclos, 1969) to 15.3% (George Marchais, 1981) to 3.4% (Robert Hue, 2002) - had the curious effect of encouraging the protest vote to started shifting to the far right. By 2002, the PCF was polling only 3.4% in the legislative election, and its presidential vote was less even than the Trotskyist groupuscules; today, it requires a little help from its PS "friends" (in the form of non-competition in certain districts of diehard communist voters) to be guaranteed a parliamentary group in the French national assembly at all.

The right of the right This slow but significant transfer of votes from the extreme left to the extreme right saw the latter win no less than 30% of the vote in the first round of the presidential election in 2002. The stunning result was that veteran rightist Jean-Marie le Pen - the leader of the rightwing Front National (FN) - eliminated Lionel Jospin of the PS, and himself reached the second-round ballot against Jacques Chirac.

The trajectory of Le Pen's support since his first contest in 1974 tells the story: from 0.74% to 14.4% in 1988 (he was unable in 1981 to gain the support needed to qualify for the campaign) to 15% in 1995 and 16.86% in 2002 - when Jacques Chirac benefited from the disarray by crushing Le Pen with 82.21% of the decisive ballot). Today, the 78-year-old - first elected as an MP in 1956 - is basking in 13%-17% opinion-poll support for a campaign that announces his jingoism, opposition to immigration, and distaste for Arabs and black people.

There is a snag - the same one that derailed his efforts in 1981. By law, each candidate needs the support of 500 elected representatives (from national or local assemblies, or mayors) to enter the contest; for the FN this is always difficult, as the party has few elected members (none in parliament), and Le Pen has always relied on courting rightwing village mayors.

But if he can stand in the first round on 22 April 2007, he will introduce again a "wild card" into a race likely to be between the socialist candidate Segolene Royal and (most probably, if not yet certainly) head of the government party Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (UMP) and interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy.

Jean-Marie Le Pen combatively proclaims a determination to win; and if he can't reach the ballot, he threatens to unleash "his" voters against forces on the right he accuses of betrayal (thus the covert efforts from Sarko's" camp to help him obtain the 500 signatures he needs).

Le Pen rules the FN as he dreams of ruling France - single-handedly, brooking no dissent. He intends to stand as long as he lives and is grooming one of his three daughters, Marine, to succeed him. At the same time, there is no one on the far right with his amazing charisma (without which he would have remained an obscure, one-eyed, neo-fascist agitator). Where will all his supporters turn to when he dies?

The left of the left An obvious answer would be: forward to the past, and (as it was before Le Pen) into the arms of the extreme left. Both tendencies, after all, have campaigned against the European constitution and against globalisation. There is indeed, in the galaxy of movements of all shades of red or green, a rich reservoir of protest votes.

Some, Les Verts (Greens) as well as the PCF, have in the past joined the socialists as junior partners in coalition governments; they seem ready to do the same if "Sego" wins, although they loath her social- democratic leanings. Others, like the three Trotskyist parties remain adamantly opposed to class collaboration with those Stalin used to call "social traitors"; two are preparing to field their own candidates, the 29- year-old postman Alain Besancenot (Ligue Communiste Revolutionnaire / LCR) and (fighting what will be her sixth presidential campaign) the 66-year-old Arlette Laguiller (Lutte Ouvriere / LO).

As the economist Jean Matouk wrote in Liberation, part of the self-styled "anti-liberal-left" parties don't really wish to see the PS win next year as "they never fare better than when the right is in power" (see Qui veut vraiment vaincre la droite?, 27 November 2006). This Realpolitik is in stark contrast to the idealism many far-left and green militants proclaim. Their rhetoric says that "ultra-liberalism", globalisation, the United States (and a corporate, Lisbon-agenda-led Europe) are the scourge of humanity, and that the PS's moderate bourgeois reformism has nothing anymore to do with socialism; their logic says that they would prefer the right rather than the centre-left to win.

Among the forty current self-proclaimed presidential candidates, a dozen come from the "left of the left". Three are jostling to represent the greens, and another - the popular TV presenter Nicolas Hulot - appears ready to join the field. But a further altermondialiste candidate (in addition to those of the PCF, LCR and LO) has left in disgust on 28 November; Jose Bove - the farmer who became famous by dismantling his local McDonald's and uprooting GM crops - is dismayed by internal leftist bickering.

He accuses the leadership of the PCF and the LCR (the LO is too pure to mingle with other soi-disant comrades) of hijacking the decision of a congress of the "left of the left" scheduled for 9-10 December to select a joint candidate (as well as Besancenot, Marie- George Buffet has already been anointed as the PCF's choice). There are further disputes over strategy; Bove charges Buffet of manipulating the 700 independent committees where all leftists are supposed to ingather to make the decision; and the LCR demands that each potential partner in the leftist alliance vouches not to compromise with the PS (an anathema for the communists, who could be wiped out of parliament).

The rationale of the "left of the left" strategy is to consolidate a force that could be matched by a counterweight on the left of the PS (which as a whole represented 26% of voters in 2002 and now stands at 14% in the opinion-polls). The left's leaders want to draw support from many of the 54% of French citizens who voted "no" to the European constitution in the referendum of May 2005; then negotiate with the PS on an equal footing, thus forcing it to lean further to the left.

So far, the political ambitions and rivalries of its main leaders - no less than a wildly unrealistic platform - mean that this strategy has got nowhere.

Any readers still able to follow these Byzantine intricacies of the far left may also wonder whether this "strategy" - if that is not too grand a word in the circumstances - for fighting Segolene Royal on her left has any chance of success. In this case, "success" appears to mean derailing a popular female candidate from the left and displaying an electoral weight able to force the PS into negotiation. The risks are evident: torpedoing the traditional left and sabotaging its chances of power, looking like another bunch of politicians trapped by petty rivalry and personal ambition, and guaranteeing another presidency of the right in the Elysee palace.

Segolene Royal is depending on the fact that enough elements on the left are burdened by a guilt-tinged feeling of responsibility for Jospin's defeat in 2002 and are prepared to vote against their preferred candidate to avoid a similar outcome. The question is: how many of those who don't share her social democracy, or who (unlike her) voted "no" to Europe's constitution will turn to her as the only force capable of crushing Sarkozy?

If Sego survives a six-month-long election campaign - and some of her friends as well as her enemies still believe she won't - how many leftists will remain faithful to their own parties, how many could jump on her bandwagon? How far left - and right - will the Royal circus be able to cast its net? The ball is in play.

Patrice de Beer is former London and Washington correspondent for Le Monde.



Comment on this Article

---

Segolene Royal plans 'useful' trip to US in New Year

PARIS, Dec 10, 2006 (AFP)

French Socialist presidential candidate Ségolčne Royal plans to make a trip to the United States early next year during which she will expound on her criticisms of globalisation, one of her top advisors said Sunday.

The trip will take place "at the end of January or the beginning of February," the advisor, former minister Jack Lang, told Le Journal du Dimanche newspaper.
Royal, he said, "wants this trip to be useful for the French and wants concrete benefits to emerge that might take the form of acts or reflection... on globalisation, economic trade, health."

The US visit, which aims to bolster Royal's stature on the world stage ahead of France's April-May 2007 presidential elections, had originally been planned for December 13-14 but was postponed.

Royal has frequently criticised US policies, in contrast with her likely chief rival from the ruling right, Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, who has been firmly pro-US in his stance and who met President George W. Bush in Washington in September.

At the beginning of December, Royal sparked a furore during a visit to Lebanon by telling a Hezbollah member of parliament that she agreed with his view that US foreign policy smacked of "insanity".

She later amended her comments to say they referred only to the US-led war and occupation of Iraq, and that she drew a distinction between Bush's policies and "the wider policies of the United States."

Last month, when she officially launched her presidential campaign after easily winning her party's nomination, Royal also criticised the US conception of market-driven globalisation.

She said France must "resist the bad wind of unchecked liberalisation and at the same time seize the opportunities of a globalisation, which carries with it the worst and the best." Worker protection, she said, should be "reinforced".

One of the policy areas she does agree with the United States, however, is Iran and the efforts being made to block its nuclear ambitions.

In a television interview Friday, Royal reaffirmed that she believed Iran should be denied a civilian nuclear programme because it refused to accept international controls.

But French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin said her comments "lacked credibility" because they failed to take into account the 1968 nuclear non-proliferation treaty that allowed signatory states to use nuclear technology for peaceful ends.

A former conservative French president, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, also said "no-one can challenge" that article of the treaty.

Most other French politicians have limited their criticism of Iran's nuclear programme to saying Tehran must not be allowed to develop an atomic arsenal - something it insists it is not doing.



Comment on this Article

---

Mass hysteria forces evacuation of school

Michael Horsnell
The Times
December 08, 2006

A specialist science college was evacuated yesterday after a film on human biology apparently sparked mass hysteria.

More than 30 pupils, aged from 11 to 13, as well as a teaching assistant were taken to hospital after three children initially told teachers that they were feeling unwell.
As other children, mostly from Year 7, at Royston High School in Barnsley, South Yorkshire, joined the sick list, staff reported a domino effect. When the entire class began feeling faint and nauseous, they called in the emergency services, fearing a gas leak.

All students and staff were assembled in the hall and sports hall before it was decided, on the advice of paramedics, that everyone at the 627-pupil school should be removed.

Eventually 32 pupils were taken by ambulance and patient transfer vehicles to Barnsley District Hospital for check-ups, as emergency services monitored the school. A hospital spokesman said: "The children were brought into our emergency department. We checked their blood pressure, pulse and blood sugar levels. I have never come across anything like this before."

Two hours after the evacuation the all-clear was given and lessons for the older children unaffected by the scare resumed as normal after the lunch break.

Kay Jenkins, the head teacher, said: "I must emphasise that no children were ever in danger because of the fast, effective, co-ordinated response from the school and the joint emergency services."

She said that no gas leak had been found and that there were no experiments taking place in the science laboratory at the time. "We are still unsure about what happened, but a group of 30 students were watching a human biology video which is regularly shown in a science class," she said. "It is about the human body and how it works and no blood is shown on the screen.

"Three children asked to leave and came down to the medical room feeling a bit queasy. Then another couple came down and at that point, as a few pupils were showing similar symptoms. We contacted the ambulance service and on the advice of the emergency services the school was evacuated as a precaution.

"The police and fire services searched the building while the paramedics stayed with us to see it through. We evacuated the school because there was a lot of upset."

All the children were discharged within four hours of arrival at hospital. Many were picked up by anxious parents.

The incident was the latest of several ascribed to mass hysteria.

Almost 300 children in Holinwell, Nottinghamshire, collapsed and were taken to hospital while competing in a brass band competition in a field in 1980.

But the biggest outbreak was in 1955 when 300 nurses at the Royal Free Hospital in London complained of paralysis.

Psychiatrists wrote a description of events for the British Medical Journal and described it as mass hysteria.

But since then, the history of mass hysteria has become divisive. Some claim it to be all in the mind while others assert that there may yet be an agent, infective or chemical, that could cause such symptoms.



Comment on this Article

---

Sir Richard Doll - blamed lung cancer on cigarettes while on the payroll of chemicals industry!!

By Steve Connor, Science Editor
Published: 09 December 2006

Some of Britain's most senior scientists have angrily denounced suggestions that Sir Richard Doll, who proved the link between smoking and lung cancer, had deliberately failed to disclose financial dealings with the chemicals industry.
The scientists said that tens of millions of people owed their lives and health to studies pioneered by Sir Richard. "It is with dismay that we now hear allegations against him that he cannot rebut for himself," the scientists say in an open letter.

Sir Richard, who died last year aged 92, had received consultancy fees of $1,500 a day from Monsanto during the 1980s and several thousand pounds from the Chemical Manufacturers Association, Dow Chemicals and ICI. Although friends and colleagues insist that Sir Richard made no secret of his private consultancies, his close links with the chemicals industry were not widely known.

However, unlike today, there were no rules then about declaring financial interests. Colleagues of Sir Richard point out that it is only in recent years that scientists have been required to disclose financial interests. In any case, they argue, Sir Richard donated his fees to charity.

They also point out that the news of his dealings with the chemicals industry came from his own papers which he had donated to a museum of medical history.

In the open letter, the head of the Medical Research Council, Professor Colin Blakemore, and five other leading scientists strongly support Sir Richard against allegations that his science was compromised. "We feel it is our duty to defend Sir Richard's reputation and to recognise his extraordinary contribution to global health, which began in 1950 with his first [scientific] paper demonstrating a link between smoking and lung cancer," they say.

"He played a key role in the development of randomised controlled clinical trials - now the standard method by which new treatments are evaluated. He also helped identify several occupational hazards, most notably asbestos, and assess reliably the dangers of radiation," they say.

The letter is co-signed by Lord Rees, the president of the Royal Society; Mark Walport, director of the Wellcome Trust; Professor John Bell, president of the Academy of Medical Science; Professor Alex Markham, head of Cancer Research UK and Sir Richard Peto of Oxford University, who worked alongside Sir Richard for 30 years.

The authors say that Sir Richard willingly made his expert advice available to industry and to government.

"On the basis of those papers, it has recently been suggested that Sir Richard's advice to industry somehow compromised his own publications.

"We know of no evidence to support this allegation. Sir Richard was open about these consultancies and felt it appropriate that companies should seek expert advice on the safety of their products," the letter says.

Professor Peto said: "Twenty years ago people often did not disclose funding when writing scientific papers. Nowadays, it is not only standard practice, it is mandatory. I think this change is an improvement, and so did Richard Doll."

The letter

Sir Richard Doll was one of the world's greatest cancer researchers. It is with dismay we hear allegations against him he cannot rebut. His extraordinary contribution to global health began in 1950 with his first paper demonstrating a link between smoking and lung cancer. He played a key role in developing randomised controlled clinical trials, among many other invaluable contributions. It has been said his advice to industry compromised his publications. We know of no evidence for this. He was open about consultancies and felt companies should seek expert advice on the safety of products.

Professor Colin Blakemore; Dr Mark Walport; Lord Martin Rees; Professor John Bell; Professor Alex Markham


Comment: In other words, Doll and other scientists on chemical company payrolls had a vested interest in finding something to blame for lung cancer and many other illnesses caused by industrial chemicals in the air, food and water.

Comment on this Article

---

Fascists Live Too Long

---

Chile's Pinochet dead: television

Reuters
Sun Dec 10, 2006

SANTIAGO, Chile - Ex-dictator Augusto Pinochet, who ruled Chile from 1973-1990 and spent his old age fighting human rights, fraud and corruption charges, died on Sunday a week after suffering a heart attack, Chilean television reported.
Pinochet, 91, grabbed power in a coup and went on to become the best known of the South American dictators of the 1970s and 1980s. Under his regime more than 3,000 people died in political violence, many at the hands of repressive secret police.

He was accused of dozens of human rights violations but a lengthy effort to bring him to trial in Chile failed as his defense lawyers successfully argued that he was too ill to face charges.

Despite Pinochet's human rights record, many Chileans loved him and said he saved Chile from Marxism.

But even many loyal supporters abandoned him after it came out in 2004 that he had stashed some $27 million in secret off-shore bank accounts that were under investigation at the time of his death.



Comment on this Article

---

Augusto Pinochet 1915-2006: He took his crimes to the grave

By David Usborne
11 December 2006

"His death does rob us of a proper trial and retribution for his victims." Years of illness allowed the General's lawyers to fend off court proceedings in his native Chile. For nearly two decades as Latin America's most infamous dictator, he was accused of ordering the deaths and disappearances of at least 3,000 Chileans, many killed at the hands of his secret police.
Augusto Pinochet, the former dictator who ruled Chile with an iron fist from 1973 until 1990, died in a high-security military hospital in the capital, Santiago, yesterday. His death from heart failure leaves a disputed legacy of brutal political repression; salvation from Marxism; and civil turmoil.

Doctors said they rushed the discredited dictator back into the hospital's intensive care unit yesterday morning after a sudden deterioration of his condition. He was only released from the unit last Thursday where he had been under treatment for an acute heart attack suffered one week ago after which he underwent an emergency angioplasty to widen a clogged artery.

In a brief announcement, the hospital said the one-time military strongman - who in recent years had been hounded by charges at home and abroad of human rights violations, corruption and fraud - had died at 2.15pm local time in Chile. He was 91.

His death sparked champagne-soaked celebrations, skirmishes with police and displays of lasting devotion as Chileans took an anguished look back at the dictator who brutally ruled for 17 years.

Celebrations broke out in several parts of the Chilean capital. At a major plaza, hundreds of cheering, flag-waving people gathered to pop champagne corks and toss confetti.

Outside the hospital where Pinochet died, Chileans who believed he saved them from communism wept and hoisted posters with the general's image. Some chanted that Pinochet and his feared secret police were Chile's saviours. " He will live forever in my memory - I love him as much as my own children," said Margarita Sanchez.

Meanwhile, police clashed with demonstrators who threw rocks and erected fire barricades that sent up thick plumes of smoke and blocked traffic on the city's main avenue. Tear gas and water cannons were used to disperse the protesters, many of them masked, who quickly regrouped.

Officials blamed the violence on a small contingent among the thousands of demonstrators who poured into the streets to denounce Pinochet's legacy. At least two bank offices were damaged.

The clashes spread past midnight to several working class districts and police said 23 officers, including a major and a captain, were injured.

Deputy Interior Minister Felipe Harboe said there had been a number of arrests but did not give a figure.

"The government makes an appeal to peace," Harboe said. "We do not want people to be affected today by facts of the past."

Chile's government said Pinochet will not receive the state funeral normally granted to former presidents, but only military honours at the Santiago military academy.

This morning, Pinochet's coffin was transferred to the Military Academy.

The coffin, covered with a Chilean flag and Pinochet's military hat and sword on top if it, was placed in a large hall, but the media was kept at a distance and could hardly see it through large windows.

As he requested, Pinochet will be cremated, according to son Marco Antonio, to avoid desecration of his tomb by "people who always hated him."

The government said it had authorised the Chilean flag to be flown at half-staff at military barracks nationwide.

In a carefully measured statement, Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett said: " We note the passing of General Pinochet and want to pay tribute to the remarkable progress that Chile has made over the last 15 years as an open, stable and prosperous democracy."

That contrasted with the office of former prime minister Margaret Thatcher, a staunch ally of the former dictator, which said she was "greatly saddened" by news of his death.

Human rights activists responded more bluntly to the passing of a man who had become a pariah to most of the world. "Pinochet has died, and I don't think he's going to heaven," commented the human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson.

"His death does rob us of a proper trial and retribution for his victims." Years of illness allowed the General's lawyers to fend off court proceedings in his native Chile. For nearly two decades as Latin America's most infamous dictator, he was accused of ordering the deaths and disappearances of at least 3,000 Chileans, many killed at the hands of his secret police.

But even his most loyal supporters distanced themselves from Pinochet in 2004, however, when it emerged he had allegedly stashed as much as $27m (Ł14m) in foreign bank accounts.

Among those who felt betrayed by Pinochet were supporters who had helped fund his reconstruction efforts in the first years of his dictatorship - and may also have donated cash for his legal defence after he was arrested in London on human rights charges in 1998. He was held in Britain for 16 months.

In recent weeks, the General, faced new charges connected to the death of two bodyguards for Salvador Allende - the man from who Pinochet seized power - and was under house arrest.

For many Chileans, consigning Pinochet to history is long overdue. Even after he lost the presidency in 1990 in a national referendum, he remained commander-in-chief of the nation's armed forces for another eight years..

As the Pinochet era gradually faded, Chile emerged as one of Latin America's most stable democracies, marked earlier this year by the election of Michelle Bachelet of the centre-left Concertacion Coalition, which has ruled Chile since 1990.

The pencil-shaped Andean nation also remains in an economic boom, fed largely by mineral wealth and, arguably, by the free-market policies first introduced by Pinochet in place of the socialist doctrines of Mr Allende.

Divisions over the legacy of Pinochet still remain in Chile. "He's the biggest criminal in the history of our country," said Sola Sierra of the Association of Relatives of the Detained and Disappeared. But a rightist legislator, Iván Moreira called him "a liberator ... who brought democracy back to Chile." He went on: "He saved us from Marxism, from becoming a satellite colony of Soviet-Cuban imperialism."

Crediting Pinochet with the economic health of Chile today does not come easily as evidence has accumulated over the years of his utter disrespect of human rights. His regime systematically snatched political opponents from the streets and sent assassins around the globe to wipe out critics and resistors.

A Truth Commission in Chile established that 3,197 Chileans were killed during Pinochet's years in power and another 250,000 were locked up.

Amnesty International said Pinochet's death "should be a wake-up call for the authorities in Chile and governments everywhere, reminding them of the importance of speedy justice for human rights crimes, something Pinochet has now escaped."



Comment on this Article

---

Crowds take to streets to celebrate Pincohet's demise

By Jen Ross in Santiago
11 December 2006

The streets of Santiago were a cacophony of car horns and cheering yesterday, as Chileans took to the streets in droves to celebrate the demise of South America's most notorious dictator.

Estimates range from the tens to the hundreds of thousands of people in the streets. And while some came to lament the passing of General Augusto Pinochet, the vast majority of those taking to the streets and plazas around the capital were celebrating the death.

"This is a moment of freedom, of joy, and of catharsis for an entire nation that lived through one of the worst dictatorships of all of Latin America," said Daniela Lillo, a mother and actress who stood in Santiago's Plaza Italia square, with a glass of champagne in hand.
With her four-year-old daughter in tow, she said her daughter she would never forget this day and her first sip of champagne.

But others say they were disappointed that Pinochet never saw his day in court for the 3,200 deaths and disappearances that took place under his rule.

"Pinochet has died without ever served justice," said Carmen Soria, the daughter of a Spanish diplomat assassinated during the dictatorship. "The courts and four government of the Concertacion [Chile's ruling left-wing coalition] were not able to condemn Pinochet.

It is ironic that he also died on the International Day for Human Rights. "This day is bittersweet because we weren't able to make him spend a single day in jail," lamented Ximena Muńoz, a human rights activist for an association for Chile's disappeared.

"Still, he's been judged by the public and that will go down in history, so today he is dead and you see today that it's a carnival for Chile's people. The dictator has died. Now we must forge ahead to try the rest of the assassins and torturers of his era."

But Pinochet maintains a fanatical following, and tens of thousands of weeping supporters surrounded the military hospital, where he was pronounced dead yesterday. "All of the hatred he inspires is so unfortunate," said a supporter, Juan Agustin Vargas, who stood wearing badges showing Pinochet's face, and singing patriotic military songs. "They don't recognise or thank him for having given us the liberty, the education, the social security and the economic stability we enjoy today."

Police remained on guard last night amid fears of violent clashes, and water cannons and tear gas were used to separate supporters and opponents in the capital and in Valparaiso, Chile's second-largest city.



Comment on this Article

---

Glee and grief as man who 'brought Spanish inquisition to Chile' dies at 91

Jonathan Franklin in Santiago, Rory Carroll, Latin America correspondent, and Duncan Campbell
Monday December 11, 2006
The Guardian

General Augusto Pinochet, the Chilean former dictator whose brutal regime cast a shadow over his country and the rest of the continent for more than three decades, died yesterday at the age of 91.

He was pronounced dead from heart complications at Santiago's military hospital at 2.15pm local time. Within minutes, cars circled the centre of the Chilean capital, blowing their hooters and waving flags to celebrate the passing of the man whose US-backed military coup destroyed Latin America's first democratically elected Marxist government.
Police were quickly deployed across the city and residents in working class districts erected barricades last night as news of Gen Pinochet's death left the capital in ferment and the country in shock.

Victims of human rights abuses during his 17-year rule gathered at a statue of Salvador Allende, the Chilean president who died during the 1973 coup, and urged the government to avoid giving any special honours at the burial. Their plea was heeded by President Michelle Bachelet, herself detained and tortured by Pinochet-era security forces, who said he would be buried with military honours, but would not be given a state funeral.

As police patrols fanned across the capital to avert clashes between friends and foes of the late dictator, poorer neighbourhoods lit tyres to celebrate. "These people are not celebrating the death of anyone," said Jorge Salinas, 50, who was throwing confetti into traffic. "It is to celebrate the end of a cycle of so much pain, so much dictatorship, so much torture. Pinochet signified many deaths, so much suffering for us. That's why you see such happiness in most of the people."

Torture

While champagne flowed downtown, a bitter crowd of some 700 Pinochet supporters gathered outside the military hospital. Some sang the national anthem while others assaulted journalists. "He leaves us today, but I remain proud to support him," said Ivan Moreira, a member of the lower house of the Chilean congress who was with the Pinochet family during a private mass at the hospital yesterday.

However, even in upper middle class neighbourhoods where Gen Pinochet was once revered, his reputation has disintegrated in recent years, because of ongoing inquiries into financial crimes, including tax evasion and illegal weapons deals.

Gen Pinochet was also under indictment in three cases stemming from the 3,000 people killed and thousands tortured during his regime, when he was feted by Washington as a bulwark against communism.

International reaction to his death was mixed and in some cases coy. Britain's foreign secretary, Margaret Beckett, said: "We note the passing of General Pinochet and want to pay tribute to the remarkable progress that Chile has made over the last 15 years as an open, stable and prosperous democracy."

A spokesman for Lady Thatcher, the former prime minister who cherished Gen Pinochet's assistance during the Falklands war with Argentina, said she was "greatly saddened" and had sent her condolences to his family, but would not be issuing a formal statement.

Gen Pinochet's critics regretted his passing only because it meant he could not be tried. Amnesty International said: "Pinochet's death should be a wakeup call for the authorities in Chile and governments everywhere, reminding them of the importance of speedy justice for human rights crimes - something that Pinochet has now escaped."

When Gen Pinochet seized power in 1973, he knew he would be enjoying the strong support of the US. The secretary of state and national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, was an admirer and anxious that no bridgehead for the left should be established in Latin America by President Allende.

"The prevailing mood among the Chilean military is to use the current opportunity to stamp out all vestiges of communism in Chile," said a CIA memo immediately after the coup. "Severe repression is planned." Another CIA document noted that the methods used by the junta's secret police were "out of the Spanish inquisition".

When Dr Kissinger and Gen Pinochet met in 1976, according to documents released in 1999, Dr Kissinger told him to ignore criticisms from within the US about his methods, assuring him that they were part of a communist propaganda exercise. He told him: "We wish your government well."

Dr Kissinger remained loyal to Gen Pinochet. When the retired dictator was arrested in London in 1998 and was facing extradition to Spain, he backed the campaign for him to be allowed to return home.

Gen Pinochet's link with Lady Thatcher was equally strong. She visited him when he was under house arrest, a meeting as portrayed in the television film Pinochet in Suburbia. She thanked him "for bringing democracy to Chile" and dismissed Allende's supporters as "a small minority of communists who nearly wrecked the country".

Last month, besieged by criticism and pending trials, the ailing general appeared to accept political, but not legal, responsibility for his regime's brutality. "Today, near the end of my days, I want to say that I harbour no rancour against anybody; that I love my fatherland above all; and that I take political responsibility for everything that was done which had no other goal than making Chile greater and avoiding its disintegration," he said.



Comment on this Article

---

The general willing to kill his people to win the battle against communism

By Rupert Cornwell
11 December 2006

In the end it was probably right that Augusto Pinochet never faced justice meted out by a court of his peers for what happened in Chile between 1973 and 1990.

There was always something jarring about the prospect of a half-comprehending 91-year-old man brought to trial for deeds, however heinous, which he thought were the salvation of his country. Add to that the fact that many of his peers to this day agree with him. The verdict on Pinochet can only be delivered by history, and a case can be made in his defence - a far more credible case than can be made for Idi Amin or the genocidal Nazis to whom he is likened by his foes. For these latter however, there is one consolation. General Pinochet may not have died convicted. But he died in disgrace.
Ultimately there was something pathetic about his final years - the years that remained to a man who was wont to boast when he ruled Chile that "not a leaf moves in this country if I'm not moving it".

The world watched astonished as a once all-powerful autocrat languished under house arrest on an estate in Wentworth, Surrey, after a Spanish judge had issued an arrest warrant against him for crimes against humanity.

After 16 months he was allowed to return home by the British government on grounds of ill-health. But whatever was left of the myth of Augusto Pinochet had been destroyed. No spectacle, surely, is more humiliating than that of a dictator removed from the levers of power and revealed as a mortal, flesh and blood like the rest of us, obliged to seek escape in the due processes of law that once he had so ruthlessly abused.

Thereafter he was merely a shrivelled old man, haunted by ghosts, living out his days in his own country - a country which, albeit by him, had moved far beyond him, to become once again a model of normality in the hemisphere.

In the end the courts couldn't try him for the deaths of the 3,000 people who had died or disappeared under Pinochet's rule, or for his part in Operation Condor, a syndicate of assassination run by half-a-dozen Latin American strongmen of the era. Nor could they lay a glove on him for the murder in 1976 of Orlando Letelier, the former ambassador and regime opponent who was blown up in a car bomb planted by the Chilean secret services in the heart the opulent diplomatic quarter of Washington DC. Nor could they extract even symbolic recompense for the losses suffered by the 200,000 people who were forced into exile to escape persecution or worse.

No, in the end, the Chilean authorities were after him for tax evasion, and for illicit foreign bank accounts in Washington and elsewhere. Famously, that was how Al Capone was brought to justice. And like Capone, Pinochet - the devout Catholic who declared that "I see myself as a good angel" - would, had he lived, probably have been sentenced as a financial criminal.

Meanwhile, not only has history's broader verdict yet to be delivered. The jury could prove to be hung. For the case for the defence must be considered. Individual leaders are the products of their era. Pinochet himself was a creature of the proxy war between the US and the Soviet Union, fought across Central and Latin America, Africa and Asia.

Yes, the turmoil in Chile before the coup of September 1973 was shamefully fomented by the United States. But there is no evidence that Washington directly ordered the coup. Pinochet sincerely believed that as a military leader, his duty was to save his country from a descent into communism and chaos. He was far from the first general in his part of the world to stage a coup, and he probably won't be the last. His problem was that the country in question was Chile; one reason the coup and its aftermath were so bloody was because of the very robustness of Chile's existing democratic traditions.

Ultimately moreover, even Pinochet had to bow to democracy. After 15 years, he was forced to call a referendum. He lost and two years later in 1990 ceded power to a leftwing government run by former exiles. But the subsequent success of Chile's economy is attributed by many to the free market reforms he introduced, guided by monetarist "Chicago School" economists who used Chile as a laboratory for the ideas of Milton Friedman.

Today, some economists talk of a "Chilean variation," a model for countries where economic growth can best be fostered under a largely authoritarian regime. Russia is one example and China, it could be argued, is another. The problem is the trade-off between prosperity and human rights. And the problem is still unresolved. "I love my fatherland above all," the old man said, as he celebrated his 91st birthday on 25 November, knowing the end was near. And not a few, even in the fatherland he brutalised, still love him in return.



Comment on this Article

---

Wakey Wakey!

---

Major U.S. $ Crisis Looming

by Julian D. W. PhillipsFrom - www.silverforecaster.com 4th December 2006.

We are approaching rapidly a series of currency crises of a greater magnitude than ever seen before in history. Whilst the U.S.$ will be the prime recipient of these, many currencies trying to protect their international competitiveness or their own stability will be dragged into the crisis that will affect to a greater or lesser extent the bulk of currencies across the world. There will be few currencies and consequently their economies that will escape the ripple effects of the dramatic changes in exchange rates. Why will this happen? To understand this a look at the history of the 4 over the last 50 years becomes pertinent. We take a brief look at the monetary system and its recent past to see how the toppling from financial power and its extent is likely and the full extent of that power.
With its dominant influence over the I.M.F., where its voting power of over 16% placed it in complete control of any vote [because a basic requirement of the I.M.F. is that for any issue to be passed, it must have the support of 85% or more of its members votes. This left the U.S.A. in control of not just of the most important of the globe's financial institutions but of the global monetary system. Through the $ being the currency in which oil was priced, it reinforced this strength and dominated global trade through oil. The tribute [tax] it then drew from the world through the printing of the $ for international trade, was the equivalent of the tribute Britain drew in the days of its global empire. The expansion of the Trade deficit is serving the same function, which explains why little is being done to correct that imbalance. With recipients of the $ content to reinvest their surplus $' back into U.S. Treasuries and bonds, the States is receiving cheap financing of its economy. So all looks fine as the U.S.A. draws off the benefits of its pivotal position.

The only action being taken to adjust this at present is a trip [which we believe will be a failure before it begins] by the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Ben Benanke and the Treasury Secretary Paulson to China. Ostensibly this is to persuade the Chinese to revalue their currency. The Chinese authorities have responded to this request many times already and forcefully, so why the trip? Is it a posturing that it is the Chinese that is at fault or what? Needless to say any responses from the trip will do little to strengthen the $. This trip does little to address the growing problem of the falling $ in the foreign exchanges, the ultimate measure of the true value of the $.

But the process of Asia's enormous growth is that it is moving toward being the most important economy in the world alongside India and other emerging economies. As such it will move to take the reins of global financial power.

The tipping of that power towards the East has to precipitate the end of the reign of the U.S.$ as the key global currency. The Chinese Yuan is by no means ready to take those reins, nor we suspect, is the €. Nevertheless, the $ is on the decline long-term due to this shift in power. Even if this concentrated power is re-distributed to several other currencies, the decline of the $ will continue and with a growing ace.

As we have often said in these columns, we do not expect the $ to decline down a gentle slope, but to move along a plateau, before dropping down a cliff to the next level at which it will plateau before the next fall. Steadily we will see the pressures from excess U.S. $' bring not only a value decline but also a heavy loss of confidence in the $ from outside the U.S. of A.

It appears that we are very close and have possibly begun the first cliff edge fall to the next low. The fall may be steeper and greater than most have imagined.

Many monetary officials in the U.S.A. have expressed their lack of knowledge of what lies ahead in this type of situation. But the very structure of nations self-interest will cause a weakening $ to fall further once the falls really begin. We have to say that such $ crises in the global foreign exchanges have the potential to structurally damage the globe's monetary system in ways never seen before. What we take for granted as being an exchange rate crisis will pale against the breadth of this impending drama as it encompasses several currencies in its wake.

As we wait on the brink of these changes, we can be certain that both gold and silver will rise further to take on the mantle of safe currencies beyond the reach of Central Bankers, who may likely support their role as an alternative currency. What is certain is that once confidence in the $ starts to become visible in the markets the gold price will rise in a manner completely inconsistent with its role as simply a metal, a commodity.

Hence we ask our readers to be prepared for more than seems 'normal' in the days to come.



Comment on this Article

---

Think tax-backward to avoid the AMT

By Linda Stern
Reuters
Sun Dec 10, 2006

WASHINGTON - Taxpayers, walk away from the gift wrap and pick up your pencils. You have less than a month to strategize your way out of the alternative minimum tax for 2006.

The AMT has become a universally unpopular symbol of policy gone awry. Initiated in 1969 as a way to catch high-income Americans who were dodging all income taxes, it has morphed into an almost-incomprehensible parallel tax system that disproportionately affects middle-income taxpayers who have many kids or live in high-tax states.
Because its brackets are not automatically indexed for inflation (unlike the regular income structure, which is), it catches more taxpayers every year as their incomes rise to AMT levels.

"This year it will affect 3.6 million taxpayers, at an average of about $6,000 per return," says Lonnie Davis, director of tax services for CBIZ Accounting, Tax & Advisory Services in Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania.

It's tough to understand, but ignore it at your own peril. Every year the AMT snags more taxpayers, and if it snags you, the very actions you take to cut your taxes (such as making extra mortgage payments in mid-December) could come back to bite you.

Here's what you need to know -- and do -- right now:

-- Get a basic idea of how the AMT works.

In most simple terms, it applies a lower tax rate to a broader definition of income. It defines income more broadly by disallowing some write-offs, such as state and local taxes deducted, some home equity interest, some medical expenses and some profits on employee stock options.

It also disallows personal exemptions, hitting big families hard. (For a complete list of the so-called "preference" items disallowed by the AMT, go to the IRS Web site and download Form 6251 and its instructions.) Then it subtracts a special AMT exemption amount, and then it subjects the income left to tax rates of 26% on the first $175,000 ($87,500 for married couples filing separately) and 28% on the excess.

-- Drill down and guesstimate whether you're going to be subject to the AMT.

Look at last year's return and see if you paid any AMT. Even if your situation is pretty similar this year, you may not be subject to it because of two changes made in the tax bill passed earlier this year.

That bill slightly increased the AMT exemption that gets subtracted from your income. The same law eased up on AMT treatment of a variety of credits including the child and dependent care credit and Hope scholarship and lifetime learning credits.

A quick and dirty way to see if you'll be hit by the AMT is this: Find out what your marginal tax rate is, and subtract the AMT rate. If, for example, you're married filing jointly with an income of $150,000, your regular marginal tax rate is 28 percent and your AMT rate is 26 percent, making the spread between the two taxes only 2 percent of your income. If your list of preference items, personal exemptions and the like exceed 2 percent of your income, there's a good chance you'll be AMT bait.

If you use tax-preparation software, you can open last year's forms, guesstimate your income and deductions, raise the AMT exemption amount on form 6251 to 2006 levels of $62,550 (married joint), $42,500 (single) or $31,275 (married filing separately.) See if it calculates an AMT payment for you.

-- Then what?

If you expect to be AMT'd, think backward, says Davis. Put off that year-end home equity or tax payment until January. Defer your miscellaneous expenses, like investment interest or job-hunting expenses. Bring extra income, such as bonuses, into this year. Your mission is to keep preference items a low-enough proportion of your taxes to kick you out of AMT contention, at least for one more year.

-- Watch Washington.

Both Democrats and Republicans say they want to "fix" the AMT problem, but they'll have their own problems doing that. They're not supposed to cut taxes in the future (as any AMT fix would do) without finding like income elsewhere, and there's not many other places for legislators to go to fund that.

It's more likely that the best they will do is continue to adjust it annually. That buys them continued attention from tax-focused lobbyists, and it buys them higher revenues that they can count in the out-years, even if they're just going to adjust them away too.

That means if you're just falling under AMT radar, you might continue to escape it, one year at a time.



Comment on this Article

---

Asian central banks accept falling US Dollar

Dave Chiang
06 Dec 06

Asian central banks learn to live with dollar fall

Asian central banks appear divided on how to respond to the falling US dollar. Several countries, including Thailand,

South Korea and Singapore, appear to have intervened to curb its decline against their currencies, while heavyweights Japan and China are taking a more benign approach.
"There is a degree of acceptance in Asia about the downward drift of the dollar as long as other currencies outside the region rise in value against it as well," said Adrian Foster, foreign exchange strategist at Dresdner Kleinwort in Singapore.

Some countries are more worried than others. South Korean financial officials are concerned about the rapid rise of the won, which on Monday hit a nine-year high against the dollar.

The Korean currency has been among the fastest rising in the world, appreciating by nearly 10 per cent against the greenback this year, which has affected profits at South Korean exporters such as Samsung Electronics and Hyundai Motor.

Traders say the Bank of Korea appeared to have intervened heavily last month to try to stem its ascent.

Thailand fears that its export competitiveness will be harmed by a rise of the baht, which has appreciated by 15 per cent against the dollar this year.

The central bank has turned to administrative measures to ease upward pressure on the baht. In an attempt to deter short-term speculation on the currency, the Bank of Thailand on Monday announced that non-residents holding Thai treasury bills, government or central bank bonds without underlying businesses in the country must retain them for at least three months before selling them on.

Bigger economies appear better able to withstand the effects of a falling dollar. Japan, whose currency is considered undervalued against the dollar and euro, has not shown undue alarm at the strengthening of the yen against the dollar in the past few weeks.

Officials have suggested that they see no reason for the yen to weaken further given the health of the economy. Yen weakness has been blamed partly on the carry trade, in which investors borrow cheaply in yen to invest in higher-yielding assets, including US-denominated ones, abroad.

China has been in effect supporting the dollar for a number of years due to its purchases of US Treasuries and other financial instruments, which make up an estimated 70 per cent of its $1,000bn foreign exchange reserves.

There has been no hint that the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE), which manages the money, has been buying dollars to support it or ease its decline.

But China's reserve holdings do give it an incentive to support a strong dollar. SAFE has became concerned about the negative impact on the dollar of suggestions that Beijing had been diversifying into other currencies.

One challenge facing Asian central bankers, however, are signs of inflation that could force them to raise interest rates and the value of their currencies as a result.

Mr Foster said: "The central banks must balance the need to keep inflation under control without causing their currencies to appreciate sharply."

Reporting by John Burton in Singapore, Anna Fifield in Seoul, Amy Kazmin in Bangkok, Richard McGregor in Beijing and David Pilling in Tokyo



Comment on this Article

---

Europe will not escape the impact of dollar depreciation

by Wolfgang Munchau
3 Dec 06

Judging by the latest economic data, the world confronts the risk of a US recession next year, brought on by a collapse in house prices. A recession would almost certainly lead to a fall in the US current account deficit, and possibly a further significant decline in the dollar's real exchange rate. Only a fool would dare forecast the dollar's exchange rate next year, or the precise mechanism through which global imbalances will eventually adjust. But there is a distinct possibility that the much predicted adjustment may be about to happen.
So what then? Among the wide range of views on this subject, two are particularly popular, one pessimistic, one optimistic - and both wrong. The pessimistic view is that a sharp and sudden adjustment in the US current deficit would hit the eurozone harder than other regions. Since many Asian and Latin American currencies are pegged to the dollar, the brunt of adjustment would fall on the euro, leading to a sudden collapse of European exports to the US. The optimistic view, often heard inside the eurozone itself, is that the trade exposure to the US is relatively small - eurozone exports to the US make up only about 4 per cent of gross domestic product. This suggests the eurozone would get off lightly.

Both views are wrong. The first misjudges the adjustment dynamics, and the second focuses too much on trade as a transmission channel for a global adjustment shock. Trade is still an important channel for Asia, but much less so for Europe, where financial transmission channels play a more important role. A big effort to disentangle these channels was recently undertaken by two academics, Philip Lane from Trinity College in Dublin and Gian Maria Milesi-Ferretti from the International Monetary Fund*. They looked at three scenarios: a soft landing scenario, a disruptive scenario and one in which the world's policymakers would do all the right things at the right time - the triumph-of-hope-over-experience scenario. Scenarios one and three are both benign and improbable. It is scenario two we should worry about.

On their calculations, a sudden adjustment in the US current account, accompanied by an unexpected 20 per cent dollar depreciation, would lead to a deterioration in the net asset position of European countries by 1.5-3 per cent of GDP, partially offset by gains by banks with short dollar positions. The countries worst affected would be the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, the UK and Switzerland. Interestingly none of these countries, save for the Netherlands, is a eurozone member.

The effects of a sudden adjustment shock are not only significant, but also extremely uneven. A sharp fall in the dollar would probably end the eurozone's current mini-boom. It would most certainly hit Asia. The idea that the Asian consumer would miraculously come to the rescue of the world economy is wishful thinking. A sudden adjustment of global imbalances is a serious asymmetric shock for the world economy. But it is far from clear that the eurozone is more exposed than others.

On the contrary, it appears that eurozone membership may protect some countries from the worst. It is conceivable that global investors may pull out of non-eurozone countries with high current account deficits. We witnessed a taste of sudden risk-aversion in Turkey and Hungary earlier this year.

So what should policymakers do? Two years ago in the last period of dollar weakness, central bank intervention put a floor under the dollar. But the US economy was strong and interest rates were rising. Now the economy is weakening, along with the interest rate outlook.

What about structural reforms? Even if well implemented, they take time to work through. The best policy response to a global adjustment shock has to be a relaxation in monetary policy and a co-ordinated fiscal stimulus. I am not at all sure this will happen, given the past record. If I am concerned about the eurozone, it is not so much about the event itself but how we react to it.

*Europe and Global Imbalances, draft paper, September 2006



Comment on this Article

---

A Daily Reckoning Investment Alert

Addison Wiggin
The Daily Reckoning

The Daily Reckoning Editor's Note: Due to popular demand we are re-broadcasting the Investment Alert regarding China's attack on the American Economy. This may be an opportunity that you do not want to miss.
Please read below.

Daniel Denning, who predicted the massive profit explosion in the 2003-2004 gold market, begs you to heed this urgent message:

Protect Your Money and Pile up as Much as 794% Profits During... China's Deliberate ECONOMIC ATTACK ON AMERICA!
Beijing just unleashed a deadly three-prong attack that will levy a FINANCIAL FIRESTORM on the American economy. Before it's over, many billions of dollars will vanish into thin air! But these two simple investments can protect you. In fact, not only will they "China-proof" your portfolio... they can give you super- safe-haven profits as high as 794%..

WATCH OUT! China's "UNRESTRICTED" ATTACK on the American Economy Has Already Begun...

Find out about these two simple investments to completely "China-Proof" your wealth AND to rake in safe-haven profits that could go as high as 794%...

Dear Friend,

I hope you're ready. Because whether you realize it or not, Beijing's military government has just declared a hidden WAR on the American way of life!

Yep, that's right. Over the next five minutes, you'll read about something so shocking, The Vancouver Sun calls it, "The big sword overhanging the U.S. economy." The Irish Independent says it could "rip the heart out of manufacturing growth in Europe and America." And the New York Times says this savage cycle of financial malice could actually destroy "the very stability of the global economy."

"The Chinese make the televisions. The Americans watch them."
Popular Chinese saying

I'm talking, of course, about China's jaw-dropping economic growth over the last several years running. History has never seen a country grow this fast. I'm sure you already know there will be consequences.

Big ones.

Even the Asia Times is predicting a crisis "more devastating to the U.S. economy than any nuclear strike." But what I doubt you know -- yet -- is just how deep and deliberate this financial havoc will be.

Over the next five minutes, you'll see how this threat from the East was actually designed to DESTROY the U.S. economic advantage. Intentionally. What follows is an imminent DISASTER for the bond market... DEVASTATION for the already-weak U.S. dollar... and absolute ANNIHLATION of most of the popular stocks on Wall Street! If you're not careful, you stand to lose everything. Watch as it happens. Interest rates are virtually guaranteed to skyrocket... America's real estate bubble will POP like a balloon at a porcupine party... and the voracious financial backdraft that follows will literally suck the life out of America's so-called "recovery"...

I don't paint a pretty picture. But that's only the bad news. The good news is you can protect yourself! Two Powerful Moves That Can Protect Your Money

I'm about to show you a powerful strategy that cannot only protect you... but it can make you an incredible 794% profit. It's easy to do.

Of course nothing is a sure thing but this is pretty close. Just talk to any broker. Or log onto your favorite trading website on the Internet. This strategy I'll reveal only takes about five minutes to execute. And you can get started with very little capital.

Because part of the strategy is a leveraged investment, you only risk what you put in. But you stand to make many, many times that in financial "safe-haven" profits. This strategy I'll reveal starts with two simple investment opportunities. Do just one, and I predict you'll make as much as 350% to 400% Do the other, and you stand to make up to an additional eight times your money. And combined, the whole package gives you a fortress in which you can safely park some of your wealth.

Because I know already what this strategy is, I also know it's something you won't find anywhere else on the market today. And I'll reveal it to you in just a second. But first... How to Survive the Most Serious Financial Threat Since 1929 What follows is not a trend you can shrug off. It's not a "recoverable blip" in the market. Washington has no control over this. New York and Chicago brokers have no control over this. And Europe has no control over this either.

"Many economists believe that the Chinese currency is undervalued by as much as 40%, giving the country an unfair advantage in being able to underprice competitors in international markets."
The Washington Times ,Dec. 10, 2003

Which is why what I'm about to describe will turn out to be the most dramatic and serious financial threat America has faced since 1929! I'm so worried about it, I've put together a FREE resource for investors.

I will e-mail it to you, no charge. It's called " Total Profit Protection From the Coming China Crisis!" And again, it's FREE. You'll find out exactly how - step by step - you can pile up as much as 794% gains while you fortify your wealth against the winds of crisis ahead. I've promised you that much already. But then I'll also e-mail you three more FREE reports that show you...

° How to make up to 455% on a buy-and-hold mutual fund!

° A dozen ways to make Asia gains without buying Chinese stocks!

° How to lock in up to 953% profits on the next leg of the gold-market boom!

° And how to sock away as much as 10 times your money on what I firmly predict will be a breathtaking 20-year boom in commodities!

It's all FREE, as part of the STRATEGIC PROFITS PROTECTION LIBRARY I've put together just for you. But I'm getting ahead of myself. First, let's dig into the sordid details of the crisis ahead...

"Beijing's Secret War on America" How China Expects To Win "The first rule of unrestricted warfare is that there are no rules, with nothing forbidden."
- Col. Qiao Liang & Col. Wang Xiangsui China's People's Liberation Army, and co-authors of Unrestricted Warfare

Has there ever been a rising power, in the pages of history, that has picked up economic momentum... packed on military might... and then decided not to flex it's muscles?

The answer, as you well know, is that there hasn't. Power is power. The nations that have it chomp at the bit to use it. Which is exactly what China is doing now. But you don't have to take my word for it. Roger W. Robinson Jr -- head of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission -- gave this testimony to the U.S. House of Representatives back in October 2003. He laid out the Chinese blueprint for undermining the U.S. economy:

° First, they devalue their currency by as much as 40%

° Then they issue tariffs on foreign goods

° They cut foreign firms off from local marketing channels

° They chaperone and handpick partners for international joint ventures

° They give preferential loans to their own factories from state banks

° Chinese companies get privileged listing on the Chinese stock market

° Chinese companies get special tax breaks not available to foreigners

This assault on the American economy is already well under way. Whether they'll succeed or not we don't yet know. But for a long time to come, you'll need to protect yourself and your money. But you can also profit -- by as much as 794% or more. Click the "Subscribe Now" button below to send for your FREE set of the STRATEGIC PROFITS PROTECTION LIBRARY.

Look, by now you might be wondering if I've got some sort of personal vendetta against China. No! That's not the case at all. I've got nothing against China or the Chinese. In fact, I'm making plans right now to go there and all around the rest of Asia do research on the massive investment opportunities already under way. China has an unbelievable history. They have lots of culture. Three thousand years ago, they were building palaces... while my ancestors were making mud patties on the English moors. So no, I'm under no delusions about the greatness China is capable of. But that doesn't change the rest of the facts I'm about to show you. When I show them to you, I'm confident you'll come to the same conclusions I have. You'll see instantly that what's quietly unraveling the fabric of the American economy... the exploding deficits, the massive trade gap, the joblessness, and even some secret aspects of the war on terrorism... is not only no accident, but it can all be traced back to, shockingly enough, Beijing. Here's the "real" truth: Without a doubt, China's military government has actually masterminded adeliberate assault on the American way of life.

I'm going to show you how they've done it. It's a war. Not with tanks or missiles. Not with jets, bullets, or guns. Or hand grenades. The "combatants" in this battle wear business suits. They hit you with handshakes, contracts, and smiles. But don't be fooled. This is war without rules. In the words of one of their own military officers, "nothing is forbidden."

Without drawing a drop of blood, Beijing fully expects to win... and here's how they plan to do it: Guerilla Economics! Step back for a second. And remember... When we talk about modern China, we're not talking about a democracy. We're talking about a military dictatorship.

Even now, in 2004. This is the way they do business. I'm calling it "guerilla economics." The goal is to destroy the competition. And at the same time... create a guaranteed money-making environment for China's own entrepreneurs.

Is it working.

For China, absolutely... Ding Lei is 32 years old. He's also the richest man in China. His NetEase.com outfit didn't crank out a nickel of profit until 2003. But his stock is up 50-fold thanks to ecstatic American investors, and Ding is now personally worth $900 million! Chen Tianqiao is just 30. In 1999, he ran a cartoon Web site. Now he runs Shanda Networking, an online gaming business out of Shanghai. New York venture capitalists helped him get started. Now he's personally worth $480 million. Larry Rong's dad is Rong Yiren, founder of CITIC. CITIC is the biggest company in China and a magnet for U.S. investment dollars. Larry is personally worth $850 million. His family is worth closer to $2 billion.

The military government of China has their hands deep in the pie too.

Take China's biggest TV and cell phone maker, TCL Corp. It's state owned. Last year they exported 3.83 million TVs. They expect to ship 5 million more!

"All Beijing has to do is to mention the possibility of a sell order going down the wires. It would devastate the U.S. economy more than any nuclear strike."
Asia Times, Jan. 23, 2004

The top 100 richest people in China now have an average wealth of $230 million. Another 10,000 or so more Chinese are worth at least $10 million so far. And that's up from zero millionaires in China as recently as 1979.

Of course, most of the companies listed on the Shanghai exchange are still state-owned. The top 14 Chinese car-makers are state owned -- with bloated bureaucratic budgets. But that doesn't matter -- in 2003, U.S. investors poured millions and millions of dollars into China Brilliance Automotive shares -- and it's stock shot up 232%!

For all appearances, it looks like China has cracked the code of Western capitalism. Three years ago, for instance, China didn't manufacture a single laptop. NOW they make 40% of all laptops sold worldwide! They're also ranked as the world's biggest maker of computer hardware... consumer electronics... even steel (remember when that used to be Pittsburgh?).

China cranks out 38% of the world's cell phones. And half of the world's shoes. Plus most of the wooden furniture, video games, and televisions in the United States. But guess what happens when you take a look at the other side of the coin...

Is This the End of the American Miracle? We're feeling the China boom right here at home, too. But somehow it's not the same...

Here in the United States, American Metal Ware had made nearly 2.5 million pots in their Wisconsin factory... before they had to shut it down.

Chinese manufactures stole the design and cranked out copies at half the price.

To compete, Metal Ware had to move over to China.

Levi's were the all-American brand. They once had 63 U.S. plants. They just closed the last two and fired all the workers. Levi's will be made in China now.

Walt Disney was an all-American success story. But Disney's "Winnie the Pooh" dolls are made not here, but in the same place as Dr. Scholl's sandals and Foster Grant Sunglasses -- China.

How about Wilson tennis balls or Black & Decker drills? Silk flowers, sneakers, wood furniture, and hand-held "Game Boy" video games? All sold here, but all manufactured in... China.

A mind-blowing 80% of all the toys, bikes, and Christmas tree ornaments sold in the Unites States came from China. Along with 90% of the sporting goods and 95% of the shoes. Motorola spent over $1 billion moving operations from the US to China.

Thousands lost their jobs -- replaced by 10,000 Chinese workers in four new plants on the coast of the Yellow Sea. Look, there's nothing wrong with making money. And you can't fault anybody for just doing business and looking out for their own best interests. But at what cost? And whose expense?

A New Hampshire radio show made a public dare: "Take $400 an hour at Wal-Mart. Buy as many 'Made In America' goods as you can." Two listeners took the challenge. An hour later, they hit the checkout line with a basketful of 40 items. Guess how many actually were made in America? Just 10. It's no wonder. Sam Walton, Wal-Mart's founder, wrote an autobiography called "Made In America." But today, Wal-Mart alone imports a mind-blowing $12 billion of goods from China every year... That's more than China's trade with either Russia or the United Kingdom!

How did this happen? Beijing's Ugly SECRET #1: "Crush the Competition With Slave Labor!" Chinese workers average 61˘ an hour. US factory workers average $16 an hour. In other words, US workers make more in two weeks than most Chinese laborers make in a whole year! Nobody outside of China can compete with that. "We are beholden to the Chinese by our Treasuries. That worries me."

Carla Hills, Former U.S. trade representative China gets an endless supply of labor for just pennies. And there's a waiting list nearly 200 million people long to take over those jobs when the current workers drop from exhaustion (they work 12 hour days, 7 days a week). Moral or not, Beijing's slave-labor strategy does exactly what they hoped it would... It's sucked the life out of America's more costly industrial complex! Just check out the numbers: Over 450 U.S. companies are based in China. That's more than 10 times the number of U.S. companies there in 1990.

They've got combined annual sales of $23 billion. And more than 250,000 employees. In fact, U.S. investment in China is now a record $33 billion a year!

Meanwhile...

Nearly 2,250 American manufacturing jobs here in the Unites States have disappeared... every single day!

That's a not something new... it's been the trend day in and day out, over and over again... for 40 months straight!

What are the Chinese up to? They learned this trick from the Americans. Especially mega-rich superstars like Andrew Carnegie, John Rockefeller, and J. Pierpont Morgan. It's the genius strategy of any savvy monopoly maker: First, move in and CRUSH the competition with cutthroat pricing. Then... take away his business and leave him high and dry!

Thanks to slave labor, Chinese companies can crush U.S. competition with lots of cheap goods that USED to be made right here in America. In exchange, they not only get our purchases... they get our companies, when they're forced to pack up and move over to China so they can take advantage of the same cheap labor strategy. What's more, China also gets to send a whole new kind of export to America... Chinese STOCKS! And in return for that, they get billions more in investment capital. Straight from the trading accounts of private U.S. investors. Imagine. We're literally paying Beijing to "rip the heart" out of the U.S. heartland!

But it gets even better. Because that's only the FIRST dirty strategy engineered and overseen by Beijing. Here's the second... Beijing's Dirty SECRET #2:"Bait the Trap With Treasury Notes!" Another fallout from Beijing's supercheap labor strategy is America's massive trade deficit with China. It just keeps exploding.

As you can see in this chart, it's already passed a gap of over $120 billion. That means we actually BUY $120 billion more in goods from China than we manage to SELL to them. A household can't get rich... or stay rich... if it spends more than it takes in. Neither can a nation. Yet, no matter what we try to do to stop the gap from growing... weaken our dollars, create trade tariffs, perfect production and slash costs... America just can't keep up.

The trade deficit is now exploding $1.5 billion per day. Putting that in perspective... that means we spend an additional $1 million on Chinese products... every single passing minute! But that's not the worst part. Guess what China is doing with all that money?

° First, the money we send China gets reinvested in the PLA, China's massive military. (New reports say China has just built low-profile military bases on several disputed reefs in the Philippines!).

° Second, it goes back into funding more huge Chinese factories. With 200 million Chinese looking for jobs, China needs to build places for them to work! It also needs to buy HUGE stockpiles of raw resources to keep the factories running. ° Third, and most dangerous of all, the Chinese government uses a lot of their extra exporting income... to pile up an absolutely SICK number of U.S. Treasury bonds! That's right. China spends nearly $7.8 million an hour... or $187 million a day... snapping up US Treasuries and dollars.

The movers and shakers in China now hold the U.S. hostage to over $120 billion in Treasuries!

Now ask yourself: If it's obvious that U.S. interest rates have nowhere to go but up... if it's obvious the U.S. dollar has nowhere to go but down... and if it's obvious that Washington right now is literally spending America into oblivion...

Why would the Chinese government sock so much faith in U.S. treasuries?

Simple. It's not a vote in America's future at all. Instead, it's Beijing's way of backing America into a corner!

Think about it. The Feb. 5, 2004 Wall Street Journal has already reported that other Asian countries -- who altogether with China and Japan included -- hold an eye-popping $1.9 TRILLIONin U.S. foreign reserves -- are starting to dump U.S. debt. Korea and Thailand dumping is one thing. But when a massive holder like China stops buying U.S. debt and starts dumping, it's a much, MUCH bigger deal.

Pressure on U.S. bond yields will skyrocket. Other foreign investors will run from dollar-priced securities in a panic. Long interest-rates will jump. And U.S. consumers, businesses, and investors will get crushed in the jaws of a very powerful "Treasury Trap"!

It won't take more than a whisper - "sell." And that's your signal. I promised earlier to show you how to protect yourself from exactly this kind of disaster. And that's precisely what you'll discover in your FREE e-mail report "Total Profit Protection From the Coming China Crisis! " But before we dig into all that, let me share with you just one more piece of this sinister puzzle...

Beijing's Dangerous Strategy #3:"Lock the U.S. Dollar in a Death Struggle" To finance all its foreign debt, the United States has to spend a breathtaking $55 million per hour... or $1.3 billion per day... just to keep enough liquidity in the system to cover overseas interest-payment obligations.

Washington treats the Federal Reserve like a money machine: Walk up, punch the buttons on the printing press, and out comes the cash! Why? Because the more dollars there are, the less they're worth. And the less they're worth, the easier it is to cover those interest obligations without wincing. "America's growing reliance on high quality, low-price Chinese imports eventually might undermine the U.S. defense industrial base." US-China Security Review Commission Report

Trouble is, no government -- not even one as large as America's -- can keep up with that kind of program. Especially when you're overextended on your own personal spending budget by nearly half a trillion (with a "t") dollars! So just by holding U.S. Treasures, Beijing already has us trapped. But they haven't stopped there. China has ALSO hoarded piles and piles of ever-cheaper U.S .dollars. They've now got more than $310 billion in U.S .dollar reserves! Again, you have to ask: If U.S. dollars are backed by an overextended federal government... and if other major governments worldwide are already talking about switching reserves to gold and euros... if America's money isn't worth the paper it's printed on...

Why would China want to keep so much of their newfound wealth in the U.S. dollar, a currency that's already down more than 50% since October 2000? Again, it's simple. Since 1995, the Chinese currency -- the yuan -- has been pegged to the dollar at the weak exchange rate of 8.28 to the dollar. No matter how low the dollar goes, the yuan goes with it. So no matter how low the dollar goes... it's virtually impossible to close any currency-related trading gap we've got with China! It's like seeing how long two enemies can hold their breath under water. Whoever can withstand having a dirt-cheap currency the longest wins. But so far, judging just by the trading deficit, it looks like China is winning. And the U.S. is running out of options.

Could a stronger dollar shake loose the yuan's death grip? Not at all. This is how the sinister yuan strategy works. If the dollar rises, the yuan rises in lock step. If the dollar drops, so does the yuan. China's trading advantage never disappears... but we risk popping our own real estate bubble, slashing trade with Europe, and knocking the legs out from under stocks and bonds.

Meanwhile, China still has $310 billion in dollar reserves... which it can trade for euros or gold at any time... and use to throw the dollar into a final death spiral. When Beijing starts dumping, what follows could be worse for dollars than anything since Nixon broke with Bretton Woods in the 1970s.

Your FREE copy of "Total Profit Protection From the Coming China Crisis!" will also show you to protect yourself against this inevitable dollar collapse... with a strategies that can turnsevery $1,000 invested into as much as $78,400 or more. But first... Still wondering how or why all of this could have been a planned economic attack... rather than just an accident of free-market capitalism? Still think all this is a coincidence?

That's ok. But before you make up your mind to the contrary, you'd better read this... click here to continue . http://www.agora-inc.com/reports/DRI/china324/

Comment from a Signs Forum Reader: Interesting stuff about the China angle. Then again there's a veritable market on the "China's the enemy and is trying to destroy America" schtick. You got hundreds of websites dedicated to the topic, I'm sure Newsmax.com has a whole library of books on it.

That isn't to say China isn't hostile or planning to wage war with the US. Obviously that is the case, but at this point it seems to be just using their strengths against America's weaknesses (e.g. sunburn cruise missiles, lasers blinding satellites, economic warfare, etc.). Keep in mind the US has been messing with China for a very long time and is now literally surrounding it with military bases.

This does smell like propaganda, as in, we'll have someone else to blame when the economy crashes and people need a scapegoat, why not China with all their outsourced American jobs? Great way to kick off that war they've been talking about for the past decade.

This isn't new, the site that I got the above article from also pitches the "commies never went away but are still in power in Russia and trying to destroy America" schtick. The accuse "Leninist Doctrine" of being responsible for the drug epidemic in the US and the perestroika thing was a ruse to deceive the west.

While it's not outside the realm of possibility it is still darn annoying that you got people still willing to blame everyone else, especially their enemies, for America's problems. As if the US doesn't bear a great share of blame for the world drug problem or the world financial/economic crisis. No it's ALL the "commie's" fault. Geez, get real.

An interesting thing did happen when I tried to put in that above link into firefox and forgot to replace the (dot) with a "." it sent me to this page - http://www(dot)rense.com/general72/vlob.htm

Rather bizarre if you ask me.

Comment on this Article

---

---

Remember, we need your help to collect information on what is going on in your part of the world!
Send your article suggestions to: sott(at)signs-of-the-times.org