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Editorial: Top Ten Myths about Iraq 2006
Juan Cole
December 26, 2006
1. Myth number one is that the United States "can still win" in Iraq. Of course, the truth of this statement, frequently still made by William Kristol and other Neoconservatives, depends on what "winning" means. But if it means the establishment of a stable, pro-American, anti-Iranian government with an effective and even-handed army and police force in the near or even medium term, then the assertion is frankly ridiculous. The Iraqi "government" is barely functioning. The parliament was not able to meet in December because it could not attain a quorum. Many key Iraqi politicians live most of the time in London, and much of parliament is frequently abroad. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki does not control large swathes of the country, and could give few orders that had any chance of being obeyed. The US military cannot shore up this government, even with an extra division, because the government is divided against itself. Most of the major parties trying to craft legislation are also linked to militias on the streets who are killing one another. It is over with. Iraq is in for years of heavy political violence of a sort that no foreign military force can hope to stop.
The United States cannot "win" in the sense defined above. It cannot. And the blindly arrogant assumption that it can win is calculated to get more tens of thousands of Iraqis killed and more thousands of American soldiers and Marines badly wounded or killed. Moreover, since Iraq is coming apart at the seams under the impact of our presence there, there is a real danger that we will radically destabilize it and the whole oil-producing Gulf if we try to stay longer.
2. "US military sweeps of neighborhoods can drive the guerrillas out." The US put an extra 15,000 men into Baghdad this past summer, aiming to crush the guerrillas and stop the violence in the capital, and the number of attacks actually increased. This result comes about in part because the guerrillas are not outsiders who come in and then are forced out. The Sunni Arabs of Ghazaliya and Dora districts in the capital are the "insurgents." The US military cannot defeat the Sunni Arab guerrilla movement or "insurgency" with less than 500,000 troops, based on what we have seen in the Balkans and other such conflict situations. The US destroyed Falluja, and even it and other cities of al-Anbar province are not now safe! The US military leaders on the ground have spoken of the desirability of just withdrawing from al-Anbar to Baghdad and giving up on it. In 2003, 14 percent of Sunni Arabs thought it legitimate to attack US personnel and facilities. In August, 2006, over 70 percent did. How long before it is 100%? Winning guerrilla wars requires two victories, a military victory over the guerrillas and a winning of the hearts and minds of the general public, thus denying the guerrillas support. The US has not and is unlikely to be able to repress the guerrillas, and it is losing hearts and minds at an increasing and alarming rate. They hate us, folks. They don't want us there.
3. The United States is best off throwing all its support behind the Iraqi Shiites. This is the position adopted fairly consistently by Marc Reuel Gerecht. Gerecht is an informed and acute observer whose views I respect even when I disagree with them. But Washington policy-makers should read Daniel Goleman's work on social intelligence. Goleman points out that a good manager of a team in a corporation sets up a win/win framework for every member of the team. If you set it up on a win/lose basis, so that some are actively punished and others "triumph," you are asking for trouble. Conflict is natural. How you manage conflict is what matters. If you listen to employees' grievances and try to figure out how they can be resolved in such a way that everyone benefits, then you are a good manager.
Gerecht, it seems to me, sets up a win/lose model in Iraq. The Shiites and Kurds win it all, and the Sunni Arabs get screwed over. Practically speaking, the Bush policy has been Gerechtian, which in my view has caused all the problems. We shouldn't have thought of our goal as installing the Shiites in power. Of course, Bush hoped that those so installed would be "secular," and that is what Wolfowitz and Chalabi had promised him. Gerecht came up with the ex post facto justification that even the religious Shiites are moving toward democracy via Sistani. But democracy cannot be about one sectarian identity prevailing over, and marginalizing others.
The Sunni Arabs have demonstrated conclusively that they can act effectively as spoilers in the new Iraq. If they aren't happy, no one is going to be. The US must negotiate with the guerrilla leaders and find a win/win framework for them to come in from the cold and work alongside the Kurds and the religious Shiites. About this, US Ambassador in Baghdad Zalmay Khalilzad has been absolutely right.
4. "Iraq is not in a civil war," as Jurassic conservative Fox commentator Bill O'Reilly insists. There is a well-established social science definition of civil war put forward by Professor J. David Singer and his colleagues: "Sustained military combat, primarily internal, resulting in at least 1,000 battle-deaths per year, pitting central government forces against an insurgent force capable of effective resistance, determined by the latter's ability to inflict upon the government forces at least 5 percent of the fatalities that the insurgents sustain." (Errol A. Henderson and J. David Singer, "Civil War in the Post-Colonial World, 1946-92," Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 37, No. 3, May 2000.)" See my article on this in Salon.com. By Singer's definition, Iraq has been in civil war since the Iraqi government was reestablished in summer of 2004. When I have been around political scientists, as at the ISA conference, I have found that scholars in that field tend to accept Singer's definition.
5. "The second Lancet study showing 600,000 excess deaths from political and criminal violence since the US invasion is somehow flawed." Les Roberts replies here to many of the objections that were raised. See also the transcript of the Kucinich-Paul Congressional hearings on the subject. Many critics refer to the numbers of dead reported in the press as counter-arguments to Roberts et al. But "passive reporting" such as news articles never captures more than a fraction of the casualties in any war. I see deaths reported in the Arabic press all the time that never show up in the English language wire services. And, a lot of towns in Iraq don't have local newspapers and many local deaths are not reported in the national newspapers.
6. "Most deaths in Iraq are from bombings." The Lancet study found that the majority of violent deaths are from being shot.
7. "Baghdad and environs are especially violent but the death rate is lower in the rest of the country." The Lancet survey found that levels of violence in the rest of the country are similar to that in Baghdad (remember that the authors included criminal activities such as gang and smuggler turf wars in their statistics). The Shiite south is spared much Sunni-Shiite communal fighting, but criminal gangs, tribal feuds, and militias fight one another over oil and antiquities smuggling, and a lot of people are getting shot down there, too.
8. "Iraq is the central front in the war on terror." From the beginning of history until 2003 there had never been a suicide bombing in Iraq. There was no al-Qaeda in Baath-ruled Iraq. When Baath intelligence heard that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi might have entered Iraq, they grew alarmed at such an "al-Qaeda" presence and put out an APB on him! Zarqawi's so-called "al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia" was never "central" in Iraq and was never responsible for more than a fraction of the violent attacks. This assertion is supported by the outcome of a US-Jordanian operation that killed Zarqawi this year. His death had no impact whatsoever on the level of violence. There are probably only about 1,000 foreign fighters even in Iraq, and most of them are first-time volunteers, not old-time terrorists. The 50 major guerrilla cells in Sunni Arab Iraq are mostly made up of Iraqis, and are mainly: 1) Baathist or neo-Baathist, 2) Sunni revivalist or Salafi, 3) tribally-based, or 4) based in city quarters. Al-Qaeda is mainly a boogey man, invoked in Iraq on all sides, but possessing little real power or presence there. This is not to deny that radical Sunni Arab volunteers come to Iraq to blow things (and often themselves) up. They just are not more than an auxiliary to the big movements, which are Iraqi.
9. "The Sunni Arab guerrillas in places like Ramadi will follow the US home to the American mainland and commit terrorism if we leave Iraq." This assertion is just a variation on the invalid domino theory. People in Ramadi only have one beef with the United States. Its troops are going through their wives' underwear in the course of house searches every day. They don't want the US troops in their town or their homes, dictating to them that they must live under a government of Shiite clerics and Kurdish warlords (as they think of them). If the US withdrew and let the Iraqis work out a way to live with one another, people in Ramadi will be happy. They are not going to start taking flight lessons and trying to get visas to the US. This argument about following us, if it were true, would have prevented us from ever withdrawing from anyplace once we entered a war there. We'd be forever stuck in the Philippines for fear that Filipino terrorists would follow us back home. Or Korea (we moved 15,000 US troops out of South Korea not so long ago. Was that unwise? Are the thereby liberated Koreans now gunning for us?) Or how about the Dominican Republic? Haiti? Grenada? France? The argument is a crock.
10. "Setting a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq is a bad idea." Bush and others in his administration have argued that setting such a timetable would give a significant military advantage to the guerrillas fighting US forces and opposed to the new government. That assertion makes sense only if there were a prospect that the US could militarily crush the Sunni Arabs. There is no such prospect. The guerrilla war is hotter now than at any time since the US invasion. It is more widely supported by more Sunni Arabs than ever before. It is producing more violent attacks than ever before. Since we cannot defeat them short of genocide, we have to negotiate with them. And their first and most urgent demand is that the US set a timetable for withdrawal before they will consider coming into the new political system. That is, we should set a timetable in order to turn the Sunni guerrillas from combatants to a political negotiating partner. Even Sunni politicians cooperating with the US make this demand. They are disappointed with the lack of movement on the issue. How long do they remain willing to cooperate? In addition, 131 Iraqi members of parliament signed a demand that the US set a timetable for withdrawal. (138 would be a simple majority.) It is a a major demand of the Sadr Movement. In fact, the 32 Sadrist MPs withdrew from the ruling United Iraqi Alliance coalition temporarily over this issue.
In my view, Shiite leaders such as Abdul Aziz al-Hakim are repeatedly declining to negotiate in good faith with the Sunni Arabs or to take their views seriously. Al-Hakim knows that if the Sunnis give him any trouble, he can sic the Marines on them. The US presence is making it harder for Iraqi to compromise with Iraqi, which is counterproductive.
Think Progress points out that in 1999, Governor George W. Bush criticized then President Clinton for declining to set a withdrawal timetable for Kosovo, saying "Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the president to explain to us what the exit strategy is."
Comment on this Editorial
Editorial: A Look Back and Ahead In An Age of Neocon Rule
by Stephen Lendman
27 December 2006
Borrowing the opening line from Dickens' Tale of Two Cities - "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...." He referred to the French Revolution promising "Liberte, egalite and fraternite" that began in 1789, inspired by ours from 1775 - 1783. It ended a 1000 years of monarchal rule in France benefitting those of privilege and established the nation as a republic the way ours did for us here a few years earlier.
That was the good news. The bad was the wrong people came to power. They were the Jacobins who at first were revolutionary moderates and patriots until they lost control to extremists like Maximilien Robespierre who ushered in a "reign of terror" (The Great Terror sounding a lot like today's "war on terror") characterized by brutal repression against perceived enemies from within the Revolution who didn't get a chance to prove they weren't. In the name of defending it, individual rights were denied and civil liberties suspended. Laws were passed that allowed charging those designated counter-revolutionaries or enemies of the state with undefined crimes against liberty.
It resulted in justice being meted out to thousands for what Orwell called "thoughtcrimes" or for their freely expressed opinions and actions judged hostile to the state under a system of near-vigilante justice by the Paris Revolutionary (kangaroo) Tribunal with no right of appeal. It led to the public spectacle of an inglorious trip to and quick ending from the death penalty method of choice of the times - the guillotine that was barbaric but quick, and a much easier, less painful way to die for its victims than the use of state-inflicted torture-murder in the commonly drawn out lethal injection process used in 37 of the 38 death penalty states and by the federal government making the condemned endure a slow agonizing death unable to cry out while they're being made to suffer during their last moments of life. Instances of this barbarity aren't exceptions. They're the rule, the exception being this time a report or two of what really happens slipped out and made news.
Fast forward to the past year and the previous five under George Bush and ask: sound familiar? French Revolutionary laws during the "reign of terror," like the Law of Suspects, were earlier versions of our Patriot I and II and Military Commission Acts today. The Revolutionary Tribunal, with no chance for justice or right of appeal, was no different than our military courts today, and too many civil ones, in which any US citizen may now be tried anywhere in the world, with no habeas right of appeal or hope for due process and from which those sent there won't fare any better than the French did, doomed to meet their unjust fate - even though much in these laws today is unconstitutional and one day will be reversed by a High Court upholding the law instead of the extremist rogue one now empowered that scorns it.
What May Lie Ahead As the New Year Approaches
At the end of the sixth horrific year under the reign of the Bush modern-day extremist Jacobin-neocons, we can now look ahead, but to what. We have an administration in charge for another two years one longtime analyst characterizes as "a bunch of crooks, incompetents and perverts" with the president's approval rating plunging as low as 28% in some independent polls and a growing number of people in the country demanding his impeachment and removal from office.
It's not likely from the new Democrat-led Congress arriving in January, as their DLC leadership took it off the table and so far only promises more of the same failed policy other than some minor tinkering around the edges to create an illusion of change no different than the deceptive kind of course correction proposed by the Baker "Gang of Ten" Iraq Study Group (ISG) that guarantees none at all. It doesn't leave members of the body politic with much hope for the new year that will likely just deliver more of the same rogue leadership and policy engendering growing public discontent and anger but not at a level so far to scare the those in power enough to want to address it.
The heart of the problem is the unpopular illegal war of aggression in Iraq, the cesspool of corruption and scorn for the law in Washington, and the assault on human rights and civil liberties in the country justified by the so-called "war on terror" now rebranded a "long war" against "Islamofascism" and "radicals and extremists" (who happen to be Muslims.) It's the same failed policy using the kind of deliberately provocative language intended to deceive the public to think a threat great enough exists to justify any state action in the name of national security including waging wars of aggression and all the horrors associated with them at home and abroad.
After the Baker "bob and weave," the now you see a change of course and now you don't, disingenuously suggesting a drawdown and exit strategy, the New York Times on December 16 reports "Military planners and White House budget analysts have been asked to provide President Bush with options for increasing American forces in Iraq by 20,000 or more."
The article goes on to say one option is to boost the force level by up to 50,000 even though any increase greater than 20 - 30,000 would be "prohibitive" - but it won't deter the Pentagon, on administration orders, from extending tours of duty even longer for forces now there and calling up thousands of reservists and greatly extended National Guard units to get into this quagmire even though it's recognized their presence will only make things worse as well as place an unfair burden on those called up, who've served before, and their families.
As of December 27, it's somewhat less clear what Iraq troop strength policy will emerge in January following comments by incoming Democrat chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Joseph Biden, who just stated "I totally oppose this surging of additional American troops into Baghdad. It's contrary to the overwhelming body of informed opinion, both inside and outside the administration." Senator Biden will hold hearings on Iraq on January 9, and at that time things may heat up a bit at least in rhetoric if not in final policy.
Additional heat may be created in January after George Bush admitted for the first time on December 19 that the US isn't winning the war even though two weeks before the November mid-term elections he said emphatically "absolutely, we're winning in Iraq." He wouldn't acknowledge what most every honest observer knows including the Pentagon Joint Chiefs - that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are lost. They can't be won and won't be. No military solution is possible now or any time ahead.
The president is living in a state of denial, obsessed with his messianic mission fed him by the vice-president and hardest of his hard line neocon allies, and it shows in the outlandish solutions he proposes to an insoluble problem - send in more troops (that will only make things worse) and increase the overall size of the military (that guarantees a permanent state of war).
It also clearly sounds a lot like the first official hint from the chief executive that a draft is needed and will come at some unspecified time ahead - likely following another "made in Washington" 9/11 calamity severe enough to get the public to go along with something now thought intolerable. The president's sentiment was echoed on December 21 by administration Veterans Affairs secretary Jim Nicholson who (incredibly) said that "society would benefit" if the US reinstated the military draft. He didn't say for whom. He did go further when asked in a press conference whether it should include women saying: "I think if we bring back the draft, there should be no loopholes for anybody who happens to be drafted." Maybe, to his thinking, it should include pregnant mothers as well and single ones with small children.
Such openness by the VA secretary apparently was too much, too soon, and too clear for the White House that quickly got the Department of Veterans Affairs to issue a separate follow-up statement from Nicholson saying: "Let me be clear, I strongly support the all-volunteer military and do not support returning to a draft." Let the reader choose which message to believe, but, with the nation in a permanent state of war, it looks like the trial balloon and hint of a draft now being floated is the opening round to instituting one at some designated time ahead. That likelihood looms even greater as the Selective Service System announced it's planning a comprehensive test of the military draft machinery, which it hasn't done since 1998 while, at the same time, saying the agency isn't gearing up for a draft. But what else would they say as they make plans to do this on orders from the administration.
It all amounts to an increasing level of insanity from a power-crazed administration as well as sounding much like Benjamin Franklin's wisdom who said "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting different results." In the case of Iraq, doing it with more troops on the ground is even more insane as a greater occupying force there only guarantees a stronger resistance to it presenting more targets to aim at with virtually no chance for a peaceful resolution of the conflict short of a full unconditional withdrawal of all occupying forces, no strings attached, that won't happen. In the case of a future draft, now seeming more likely, it only guarantees this nation plans to stay in a permanent state of war against future enemies to be chosen with those in or to be included in the "axis of evil" heading the target list at some point ahead.
George Bush and others floating these lunatic schemes have no regard for the lives of those affected, and why should they. For now, their aim is to buy time, and as long as they can get away with it, they and their well-connected cronies and corporate friends stand to gain from the price everyone else has to pay - a huge one including the thousands of lives lost each week and the many more thousands of survivors whose lives will never be the same again.
Think what it means as the new year approaches. The nation is at war on two fronts, it's likely more ahead are contemplated by some in the administration, no substantive effort is being made to change course, and the condition at home is a relentless march toward becoming a full-blown national security police state we're already perilously close to. It's because the neocon-dominated Bush administration is reckless in ambition, out-of-control in policy, and the embodiment of a relentless and ruthless "weapon of mass destruction" unleashed on all humanity in its way.
It's underpinned by an extremist ideology based on rule by savage capitalism that's frighteningly close to and borders on the tipping edge of the classic definition of fascism combining corporatism with strong elements of patriotism and nationalism, a claimed messianic Almighty-directed and blessed mission, and characterized by authoritarian rule backed by the iron fist of militarism and 'homeland security" enforcers, illegally spying on everyone, and intolerant of dissent and opposition in an age where the law is what the chief executive says it is and all semblance of checks and balances no longer exist. In a word - despotism, but cloaked in the deceptive rhetoric of a modern democracy falsely claiming to serve the needs of all its people.
It's also an age of extreme greed and corruption infesting government and corporate boardrooms with the gap between rich and poor at levels greater than since the 19th century "Gilded Age" of the "robber barons." It's something economist Paul Krugman calls "entirely unprecedented" under George Bush that "For the first time in our history, so much (of the nation's economic growth has gone) to a small, wealthy minority" while the great majority can't stay even as inflation-adjusted wages fail to keep up with rising prices and poverty is growing in an age of affluence affecting tens of millions in the richest country ever in the world.
The grossness of this disparity was on the online business pages of the New York Times on Christmas Day in a story titled "Wall St. Bonuses" So Much Money, Too Few ($250,000) Ferraris. The article highlights that "The 2006 bonus gold rush has re-energized some luxury markets" like Manhattan real estate that had softened earlier in the year and echoed the lament of a real estate broker about a "dearth of listings for two clients trying to spend $20 million on Manhattan properties" while mentioning some of the Wall Street wealthy already in their luxury nests are buying $5 million apartments for their children and private resort vacation homes to boot.
The same ugly data is there overall worldwide in a newly released study by the Helsinki-based World Institute for Development Economics Research of the UN University that shows the richest 2% of adults in the world own more than half of its wealth compared, on the other end, with the assets of about half the world's population accounting for barely 1% of global wealth - lumps of coal only for them and a "Ba Humbug" dismissal for their plight by those with everything wanting still more.
The Cost to a Society Based on Predatory Capitalism and Out-of-Control Greed, Corruption and Militarism
The societal breakdown in the US is a national disgrace and affects many millions. A sampling of some of it is listed below:
-- 47 million Americans can't afford basic health insurance.
-- Over 80 million in total have no health coverage during some portion of each year and most of them are employed.
-- The Bush administration just proposed sweeping cuts in payments to pharmacies to reduce the Medicaid benefits 50 million poor in the country rely on, can't afford to make up the difference for on their own, and may have to forego medications they vitally need if pharmacies won't fill prescriptions at lower prices.
-- The US ranks 41st in infant mortality, and the World Health Organization (WHO) ranks the country 37th in the world in "overall health performance" and 54th in the fairness of health care despite spending at a current level overall of around $2 trillion a year or about double the amount per capita of the OECD countries that deliver superior health care overall to their citizens as a national priority.
-- Well over 12 millions Americans struggle daily to feed themselves, and many thousands across the country can't afford housing and are forced to sleep on the streets including in winter cold.
-- A just released December 14 US Conference of Mayors report said these conditions continue to worsen based on a survey of 23 cities showing 7% more requests for food aid in 2006 following a 12% jump in 2005 during a period of economic growth.
-- The same report showed requests for shelter rose 9% in 2006 with requests from families with children rising 5%.
-- Public education is deliberately being eroded with illiteracy in basic reading, math and computer skills shamefully high and rising.
-- The US prison population is the highest in the world at 2.2 million and increasing by 1000 a week, half of those in it are black, and half of the total prison population is there for non-violent offenses half of which are drug-related. The US prison system is a shameful Gulag and an affront to humanity. The appalling conviction and sentencing of first-time drug offender Weldon Angelos is but one of countless examples. He was convicted of three sales of marijuana in 2004 while in possession of a gun unrelated to the sale. Under the insane federal mandatory sentencing laws, he was sentenced to five years for the first offense and 25 years each for the other two totaling 55 years in federal prison or a likely life sentence if he's forced to serve it all because he possessed and sold a few "joints" of a substance less harmful than legal cigarettes that kill millions yearly while it's not known marijuana ever killed anyone using it. Only in America.
-- The true state of things overall is suppressed by the dominant corporate-controlled media (including the NPR and PBS parts of it) functioning as a national thought-control police controlling all mass communication and depriving the public of any real information vital to a healthy democracy and their welfare.
-- Racial segregation is as great as in the 1960s, and the national sport almost is demonizing Muslims as "terrorists, radicals, extremists and Islamofascists" and impoverished "people the color of the earth" Mexicans and Latin Americans as "illegal immigrant invaders polluting" our white western European society and culture, mindless that they only come el norte in desperate search of work because of the devastating effects of NAFTA on their lives that destroyed their ability to support their families.
Data from the Oakland Institute think tank specializing in social, economic and environmental issues shows that heavily subsidized US corn exports to Mexico have tripled since NAFTA came into force forcing two million Mexican corn farmers out of business, something that was predicted in advance but allowed to happen anyway. It also led to suicides but at a rate nowhere near the level globalized trade US-style had on farmers in India where as many as 100,000 of them have taken their own lives because "New World Order" indebtedness caused them to lose their farms and then everything else.
-- Childhood poverty in the US ranks 22nd and next to last among developed nations when there should be virtually none tolerated in the richest country in the world or toleration of any of the other listed abuses.
-- An alarming number of high-paying and other jobs have been exported abroad in a process that's gone on for decades but picked up in momentum since the 1980s and especially in recent years. Mckinsey Global Institute estimates the volume will grow 30 - 40% a year for the next five years. Forrester Research estimates 3.3 million white-collar jobs will be lost by 2015 with most affected areas in financial services and information technology, and University of California researchers estimate that "up to 14 million American jobs are at risk to outsourcing."
It adds up to a nation in decline, losing its industrial base and becoming primarily a service-oriented economy mainly offering low-skill, low-pay jobs with the better, higher-paying ones growing scarcer, making a college degree in areas outside of critical skills almost worthless. Exporting jobs to low-wage countries is a boon for corporate bottom lines in an age of "globalized free trade" never characterized as fair for the harm it does to millions of wage earners at home or in the developing countries on the receiving end being exploited by capital that sucks out their wealth and impoverishes their people, many of whom work for near-slave-rate wages in a modern era of serfdom in countries around the world in Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe and Latin and Central America.
-- Worker outrage around the world in protest is growing in response to these abuses (unreported in the US) because most governments are doing little or nothing to ameliorate them. It showed up on November 22 in South Korea when over 200,000 workers belonging to the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) staged a general strike protesting in 17 cities against the bilateral US-Korea Free Trade Agreement currently being negotiated that will do to their members and farmers what NAFTA did to Mexicans and India's agricultural trade policies did to their small farmers. It continued on the streets in the days following and spilled over to the Big Sky Ski Resort in Big Sky, Montana where negotiations are being held in seclusion but are still unable to escape the daily protests held against them there.
-- It happened as well in Cebu City, Philippines where President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (closely allied to the failed Bush agenda and elected through fraud) had to cancel two Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) meetings in December attended by 19 countries including the US and Canada. It was an abrupt ending to the meeting held to ratify trade and security agreements because of the mass protests by workers, farmers and others against their harmful effects forcing thousands in the country to leave daily to go abroad for work paying enough to support their families at home.
-- Workers almost everywhere have been harmed, including in the US, as union clout and worker rights here have declined in an age where the social contract government once had with its working people has been dismantled with less than 13% of the work force (the lowest in the industrialized world) unionized today compared to one-third of it in 1958. In an age of modern-day "robber barons," the middle class bedrock of a democratic state is slowly disappearing as the nation moves closer to becoming a banana republic at a time when 51 of the world's largest economies are corporate giants, most of them US-based.
It all goes on with no redress or sign of change in an age of out-of-control militarism and outlandish budgets supporting it that began ratcheting up under Ronald Reagan, along with big budget deficits to pay for it, and have gone wild under George Bush. The White House just approved a fiscal year 2008 near $470 billion Pentagon budget on top of an additional $100+ billion off-the-books amount minimum more that will boost this year's war budget for Iraq and Afghanistan to a yearly record of about $170 billion. It also needs tens of billions annually for "Homeland Security" and tens of billions more for the "spy agencies" totaling numbers in the range of well over $700 billion a year and rising - while social spending continues to be slashed to pay for it all in a heartless society scorning its people and their essential needs as long as the interests of capital are served along with the militarists in it profiting from its blood money.
Since WW II, when the US emerged as the only dominant nation left standing, Washington, instead of disarming and fostering peace, embarked on a now long-running program of militarization to maintain the country's political, economic and military preeminence over all others. It takes a lot of military spending to do it, that could have been used far more productively investing in human capital (like health and education) and physical capital (like essential infrastructure) as well as promoting non-military related business and industry that over time pay back far greater dividends than the short-term gains from building weapons and having large standing armies, navies and air forces that only exist to kill and destroy.
Productive spending also pays off in creating a society free from a dominant military culture like now exists out-of-control and hard to contain in the Pentagon that scorns civil liberties and democratic principles and values that have nearly vanished. The course this nation chose 60 years ago led to today's corrupted society armed to the teeth for endless wars with the most destructive weapons in human history deployed on over 800 known military bases in about 155 of the 192 countries of the world. It cost an unimaginable amount creating this monster as documented by the Center for Defense Information. It reported this country spent an estimated $21 trillion in constant dollars since 1945 on defense, the numbers continue to rise sharply, and the mindset of most of the nation's leaders, especially George Bush, is when you've got the might, you have to throw it around to prove it as well as scare off potential challengers.
Shamefully the US stands as a modern-day Sparta glorifying war and those put in charge to wage it. Witness the retirement ceremony for Army Major General Geoffrey Miller last summer when Army Vice Chief of Staff General Richard Cody awarded the man who supervised the infamous US Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib torture-prisons with the Distinguished Service Medal (DDSM). This award was established by Richard Nixon in 1970 so the Secretary of Defense could reward officers of the US Armed Forces "whose exceptional performance of duty and contributions to national security or defense have been at the highest levels."
Witness also the December 16 retirement ceremony at the Pentagon for unindicted war criminal and torture-authorizer Donald Rumsfeld complete with pomp and circumstance, George Bush and Dick Cheney in attendance for the spectacle, and a 19 round cannon salute that might have been better aimed. In open defiance of growing public anger over the war, speakers, including the president, shamelessly lauded Rumsfeld for the war of aggression he directed and his leadership in doing it. The galling scene showed Bush hugging Rumsfeld saying: "This man knows how to lead, and he did. And the country is better off for it." He failed to say for whom, but it got worse with Dick Cheney saying: "I believe the record speaks for itself - Don Rumsfeld is the finest Secretary of Defense this nation ever had."
Contrast those spectacles with the fate of extraordinary people like Lynne Stewart prosecuted for her crime of courage, honor and resisting tyranny. She was unjustly charged under the 1996 Antiterrorism Act with four counts of aiding and abetting a terrorist organization and violating Special Administration Measures (SAMS) imposed by the US Bureau of Prisons, which included a gag order on Sheik Abdel Rahman whom she represented as counsel for the defense in his 1995 trial because former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark asked her to take the case.
Lynne took it in the same spirit she spent her entire 30 year professional life as a courageous champion for the rights of the poor, underprivileged and those in society never afforded due process unless they're lucky enough to have an advocate like her. She broke no law, and her trial was a gross miscarriage of justice. Still, the Justice Department asked for a harsh 30 year sentence. It wasn't for any crime committed. It was to send a clear message to all in the legal community not to represent "unpopular clients" and not to afford them their legal right of due process with competent counsel when the government wants them put away.
Lynne for the present had the last word being vindicated in court on October 17 when Judge John G. Koeltl rejected the prosecution's case in the 28 month sentence he handed down allowing Lynne to remain free pending her appeal to a higher court, acknowledging it might overturn her conviction and effectively rebuking the Justice Department for their prosecution of a courageous woman who spent a lifetime fighting for justice.
The outcome was painfully different in an age of Muslim demonization and persecution shown in the prosecution of Dr. Rafil Dhafir, a Muslim American of Iraqi descent and practicing oncologist until his license was unjustly revoked as a prelude to the greater outrage committed against him. Dr. Dhafir was charged and tried in another US "kangaroo court" for what Katherine Hughes called and wrote his "crime of compassion." Katherine followed the trial daily in court for 17 weeks and remains his champion, continuing to work tirelessly for his vindication and release.
Dr. Dhafir was convicted and is now serving a 22 year sentence in federal prison for violating the Iraqi Sanctions Regulations (the IEEPA) having used his own funds and what he could raise from others to bring desperately needed humanitarian aid, including food and medical supplies, to Iraqi people unable to get them because of the punitive, harsh and unjust sanctions imposed prior to the 2003 war. He did it through his Help the Needy charity, and for it was convicted of violating the sanctions, tax fraud, money laundering, and mail and wire fraud - a total of 60 counts and found guilty on 59 of them.
The verdict sent another chill through the Muslim community, and as Katherine explained on her web site - dhafirtrial.net - "If we can get Rafil Dhafir, we can get anyone." Not quite, as Lynne Stewart's vindication proves. But it proves something else too. In the age of George Bush, the chance of prevailing against injustice as a white American is a lot better than for a "not-as-white" Arab Muslim, even an American one, especially one courageous enough to take on a mission of mercy in defiance of state policy unjustly prohibiting it.
Dr. Dhafir was confined at the federal prison in Fairton, NJ until December when he was transfered further away from his family, who weren't told. He's now at what's been described as the hellhole in Terre Haute, IN, in an area of right wing extremism and KKK influence, in a deliberate act of further barbaric vengeance to break his spirit, restrict his access to legal help and his family, and cause him undue pain and suffering in an age of US-sanctioned and authorized torture as a method of social control and inhumanity and because no dissenting authority has the courage to challenge Washington's willingness to go against the most basic principles of equity and justice.
A Look Back to Find Direction Ahead
A look back to an important anniversary just reached should have been duly noted and reflected on in the major media, but it passed nearly unnoticed. It was the December 15 anniversary of the Bill of Rights of 1791 to the Constitution framed in 1787. It gave us unimaginable freedoms up to that time written into the law of the land that overall was a great democratic experiment never tried before outside of ancient Athens for a few decades before it ended. It gave people the rights of free expression, religion and peaceable assembly; protection from illegal searches and seizure; the right of due process, against double jeopardy and to remain silent if accused; to a speedy trial by jury if charged with the right to counsel and to be able to call witnesses; protection from any cruel and unusual punishment and more.
Most of the credit for this historic achievement goes to James Madison who drafted the first 10 amendments and with his perseverance got the other Framers to go along. He then managed to get the needed two-thirds vote from both Houses of Congress and ratification by the required three-fourths of the states in 1791 to have them become the law of the land - a major landmark achievement today being defiled by those in power who have contempt for the freedoms the Founders gave us.
Madison is thought of by some to be the "Father of the Constitution," but it's more accurate to call him its Godfather as he had a lot of help from the other 54 Founders who met in the Philadelphia State House, where the Declaration of Independence was signed 11 years earlier, to frame this historic document for the new republic they hoped would last into "remote futurity" - if we could keep it as Ben Franklin warned at the time and would shudder now at how things turned out and condemn those in power responsible.
Two future presidents, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams were serving abroad as envoys to France and Britain and weren't in Philadelphia for this historic gathering. When they were back later on, Jefferson and Madison wanted twelve initial amendments to the Constitution instead of the original 10 that were adopted. Federalists John Adams and Alexander Hamilton, however, opposed the Bill of Rights entirely and managed to exclude from them the other two that included "freedom from monopolies in commerce," or what are now giant corporate predators, and "freedom from a permanent military," or today's standing armies waging wars of illegal aggression.
Imagine what might have been, what was lost, and how the country might be governed today had Jefferson and Madison prevailed. Still they deserve our gratitude for what they accomplished, and it's disconcerting at the least to wonder how much worse off we'd be now if they hadn't gotten any of the Bill of Rights freedoms in our founding law that although lost under neocon rule may one day be restored if we can survive in the meantime.
A Look Ahead In An Age of State-Sponsored Terror Under Neocon Rule
It's time to pause at year's end to give thanks for our blessings but reflect that the spirit of the season demands that the madness of Bush neocon rule be stopped and ended before it's too late. Six years is more than enough to know the administration's agenda at home and abroad is roguish, corrupted by greed and contempt for the law, ruthless in its pursuit of world dominance through the barrel of a gun, and arrogant enough to think it can get away with it because who'll challenge those in charge.
Internally, there no longer are checks and balances as the three branches of government under Republicans and Democrats are united for a common purpose, and their agenda to carry it out is hostile to the public interest. It's the ultimate expression of Lord Acton's dictum that "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Positively it does in the age of George Bush and a culture obsessed with power, the lust for more of it, and the worship of the wealth and privilege that comes with it. It wreaks of the Vince Lombardi philosophy that "Winning isn't everything; it's the only thing," and the only rules are the ones those now in power make up as they go along justifying whatever they choose to do, regardless of its consequences always harmful to the great majority.
It's also based on might making right but not the way Abe Lincoln meant it when he said in his February, 1860 Cooper Union speech prior to his July presidential nomination that year: "Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it." He later expressed a spirit of reconciliation with the South and kind of humanity George Bush has contempt for in his second inaugural address in March, 1865 when he spoke of "malice toward none (and) charity for all" only weeks before his life was taken by an assassin's bullet. Imagining that language from George Bush, and meaning it, would be to imagine the unimaginable from a man who likely doesn't even understand it.
What is imaginable in the year ahead and thenceforth is a world without George Bush and his neocon extremist administration leading the nation on a path to hell. Those wanting justice demand the Congress act to impeach him and the vice-president and then remove them from office allowing for the chance charges will be brought against them both and others in their administration so they'll be held to account in the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague or another judicial venue where officials may be prosecuted for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. They committed them all and more against the people of Iraq, at least two of the three in Afghanistan, and a legion of others against the people of the United States and its Constitution.
It'll only happen if it comes from the bottom up, from enough public outrage bubbling to the surface vocally demanding justice be served and the rule of law restored and again respected. No one at any level in public or private life should ever be allowed to get away with the kind of reckless and gross criminality that's been rampant and out-of-control in Washington for the past six years under Republican neocon rule.
It's long past time to put an end to this criminal class of rogues in charge, running the country like their private fiefdom in a culture of galling corruption and scorn for the law that exceeds anything here ever preceding their tenure. Already there's a groundswell of growing outrage slowly building in size and intensity. As the new year approaches, it remains to be seen if a combination of those people of conscience can unite with enough others in the body politic to give us all what everyone should want and demand - an end to wars, a renewed respect for the law, accountability for those in government who violated it, and a commitment to serve the public interest with equity and equal justice for all in the true spirit of a real democracy restored from the grave and once again respected and cherished.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.
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Editorial: Will Stinky Cut The Big One?
Sheila Samples
Dec 25 2006
Smirking Chimp
It's almost painful to watch the disintegration of George W. Bush and what's left of his murderous administration. Those who haven't fled are racing blindly through the halls of power, lurching into one another in a desperate attempt to distance themselves from Bush and to escape reaping what they have sown.
Even cutting a bit of slack, it's still inconceivable that any thinking person could spend more than five minutes in the presence of Bush without the shock of recognizing what a total idiot this country has as its president. Other than breaking stuff, killing anything in his path, refusing to admit mistakes, and making an obscene mess of anything he touches, apparently the only thing Bush can do with any success is break wind --pass gas -- fart.
First Fart Boy
In his Aug. 20 U.S. New & World Report "Washington Whispers" under the heading "Animal House in the West Wing," Paul Bedard wrote that Bush not only loves to cuss, but "... the first frat boy loves flatulence jokes...can't get enough of fart jokes. He's also known to cut a few for laughs, especially when greeting new young aides..."
Bedard also told the Boston Herald's Margery Eagan that he's heard about Bush's full-salute "Austin Greeting" when new aides arrive. "He likes to gas a couple, and then bring the aide in and see what the kid's face looks like." Eagan, who admitted she was grossed out, commented, "Naturally, the aide can't accuse the President or grimace or hold his nose. This dilemma apparently drives the presidential funny bone wild."
Most of us stopped laughing at Bush's coarse antics long ago. The boastful sound and fury of hot air blasting from both ends of this crude, immature thug as he rips one windy flatulent speech after another while saying absolutely nothing is not only vulgar, but is indescribably evil. The stench of Bush's lies mingles with, and hovers over the growing mounds of mangled and broken bodies of innocent men, women and children in Iraq and Afghanistan -- swirls around coffins laden with American service members sneaked back in-country with no fanfare.
CNN -- The Most Twisted Name in News
Each day, more and more soldiers and marines are blown to bits. Each morning the streets of Iraq's cities are strewn with hundreds of shackled, tortured, beheaded Sunni and Shiite civilians. Yet, for the past year, the hypocritical Congress, corporate media and crusty retired military "experts" sat around gleefully playing politics and fiercely debating whether the Iraqi quagmire was a civil war. It was a rabid debate -- with all participants forced by Bush and Cheney's claims of success to argue but one side with no pretense of delving into the reality of Bush's mad adventure.
Until Nov. 26 when Michael Ware, CNN's Baghdad correspondent, startled the world and brought the civil-war debate to a screeching halt. Kitty Pilgrim, sitting in for Lou Dobbs, asked Ware, "The Iraqi government and the U.S. military in Baghdad keep saying it's not a civil war -- what are you seeing?"
Ware, a seasoned war correspondent who is no stranger to civil wars and has covered the war in Iraq for both Time Magazine and CNN since it began, responded intensely, "Well, it's easier to deny it's a civil war when you live in the most heavily fortified place in the country -- the Green Zone -- and that's where the prime minister, the national security advisor and the top military commanders live. However," Ware continued, "as for the people living on the streets, or Iraqis in their homes -- if this is not a civil war, then they do not want to see what one looks like."
Ware went on to describe the stark inhumanity of neighbor against neighbor, family on family, ethnic cleansing, "institutionalized" Shiia death squads in legal police uniforms who roam the streets, dragging Sunni families from their homes never to be seen again -- Sunnis plunging car bombs into marketplaces...Ware said the recent surge in violence was a result of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr boycotting the Nouri al-Maliki puppet government and parliament as a result of Maliki meeting with "the criminal Bush."
A national dead silence followed Ware's outburst of truth. The next evening, Wolf Blitzer gave Ware a second chance to join the "best political team in journalism" by reigniting the debate. After sternly warning Ware that UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said Iraq was "almost -- almost" in a civil war, and that the White House, Bush administration and PM Maliki flatly deny it, Blitzer asked, "Is it a civil war?"
Again, without hesitation, Ware reiterated that the horrors exploding around him were nothing if not a civil war. He said, "the debate about whether there is a civil war is fueled either by the luxury of distance -- those who aren't here on the ground -- or by the spin of those with a political agenda to deny its existance."
A week later, Annan set Blitzer straight. He not only said Iraq was indeed in a civil war, but that Iraqis were "better off when a brutal dictator ruled their land."
Michael Ware is no longer in Iraq.
Decisions...Decisions...
The Iraq Study Group (ISG) report was a swat across Bush's rump, and a confirmation that this nation's foreign policy is run by corporate committee. Some thought Poppy Bush and Uncle Jim (James Baker, III) were stepping in yet again to pull Stinky's cajones out of the fire by helping him to save face for the mess he had made. However, those familiar with the Group's Iran-Contra power-brokers know why they stepped out of the shadows now, after three years of bloody violence. The report basically said -- You screwed up again, Junior -- big time. Iraq is so broke, you can't own it, you can't fix it and you can't leave it. You're stuck there, which is fine, because you can't leave until you get the oil, which is why we put you in office and sent you over there in the first place. Get that oil law finalized so we can get the oil contracts before China, India and Russia get there.
Bush is overtaken with strategies and plans from those who sense his confusion and assume he is weakening. Anyone who thinks Bush will admit his mistakes and support the troops by rescinding their death sentences doesn't know Jack about George. During the nine-month gestation period (Mar-Nov) of the ISG Report, 633 coalition troops were blown to bits -- 592 of them Americans. In the month since the ISG strategy died aborning, 80 troops have been slaughtered -- all of them Americans -- three of them today as I write this on Christmas Eve. Tonight, 12 families will kneel and pray for their childrens' lives, unaware that they are already dead.
And so we wait while Bush struts and frets on the world stage and rips one brain fart after another, all signifying nothing. He's gonna weigh the options -- listen to the voices...take the generals' advice...surge up briefly before pulling out...double-punch 'em with a double down and keep on truckin' -- before he announces his decision to stay the course, or achieve the objective or accomplish the mission -- whatever.
The Big One
Bush reminds us often that he's The Decider. Nobody has the right to question his decisions -- not even him -- because history has called him to action, and he is delivering God's gift of freedom to every individual on earth whether they want it or not.
Who can forget the profound deliberation that preceeded Bush's decision to invade Iraq? On 9-11, he announced, "I don't care what the international lawyers say, we are going to kick some ass." And, in March 2002, a full year before invading Iraq, his decision was, "Fuck Saddam. We're taking him out!"
When asked during a press conference last week if he questioned his own decisions, Bush replied confidently, "No, I haven't questioned whether or not it was right to take Saddam Hussein out, nor have I questioned the necessity for the American people -- I mean, I've questioned it; I've come to the conclusion it's the right decision. But I also know it's the right decision for America to stay engaged, and to take the lead, and to deal with these radicals and extremists, and to help support young democracies. It's the calling of our time .... And I firmly believe it is necessary."
We're losing in Iraq, but Bush says that doesn't bother him -- it just means we're going to win if we expand the armed forces, put more and more troops on the streets of Baghdad, and stay the course.
Bush is a brutal, pathological liar -- arguably a homicidal maniac. After losing two wars against helpless, unarmed nations, he's bored. The Decider is moving on to greater things, and those who know how to listen to him know the decision to nuke Iran has already been made. Before he leaves office, Bush plans to spread the same freedoms throughout Iran that Iraq is presently enjoying, only this time he has decided to attack a huge, oil-rich, armed-to-the-teeth nation which has the capacity not only to defend itself, but to wreak death and destruction upon its attackers.
Will Stinky cut the big one on his way out? Or is he just whistling past the graveyard -- yodeling past the skull orchard -- as he goes mano-a-mano with Poppy?
Where's Michael Ware when you need him?
Sheila Samples is an Oklahoma writer and a former civilian US Army Public Information Officer. She is a regular contributor for a variety of Internet sites. Contact her at
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America the Beautiful
Former US president Gerald Ford dies at 93
Associated Press
December 27, 2006
 |
| Gerald Ford reads a proclamation in the White House granting his predecessor
and full-time crook, Richard Nixon, ‘a full, free and absolute pardon’. |
Gerald Ford, who picked up the pieces of Richard Nixon's scandal-shattered White House as the 38th and only unelected president in America's history, has died. He was 93.
"My family joins me in sharing the difficult news that Gerald Ford, our beloved husband, father, grandfather and great grandfather has passed away at 93 years of age," his wife, Betty, said in a brief statement issued from her husband's office in Rancho Mirage. "His life was filled with love of God, his family and his country."
President George Bush paid tribute, praising Ford's "integrity and common sense".
Ford had battled pneumonia in January 2006 and underwent two heart treatments - including an angioplasty - in August at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.
He was the longest living president, followed by Ronald Reagan, who also died at 93. Ford had been living at his desert home in Rancho Mirage, California.
Ford was an accidental president, Nixon's handpicked successor, a man of much political experience who had never run on a national ticket. He was as open and straightforward as Nixon was tightly controlled and conspiratorial.
He took office minutes after Nixon flew off into exile and declared, "our long national nightmare is over". But he revived the debate a month later by granting Nixon a pardon for all crimes he committed as president. That single act, it was widely believed, cost Ford election to a term of his own in 1976, but it won praise in later years as a courageous act that allowed the nation to move on.
The Vietnam war ended in defeat for the US during his presidency with the fall of Saigon in April 1975. In a speech as the end neared, Ford said: "Today, America can regain the sense of pride that existed before Vietnam. But it cannot be achieved by refighting a war that is finished as far as America is concerned." Evoking Abraham Lincoln, he said it was time to "look forward to an agenda for the future, to unify, to bind up the nation's wounds."
Ford also earned a place in the history books as the first unelected vice-president, chosen by Nixon to replace Spiro Agnew who also was forced from office by scandal.
Even to millions of Americans who had voted two years earlier for Richard Nixon, the transition to Ford's leadership was one of the most welcomed in the history of the democratic process - despite the fact that it occurred without an election.
After the Watergate ordeal, Americans liked their new president - and first lady Betty, whose candour charmed the country.
They liked her for speaking openly about problems of young people, including her own daughter; they admired her for not hiding that she had a mastectomy - in fact, her example caused thousands of women to seek breast examinations.
And she remained one of the country's most admired women even after the Fords left the White House when she was hospitalised in 1978 and admitted to having become addicted to drugs and alcohol she took for painful arthritis and a pinched nerve in her neck. Four years later she founded the Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage, a substance abuse facility next to Eisenhower Medical Center.
Ford slowed down in recent years. He had been hospitalised in August 2000 when he suffered one or more small strokes while attending the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia.
The following year, he joined former presidents Jimmy Carter, George Bush and Bill Clinton at a memorial service in Washington three days after the September 11 attacks. In June 2004, the four men and their wives joined again at a funeral service in Washington for former President Ronald Reagan. But in November 2004, Ford was unable to join the other former presidents at the dedication of the Clinton presidential library in Little Rock, Arkansas.
In January, Ford was hospitalised with pneumonia for 12 days. He was not seen in public until April 23, when President George Bush was in town and paid a visit to the Ford home. Bush, Ford and Betty posed for photographers outside the residence before going inside for a private get-together.
The intensely private couple declined interview requests and were rarely seen outside their home in Rancho Mirage's gated Thunderbird Estates, other than to attend worship services at the nearby St Margaret's Episcopal Church in Palm Desert.
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9/11 conspiracy theory debunked in US senate probe
AP
27/12/2006
A lengthy US senate investigation has debunked claims by a Republican congressman that military analysts identified Mohamed Atta and other September 11 hijackers before the attacks.
In a letter to members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senators Pat Roberts and John D Rockefeller dismissed suggestions by Republican Curt Weldon that defence analysts ignored analysis that could have prevented the attacks.
Roberts, a Republican, is the outgoing chairman and Rockefeller the senior Democrat who will assume the chairmanship on January 4 when the new congress convenes.
They concluded "there was no evidence Mohamad Atta or any hijackers were identified prior to 9/11", said a committee aide.
An internal defence department assessment had already dismissed Weldon's claims as unfounded, but the letter from Roberts and Rockefeller is the first rejection from Capitol Hill. The letter was reported on today by The Los Angeles Times.
Weldon, a 10-term Republican who lost his seat in the November 7 election, repeatedly contended that a secret military unit called Able Danger searched large amounts of data to link four September 11 hijackers to al-Qaida more than a year before the attacks.
In September, the Pentagon's inspector general found that some employees recalled seeing an intelligence chart identifying Atta as a terrorist before the attacks, but the report said those accounts "varied significantly" and witnesses were inconsistent at times in their statements.
At the time, Weldon questioned the "motives and the content" of the report and rejected its conclusions, which he said relied on cherry-picked testimony. Weldon was not available for comment today.
According to the committee aide, Roberts and Rockefeller found similar problems in their investigation.
Weldon lost his seat to Democrat Joe Sestak, a retired navy admiral who called for troops to be withdrawn from Iraq by the end of 2007.
Just weeks before the election, the FBI raided the homes of Weldon's daughter and a close friend in an investigation of whether or not the congressman improperly helped the pair win lobbying and consulting contracts.
Comment: Eh..yeah, there may be a slight problem with asking the conspirators to decide whether or not there was a conspiracy...
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Pentagon restarting mass vaccinations despite health fears
27/12/2006
Monterey Herald
WASHINGTON - En route home from the Persian Gulf on a military supply ship in 2003, merchant seaman James Francis and his mates got an ultimatum: Take anthrax and smallpox vaccinations or lose your jobs.
Francis' Seattle attorney, Russell Williams, described the shipboard scene the next day off the isle of Crete as: "Wham, bam. 'Get in line. Take your shots.'"
Within days of taking the two shots, Francis' feet began to tingle and burn. When he later took the second in a series of six anthrax shots, his health slid downhill. Since then, the 45-year-old messmate from Las Vegas has fought a rare nervous system disease known as Guillain-Barre Syndrome, along with chronic pain, pneumonia and a life-threatening blood clot.
Vaccine makers are immune from lawsuits, so Francis sued the government, winning what his lawyer calls a "substantial" settlement in December 2005. Others say Uncle Sam shelled out about $2 million.
Shots for 200,000
But Francis' success is unlikely to be duplicated by any soldier harmed in the massive anthrax inoculation program that's set to get under way in earnest early next year. Some 200,000 troops, who unlike private employees are barred from suing the U.S. government, will be required to take the vaccine.
The Pentagon is reviving its mandatory anthrax vaccinations despite allegations that the shots have contributed to as many as 23 deaths and sickened hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of soldiers.
On Tuesday, the Department of Health and Human Services canceled an $877.5 million contract with California-based VaxGen. Inc. for what would have been a substitute anthrax vaccine. HHS said the company missed deadlines for beginning tests on humans.
That puts even more focus on the controversial, decades-old vaccine, which has been used to inoculate 1.5 million military personnel. The Pentagon has been rocked by criticism that it has failed to adequately track whether the shots have caused diseases. Indeed, as occurred with Francis, many soldiers are injected with several vaccines on the same day, making it harder to identify the cause of illnesses.
In 2004, lawyers for sick soldiers won a court injunction blocking the mandatory shots until the Food and Drug Administration reviewed the license of Maryland-based vaccine manufacturer Emergent BioSolutions. In December 2005, the FDA declared the vaccine safe and restored the license.
Rare disease|
But testimony from some military doctors undercuts that decision.
Dr. Limone Collins, the medical director of the Vaccine Healthcare Center at the Army's Walter Reed Army Medical Center, testified that Francis had "a rare, vaccine-associated, neuro-immunological disease," according to court papers.
Dr. William Campbell, a neurologist at the center, said the dual vaccinations afflicted Francis with a Guillain-Barre variant in which the body's immune system attacks the nervous system.
In another case, the medical director of a Vaccine Healthcare Center at Lackland Air Force Base testified last year on behalf of Nathan Torquato, a senior airman being court-martialed for using cocaine and methamphetamine to cope with muscle pain and chronic fatigue syndrome, which he blames on his anthrax shots. Helping Torquato win a lighter sentence, Dr. David Hrncir said it "appears that we are having higher numbers of people coming down with chronic fatigue syndrome as a result of this vaccine."
Despite such testimony, Pentagon health chief William Winkenwerder announced on Oct. 16 that safety questions had been resolved and that the shots would soon resume -- the Pentagon now says in January -- for troops deployed in the Middle East, Korea and other areas at high risk of a terrorist attack with germ weapons such as smallpox and anthrax.
Vaccine deemed safe|
Col. Randall Anderson, who runs the Military Vaccine Agency, said the Pentagon believes health risks from the anthrax vaccine "are equal to those of other vaccines" that cause illnesses in only a tiny percentage of those vaccinated.
Robert Burrows, Emergent's vice president of corporate communications, pronounced the vaccine -- sold as BioThrax -- to be "safe and effective" and vetted "more than any in history."
But on Dec. 13, lawyers who succeeded in stalling the mandatory program in 2004 filed suit seeking a new injunction, alleging that the FDA manipulated data from a 1950s clinical study and circumvented its rules in licensing a vaccine that was modified multiple times.
Numerous public health experts believe BioThrax causes a range of problems, particularly among women and people prone to autoimmune diseases. They list Guillain-Barre, which can kill or paralyze; other neurological disorders; diabetes; arthritis; chronic fatigue syndrome; chronic muscle and joint pain; respiratory ailments; vision problems; memory loss, and depression.
Blaming government|
The afflicted soldiers blame their government.
Retired Air Force Sgt. David Lyles, 32, of Mentor, Ohio, said he was injected with the shot in October 2003 at Youngstown Air Force Base.
A few minutes later, Lyles said, he fell off a stool in the base's avionics shop from anaphylactic shock and hit his head on the cement floor. Lyles, who had always been athletic, said he recovered from the concussion but that Guillain-Barre left him walking with a cane.
"If there is a problem with the vaccine, why subject people that are helping you defend what you believe in?" asked Lyles, who also said he's lost some of his short-term memory.
An FDA system that collects adverse reaction reports for all vaccines has recorded more than 4,700 reports related to anthrax shots over the last 16 years. The number of cases, the agency says, will "inevitably be underreported."
The FDA said it has received 23 reports of anthrax vaccine-related deaths, but has seen no proof that the shots were to blame. The FDA also couldn't readily estimate the number of serious illnesses associated with the vaccinations. In the past, it has estimated 500 cases.
Dr. Meryl Nass, an internist in Bar Harbor, Maine, who has specialized in anthrax vaccine-related illnesses, says the estimates of health problems are vastly understated.
Nass said she has treated more than 500 seriously ill patients and that at least 1,500 more have phoned or sent e-mails.
Defense Department officials say several studies, including analyses of soldiers' disability claims and of post-vaccination hospitalizations, debunk the health concerns. But as recently as May, the Government Accountability Office said that the vaccine's long-term safety "has not been studied."
The Pentagon also draws criticism for giving anthrax shots with other vaccines. John Richardson, a retired Air Force pilot who has crusaded against the vaccine, charges that this is done "so they can hide which vaccine is causing the problem."
He cites the case of Rachel Lacy, a 22-year-old Army reservist who was awaiting deployment to the Persian Gulf in early 2003 when she received an anthrax shot and four other vaccinations at Fort McCoy, Wis.
A month later, she died of a pneumonia-like affliction at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. The Pentagon called her death "a rare, tragic event that may have been related to vaccination," but said two expert medical panels couldn't identify any of the five vaccines as the culprit.
Pentagon spokeswoman Ann Ham said each reported death is similarly investigated, but none has been "causally associated with anthrax immunization alone." Anderson said a government immunization panel found no reason not to give vaccines together.
Much Pentagon data remain out of the public's reach, even though a Defense Medical Surveillance System tracks all illnesses among troops. After the National Academy of Sciences' Institute of Medicine found no proof of causal links between the vaccine and illnesses in 2002, but urged more research, the Pentagon stopped issuing quarterly analyses of BioThrax's effects. "There isn't a need for that," Anderson said.
David Geier, vice president of the Maryland-based Institute for Chronic Illnesses, and his father, Dr. Mark Geier, have analyzed the FDA's vaccine adverse reaction reports and published numerous articles on vaccine safety. David Geier said the reactions to BioThrax among healthy soldiers have been "many orders of magnitudes higher" than they've been for nearly all other civilian vaccines.
The Defense Department has said it's given the vaccine to an estimated 175,000 troops involved in the 1991 Gulf War, but said it didn't keep accurate records of who was inoculated.
A Department of Veterans Affairs advisory committee that investigated possible causes of Gulf War Syndrome, clusters of illnesses that afflicted some 200,000 war veterans, didn't rule out the anthrax vaccine as a possible cause, said Steve Robinson, a panel member and official of Veterans for America.
While Anderson said that more BioThrax studies are under way, Nass dismissed the Pentagon research as "epidemiological garbage."
For example, she cited a military study of vaccine links to optic neuritis that excluded troops who developed vision problems in their first 18 weeks in the military, even though many soldiers get their shots in boot camp. The study also omitted other soldiers not diagnosed within 18 weeks of vaccinations -- shots given just before they were sent overseas where there were no ophthalmologists, she said.
The mandatory anthrax vaccine program has been beset with problems almost since deputy FDA commissioner Michael Friedman granted a 1997 Pentagon request to expand its use from protecting people against anthrax infection in skin wounds to shielding those who breathe it.
In 1998, FDA inspectors halted production until the vaccine's manufacturer, Michigan-based BioPort Corp. (now an Emergent subsidiary), corrected deficiencies. Its plant didn't reopen until 2002.
From 1998 to 2000, hundreds of active troops, reservists and National Guardsmen risked courts-martial by refusing to take anthrax shots for fear of health problems. Then the 2004 court injunction forced the Pentagon to shift to a voluntary program. About 50 percent of troops have refused the shots.
Vaccine critics note that both the VA and the Pentagon have routinely paid disability benefits to soldiers who blame BioThrax for chronic illnesses, but they list the ailments as "service-connected" without mentioning the vaccine.
Virginia attorney Richard Stevens, who has handled a number of claims, said that way, "they always have plausible deniability."
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Congressional report criticizes FBI on lingering questions over Okla. bombing
27/12/2006
AP
WASHINGTON - The FBI failed to fully investigate information suggesting other suspects may have helped Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols with the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, allowing questions to linger more than a decade after the deadly attack, a congressional inquiry concludes.
The House International Relations investigative subcommittee will release the findings of its two-year-review as early as Wednesday, declaring there is no conclusive evidence of a foreign connection to the attack but that far too many questions remain.
The subcommittee's report will conclude there is no doubt McVeigh and Nichols were the main perpetrators, and it discloses for the first time that Nichols confirmed to House investigators he participated in the robbery of an Arkansas gun dealer that provided the proceeds for the attack.
There have long been questions about that robbery because the FBI concluded McVeigh was in another state when it occurred.
The report also sharply criticizes the FBI for failing to be curious enough to pursue credible information that foreign or U.S. citizens may have had contact with Nichols or McVeigh and could have assisted their plot.
"We did our best with limited resources, and I think we moved the understanding of this issue forward a couple of notches even though important questions remain unanswered," Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., the subcommittee chairman, said in an interview with The Associated Press.
Rohrabacher's subcommittee saved its sharpest words for the Justice Department, saying officials there exhibited a mind-set of thwarting congressional oversight and did not assist the investigation fully.
The report rebukes the FBI for not fully pursuing leads suggesting other suspects may have provided support to McVeigh and Nichols before their truck bomb killed 168 people in the main federal building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995.
The report says the inadequacy of the bureau's work was exposed two years ago when some bombing evidence overlooked for 10 years was discovered in a home linked to Nichols that had been searched repeatedly by agents.
FBI spokesman Richard Kolko said Sunday, "Having not yet read the report, it would be inappropriate to comment on its contents."
Nonetheless, Kolko said: "The Oklahoma City bombing case was the largest case the FBI worked on before 9-11. Agents at virtually every office, domestically and overseas, covered thousands of leads. Every bit of information was investigated and reviewed. The FBI worked tirelessly to cover all of the leads and conducted a thorough and complete investigation."
The subcommittee concludes the Justice Department should not have rushed to execute McVeigh in 2001 after he dropped his court appeals, and that officials should have made more efforts to interview and question him about evidence suggesting he might have gotten help from other people who remain unpunished.
The former lead FBI agent in the case, Dan Defenbaugh, told AP a few years ago he was trying to get one last interview with McVeigh to go over unanswered questions in the case but could not get it arranged before McVeigh was executed.
Comment: The Oklahoma bombing was a US government-sponsored terror attack on the American people.
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'Threatening note from God' grounds plane at NY airport
Raw Story
24/12/2006
A "threatening note" attributed to "God" led to a U.S. Airways plane being grounded at LaGuardia Airport in New York on Christmas Eve.
U.S. Airways Express Flight 3068, which left Charleston, South Carolina en route to Portland, Maine earlier today, was diverted to the New York City area airport.
The man, "who appeared to be about 35 years old," the Associated Press reported on Monday, "gave the note to another passenger, Tammy Budek, who gave it to a flight attendant as the plane rolled toward the runway at New York's LaGuardia Airport."
"He said he had AIDS, and the shedding of his blood and all our blood would cure all sickness," Budek told the Portland Press Herald. According to Budek, the man's note suggested "he was Jesus and it was time for everybody to die."
"Budek said the man who passed her the suspicious note 'smiled the whole time' while authorities cuffed him and removed him from the plane," Elbert Aull reported for the Portland, Maine newspaper.
The note writer was taken into custody and hospitalized, but a Port Authority spokesman said it was unlikely he would be charged with any crimes.
According to FOX, the pilot requested for a K-9 team to come on board and sweep the plane before the passengers got off. All luggage was then scattered out across the plane as the authorities searched further.
Port Authority of New York and New Jersey spokesman Alan Hicks later said that nothing suspicious had been found by the K-9 units.
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Announcing the P.U.-litzer Prizes for 2006
By Norman Solomon and Jeff Cohen,
AlterNet. Posted December 26, 2006.
Competition has been fierce this year for the fifteenth annual P.U.-litzer Prizes.
Many can plausibly lay claim to stinky media performances, but only a few can win a P.U.-litzer. As the judges for this un-coveted award, Jeff Cohen and I have deliberated with due care. (Jeff is the founder of the media watch group FAIR and author of the superb new book "Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media.")
And now, the winners of the P.U.-litzer Prizes for 2006:
"Fact-Free Trade" Award -- New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman
In a press corps prone to cheer on corporate-drafted trade agreements as the key to peace and plenty in the world, no cheerleader is more fervent than Tom Friedman. During a CNBC interview with Tim Russert in July, Friedman confessed: "I was speaking out in Minnesota -- my hometown, in fact -- and a guy stood up in the audience, said, 'Mr. Friedman, is there any free trade agreement you'd oppose?' I said, 'No, absolutely not.' I said, 'You know what, sir? I wrote a column supporting the CAFTA, the Caribbean Free Trade initiative. I didn't even know what was in it. I just knew two words: free trade.'" (Friedman may not have read even the pact's title; CAFTA actually stands for the Central America Free Trade Agreement.)
Lock up the First Amendment Prize -- CNN's William Bennett
Soon after being hired as a CNN pundit, Bennett went on his radio talk show and offered his views on freedom of the press -- and on reporters who broke stories about warrantless wiretapping and secret CIA detention sites "against the wishes of the president, against the request of the president and others." Bennett fumed: "Are they embarrassed, are they arrested? No, they win Pulitzer Prizes. I don't think what they did was worthy of an award -- I think what they did was worthy of jail, and I think this investigation needs to go forward."
Broke-Brain Mouthing Award-- MSNBC's Chris Matthews
As the movie "Brokeback Mountain" (about a relationship between two cowboys) was gaining attention and audience in January, Chris Matthews appeared on the Imus show to hail "the wonderful Michael Savage" and the talk-show host's nickname for the movie: "Bareback Mounting." Matthews and Savage had been MSNBC colleagues until "the wonderful" Savage was fired -- after referring to an apparently gay caller as a "sodomite" and telling him to "get AIDS and die." Now that's hardball.
Casual About Casual Ties Award -- Fox mogul Rupert Murdoch
Echoing an Iraq war talking-point heard regularly on Fox News, owner Murdoch said on the eve of the November election: "The death toll, certainly of Americans there, by the terms of any previous war are quite minute." As FAIR noted, U.S. deaths in Iraq exceed those in the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War and the Spanish-American War, not to mention the combined U.S. deaths of all this country's other military actions since Vietnam -- including Lebanon, Grenada, Panama, the first Gulf War, Somalia, Haiti, Kosovo and Afghanistan.
Front-Page Pundit Award -- Reporter Michael Gordon and The New York Times
With many voters telling pollsters that they want U.S. troops to leave Iraq, the Times front-paged a post-election analysis by Michael Gordon -- headlined "Get Out of Iraq Now? Not So Fast, Experts Say" -- quoting three hand-picked "experts" who decried the possibility of troop withdrawal. Gordon didn't tell readers that one of his "experts," former CIA analyst Ken Pollack, had relentlessly promoted an Iraq invasion based on wildly false claims about an Iraqi threat. Gordon took off his reporter's hat that night on CNN to become an unabashed advocate for his view that withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq would lead to "civil war" (as though civil war weren't already underway).
"Prove You're Not a Traitor" Prize -- CNN's Glenn Beck
In November, Beck -- an Islamophobic host on CNN Headline News -- launched into his interview with Congressman-elect Keith Ellison, a Muslim American, this way: "I have been nervous about this interview with you, because what I feel like saying is, 'Sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies.'" Beck then added: "And I know you're not. I'm not accusing you of being an enemy, but that's the way I feel, and I think a lot of Americans will feel that way." Is it possible that primetime bigots like CNN's Beck have something to do with the prejudices "that a lot of Americans feel"?
Goundhog Day Award -- Ted Koppel
One role of journalism should be to help the public learn from past government policy disasters in hopes of preventing future ones. But in a New York Times column on Oct. 2, former ABC News star Koppel wrote that Washington should tell Iran it is free to develop an atomic bomb -- with a Mafia-like warning: "If a dirty bomb explodes in Milwaukee, or some other nuclear device detonates in Baltimore or Wichita, if Israel or Egypt or Saudi Arabia should fall victim to a nuclear 'accident,' Iran should understand that the United States government will not search around for the perpetrator. The return address will be predetermined, and it will be somewhere in Iran." In other words, no matter what the evidence, Koppel urged our government to attack a predetermined foe, Iran. Didn't that happen in 2003 with Iraq?
So, there they are, the P.U.-litzer Prizes for 2006. Hold your nose and prepare yourself for 2007.
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Ohio Supreme Court reprimands outgoing Republican Gov. Bob Taft for ethics violations
The Associated Press
Published: December 27, 2006
COLUMBUS, Ohio: The Ohio state Supreme Court on Wednesday publicly reprimanded Gov. Bob Taft for his ethics violations in office, a black mark that will stay on his permanent record as an attorney.
Taft, a Republican and great-grandson of President William Howard Taft, pleaded no contest in 2005 to failing to report golf outings and other gifts and was fined $4,000. He could not seek re-election because of term limits and leaves office in less than two weeks.
The Office of Disciplinary Counsel, an arm of the state Supreme Court, said in April that Taft violated Ohio's code of professional conduct for lawyers, and Taft later signed an agreement admitting the violation.
The justices agreed by a vote of 6-0 Wednesday with a recommendation from the Board of Commissioners on Grievances and Discipline to issue the public reprimand. The court could have rejected the recommendation or ordered a stronger punishment.
Taft, whose law license has been on inactive status since 2002, did not immediately respond to a call seeking comment.
The charges against Taft stemmed from his failure to report 52 gifts worth nearly $6,000 that he received over four years while in office.
The case spiraled off a scandal in which a Republican fundraiser was convicted of stealing from a $50 million state investment in rare coins, which contributed to the Republican Party's loss of the governor's office on Election Day.
Taft never considered resigning, although he had previously forced out several staff members for improperly accepting gifts.
The high court said the governor was guilty of an oversight, noting there was no evidence that he had purposely tried to hide the gifts. It also said there was no evidence that any of the gifts were given as bribes.
Taft "conceded this ethical lapse and acknowledged in his public apology his personal failure to maintain the standards of integrity to which all public officials must adhere," the court's ruling said.
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Military considers recruiting foreigners
By Bryan Bender
12/26/06 "Boston Globe"
WASHINGTON -- The armed forces, already struggling to meet recruiting goals, are considering expanding the number of noncitizens in the ranks -- including disputed proposals to open recruiting stations overseas and putting more immigrants on a faster track to US citizenship if they volunteer -- according to Pentagon officials.
Foreign citizens serving in the US military is a highly charged issue, which could expose the Pentagon to criticism that it is essentially using mercenaries to defend the country. Other analysts voice concern that a large contingent of noncitizens under arms could jeopardize national security or reflect badly on Americans' willingness to serve in uniform.
The idea of signing up foreigners who are seeking US citizenship is gaining traction as a way to address a critical need for the Pentagon, while fully absorbing some of the roughly one million immigrants that enter the United States legally each year.
The proposal to induct more noncitizens, which is still largely on the drawing board, has to clear a number of hurdles. So far, the Pentagon has been quiet about specifics -- including who would be eligible to join, where the recruiting stations would be, and what the minimum standards might involve, including English proficiency. In the meantime, the Pentagon and immigration authorities have expanded a program that accelerates citizenship for legal residents who volunteer for the military.
And since Sept. 11, 2001, the number of imm igrants in uniform who have become US citizens has increased from 750 in 2001 to almost 4,600 last year, according to military statistics.
With severe manpower strains because of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan -- and a mandate to expand the overall size of the military -- the Pentagon is under pressure to consider a variety of proposals involving foreign recruits, according to a military affairs analyst.
"It works as a military idea and it works in the context of American immigration," said Thomas Donnelly , a military scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute in Washington and a leading proponent of recruiting more foreigners to serve in the military.
As the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan grind on, the Pentagon has warned Congress and the White House that the military is stretched "to the breaking point."
Both President Bush and Robert M. Gates, his new defense secretary, have acknowledged that the total size of the military must be expanded to help alleviate the strain on ground troops, many of whom have been deployed repeatedly in combat theaters.
Bush said last week that he has ordered Gates to come up with a plan for the first significant increase in ground forces since the end of the Cold War. Democrats who are preparing to take control of Congress, meanwhile, promise to make increasing the size of the military one of their top legislative priorities in 2007.
"With today's demands placing such a high strain on our service members, it becomes more crucial than ever that we work to alleviate their burden," said Representative Ike Skelton , a Missouri Democrat who is set to chair the House Armed Services Committee, and who has been calling for a larger Army for more than a decade.
But it would take years and billions of dollars to recruit, train, and equip the 30,000 troops and 5,000 Marines the Pentagon says it needs. And military recruiters, fighting the perception that signing up means a ticket to Baghdad, have had to rely on financial incentives and lower standards to meet their quotas.
That has led Pentagon officials to consider casting a wider net for noncitizens who are already here, said Lieutenant Colonel Bryan Hilferty , an Army spokesman.
Already, the Army and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement division of the Department of Homeland Security have "made it easier for green-card holders who do enlist to get their citizenship," Hilferty said.
Other Army officials, who asked not to be identified, said personnel officials are working with Congress and other parts of the government to test the feasibility of going beyond US borders to recruit soldiers and Marines.
Currently, Pentagon policy stipulates that only immigrants legally residing in the United States are eligible to enlist. There are currently about 30,000 noncitizens who serve in the US armed forces, making up about 2 percent of the active-duty force, according to statistics from the military and the Council on Foreign Relations. About 100 noncitizens have died in Iraq and Afghanistan.
A recent change in US law, however, gave the Pentagon authority to bring immigrants to the United States if it determines it is vital to national security. So far, the Pentagon has not taken advantage of it, but the calls are growing to take use the new authority.
Indeed, some top military thinkers believe the United States should go as far as targeting foreigners in their native countries.
"It's a little dramatic," said Michael O'Hanlon , a military specialist at the nonpartisan Brookings Institution and another supporter of the proposal. "But if you don't get some new idea how to do this, we will not be able to achieve an increase" in the size of the armed forces.
"We have already done the standard things to recruit new soldiers, including using more recruiters and new advertising campaigns," O'Hanlon added.
O'Hanlon and others noted that the country has relied before on sizable numbers of noncitizens to serve in the military -- in the Revolutionary War, for example, German and French soldiers served alongside the colonists, and locals were recruited into US ranks to fight insurgents in the Philippines.
Other nations have recruited foreign citizens: In France, the famed Foreign Legion relies on about 8,000 noncitizens; Nepalese soldiers called Gurkhas have fought and died with British Army forces for two centuries; and the Swiss Guard, which protects the Vatican, consists of troops who hail from many nations.
"It is not without historical precedent," said Donnelly, author of a recent book titled "The Army We Need," which advocates for a larger military.
Still, to some military officials and civil rights groups, relying on large number of foreigners to serve in the military is offensive.
The Hispanic rights advocacy group National Council of La Raza has said the plan sends the wrong message that Americans themselves are not willing to sacrifice to defend their country. Officials have also raised concerns that immigrants would be disproportionately sent to the front lines as "cannon fodder" in any conflict.
Some within the Army privately express concern that a big push to recruit noncitizens would smack of "the decline of the American empire," as one Army official who asked not to be identified put it.
Officially, the military remains confident that it can meet recruiting goals -- no matter how large the military is increased -- without having to rely on foreigners.
"The Army can grow to whatever size the nation wants us to grow to," Hilferty said. "National defense is a national challenge, not the Army's challenge."
He pointed out that just 15 years ago, during the Gulf War, the Army had a total of about 730,000 active-duty soldiers, amounting to about one American in 350 who were serving in the active-duty Army.
"Today, with 300 million Americans and about 500,000 active-duty soldiers, only about one American in 600 is an active-duty soldier," he said. "America did then, and we do now, have an all-volunteer force, and I see no reason why America couldn't increase the number of Americans serving."
But Max Boot, a national security specialist at the Council on Foreign Relations, said that the number of noncitizens the armed forces have now is relatively small by historical standards.
"In the 19th century, when the foreign-born population of the United States was much higher, so was the percentage of foreigners serving in the military," Boot wrote in 2005.
"During the Civil War, at least 20 percent of Union soldiers were immigrants, and many of them had just stepped off the boat before donning a blue uniform. There were even entire units, like the 15th Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry [the Scandinavian Regiment] and General Louis Blenker's German Division, where English was hardly spoken."
"The military would do well today to open its ranks not only to legal immigrants but also to illegal ones and, as important, to untold numbers of young men and women who are not here now but would like to come," Boot added.
"No doubt many would be willing to serve for some set period, in return for one of the world's most precious commodities -- US citizenship. Some might deride those who sign up as mercenaries, but these troops would have significantly different motives than the usual soldier of fortune."
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Israeli Predation
Israeli roadblock pledge derided
December 27, 2006
The Guardian
Palestinians have criticised an Israeli pledge to remove roadblocks and other restrictions in the West Bank as too little too late.
Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, announced the measures on Christmas Day to "strengthen moderate elements" among the Palestinians especially Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, whom he met on Saturday.
The offer to remove 27 West Bank roadblocks and make it easier for Palestinians to travel was derided by Hamas in Gaza and criticised by Abbas supporters.
Hanan Ashrawi, a moderate Palestinian MP, said that Israeli promises often did not translate into action. If the restrictions were relaxed, she said, they were so insignificant as to make a joke of Mr Abbas.
"We are justifiably sceptical. Nothing has happened yet and we do not know if these roadblocks are important or peripheral ... If it is true then it will be too little too late. The only thing that will help Mahmoud Abbas is serious substantive measures accompanied by a serious and substantive peace process," she said.
There are some 500 checkpoints and roadblocks in the West Bank. They range from busy crossing points into towns such as Ramallah to unmanned barriers that force Palestinians to take long detours.
Meanwhile, the Israeli government approved plans for a settlement to be built in the West Bank for about 30 families. The decision appears to break commitments to stop settlement expansion.
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Israel to resume some attacks in reaction to Palestinian rockets
Last Updated: Wednesday, December 27, 2006 | 8:27 AM ET
The Associated Press
Israel has decided to resume pinpoint attacks against Palestinian rocket-launching cells in Gaza, officials said Wednesday, further jeopardizing what is already a shaky month-old truce with Gaza militants.
The decision came hours after a rocket wounded two Israeli teenage boys in Sderot, a town in southern Israel close to the Gaza border.
Although Israel declared it remained committed to the truce, the decision to strike against rocket launchers clearly raises the level of violence.
It could also undermine Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's recent efforts to bolster moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who is in a standoff with Hamas. The Islamic militant group controls the Palestinian parliament and cabinet.
"The defence establishment has been instructed to take pinpoint action against the rocket-launching cells," Olmert's office said after a morning meeting of senior officials.
"At the same time, Israel will continue to abide by the cease-fire."
Palestinian rockets fired despite deal
Palestinian militants violated the truce less than an hour after it took effect on Nov. 26, and by the military's count, have launched more than 60 rockets at southern Israel since then.
Israel has so far refrained from responding, but Olmert had warned in recent days that his patience was wearing thin. The injuries of the two boys late Wednesday left Olmert little choice.
Olmert has come under intense pressure from residents of Sderot, political opponents and members of his own cabinet to take action against the rockets. Most of the crude weapons have been launched by Islamic Jihad, a radical group backed by Iran that does not participate in Palestinian politics.
At least seven rockets exploded in Israel on Tuesday. Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for all of them.
Truce designed to end months of fighting
The truce ended five months of deadly fighting that followed an attack by Hamas-linked gunmen on an Israeli army post just outside Gaza. Two soldiers were killed and another was captured in that raid, and Israel retaliated by sending ground troops, artillery and aircraft to strike at militants and their rocket squads.
But the incursions failed to stop the rocket fire or win the release of the soldier. When Abbas, a moderate who favours peace talks, persuaded militant factions to agree to a truce, Olmert agreed to pull Israeli forces out of Gaza.
Israel's policy of renewed retaliation could undo progress toward bolstering Abbas against his Hamas rivals. Olmert and Abbas met on Saturday for their first working meeting, and Olmert pledged to ease restrictions in the West Bank and Gaza as a gesture to the Palestinian president.
Renewed violence could delay or shelve those plans.
Egypt to host peace summit talks
In other efforts to push forward with peace efforts, Olmert and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak are to meet Jan. 4 in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheik, Israeli officials said.
Egypt has played a major role in mediating between Israel and the Palestinians, and has been trying to negotiate the release of the captured Israeli soldier.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit was meeting Israeli officials in Jerusalem on Wednesday to help prepare for next week's summit.
And in an attempt to end the deadly tensions between Hamas and Abbas' Fatah, Jordan has invited Abbas and Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas to Amman.
Talks between the rivals over forming a national unity government broke down last month, and Abbas has threatened to call early elections to end the impasse. The tensions erupted into factional fighting that has killed 17 people this month.
Haniyeh and Abbas have both accepted the invitation to Jordan. The date of the meeting has not been publicized.
Comment: More manoeuvering from Israel, the country that has no intention of peace. The recent ceasefire was only in Gaza. IDF killing continued unabated in the West Bank. As for the claim that Israel would take "pinpoint action", that means the whole of Gaza....
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Jewish terrorist "commits suicide" in jail
Jpost
27/12/2006
Asher Weisgan, the Jewish terrorist sentenced to four life terms plus an additional 12 years for murdering four Palestinian laborers, committed suicide in his prison cell on Friday afternoon.
During a routine check of the prison, Weisgan was found hanging in his cell.
After a medical team tried unsuccessfully to resuscitate him, a Magen David Adom doctor pronounced him dead. A preliminary investigation revealed that Weisgan had not previously shown any signs of suicidal tendencies to his jailers.
Weisgan, 38, of Shvut Rachel neat Shiloh, was convicted on September 27 in the Jerusalem District Court of shooting and killing four Palestinian civilians in the area in an attempt to scuttle Israel's pullout from the Gaza Strip last year.
He had also subsequently called for the assassination of former prime minister Ariel Sharon.
The court also ordered Weisgan to pay NIS 228,000 to each of the families of the four victims, and another NIS 100,000 to the man he wounded, in an unusual court-ordered monetary penalty for a murder case.
A driver who transported Palestinian laborers, Weisgan grabbed a gun from a security guard at the end of the work day last August, and then opened fire at the workers in his car at close range, killing three instantly and mortally wounding a fourth, who died later at a Jerusalem hospital.
The four-page charge sheet called the shooting rampage near Shiloh 'cold-blooded and premeditated' murder.
The indictment said the attacker sprayed five or six bullets at each of his victims, whom he knew well, at one point even refilling his spent cartridge as he sought out his last victim.
Weisgan then went after a fifth victim back at work, the indictment read, repeatedly shooting him at close range and then verifying he was dead before finally turning himself in to a settlement security guard.
Comment: We have to wonder what this guy might have been able to reveal about the identity of his masters...
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King Abdullah: Israel not as strong as we thought
Ynet News
December 26, 2006
Jordan's King Abdullah said during an interview with Tokyo-based newspaper The Daily Yomiuri that "The (Lebanon ) war last summer showed that Israel is not as strong as we had previously thought, and, justifiably or not, the perception in the Middle East is that Israel lost."
Abdullah, who is currently visiting Japan, added that "More and more countries in the region will now believe that the only way to get Israel to listen is through force and not negotiations. Israel will have to take a significant step in the right direction that will lead to calm in the region."
The Jordanian king stressed that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains the main source of Mideast tension. "Until we deal with this issue, which can be easily resolved, the Middle East will be forever cursed, as will the entire Muslim world," he said.
Abdallah said that in light of the current situation Israel must decide whether or not it wishes to remain isolated.
"The Arab countries are very interested in moving the peace process along, and this conveys a message to the Israelis: If we advance the peace process and implement a two-state solution, all the Arab and Muslim countries will agree to establish (diplomatic) relations with Israel," he said.
'Must change policy in Middle East'
During the Interview Abdullah warned of the rise in extremism in the Middle East, which, according to him, may lead to the weakening of the peace camp and the moderate elements.
"Therefore, we must change the policy in the Middle East, or else people will only here extremist views," he said. "In the past, there were 8 to 10 year intervals between conflicts, but now this has dropped to 10 to 12 months, and may I remind you that we are expecting three civil wars in 2007 (in the Palestinian Authority, Iraq and Lebanon).
Turning his attention to the Iranian threat, the Jordanian king said, "There is no doubt that Iran is a major player in the region and should be incorporated into the process.
"If we advance the process in one arena, we will be able to do the same in other arenas as well," he said. "Today the Arab street is drawn more the extremists and extremist rhetoric and less to moderates speaking of peace and co-existence."
Abdullah summed up the interview by saying that the only way to fight the radicalization in the region is through education.
"The next step is to get to the streets, the schools, the homes. This is not a process that could take place over night. In certain places this process could take 15-20 years, but eventually the moderate majority must decide - does it want to sit quietly, or does it plan to act against the horrible crimes committed in the name of religion?"
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New (illegal) settlement planned for former Gaza settlers
Haaretz
27/12/2006
The Defense Ministry has approved the building of a new (ILLEGAL) settlement in the northern Jordan Valley, outside of the West Bank separation fence (WALL) ... The settlement, to be named Maskiot, will include 20 families from the former Gaza settlement of Shirat Hayam and another 10 families from other settlements in Gush Katif. Jordan Valley Regional Council leader Dubi Tal said Tuesday that construction is expected to begin in two weeks.
Comment: Remember the summer of 2005? The tears, the anguish of the settlers as they were wrenched from their homes in the Gaza strip by Israeli soldiers who could barely bring themselves to do their duty. Oh! the sacrifice that was made in leaving their stolen land and illegal homes, and all for peace with the ungrateful Palestinians. Remember how we were told this was a unilateral Israel move for peace, that now Gaza would be given back to the Palestinians. Well, 18 months later and Gaza is more of a prison than it ever was, and the illegal settlers are being moved into nice new homes on Palestinian land in the West Bank.
Israeli "justice".
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Israel settlement breaks promise to U.S. (and international law)
AP
27/12/2006
Israel has approved a new settlement in the West Bank to house former Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip, officials said Tuesday, breaking a promise to the U.S. to halt home construction in the Palestinian territories.
Comment: What will the Bush government do in the face of Zionist aggression? The same as they have always done... smile and say "thank you"
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Israeli army attacks a medical center, abducts residents, while settlers destroys farm lands in Hebron
IMEMC
27/12/2006
The army left after interrogating the three for some time, no arrests were made and army claimed they were looking for what they call wanted Palestinians. In the meantime in Al Thahria town south of Hebron, right wing Israeli settlers living in illegal Israeli settlement around the village attacked and destroyed Palestinian farm land. Eyewitnesses said that the settlers bulldozed farm lands and destroyed the crops totally in 40 donums of land (10 acres).
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A Palestinian view of Jimmy Carter's book
EI
27/12/2006
Given the pressure he has faced, it may be understandable that Mr. Carter says this, but he is wrong. Discrimination against non-Jewish citizens both informal and legalized is systematic. Non-Jewish children attend separate schools and live in areas that receive a fraction of the funding of their Jewish counterparts. The results can be seen in the much poorer educational attainment, economic, health and life outcomes of Palestinian citizens of Israel. Much of the land of the country, controlled by the quasi-governmental Jewish National Fund, cannot be leased or sold to non-Jews.
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"Palestinians" call on Israelis to evacuate Negev
Ynet
17/12/2006
Residents of Kiryat Gat and Ashdod recently received leaflets distributed by right-wing activists asking them "to evacuate to the settlement of Eilat," which were signed as if they were written by the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades. The leaflets were signed: "Extreme right-wing activists."
The pamphlets, which were written in both Hebrew and Arabic, declared: "In light of the ceasefire, which we are successfully exploiting Inshallah (G-d willing) for massive armament of the resistance committees, and after the huge success we had in expelling the Zionist settlements from the Gaza Strip and in turning the settlement of Sderot in to a ghost town, our organization will soon begin firing rockets at the settlements of Ashkelon, Ashdod, and Kiryat Gat, which are under Zionist occupation."
The right-wing activists even mentioned in the leaflet that they don't want to expose the children of the region to heavy damage to their psyches and property that will likely be caused "because of the legitimate desire of the Balestinian (sic) nation to free the occupied lands of Balestine (sic), and to end the continued suffering that the Zionist occupation causes residents and children of the refugee camps."
The leaflet was signed by the right-wing activists in the name of the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades: "At this stage, we will not hinder you from going to the settlement of Eilat. We promise not to damage this settlement until further notice."
Yoav Kahane, chairman of the "Orange Youth" in the south, explained that the leaflets were distributed because the government "has been stricken with complete blindness. The government wants to release Palestinian prisoners while the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades continue shooting at Sderot."
Comment: Agents of Israeli interior intelligence.
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Army abducts at least 17 Palestinian men from several parts of the West Bank
IMEMC & Agencies
27 December 2006
Palestinian sources reported that the Israeli army has abducted at least 17 Palestinian men from several parts of the West Bank in pre dawn invasions on Wednesday morning.
In the southern West Bank city of Bethlehem, the Israeli army invaded Al Khadier village, south of the city, and Aida refugee camp in the city. Two men were abducted during the attack.
Israeli troops surrounded the house of Ahmad Abu Hadu, 17, in Aida Refugee camp. They searched and ransacked it, then took Hadu to an unknown detention camp, his family reported. Also troops attacked other houses in the camp and took Mohamed Al Radi, 17, and Mahmod Harz-Allah, 16, as prisoners. Farhan Rashidah, 21, was abducted when Israeli troops attacked residents' houses in the nearby Al Rashidah village.
In the meantime another Israeli force attacked and searched residents' houses in Al Khadier village south of Bethlehem city. Before leaving, soldiers abducted Ali Salah, 19. Hhis father said that soldiers surrounded the house, forced the family into one room, searched the house, took his son, and left. The army gave no reason for their action, the father added.
Moreover also in the southern West Bank, in the city of Hebron, Israeli forces attacked residents' houses, searched them, and abducted four Palestinian men from the city while another two were taken from Yatta and Ithna villages south of Hebron. Local sources identified the six detained as: Fadile Abu I'ram, 39, from Yatta village; Arafat Al Natah, 27, from Ithna village; and Othman Al Qumiri, 30, Mu'aied Al Muhtasep, 21, Mohmaed Fanunah, 39, and Anas Laban, 26, all from Hebron city.
Four Palestinian men were abducted by the Israeli army in the northern West Bank city of Nablus during a pre-dawn invasion to the city.
Local sources identified the four as Khalil Khalil Abu Ja'ssa, 20, Mohamed Abd Al Hak, 22, Mohamed Khalbus, 18, and Ahmad Abu Salha, 22. All were moved to unknown detention camps. More that 20 Israeli military vehicles entered the city. They surrounded the town of Nablus, searched houses, took the four men, and left the city, eyewitnesses reported.
Kamal Saleh and Mohamed Wathik, both from the village of Al Araka, southwest of the northern West Bank city of Jenin, were abducted by the Israeli army during an invasion to the village on Wednesday at dawn. Residents reported that soldiers stormed the village, attacked scores of residents' houses, then took the two to an unknown destination.
Israeli army spokesperson told Israeli media that those abductions on Wednesday in the West Bank were of men whom the army calls "Wanted Palestinians".
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More Jews Migrate to Israel
IMEMC & Agencies
27 December 2006
Israeli settlement activities on the occupied Palestinian territories have been of major concern to the Palestinian population, as the more settlements Israel builds, the more Israeli settlers from various worldwide regions migrate to these settlements.
Today, about 40 British Jews will arrive in Israel, bringing the number of British Jewish émigrés this year up to 700, of which 200 émigrés migrated to Israel in 2006.
According to official Israeli statistics, the Israeli population topped 7 million recently, one third of whom are Arabs living in Israel.
Many analysts believe that the demographic issue has increasingly become a key factor in Israeli politics this year, a thing that has prompted former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to evacuate 8,000 Israeli Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip in 2005 and order construction of thousands of housing units in major West Bank settlements.
Population growth in the Hebrew state is 1.2 per cent annually, while that in the occupied Palestinian territories is 3.94.
Since the late 1980s the Jewish population has increased to over one million, as the migration from Russia and the Eastern Bloc countries after the collapse of the Soviet Union had decreased by 22 percent this year.
The Jewish Agency along with the Nefesh B'Nefesh organization, formed five years ago, said it helped 10,000 North American Jews to immigrate to Israel over the past five years.
Since 1967, Israel has been constructing Jewish settlements on the occupied Palestinian territories of Gaza Strip, West Bank and East Jerusalem, housing more than 240,000 settlers. Yesterday, the Israeli government endorsed a new settlement in the Ghour area of West Bank under the pretext of housing settlers of the Gaza Strip evacuated settlement of Ghosh Qatif.
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Creating Chaos in Iraq
What has long been a catastrophic tragedy is also now a horrific farce
Roy Hattersley
Wednesday December 27, 2006
The Guardian
The British occupation army's assault on its own police force in Basra confirms Iraq as a far greater disaster than Suez
Iraq - which for years has been an unmitigated tragedy - has turned into Grand Guignol, and, true to the traditions of that genre, horror and farce combine in equal measure. No doubt we should rejoice that al-Jamiat police station in Basra has been destroyed and its prisoners taken to the relative security of a compound in which detainees are hopefully not routinely tortured. But if a sick satire on an obscure television channel included a sketch about British troops attacking a unit of the police that they established and with whom they had been theoretically working for nearly four years, the outcry would not have been limited to complaints about undermining the morale of our troops under fire. We would have been told that the whole idea was too fantastical to sustain the lampoon.
But that is what really happened on Monday, and although the sound of the exploding bar-mines should presumably be music to the ears of everyone who supports the rule of law, a number of important questions lie unanswered in the rubble of what was, until Christmas morning, the headquarters of the Basra serious crimes unit. A witty military press officer suggested that the name related to what the 400 associated police officers did rather than what they prevented. But he did not make clear how long the British authorities have known that, among their regular activities, they crushed prisoners' hands and feet, electrocuted them and burned them with cigarettes. You will recall that one of the reasons given to justify the invasion and occupation of Iraq was the obligation to save the people from that sort of atrocity. It now appears that, at least in al-Jamiat police station, the arrival of what is bravely described as democracy has not made much difference.
According to the official statement, the army had "clear directions" from Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister, and Muhammad al-Waeli, Basra's governor, to "dissolve the unit". That, at least, is a relief. But what about General Muhammad al-Musawi, Basra's chief of police? He was reported to be "furious" at what he described as "an attempt to stir up trouble". Are we to continue working with this man? If he knew what was going on at al-Jamiat police station, he is too corrupt to head the Basra police force. If he did not know, he is too incompetent to hold down the job any longer. His importance lies in his status as physical embodiment of all that is wrong with the Iraq occupation. The place is unmanageable in part because nobody can be sure who is on whose side. The confusion of loyalties highlights the cause of the continuing horror. Most Iraqis did not want US and British troops there in the first place. Many of those who did changed their minds when they discovered that the number of murders had gone drastically up and the supply of water and electricity down since the liberators arrived.
The nature of the dilemma - faced by the coalition because of the boneheaded stupidity of the Washington neocons who dreamed up the invasion - is made clear by the proud boast that Basra's governor is on the side of the occupying coalition. Six months ago he supported the serious crimes unit at al-Jamiat, but Iraq is a nation of shifting alliances and the governor (a member of the Fadhila party) has been persuaded to change his ways by the Shia-led national government. I do not suggest that he will necessarily change back again halfway through 2007, but no one can have any doubt that the crosscurrents of inter-communal and religious disputes will continue to make the behaviour of Iraqi politicians unpredictable. It is all a very long way from the anticipated scenario of streets lined with grateful Iraqis waving stars and stripes and brandishing pictures of President Bush. Nor do pointless barbarities such as the planned execution of Saddam Hussein have any prospect of winning the occupation the popularity that has always eluded it.
Yet only last week one of those Washington free-enterprise "thinktanks" - which usually spend their time explaining that global warming is a myth and that widening the disparities of wealth is the best way to help the poor - suggested that America could solve the Iraq crisis by sending in another 200,000 troops. Putting aside the logistical problems that such a deployment would involve, one thing has to be said in favour of the strategy. All pretence at liberation has finally been abandoned. The sort of people who guided the coalition into the quagmire have decided that the only way to get out is to impose the will of the western powers by force on a reluctant - or downright hostile - people.
Of course, the new plan has no better prospects of success than the old. Everything that happens in Iraq confirms that we should not have gone there in the first place. That message was underlined by the unfortunate press officer who explained - or tried to justify - the delay in ending the torture and organisation of terror groups and assassination squads that was common practice at al-Jamiat police station. "First", he said, "we had to be sure of the police."
Nearly four years after US-led forces invaded and President Bush declared victory, the British headquarters in Basra could still not be sure where the police's loyalty lay. And General Ali Ibrahim, an Iraq army commander in the area, denounced the decision to clear out the serious crimes unit as illegal. Do we still believe that an orderly transition of power to a genuinely democratic Iraq is possible within the foreseeable future? The gloomy answer to that question is why, although the demolition of al-Jamiat police station is, in itself, a matter of rejoicing, the news also increases the general despair we should all feel about the catastrophe of Iraq. Thanks to George Bush and Tony Blair we are actors in a tragedy that seems to have no foreseeable conclusion. To pull out is to leave the people to the mercies of a hundred other serious crimes units. To remain is to intensify the hatred and bitterness of much of the law-abiding population. The worst diplomatic blunder since Suez? By comparison, Suez had a happy ending.
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Iraq massacre: US Marines 'will point the finger of blame at senior officers'
UK Indepdendent
24 December 2006
Lawyers for eight Marines charged with involvement in the massacre of Iraqi civilians in Haditha 13 months ago have warned that they will point the finger much further up the chain of command if it means preventing their clients from being scapegoated.
"We're going to drag every single, two-star and full-bird colonel and general into this thing," said Kevin McDermott, a California-based lawyer representing Captain Lucas McConnell, the commander of Kilo Company, which carried out the Haditha killings. The defence lawyers say their clients were following official policy on the rules of engagement.
In all, 24 Iraqis, including six children, several women and an old man in a wheelchair, were killed in Haditha as the Marines responded to the death of a colleague in a roadside bombing in November 2005. Only five of the dead Iraqis have been identified as militants, while the rest appear to have been innocent civilians.
Four Marines were charged with unpremeditated murder last week, and face life imprisonment if convicted. The man who led a series of deadly house-to-house raids that day, Staff Sgt Frank Wuterich, is personally accused of murdering 12 people. Four others, including Capt McConnell, face an array of lesser charges, including failure to report the incident properly, failure to conduct an appropriate investigation and general dereliction of duty.
Many critics have argued that the Haditha incident might have been written off as business as usual, were it not for graphic Iraqi documentation of the massacre that made its way into Time magazine last spring. The military initially claimed, erroneously, that the roadside bomb killed 15 of the Iraqis, and nominated Staff Sgt Wuterich for a medal for bravery.
Responding to the charges against his client, Mr McDermott said the top brass was well aware of what had happened, but condemned it only after it became glaringly public. "A lot of lieutenant colonels and colonels and generals knew what happened that day, and nobody said, 'let's do a thorough investigation of what happened'," he said. "By the end of the day, [my client's] superiors recognised the situation was so significant that they brought in air support.
"There were Harriers dropping 500lb bombs on buildings. If they're dropping 500lb bombs without knocking on the door first, how can you argue the troops on the ground did anything wrong?"
The Haditha case could not come at a worse time for US morale, as the White House pushes for a "surge" of extra troops to secure Baghdad and Sunni-controlled Anbar province against the better judgment of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and all but 12 per cent of the US public. President George Bush's administration has even talked about expanding the overall size of the US military.
Haditha was front-page news across America on Friday, forcing officials sharply on to the defensive. Condoleezza Rice, the Secretary of State, said the cost in US lives and money in Iraq had been "worth it". President Bush, she insisted, would never ask for further sacrifices "if he didn't believe, and in fact I believe as well, that we can in fact succeed".
The new Defence Secretary, Robert Gates, gave a similarly positive - if unconvincing - assessment as he made his first trip to Iraq in his new job. "I believe, based on what I have heard and seen both from American commanders and the Iraqis, that things are moving in a positive direction."
Comment: If the blame lies with "senior officers" then it also by definition lies with members of the Bush administration. War crimes, impeachment, trial, sentencing.
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Sgt. Ricky Clousing went AWOL over atrocities
Indyweek.com
20/12/2006
Soldier tried to report abuses but was rebuffed
The first day he was deployed in Iraq, in November 2004, Sgt. Ricky Clousing found himself standing guard at the rear of an Army convoy after it stopped on a Baghdad street. His job was to turn back any vehicles that approached. So when a car turned toward them from a side street, he raised his weapon in warning and the car began to turn around. Clousing could see the driver's eyes clearly-just a scared and unthreatening young man. Then, from somewhere in the convoy, Clousing heard a "pop, pop, pop." Another soldier had fired at the car, killing him.
Clousing told that story and more about his appalling Iraq experience in a speech at Guilford College a few weeks before his court martial for desertion from the Army was scheduled to begin at Fort Bragg. That was in October. The trial ended with a plea agreement: Clousing was found guilty of being AWOL and was sentenced to serve three months in a military prison before receiving a bad-conduct discharge from the Army.
With good conduct, Clousing will be released this Friday or Saturday morning, and he'll head for Raleigh at midday Saturday to be greeted by human rights supporters at the Raleigh Friends Meeting House, 625 Tower St. (the street behind the Cameron Village Post Office). His reception is scheduled from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., before he catches a flight from RDU back to his hometown of Seattle, Wash.
"Any friends of peace and G.I. resistance are welcome to share in the spirit of this courageous voice against injustice," says Chuck Fager, the director of Quaker House in Fayetteville and one of the event's chief organizers.
Quaker House provided a videotape of Clousing's talk at Guilford to the Independent. What he experienced is almost a parable of what the country's gone through since 9/11. Clousing, now 24, joined the Army in 2002 out of a combination of youthful idealism and a then still-forming spiritual faith. He thought America would be doing good fighting Al Qaeda. Instead, he ended up part of a military wrecking crew in Iraq that saw itself bound-in his view-by no rules of conduct, morality or even good sense.
The disconnect between Clousing enlisting to do good and his Iraq deployment was all the greater because after he was tested and found to have a facility for foreign languages, his training was extended over a period of 18 months, including a stint at the Army Language School in Monterey, Calif. Soldiers in training are kept away from the news, so when he learned that President Bush was invading Iraq as part of the war on terror, it was "weird" to him, but he didn't second-guess it, because what did he know?
But then he did know, because he was assigned in Iraq to be a front-line interrogator, not in a prison, but as part of an Army tactical human intelligence team-the guys who kick in the doors and arrest the terrorists. Except, as Clousing quickly discovered, the units had no idea who the terrorists were, so when bombs went off, they broke through whatever doors were close at hand.
Most disturbing to him-and I could see his eyes clearly on tape-was the reaction of his commanding officers when he tried to report the atrocities he saw.
The occupants of a house arrested without a shred of evidence then held incommunicado for months because the Army didn't know what to do with them? Soldiers getting their jollies sideswiping Iraqis' cars with a Humvee? A farmer's livestock shot and killed for sport? It didn't matter, Clousing found: "The command just swept [his reports] away like they really weren't a problem, which was really a testament to me of like, wow, nobody really cares."
And, of course, the unwarranted killing of the driver. The Army's attitude about such things, Clousing says, wasn't "That was somebody's son we killed." Instead, soldiers are taught to depersonalize things, and say "That sucks, just somebody in the wrong place at the wrong time."
But Clousing, by his own admission, just couldn't get with the desensitization process. And after wrestling with his conscience about whether he could truthfully claim to be a conscience objector and deciding that no, there were wars he would fight for his country, he simply up and left Fort Bragg in mid-2005 after he returned from his first Iraq tour and was awaiting assignment to his second.
He went home to Seattle and discovered that the Army's lack of accountability when it came to other soldiers' misconduct also applied to his. He wanted to turn himself in, be found AWOL, and be discharged. But until he forced the issue, speaking out at a Veterans for Peace rally in Seattle, neither his command at Bragg nor the ones his lawyer called at Fort Lewis in Seattle seemed to want anything to do with him.
The story of what it took for him to finally get arrested at Bragg is almost comical-his calls to Lewis were bucked to Bragg and vice versa; he was told his records were lost, but suddenly were found after he spoke out publicly against the war; and even then, he had to find his own way back to Bragg and knock on a bunch of different doors before a soldier finally did him the service of detaining him.
Fager, who counseled Clousing after he called the G.I. Hotline at Quaker House (not knowing his name at first), says what finally pushed Clousing out of the service was a promotion that had him training other soldiers at Bragg to be interrogators once they were sent to Iraq.
Now, it wasn't just a question of violating his own conscience, which was bad enough. Clousing was going to be a cog in a military operation that, far from doing good in-and for-Iraq, was making more and more Iraqis hate Americans every day. "The stupid self-destruction of it finally got to be too much for him," Fager says.
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Horrors that mirrored Saddam's worst excesses
Times Online
26/12/2006
The Serious Crimes Unit was regarded as one of the most corrupt elements of the British-mentored and trained constabulary in Iraq's second city.
In Saddam Hussein's time, local security forces dragged hundreds of people to the al-Jameat compound in the middle of the night. They were never heard of again. It became known as the "station of death".
The two-storey building had been reopened by the British as a police station, part of the coalition's optimistic attempts to restore order after Saddam's overthrow.
Before long it was nicknamed "Gestapo HQ" by British officers. The horrors taking place behind its thick white walls were feared to compare with the sadistic excesses of the toppled dictatorship.
"When I visited the intelligence department at al-Jameat police station, I found prisoners stiff with fear, bound and gagged," Stephen Grey, the journalist, wrote in the New Statesman.
No crime seemed too extreme for the unit, based at the police station in a once-pleasant middle-class neighbourhood. Its officers were blamed for death squad killings, extortion rackets and smuggling weapons from Iran.
They worked with the Tharallah criminal network to carry out contract killings and deadly roadside attacks on British forces using sophisticated imported technology.
By last year, dozens of Iraqis were being dragged from their homes, shot in the head and their bodies dumped in operations blamed on the unit.
The discovery of a body on the outskirts of Basra in April last year provided hard evidence that these police were out of control. The dead Iraqi had been arrested on suspicion of smuggling and gun-running. An examination of his remains showed that an electric drill had been used to penetrate his skull, hands and legs.
Britain ordered undercover troops to mount surveillance. The intelligence-gathering operation went wrong when two officers became involved in a shootout with plainclothes Iraqi police. The pair were arrested and taken to al-Jameat in September 2005. Under interrogation they were punched and kicked. This time the British forces would stand for no nonsense; they bulldozed the side of the police station. The men, who had been moved to a different location, were freed.
A 50-strong "al-Jameat Gang", operating from the centre under cover of police uniform, was intimidating the remaining officers, who were too scared to inform on them.
Sheikh Ahmed al-Fartusi, a leader of the Shia Islamist al-Mahdi Army, had links to the group and was believed to provide them with protection in return for bomb-making equipment. He was seized by the international forces last year, part of a wave of arrests described as based on specific intelligence.
In an open letter to local people in January, John Cooper, commander of the British-led force in the south, described those arrested as "the most dangerous and corrupt people in Basra". He said the Interior Ministry had "instructed the chief of police to remove the most dangerous and most rotten elements from the police".
A year later, all hope of reforming the unit by weeding out rotten apples has been abandone
Comment: The entire world seems to have been convinced that Saddam was an "evil tyrant", mainly because Western government talking heads say so. The problem however is that these same governments have a long standing reputation for pathological lying, so why should we believe them. Reports of the brutality of the 15 years of US military and economic attacks on the Iraq people are regularly softened by the claim that Saddam was a "cruel dictator", with the implication that, while the US may not have acted in an entirely fair manner towards the Iraq government and people, the situation would be worse, or at least as bad, if Saddam had not been removed. This line of though stinks of manipulation, the type of mind programming that pervades all areas of Western civilian life. The fact remains that, prior to US aggression towards Iraq in 1991, Iraq was the most progressive nation in the Middle East, with high levels of literacy among the population and a thriving academic and social security system. These facts appear out of sync with the alleged "brutality" of the former Iraqi "madman".
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Experts: Iraq vets wrongly diagnosed with 'Personality Disorder'
Austin-American Statesman
24/12/2006
'Personality disorder' assessment allows for quick honorable discharge but tags veterans with a label that is hard to remove.
WASHINGTON - Soldiers suffering from the stress of combat in Iraq are being misdiagnosed by military doctors as having a personality disorder, lawyers and psychologists say, which allows them to be quickly and honorably discharged but stigmatizes them with a label that is hard to dislodge and can hurt them financially.
Though accurate for some, experts say, the personality disorder label has been used as a catch-all diagnosis to discharge personnel who may no longer meet military standards, are engaging in problematic behavior or suffer from more serious mental disorders. For returning veterans, the diagnosis can make it harder to obtain adequate mental health treatment if they must first show they have another problem, such as post-traumatic stress disorder.
"It's an absolute disgrace to military medicine," said Bridgette Wilson, a former Army medic who is now an attorney in San Diego serving mainly military clients. "I see it over and over again, the dramatic misuse of personality disorder diagnosis. It's a fairly slick and efficient way to move some bodies through."
Military records show that since 2003, 4,092 Army soldiers and another 11,296 men and women in other branches of the armed services have been discharged after being diagnosed with the disorder.
A government worker at Fort Carson in Colorado who has access to personnel records and who spoke on condition on anonymity for fear of losing his job said Army psychologists there have diagnosed some soldiers with a personality disorder after a single evaluation lasting 10 minutes to 20 minutes.
Several soldiers at Fort Carson interviewed by Cox Newspapers said they have been given or offered the diagnosis in a handful of meetings lasting less than an hour.
The personality disorder diagnosis can result in a soldier getting an honorable discharge within days, which can be appealing for many returning from Iraq.
The timing of many of the discharges, in some cases within months after soldiers have returned, appears to violate the military's rules, which say a personality disorder diagnosis should not be made if a soldier is experiencing "combat exhaustion or other acute situational maladjustments."
Dr. William Winkenwerder Jr., assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, said he is unaware of any related discharges within three months of a deployment and has "full confidence in our medical personnel in their decision-making."
Nonetheless, he asked Army surgeon general Lt. Gen. Kevin Kiley two weeks ago to review complaints of inadequate mental health care at Fort Carson. He said it was begun before Democratic Sens. Barbara Boxer of California and Barack Obama of Illinois and Republican Sen. Kit Bond of Missouri wrote a letter asking him to investigate such concerns after they were raised in a broadcast on National Public Radio.
"I'm concerned with any allegations that suggest we may have not taken the steps that we need to take to ensure that people are properly cared for," he said, adding that soldiers are receiving the best mental military health care in history.
Proper evaluation
A personality order is defined as a deeply ingrained, abnormal behavior pattern that appears during childhood or adolescence.
Critics say that many soldiers returning from Iraq who are tagged with that label actually have post-traumatic stress disorder stemming from their combat experiences. A review of four soldiers' medical records at Fort Carson and records from a soldier at another post show that they were diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder before or after their discharge.
Recommending a discharge on the basis of a personality disorder is a faster process than discharging someone for mental health problems of another nature. It requires only one military psychologist's finding, and the paperwork usually takes only a couple of days.
A diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder, on the other hand, must be handled by a medical review board, which must confirm that the condition stems from combat, a process that usually takes several months.
Dr. Joseph Bobrow, a former chief psychologist at Kaiser Hospital in San Francisco, said a personality disorder is one of the most difficult diagnoses to confirm, particularly when there is cumulative trauma.
"I think it's ludicrous to make a diagnosis of personality disorder in a 20- to 40-minute interview," he said. "Even if you do a complete battery of psychological testing and intensive and informed clinical interviews over a week, some of those results can be and are contested in a court of law."
Some of the soldiers at Fort Carson say they had been told by Army psychologists that the Department of Veterans Affairs would take care of them if their troubles persisted. A personality disorder, however, is considered a pre-existing condition, not one related to a soldier's service, and Veterans Affairs can treat but not give disability benefits in these cases.
Many soldiers who sought mental health counseling after returning from Iraq, like former Spc. Donald Schmidt of Chillicothe, Ill., say they learned only after their discharge that they must repay part of their re-enlistment bonus based on the portion of time they did not serve - more than $10,000 in Schmidt's case.
He and many other soldiers interviewed by Cox Newspapers, lawyers and veterans groups also say they were not cautioned that a personality disorder diagnosis could damage their job prospects because prospective civilian employers may request access to their discharge papers. Those records usually describe anti-social traits and behaviors they are said to probably possess.
In her 13 years in practice, San Diego attorney Wilson said she has seen dozens of Marines from nearby Camp Pendleton and soldiers from other posts separated for a personality disorder when the real reason, in her view, has been to punish a soldier, avoid paying disability benefits for a more serious condition or get rid of someone deemed undesirable.
Though some of her clients have personality disorders, she said, most who received the diagnosis and discharge had minor behavioral problems or were diagnosed with bipolar disorder or severe depression by either military or civilian psychologists.
About three-quarters of her clients who have been diagnosed with a personality disorder, she said, weren't given any psychological test. Rather, she said, the diagnosis was based on a roughly 45-minute interview.
Lynn Gonzalez, a counselor at the San Diego Military Counseling Project, an information and support organization for active-duty personnel having problems with the military, said the quick tagging of soldiers with the disorder has happened "enough that what we tend to do now is push guys to go to a private psychiatrist so they have more information for a proper diagnosis."
Col. Steven Knorr, chief of psychiatry at Fort Carson's Evans Army Community Hospital, said it would be rare for a doctor to diagnose and discharge a soldier for having a personality disorder in just one session, as asserted by some soldiers.
Besides examining a patient's medical history and sometimes doing psychological testing, he said, psychologists normally will talk with soldiers about how they're coping and how they feel about military service and get their commander's assessment.
"The vast majority of people I've seen separated with personality disorder are pleased with that," Knorr said.
Altering diagnoses
For nearly a year after his return from Iraq in August 2005, former Pvt. Jason Harvey had gone without any follow-up evaluations at Fort Carson after screening positive for possible post-traumatic stress disorder and a traumatic brain injury, his records show.
After a suicide attempt in May, records show that the 23-year-old was diagnosed with depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, but in late June the Army tried to discharge him with a personality disorder. Harvey said he was told by a staff psychologist in a joint meeting with his commander that if he did not agree to an honorable discharge, the commander would pursue a punitive discharge.
"They played me like a fiddle," Harvey said, adding he was wrongly told the medical retirement fell under the same category as post-traumatic stress disorder. In fact, it is a nonmedical discharge.
Also at Fort Carson, after two tours in Iraq, Schmidt, 22, told a psychologist he was feeling violent impulses as a result of marital difficulties. The decorated soldier is on guard constantly and "quick to anger" when he had not been that way before, said his mother, Patrice Semtner-Myers.
Schmidt said his Army psychologist, Dr. Michael Pantaleo, made the diagnosis after several meetings lasting between 15 and 30 minutes each and never asked him questions about his behavior before joining the Army. Pantaleo did not return calls seeking comment.
Schmidt was discharged "without a dime in his pocket," his mother said.
"The soldiers are often too stupid to know what they've done" when they accept the disorder or seek it, Wilson said. "They go out and discover the state police department really isn't interested in someone discharged with a personality disorder or find they have trouble getting security clearances."
Some military psychologists appear to be violating guidelines in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the psychiatric manual used by the military.
If a soldier complains of mental problems after returning from combat, a personality disorder is supposed to be ruled out for an unspecified amount of time because some of its characteristics, such as problems interacting with others and substance abuse, overlap with some of the hallmarks of post-traumatic stress disorder.
The Pentagon "is not familiar with the rules, or they are choosing to ignore them," said Paul Sullivan, director of programs for Veterans for America, a Washington-based nonprofit.
Knorr said it's possible for soldiers at Fort Carson to be diagnosed with mild post-traumatic stress disorder but be discharged for a personality disorder, but he thought that would be rare. An extremely low number might be later diagnosed with a disabling case of stress disorder, he said.
Dr. Bob Scaer, a neurologist and trauma expert in Boulder, Colo., who worked at Fort Carson as an unseasoned resident clinician 41 years ago, said commanders back then would send him soldiers that they wanted to remove from service.
"I'd rubber-stamp the discharge," he said. "This was an excuse for discarding soldiers who didn't fit in."
He said he has seen a few soldiers from Fort Carson recently who were misdiagnosed with a personality disorder after having initially been diagnosed by Army psychiatrists with stress disorder. The military, he said, is making problematic behavior among some returning soldiers "out to be a personality disorder, and it's not. It's well-known as a symptom of trauma."
Determination of personality disorder
Medical guidelines for each service:
Army: Requires a psychologist's findings.
Navy: Vague language; not clear that determination must come from a mental health professional or command.
Marines: Similar to Army rules but two forms of documents required. Same doctor must render findings on a Marine's impairment and on written nonmedical evidence to show examples of inability to function in the corps.
Air Force: Alone in requiring oversight where commanders fail to act on appropriate findings. Commander must have decision reviewed by discharge authority.
Personality disorder discharges
Year Army Air Force Navy* Marines
2001 805 Unavailable 1,389 443
2002 734 1,523 1,733 460
2003** 980 1,496 1,316 328
2004 988 1,307 1,253 414
2005 1,038 928 1,176 475
2006 (through Nov.) 1,086 1,085 1,076 442
Totals 5,631 6,339 7,943 2,562
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U.S. says evidence links Iran military to plots in Iraq
By Sabrina Tavernise
Published: December 27, 2006
BAGHDAD: The U.S. military said it had credible evidence linking Iranians and their Iraqi associates, detained here in raids last week, to criminal activities, including attacks against U.S. forces. Evidence also emerged that some of the detainees were involved in shipments of weapons to illegal armed groups in Iraq.
In its first official confirmation of the raids last week, the U.S. military said Tuesday that it had confiscated maps, videos, photographs and documents in one of the raids on a site in Baghdad. The military confirmed the arrests of five Iranians and said that three of them had since been released.
The Bush administration has described the two Iranians still being held late Tuesday night as senior military officials. Major General William Caldwell, the chief spokesman for the U.S. command, said that the military, in the raid, had "gathered specific intelligence from highly credible sources that linked individuals and locations with criminal activities against Iraqi civilians, security forces and coalition force personnel."
Caldwell made his remarks by e-mail, in response to a query about the raids, first reported Monday in The New York Times. "Some of that specific intelligence," he said via e-mail, "dealt explicitly with force-protection issues, including attacks on MNF-I forces." MNF- I stands for Multinational Force-Iraq, the official name of the U.S.-led foreign forces there.
U.S. officials have long said that the Iranian government interferes in Iraq, but the arrests, in the compound of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, one of Iraq's most powerful Shiite political leaders, were the first since the U.S. invasion in which officials were offering evidence of the link.
The raids threaten to upset the delicate balance of the three-way relationship between the United States, Iran and Iraq. The Iraqi government has made extensive efforts to engage Iran in security matters in recent months, and the arrests of the Iranians could scuttle those efforts.
Some Iraqis questioned the timing of the arrests, suggesting that the Bush administration had political motives. The arrests came just days before the UN Security Council passed a resolution imposing sanctions against Iran for its refusal to suspend uranium enrichment.
The Bush administration has rejected pressure to open talks with Iran on Iraq.
The Iraqi government has kept silent on the arrests, but officials spoke Tuesday night of intense behind-the-scenes negotiations by Iraq's government and its fractured political elite over how to handle the situation.
The Iraqi president, Jalal Talabani, had invited the two Iranians during his visit to Tehran, his spokesman said on Sunday, but by Tuesday, some Iraqi officials had begun to question if Talabani had in fact made the invitation.
"We know when they caught them they were doing something," said one Iraqi official, who added that the Iranians did not appear to have formally registered with the government.
Some political leaders speculated that the arrests were intended to derail efforts by Iraqis to deal with Iran on their own by making Iraqis look weak.
But the U.S. military seemed sure of what and whom it had found.
At about 7 p.m. last Wednesday, the military stopped a car in Baghdad and detained four people - three Iranians and an Iraqi. The military released two of them on Friday and the other two on Sunday night, Caldwell said. The Iranian Embassy confirmed the releases.
But the more significant raid came in predawn hours of Thursday morning, when U.S. forces raided a second location, the general said.
The military described it as "a site in Baghdad," but declined to release further details about the location.
Iraqi leaders said last week that the site was the compound of Hakim, who met with President George W. Bush in Washington three weeks ago. A spokesman for Hakim said he had not heard of a raid on the compound.
A careful reading of Caldwell's statement makes it clear, however, that the location itself was of central importance. The military gathered "specific intelligence from highly credible sources that linked individuals and locations with criminal activities," it said.
The crimes were against Iraqi civilians, security forces and Americans.
In that raid, U.S. forces detained 10 men, two of them Iranians.
They seized documents, maps, photographs and videos at the location, the military said. The military declined to say precisely what the items showed, nor did it specify if the Iranians themselves were suspected of attacking Americans, or if the Iraqis arrested with them were suspected, or both.
Some Iraqis questioned the U.S. motives, saying that the operation seemed aimed at embarrassing Hakim, the driving force behind a new political grouping backed by the United States to distance militants from the political process.
The allegation, if true, would mark the first time since the U.S. invasion that Iranian military officials were discovered in the act of planning military action inside Iraq. U.S. officials have long accused them of supplying arms and money from Iran, but never of traveling to Iraq and actively taking part in plotting violent acts here.
An official in the Iranian Embassy in Baghdad said that its diplomats had tried to see the detainees but were not allowed to, a refusal that violated international rules, the official said.
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Sowing the Seeds of War
Washington's Game in Turkmenistan
Mike Whitney
12/26/06
Did Turkmenistan's President, Saparmurat Niyazov, really die of cardiac arrest or is he just latest victim of Bush's "regime change" epidemic?
That may sound paranoid, but it's easy to be skeptical of an administration which openly promotes torture, "extraordinary rendition" and "targeted assassination" as sound foreign policy. These practices indicate that moral restraint is not high on the list of Bush priorities.
Besides, Niyazov met all the criteria for regime change; he controlled massive natural gas reserves and he refused to take orders directly from Washington. Typically, these are the only factors which matter when Bush decides which leader is next on his "hit list".
Niyazov was probably on the same "Enemies List" as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hugo Chavez and Saddam Hussein, the other foreign leaders whose only crime is that they control vital supplies of dwindling resources. Like his contemporaries, Niyazov represented an obstacle to the American oil giants extending their corporate empire through Central Asia and the Middle East. Now that he's dead, the power struggle can begin in earnest.
Turkmenistan has reserves which amount to a whopping 22.5 trillion cubic meters, the second largest supplies in Asia. Nearly all of Turkmenistan's gas is pumped through Russian energy giant Gazprom's pipelines. As economist Mikail Delyagin said, "Because of Gazprom's mismanagement, the European part of Russia cannot exist without Turkmen gas. Control over it is a categorical imperative for Russia's development during the next 10 years". (Victor Yasmann RFE/RL Current Affairs)
Disruption of gas supplies from Turkmenistan would be a severe blow to Gazprom's economic vitality. This ensures that Putin will be deeply involved in the selection of the country's future president. It also sets the stage for another clash between Moscow and Washington.
The Bush administration's objectives in Turkmenistan are the exact opposite of Putin's. The Bush team wants to build a pipeline under the Caspian Sea to pump natural gas reserves to the West through Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey and out the Mediterranean corridor or down through Bush's "new colony" in Afghanistan through Pakistan to the coast. If the Bush plan goes forward it would be a major setback to Gazprom which depends on Turkmenistan's gas to supply Ukraine and Europe. As Stratford says, "Without those shipments, Russian state energy firm Gazprom would find it impossible to satisfy both domestic Russian natural gas demand and fulfill its export contracts to Europe and Turkey".
The administration's plan would also sabotage Niyazov's prior commitments to China which has signed contracts for a pipeline to bring natural gas through Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. China's future depends heavily on Turkmenistan. According to Alex Nicholson of the AP, "Niyazov promised to pipe 30 billion cubic meters of gas beginning January 2009. (China) also won an invitation last month to tap the giant Iolotan fields, which the late president declared, contained 7 trillion cubic meters of natural gas-or more than even Saudi Arabia's proven reserves."
"7 trillion cubic meters of natural gas"?!?
No wonder the Bush administration is paving the way for intervention.
At the very least, Niyazov's death has turned out to be another "great opportunity" for Uncle Sam and it looks like Bush may have already put the pieces in place to take full advantage of it.
For example, as soon as Niyazov's death was announced, his second in command, Ovez Atayev, was removed from power by Deputy Prime Minister, Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov, under the trumped charges of "harassing and humiliating his daughter in law". The charge is blatantly absurd and politically motivated. But is Washington behind it?
The elimination of Ovez Atayev is just the first of the many fortunate "coincidences" which seem to benefit western interests. Now that the president is dead and his successor is under indictment, there are reports that a number of prominent ex-patriots will soon be returning to Turkmenistan to take part in the political "free-for-all".
Haven't we seen this performance before?
Much of what is taking place in Turkmenistan resembles the Bush-script for toppling Saddam and replacing him with expatriate stooges who were assembled and briefed outside of the country before the 2003 invasion. Is this just a reenactment of that same worn libretto?
The media, of course, is playing its traditional role of championing Washington's interventions by demanding "free elections"; another comical part of the Bush-kabuki which never seems to change. Turkmenistan has no history of free elections, but the western press sees an opportunity to serve its constituents by fomenting dramatic political change; change that is designed to install a US-friendly client. Once again, Bush's "Global Democratic Revolution" is being invoked to strengthen America's grip in Central Asia.
If we look back at the "color coded" revolutions which were orchestrated by American NGOs and American intelligence agencies, we can see that (despite the planning and huge commitment of financial resources) they accomplished nothing of lasting value. Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan are back within Russia's orbit and Georgia will soon follow. (or lose access to Russia's natural gas)
Eurasia is Russia and China's backyard and they've build up the necessary defenses to keep Washington out. Bush can waste-away in Afghanistan for another 5 or 6 years dreaming of "victory", but his "Grand Plan" for the region is basically in ruins. The United States will not prevail in Central Asia any more than it will in Iraq.
Nevertheless, the plan is going forward and Bush apparently has the requisite agents in place to give him hope for success. According the RIA Novosti, "Many people in the former president's inner circle were oriented towards Europe."
Indeed.
The power struggle is bound to be ferocious and Washington is preparing to be right in the thick of it. Bush has little choice but to do everything he can to establish an American stronghold in Eurasia's energy-center. The geopolitical stakes are just too high to ignore. The country is perfectly situated between Russia and Iran on the Caspian Sea. In fact, the Pentagon's own maps show Turkmenistan at the very center of CENTCOM's global resource war; a pivotal location for military installations and pipeline corridors. It provides ready-access to an estimated 2 trillion in oil reserves in the Caspian Sea as well as the massive natural gas supplies.
At the same time, a US-friendly president in Ashgabat could block arch-rival Gazprom from extending its dominance throughout the region by handing over critical gas reserves to western energy corporations.
This is not a battle that the Washington warlords can afford to lose, but victory will not be easy. Neither Iran nor Russia can allow Bush to take over Turkmenistan without a fight. Iran would be surrounded on all sides by the US and cut off from its neighbors to the north by hostile American forces. At the same time, US military bases would be set up even closer to the Iranian capital of Tehran.
For Russia, an American client in Turkmenistan would be a stiff challenge to its role as the region's superpower; creating the looming possibility that NATO would get an even bigger foothold in Central Asia and threaten the delicate balance of power.
Turkmenistan is a key piece in the new "Great Game"; the ongoing struggle for supremacy in Central Asia. Whether Washington played a part in Niyazov's untimely death or not is almost irrelevant. The Bush-Cheney oiligarchy have demonstrated a willingness to fight-to-the-death for every thimbleful of oil or natural gas left on planet earth. This makes the likelihood of a sudden eruption of violence in Turkmenistan all the more probable.
As the weeks go by, we can expect to see the usual indications of US involvement; the CIA-funded public demonstrations, the "democracy promoting" coverage in the media, and the comical parade of ex-patriots who matriculated in US right-wing think tanks. The whole charade is being cobbled together as part of a failed strategy to control the world's remaining resources.
The faces may change, but the routine is always the same.
While attending Niyazov's Soviet-style funeral, US Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher said that the president's death signaled "a new beginning" in relations, and that, he "hoped Turkmenistan would reform, move towards democracy and curtail human rights abuse."
Once again, "Democracy is on the march!"
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Turkmenistan Opposition Prepares to Launch 'Flour' Revolution
Created: 27.12.2006 14:38 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 16:43 MSK
MosNews
The leader of Turkmenistan's United Democratic Opposition, currently based in Norway, proposed Wednesday sending a trainload of flour to Turkmenistan and carrying out a "flour" revolution in the republic, Russia's RIA-Novosti news agency reports.
President-for-Life Saparmurat Niyazov died at 66 of heart failure last Thursday. During his rule, the eccentric leader erected golden statues to himself, named a meteorite in his name, and decreed that his quasi-Islamic precepts, under the title of Ruhnama, be the nation's guiding principal.
"The opposition is going to dispatch to Turkmenistan a train of flour to support the republic's starving people," Avdy Kuliyev said over the phone.
He said the leaders of opposition movements, who have fled overseas to escape persecution at home, could follow the train and return to Turkmenistan.
"This will be the start of our 'flour' revolution," Kuliyev, who was foreign minister in late President Saparmurat Niyazov's government in the early 1990s, said but added that the opposition's intentions are peaceful.
The opposition borrowed the name in association with the "orange revolution" and "rose revolution" in other former Soviet republics, Ukraine and Georgia, which brought West-leaning governments to power in 2004 and 2003.
Kuliyev said Turkmenistan suffers from a constant lack of bread and flour, which are the main products for the most residents in the current dire economic conditions.
Turkmenistan's opposition earlier nominated Khudaiberdy Orazov, its leader and a former deputy prime minister, as a presidential candidate, who said the opposition will seek democracy in Turkmenistan by all means, including a possible coup. Orazov is wanted in Turkmenistan on embezzlement charges.
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Ethiopian jets bomb two main airports in Somalia
USA Today
26/12/2006
MOGADISHU, Somalia - Ethiopian jets bombed Somalia's two main airports Monday while ground troops captured three villages and a strategic border town, lending Somalia's internationally backed government crucial military aid in its struggle against a powerful Islamic militia.
Russian-made jets swept low over the capital at midmorning, dropping two bombs on Mogadishu International Airport, part of a major escalation in the week-old fighting. The leader of the Islamic militia, Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys, flew into the airport shortly after the attack; it was not clear if he was an intended target.
Airstrikes also hit Baledogle Airport outside Mogadishu.
"We heard the sound of the jets and then they pounded," said Abdi Mudey, a soldier with Somalia's Council of Islamic Courts, which has seized the capital and much of southern Somalia since June.
Somalia has not had an effective government since warlords overthrew longtime dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991, pushing the country into anarchy. Two years ago, the United Nations helped set up a central government for the arid, impoverished nation on the Horn of Africa.
But the government has not been able to extend its influence outside the city of Baidoa, where it is headquartered about 140 miles northeast of Mogadishu. The country was largely under the control of warlords until this past summer, when the Islamic militia movement seized power.
Experts fear the conflict in Somalia could engulf the region. A recent U.N. report said 10 countries have been supplying arms and equipment to both sides of the conflict, using Somalia as a proxy battlefield. Some analysts also fear that the courts movement hopes to make Somalia a third front, after Afghanistan and Iraq, in militant Islam's war against the West.
The Islamic group's often severe interpretation of Islam is reminiscent, to some, of Afghanistan's Taliban regime - ousted by a U.S.-led campaign in 2001 for harboring Osama bin Laden. The U.S. government says four al-Qaeda leaders, believed to be behind the 1998 bombing of the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, are now leaders in the Islamic militia.
Militia forces have surrounded Somali government forces in Baidoa, where heavy artillery and mortar fire echoed through the streets, said Mohammed Sheik Ali, a resident reached by telephone.
But Ethiopian-backed government troops appeared to take the initiative on Monday.
Pro-government forces drove Islamic fighters out of the key border town of Belet Weyne, then headed south in pursuit of fleeing militiamen, a Somali officer said. Government troops were enforcing a curfew of 3 p.m. to 6 a.m.
"Anyone who has a gun but is not wearing a government uniform will be targeted as a terrorist," said Aden Garase, a government soldier who was put in charge of Belet Weyne.
On Ethiopian television Monday night, the defense ministry said troops would move toward the city of Jowhar, about 55 miles from Mogadishu. Later, Ethiopia made a push in that direction, capturing the villages of Bandiradley, Adadow and Galinsor, according Yusuf Ahmed Ali, a businessman in Adadow.
As its military forces advanced against militia fighters, Somalia's government also sought to seal its borders in order to prevent foreign Islamic militants from joining the Islamic courts forces.
Residents living along Somalia's coast have seen hundreds of militants arriving by boat, apparently in answer to calls by religious leaders to wage a holy war against Ethiopia.
It seems unlikely the government can blockade Somalia's 1,860-mile coastline - the longest in Africa. But the closures could hamper humanitarian aid deliveries to the country, where one in five children dies before age 5 from a preventable disease.
The U.N. World Food Program airlifted several tons of food and other aid into Somalia on Monday, but had not yet been notified of any border closings, agency spokesman Peter Smerdon said.
The Islamic militia, which grew out of a network of ad hoc Muslim courts, has brought a measure of law to a lawless country: The international airport reopened in July after being closed for a decade.
But leaders of the Islamic courts movement alarmed the country's neighbors by threatening to incorporate ethnic Somalis living in eastern Ethiopia, northeastern Kenya and Djibouti into a Greater Somalia.
Many Somalis are enraged by Ethiopian intervention because the countries have fought two wars over their disputed border in the past 45 years. Somalia is overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim, while Ethiopia has a large Christian minority.
Despite this friction, the Somali government - which has failed to assert any real control since it was formed two years ago - relies on its neighbor's military strength.
Earlier, Ethiopia had said it sent advisers to bolster the Somali government's outgunned military forces, but denied dispatching combat troops. The U.N., though, estimates that Ethiopia has 8,000 troops in the country.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said Sunday that his country was "forced to enter a war" with Somalia's Council of Islamic Courts after the group declared holy war on Ethiopia.
So far, Ethiopian and Somali troops have used MiG jet fighters and artillery to attack the Islamists, who have no military aircraft and can return fire only with much smaller mortars and recoilless rifles.
Meles has said he does not intend to keep his forces in Somalia for long, perhaps only a few weeks. He has told visiting dignitaries that his goal is to damage the courts' military capabilities, take away their sense of invincibility and allow both sides to return to peace talks on an even footing.
Government officials and Islamic militiamen have said hundreds of people have been killed in clashes since Tuesday, but the claims could not be independently confirmed. Aid groups put the death toll in the dozens.
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Zionists Lay the Groundwork for a Military Strike Against Iran
Kim Petersen
www.dissidentvoice.org
December 19, 2006
Jewish leaders" have latched onto the wiry figure of beleaguered Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the latest straw man for the crimes of zionism. Meeting in New York, "Jewish leaders" declared their intention to bring Ahmadinejad to trial for inciting genocide. [1]
The case against Ahmadinejad is based upon the regurgitated canard that he had called for "wiping Israel off the map." [2] Second, is the absurd complaint that Ahmadinejad is a holocaust-denier, as if denying or questioning history should be a crime. [3] The forced acceptance of an "official" history of the World War II Holocaust is paradigmatically similar to the compelling of Winston Smith (in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four) to believe that "2+2=5." Third, is Iran's alleged pursuit of nuclear and ballistic missile capacity. So far, Iran's pursuit of nuclear technology has been within the parameters of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. [4] Israel, however, arrogantly grants itself the right to actions and attempts to deny the same right to others. Logically, if Iran is guilty of inciting genocide for pursuing nuclear and ballistic missile technology, then Israel must be guilty of the same, or worse, since it has already attained both nuclear and ballistic missile technology.
Besides, even if Iran were inciting genocide, and as wicked as this would be, it pales in comparison to the malevolence of the actual perpetration of genocide, of which the Israeli regime is guilty among other crimes. [5]
But these are not stupid "Jewish leaders," so a question arises: what do these leaders really intend to accomplish with their fraud? JTA News makes this clear: the "Jewish leaders" seek "to lay the groundwork for a military strike if diplomacy [sic] and legal action don't derail Iran's quest for nuclear weapons."
JTA News is not easily dismissed. The New York City-headquartered JTA dates back around the end of World War I, billing itself as the Global News Service of the Jewish People. Its website claims the Jewish community relies upon JTA as "the single most credible source of news and analysis available about events and issues of Jewish interest anywhere in the world."
JTA News quotes attorney Alan Dershowitz, "We will try the law. We will try politics. We will try everything." He adds, "But if they fail, we will use self-defense." Dershowitz has already pre-judged the issue. To hell with the law and to hell with politics! If legal and political avenues do not accede to zionist aims, then Zionists will resort to whatever means necessary to achieve their aims. And this comes from the mouth of a Harvard law professor!
Aiding Dershowitz in his above-the-law vendetta is former Canadian minister of justice Irwin Cotler. They are preparing justification for "military preemption" if other efforts fail.
"We waited once, we will not wait again," said Dershowitz, who like other speakers evoked the global silence as the Nazis prepared the Holocaust. "Do not expect passive acceptance of genocide. We will fight back."
Dershowitz must battle former soldiers in the Israeli occupation army who do heed the admonition against keeping silent in the face of atrocities. A group of ex-Israeli occupation soldiers have formed Break the Silence, which does just that around the world. Said Break the Silence member Yehuda Shaul: "We provide the tools for people to understand the deeply woven moral corruption and numbness of what we do [in Occupied Palestine]. It's like a slide; once you start going down, you keep going down." [6]
It takes a lot of chutzpah for Dershowitz (not surprising since he is said to be beyond chutzpah) to invoke a right to fight back against a fraudulently alleged incitement to genocide. Unless one initiates a fight against you, you cannot correctly be said to be fighting back. As for the "passive acceptance of genocide," that is exactly what too many Israeli Jews and too many other regimes and their citizens are guilty of vis-à-vis the Palestinians today.
Taking down Ahmadinejad legally is one recourse Dershowitz and his fellow cronies may futilely attempt since leaders of nation states have diplomatic immunity (applicable before all except hyper-powers, which the hapless duo of Manuel Noriega and Saddam Hussein discovered). Some speakers pointed to the "successful" cases to prosecute former Chilean leader Augusto Pinochet and former Serbian-Yugoslavian leader Slobodan Milosevic as war criminals under international law. Successful? Both were eventually arraigned, but the trials were never concluded. This is hardly "successful."
It must also be noted that neither Pinochet nor Milosevic was a leader at the time of his arraignment.
Nonetheless, Jewish leaders have graciously "give[n] the international community a chance to prove itself" by trying the legal route.
Speaking for the Jewish leaders, Dershowitz issued a warning:
If the international community fails, if this challenge is not met, we reserve the right of self-defense. We pledge here today to do everything it takes, and anything it takes, to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. We will not fail. We cannot fail. [italics added]
If the international community caves into the illegitimate demands of Jewish (or other) leaders, then it will have failed. The silent international community, however, is already failing the victimized Palestinian people and the result is another bloody stain on humanity.
Kim Petersen, Co-Editor of Dissident Voice, lives in the Republic of Korea. He can be reached at: kim@dissidentvoice.org.
ENDNOTES
[1] Ben Harris, "Jewish leaders threaten to indict Ahmadinejad for inciting genocide," JTA News, 14 December 2006.
[2] Juan Cole, "Hitchens the Hacker; And, Hitchens the Orientalist And, We don't Want Your Stinking War!" Informed Comment, 3 May 2006. According to Cole, Ahmadinejad's words were: "The Imam said that this regime occupying Jerusalem (een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods) must [vanish from] from the page of time (bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad)." Ahmadinejad was not making a threat, he was quoting a saying of Khomeini and urging that pro-Palestinian activists in Iran not give up hope.
[3] A case for the right to question history. Kim Petersen, "Progressivism, Skepticism, and Historical Revisionism: The Inalienable Right to Question History," Dissident Voice, 19 December 2005.
[4] Jeremy R. Hammond, "Iran and the Violation of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty," Dissident Voice, 4 December 2006.
[5] Francis A. Boyle, "Palestine Should Sue Israel for Genocide before the International Court of Justice," Media Monitors, 2 December 2000.
[6] Haroon Siddiqui, "Ex-soldiers break 'silence' on Israeli excesses," Toronto Star, 17 December 2006. The TS headline euphemistically refers to "Israeli excesses," but Yehuda Shaul details crimes such as throwing Palestinians out of homes, closing their schools, and shooting grenades at them.
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NATO Chief Says Expansion to Ukraine and Georgia Will Not Harm Russia
Created: 27.12.2006 13:29 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 17:05 MSK
MosNews
NATO's steps to expand its ties with Ukraine and Georgia are not aimed against Russia, the alliance's Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said in an interview published on Wednesday, the Interfax news agency reports.
The vigorous dialogue that comes as NATO's response to the two countries' aspiration for closer cooperation with alliance has not been developing at the expense of relations between these countries and Russia, de Hoop Scheffer said. NATO is seeking to help form good and constructive relations between them, he added.
NATO is not going to assert that it is able to resolve today's security problems on its own, de Hoop Scheffer noticed.
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In Somalia, a reckless U.S. proxy war
IHT
26/12/2006
Undeterred by the horrors and setbacks in Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon, the Bush administration has opened another battlefront in the Muslim world. With full U.S. backing and military training, at least 15,000 Ethiopian troops have entered Somalia in an illegal war of aggression against the Union of Islamic Courts, which controls almost the entire south of the country.
As with Iraq in 2003, the United States has cast this as a war to curtail terrorism, but its real goal is to obtain a direct foothold in a highly strategic region by establishing a client regime there. The Horn of Africa is newly oil-rich, and lies just miles from Saudi Arabia, overlooking the daily passage of large numbers of oil tankers and warships through the Red Sea. General John Abizaid, the current U.S. military chief of the Iraq war, was in Ethiopia this month, and President Hu Jintao of China visited Kenya, Sudan and Ethiopia earlier this year to pursue oil and trade agreements.
The U.S. instigation of war between Ethiopia and Somalia, two of world's poorest countries already struggling with massive humanitarian disasters, is reckless in the extreme. Unlike in the run-up to Iraq, independent experts, including from the European Union, were united in warning that this war could destabilize the whole region even if America succeeds in its goal of toppling the Islamic Courts.
An insurgency by Somalis, millions of whom live in Kenya and Ethiopia, will surely ensue, and attract thousands of new anti-U.S. militants and terrorists.
With so much of the world convulsed by crisis, little attention has been paid to this unfolding disaster in the Horn. The UN Security Council, however, did take up the issue, and in another craven act which will further cement its reputation as an anti-Muslim body, bowed to American and British pressure to authorize a regional peacekeeping force to enter Somalia to protect the transitional government, which is fighting the Islamic Courts.
The new UN resolution states that the world body acted to "restore peace and stability." But as all major international news organizations have reported, this year Somalia finally experienced its first respite from 16 years of utter lawlessness and terror at the hands of the marauding warlords who drove out UN peacekeepers in 1993, when 18 American soldiers were killed.
Since 1993, there had been no Security Council interest in sending peacekeepers to Somalia, but as peace and order took hold, a multilateral force was suddenly deemed necessary - because it was the Islamic Courts Union that had brought about this stability. Astonishingly, the Islamists had succeeded in defeating the warlords primarily through rallying people to their side by creating law and order through the application of Shariah law, which Somalis universally practice.
The transitional government, on the other hand, is dominated by the warlords and terrorists who drove out American forces in 1993. Organized in Kenya by U.S. regional allies, it is so completely devoid of internal support that it has turned to Somalia's arch- enemy, Ethiopia, for assistance.
If this war continues, it will affect the whole region, do serious harm to U.S. interests and threaten Kenya, the only island of stability in this corner of Africa.
Ethiopia is at even greater risk, as a dictatorship with little popular support and beset also by two large internal revolts, by the Ogadenis and Oromos. It is also mired in a conflict with Eritrea, which has denied it secure access to seaports.
The best antidote to terrorism in Somalia is stability, which the Islamic Courts have provided. The Islamists have strong public support, which has grown in the face of U.S. and Ethiopian interventions. As in other Muslim-Western conflicts, the world needs to engage with the Islamists to secure peace.
Salim Lone, who was the spokesman for the UN mission in Iraq in 2003, is a columnist for The Daily Nation in Kenya. This Global Viewpoint article was distributed by Tribune Media Services.
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Life is Suffering
Hundreds burned alive in Lagos pipeline fire
Wednesday December 27, 2006
The Guardian
- Death toll could be as high as 500, says Red Cross
- Fire engulfed locals after gang siphoned off fuel
More than 260 people were killed yesterday - burned alive when a ruptured oil pipeline burst into flames in Lagos.
Crowds of local residents had gone to scoop up petrol using plastic containers after an armed gang punctured an underground pipeline to illegally siphon off fuel.
"The number of dead is confirmed at 269," said Red Cross secretary-general Abiodun Orebiyi. "We have retrieved all the bodies." Another 160 people were taken to hospitals in Lagos suffering burns. The remains of hundreds of bodies, most burned beyond recognition, were at the scene of the blast in the densely populated Abule-Egba district of Lagos, next to a car workshop and a sawmill.
Some corpses lay rigid on the ground, arms and legs thrust awkwardly in the air with their clothes and skin burned off. It took firefighters equipped with leaking water hoses about six hours to put out the flames as hundreds of people watched.
In the absence of an ambulance service, one group of volunteers loaded charred bodies into an estate car operated by the Lagos road safety authority.
The explosion happened in an area on the city fringes where the families of low-paid and casual workers live crowded together. "One friend knocked on our door and told my husband they were taking fuel. My husband ran out with two buckets and now he has gone. This is a curse from God," said a woman who gave her name as Ole.
"There were mothers there, little children," said Emmanuel Unokhua, an engineer who lives near the scene of the blast. "I was begging them to go back."
Mr Unokhua said that residents had thrown fuel over him and a few police who had been unable to control the crowd.
"They were not arresting anyone because they had no vehicle to put them in," he said. "There are plenty of vehicles for the dead bodies now."
"My brother, my brother," wept Suboke Adebayo as an unidentified charred male corpse was loaded into a waiting ambulance. Ms Adebayo, a 19-year-old student, had spent hours trying unsuccessfully to contact her sibling. "I've been calling him since this morning, but I can only hear a holding tone," she said.
A woman in a yellow T-shirt sobbed uncontrollably, slapping herself on the face and clawing her own arms in grief.
Long queues have formed at fuel stations across Nigeria over the past few weeks because of shortages in supply of fuel from the national oil company.
"Because of the scarcity, people want to make a quick profit or just fill their tank," Mr Orebiyi said.
The authorities blame incidents such as yesterday's on "bunkerers", criminals who tap into pipelines carrying refined fuel around the country for the state-owned Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).
After taking as much as they can transport for resale under the cover of darkness, they leave the pipelines leaking and villagers in poverty-stricken communities rush to the sites with cans, bowls and buckets to collect as much fuel as possible for use in vehicles, generators and kerosene cookers. A stolen jerrycan of petrol, sold on the black market, can equal two weeks wages for a poor Nigerian.
According to observers, however, behind this lies another story of poverty and the mismanagement of the country's natural resources. Lagos is the commercial capital of the world's seventh-largest oil producing nation.
Fuel shortages were until recently run of the mill in Nigeria, whose four fuel refineries had fallen into dilapidation under years of neglect by military governments, leading to a paradoxical situation where the country imported refined petrol to be resold at below-market rates, at the same time as exporting crude oil.
The loss-making re-import scheme encouraged many dealers to divert their supplies for sale on the more profitable black market instead.
Controversial fuel price rises enacted by President Olusegun Obasanjo last year seemed to have resolved the problem, making imports more profitable and thus eliminating the trade in stolen fuel.
The head of the NNPC, Funsho Kupolokun, told local television that petrol thieves were to blame for the new shortages, with the corporation struggling for weeks to repair damage they had caused to essential pipelines supplying the populous south-west of the country.
But rumours of less transparent causes are already circulating, with some suspecting that marketeers are deliberately withholding supplies in order to profit from a possible new year price rise.
Whatever the reason, the shortage has seen the resurgence of Lagos's once-notorious black market fuel traffickers. Residents allege that such gangs have been colluding with some filling-station owners to corner remaining supplies for resale at 100 naira (41p) a litre, almost double the official retail price set by the government regulator, and too expensive for most ordinary people.
The Christmas shortage has caused all the more hardship as petrol is not only essential for transport, but for the generators on which most homes and businesses rely in the absence of reliable mains electricity. As the shortage deteriorated into crisis, Lagos-resident activist Lolade Bamidele told the Guardian that in recent days "you can feel the desperation, it is almost palpable".
He said that in areas such as Abule-Egba that desperation had bitten hardest and many of the victims would have ignored the risks to obtain a windfall of free fuel.
Comment: Nigeria is the world's eighth-largest crude exporter and the fifth-biggest exporter oil to the United States. Its exports to the United States have risen to 1.1 million barrels per day in the most recent government statistics -- about 10 percent of U.S. crude imports.
Two years ago, a similar explosion occurred killing 50 people...
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Flashback: Up to 50 people feared killed in fuel pipeline explosion and fire in Nigeria
18 September 2004
AP
LAGOS, Nigeria - An oil pipeline exploded near Nigeria's largest city as thieves tried to siphon oil from it, with up to 50 people perishing in the flames, police said Friday.
"People were stealing fuel from the pipeline when it caught fire and exploded," police spokesman Emmanuel Ighodalo said of the blast Thursday in Amore, a village across a wide lagoon from Lagos, a city of 13 million people.
At least 30 charred bodies of victims have been recovered and more still littered the swamps and waterways surrounding the site of the explosion, making it likely the death toll could reach 50, said Ighodalo.
Giant tongues of flame coming from the pipeline scorched the nearby vegetation while large plumes of smoke billowed skywards at the scene Friday.
Eight bodies, some burned beyond recognition, still lay at the scene, not yet collected by recovery workers.
The pipeline, run by state-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, pumps imported fuel from the Lagos sea port to western Nigeria.
Company officials said the pipeline pumps had been turned off to help firefighters, increasing the likelihood of fuel scarcity in parts of Nigeria.
"Our priority is to put out the fire so we can fix the pipeline," an official overseeing a team of firefighters at the site said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The closed pipeline wasn't expected to affect the amount of petroleum sent from Nigeria, Africa's largest exporter of crude and a member of OPEC.
Amore residents, including some survivors who escaped the explosion with injuries, fled fearing police arrest, said Ighodalo.
Armed police and navy troops kept watch over the village, emptied of its estimated 1,000 inhabitants.
One area resident, Tony Nwanma, quoted some survivors as saying a power generator used by the thieves to pump gasoline from the pipeline had caught fire, causing the explosion.
In the past, similar explosions occurred when villagers unwittingly ignited highly combustible petroleum as they collected it from ruptured pipelines. A 1998 pipeline blast killed over 1,000 in southern Nigeria.
Stealing valuable oil from pipelines is common in Nigeria, where most inhabitants are deeply impoverished despite Nigeria's oil riches.
Comment: The question, of course, is why are the people of Lagos so desperate that they would risk their lives to steal some oil? The answer, brings us back to America and other Western nations and what they do so well - steal the natural resources of other countries and create poverty and starvation for millions of innocents.
Nigeria to use new US ship to curb oil smuggling: navy
LAGOS (AFP) Sep 05, 2003
The Nigerian navy said Friday a new ship donated by the United States will be used to curb oil smuggling from the west African country.
A navy spokesman told AFP the new vessel, "NN Nwanbe", was the latest of three Amercian ships donated to Nigeria to strengthen defence ties between the two countries.
Oil Wars
Transforming the American Military into a Global Oil-Protection Service
The Department of Defense has stepped up its arms deliveries to military forces in Angola and Nigeria, and is helping to train their officers and enlisted personnel; meanwhile, Pentagon officials have begun to look for permanent U.S. bases in the area, focusing on Senegal, Ghana, Mali, Uganda, and Kenya. Although these officials tend to talk only about terrorism when explaining the need for such facilities, one officer told Greg Jaffe of the Wall Street Journal in June 2003 that "a key mission for U.S. forces [in Africa] would be to ensure that Nigeria's oil fields, which in the future could account for as much as 25 percent of all U.S. oil imports, are secure."
Of course, when the natives get restless over the fact that their wealth is being exported to the West, the best response is some old-fashioned colonial crowd control:
Outcry Mounts Over Killings of Nigerian Protesters
By Camillus Eboh
Mon July 7, 2003
ABUJA (Reuters) - Nigeria's top union official called on Tuesday for a public inquiry into the alleged killing of at least 10 protesters as the oil-producing country waited desperately for an end to a week-long general strike over fuel prices.
Lagos police denied the killings, but acknowledged what they said was one accidental death and spoke of serious gun battles on Monday with "hoodlums" who set a police car ablaze.
"We were dealing with heavily armed hoodlums who have nothing to do with the strike or the unions," Lagos Police Commissioner Young Arebamen told Reuters. [...]
If that fails, and you fear some bad press in the West, then simply label the protesters as "Islamic terrorists" and watch as Western audiences and politicians shrug their shoulders and turn their face away.
Clashes over Taliban-style rule kills 29 in Nigeria
Sep. 24, 2004
AP
LAGOS, Nigeria - A gunbattle between security forces and Islamic militants fighting to create a Taliban-style state in northern Nigeria left 29 people dead, most of them militants, police said today.
In the southern oil region, meanwhile, clashes between troops and tribal militia fighters forced oil giant Royal Dutch/Shell to evacuate two facilities, the company said. Shell said there was no disruption to its production and exports.
Security forces have been battling militants in the north this week after Islamic fundamentalist gunmen launched their first attack since January, assaulting police stations Monday in the towns of Bama and Gworza. Four police officers and two civilians were killed.
However, while playing up the "Islamic terror" angle, it is important to completely ignore the crimes of the sitting Nigerian government that you support:
Woman loses stoning death appeal
An Islamic court in northern Nigeria ruled on Monday that a young woman must face death by stoning according to Muslim law for having a child outside marriage. - The decision, upholding a verdict by a lower court, looks set to re-ignite international outrage against Nigeria and could stoke sectarian tensions in the country's largely Muslim north. "If one can be sentenced to death for fornication then it makes nonsense of our democracy," said Innocent Chukwuma of the Centre for Law Enforcement Education, a Lagos-based legal rights pressure group.
Hey! Watch it buster, that's American Democracy you're talking about!
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£1,000 fine for failing to update identity cards
Sunday Telegraph
24/12/2006
A draconian regime of fines, which would hit families at times of marriage and death, is being drawn up by ministers to enforce the Identity Card scheme.
Millions of people, from struggling students to newly-wed women and bereaved relatives, will face a system of penalties, netting more than £40 million for the Treasury.
People would be fined up to £1,000 for failing to return a dead relative's ID card, while women who marry will have to pay at least £30 for a new card if they want to use their married name, risking a £1,000 fine if they do not comply.
The revelations will fuel debate over ID cards in the countdown to their nationwide introduction, which the Government claims will boost security, tackle identity fraud and prevent illegal working. But costs are soaring and the technology has failed in tests.
The Government says people will have to pay £30 for a simple ID card, or more than £90 for one with a passport. Experts, however, claim that the cost of a combined card could be as high as £300, pushing the implementation costs beyond £20 billion.
David Davis, the shadow home secretary, said the fines revelation shows that the scheme "will hit the taxpayer not the terrorists" and is "just another Labour stealth tax".
He said: "It is shocking that the Government is considering charges and fines on people at some of the most sensitive times in life. The Conservatives would scrap this plastic poll tax and invest the savings in practical measures to improve security."
The first cards will be issued by the Identity and Passport Service to passport applicants in 2009 and will become compulsory from 2010.
As well as a picture, the card will carry a microchip holding biometric information such as fingerprints, iris or facial scans. Everyone over 16 applying for a passport will have these details added to a National Identity Register from 2008.
The extent of the fines for minor infringements is revealed in written answers from John Reid, the Home Secretary, and other ministers. They show that the Government is drawing up sinister sounding "guidance on death registration" which will order bereaved families to return the card of their deceased relative within a specified period. Failure to do so would carry a £1,000 fine under the "invalidity and surrender of ID cards" section of the Identity Cards Act 2006.
Mr Reid confirmed: "We intend to work closely with the General Registrar Offices to ensure that the notification of death and return of the ID card can be done in a sensitive manner."
Joan Ryan, the Home Office minister, said that charges would apply "if a person wished to add a married surname to his or her register entry". Based on an estimate of 311,000 marriages a year, that would net up to £9 million a year for the Exchequer.
People would be charged at least £30 for lost or stolen cards. Based on the 930,000 driving licences lost or stolen each year, this would earn the Treasury more than £28 million a year, say the Tories.
Mr Davis said the potential scale of the fines - those two areas of card "infringement" alone could bring in up to £40 million a year for the Treasury - proved that ID cards were a new stealth tax.
In a separate plan that the Tories say could hit millions of students, Mr Reid admitted that applicants will be asked for "all current alternative addresses". Failure to update the register with details such as term-time halls of residence could result in a £1,000 fine.
There was also anger over the disclosure that all fees and fines will be paid directly into the Treasury's central funds for general spending and not go towards running the scheme.
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Most Iranian legislators vote to 'revise' ties with UN watchdog
Last Updated: Wednesday, December 27, 2006 | 6:56 AM ET
The Associated Press
Iran's parliament voted Wednesday to urge the government to "revise" ties with the United Nations nuclear agency, but stopped short of recommending a severing of relations.
The vote came four days after the UN Security Council decided to impose limited sanctions on Iran for its refusal to cease enrichment of uranium, a process that yields material for either nuclear reactors or bombs.
Members of Iran's ruling hierarchy have repeatedly urged the government to cut ties with the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency if the Security Council imposes sanctions.
The bill said that the government was "obliged to accelerate the country's peaceful nuclear program and revise in its co-operation with the International Atomic Energy Agency based on national interests."
In a session broadcast live on state radio, parliamentary speaker Gholam Ali Haddad Adel said 161 of 203 legislators present voted in favour of the bill.
The government supported the measure.
"This is a very helpful proposal," Deputy Foreign Minister Hamid Reza Asefi told the assembly before the vote. "I ask legislators to vote for it."
Speaker Haddad Adel said the bill would not bind the government to a particular course of action.
"The bill gives a free hand to the government to decide on a range of reactions - from leaving the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty to remaining in the International Atomic Energy Agency and negotiating. We trust the government," Haddad Adel said.
Some legislators pushed for a bill that took a more aggressive line against the IAEA, which they accused of being dominated by the United States.
"The draft is not appropriate to the United States' animosity to Iran," said legislator Hassan Kamran. "This is a weak draft. It should be stronger."
But other legislators said the bill should be thrown out.
"There is no need for the bill. We should lessen tensions," said legislator Noureddin Pirmoazzen.
For the bill to become law, it must be approved by the Guardian Council, a constitutional watchdog controlled by hard-line clerics.
The United States and some allies accuse Iran of using a civilian nuclear program as a cover for developing a nuclear bomb. Iran denies this, saying its program is strictly for generating electricity from nuclear fuel.
Comment: It looks like the pathocrats are taking advantage of the Christmas holidays to turn the screws a few turns while others are feasting. The UN resolution against Iran was passed on Saturday. Olmert met with Abbas on Sunday. Now the Israelis are going to start "pinpoint attacks" against the Palestinians in retribution for a rocket attack, an attack that is most likely the work of Israeli agents in Gaza.
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Venezuela Defends Sovereignty
Caracas, Dec 27 (Prensa Latina)
The purchase of military equipment by Venezuela represents the defense and sovereignty of the country, affirmed retired Lieutenant Colonel Hector Herrera, national director of the Bolivarian Civic Military Front (FRENCIMIBOL).
He added that the military would receive new Russian AK 103 Kalashnikov rifles technology to replace the old light automatic rifles of Belgian manufacture.
"This level of defense is for individual soldiers, not to be used to attack or threaten any country," he added.
He also referred to the purchase of 53 Russian patrol helicopters and MI-35 combat helicopters stationed along the Venezuelan border and areas of difficult access.
At the same time Herrera qualified as important the purchase of three MI-26T helicopters, considered the largest in the world, able to transport 100 fully equipped soldiers or 150 persons individually on a rescue mission.
The FRENCIMBOL director noted the purchase of Russian Sukhol supersonic planes, two of which are already in the country.
Herrera also mentioned a future helicopter training center in Venezuela, the first in Latin America. Before, he pointed out, we had to go to the United States to train.
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Cuba slams Costa Rican president for comparing Castro to Pinochet
The Associated Press
Published: December 27, 2006
HAVANA: Cuba blasted Costa Rican President Oscar Arias on Wednesday for comparing ailing leader Fidel Castro to the late Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, calling Arias an "opportunistic clown" who does the bidding of the U.S. government.
In a statement published in the Communist Party daily Granma, the Cuban Foreign Ministry said it reacted with "profound indignation" to President Oscar Arias' comments likening Castro to his ideological foe.
"There is no difference" between the men, Arias said in an interview in Costa Rica last week. "The ideology differs, but both were savage, brutal and bloody."
Pinochet, who died on Dec. 10 at age 91, was blamed for a political crackdown that killed nearly 3,200 people during his right-wing military rule from 1973 to 1990.
The 80-year-old Castro governed communist Cuba without interruption for more than 47 years until he temporarily ceded his powers to his younger brother Raul following intestinal surgery on July 31.
The Washington-friendly Arias, who won the Nobel Peace Price in 1997 for helping broker an end to Central America's civil wars, has exchanged salvos with Cuban officials since he was elected earlier this year.
Cuban Vice President Carlos Lage and Arias quarreled publicly in August after they suspended a meeting on re-establishing diplomatic relations between the two nations. Arias had also wanted to use the meeting to discuss civil rights on the island, but Lage rejected that idea.
In the statement on Wednesday, Cuba called Arias a "vulgar mercenary" of U.S. officials and said Washington "always had on hand another opportunistic clown ready to follow its aggressive plans against Cuba."
"President Arias shamelessly supports the United States' annexation plan against Cuba and disrespects the heroic and selfless struggle of our people for their independence and sovereignty," the statement said.
The escalated spat comes with Castro still out of public view months after his surgery.
On Tuesday, a Spanish surgeon who recently treated Castro said in Madrid that the Cuban leader does not have cancer, as U.S. intelligence officials have speculated, and insisted that he was recovering slowly but steadily from a serious operation.
Cuban authorities have not commented on last week's visit to the island by Dr. Jose Luis Garcia Sabrido, the chief surgeon at Madrid's Gregorio Maranon Hospital.
Garcia Sabrido's statements to news media represented the first independent medical assessment of Castro's condition. The Cuban government has kept Castro's condition a state secret, occasionally releasing photographs and videos of him to show he is convalescing.
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Down to Business
Will the dam break in 2007?
Joseph Stiglitz
December 27, 2006 12:30 PM
The world survived 2006 without a major economic catastrophe, despite sky-high oil prices and a Middle East spiralling out of control. But the year produced abundant lessons for the global economy, as well as warning signs concerning its future performance.
Unsurprisingly, 2006 brought another resounding rejection of fundamentalist neo-liberal policies, this time by voters in http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1940869,00.html and Ecuador. Meanwhile, in neighbouring Venezuela, Hugo Chávez won an overwhelming electoral: at least he had brought some education and healthcare to the poor barrios, which previously had received little of the benefits of the country's enormous oil wealth.
Perhaps most importantly for the world, voters in the United States gave a vote of no confidence to President George W Bush, who will now be held in check by a Democratic Congress.
When Bush assumed the presidency in 2001, many hoped that he would govern competently from the centre. More pessimistic critics consoled themselves by questioning how much harm a president can do in a few years. We now know the answer: a great deal.
Never has America's standing in the world's eyes been lower. Basic values that Americans regard as central to their identity have been subverted. The unthinkable has occurred: an American president defending the use of torture, using technicalities in interpreting the Geneva Conventions and ignoring the Convention on Torture, which forbids it under any circumstances. Likewise, whereas Bush was hailed as the first "MBA president," corruption and incompetence have reigned under his administration, from the botched response to Hurricane Katrina to its conduct of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
In fact, we should be careful not to read too much into the 2006 vote: Americans do not like being on the losing side of any war. It was this failure, and the quagmire into which America had once again so confidently stepped, that led voters to reject Bush. But the Middle East chaos wrought by the Bush years also represents a central risk to the global economy. Since the Iraq war began in the 2003, oil output from the Middle East, the world's lowest-cost producer, has not grown as expected to meet rising world demand. Although most forecasts suggest that oil prices will remain at or slightly below their current level, this is largely due to a perceived moderation of growth in demand, led by a slowing US economy.
Of course, a slowing US economy constitutes another major global risk. At the root of America's economic problem are measures adopted early in Bush's first term. In particular, the administration pushed through a tax cut that largely failed to stimulate the economy, because it was designed to benefit mainly the wealthiest taxpayers. The burden of stimulation was placed on the Federal Reserve Board, which lowered interest rates to unprecedented levels. While cheap money had little impact on business investment, it fuelled a real estate bubble, which is now bursting, jeopardising households that borrowed against rising home values to sustain consumption.
This economic strategy was not sustainable. Household savings became negative for the first time since the Great Depression, with the country borrowing $3 billion a day from foreigners. But households could continue to take money out of their houses only as long as prices continued to rise and interest rates remained low. Thus, higher interest rates and falling house prices does not bode well for the American economy. Indeed, according to some estimates, roughly 80% of the increase in employment and almost two-thirds of the increase in GDP in recent years stemmed directly or indirectly from real estate.
Making matters worse, unrestrained government spending further buoyed the economy during the Bush years, with fiscal deficits reaching new heights, making it difficult for the government to step in now to shore up economic growth as households curtail consumption. Indeed, many Democrats, having campaigned on a promise to return to fiscal sanity, are likely to demand a reduction in the deficit, which would further dampen growth.
Meanwhile, persistent global imbalances will continue to produce anxiety, especially for those whose lives depend on exchange rates. Though Bush has long sought to blame others, it is clear that America's unbridled consumption and inability to live within its means is the major cause of these imbalances. Unless that changes, global imbalances will continue to be a source of global instability, regardless of what China or Europe do.
In light of all of these uncertainties, the mystery is how risk premiums can remain as low as they are. Especially with the dramatic reduction in the growth of global liquidity as central banks have successively raised interest rates, the prospect of risk premiums returning to more normal levels is itself one of the major risks the world faces today.
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Global economy faces a dangerous year
Jephraim P GundzikDec 23, 2006
Rising inflation and falling home prices are likely to push the US economy into recession by the second half of 2007. Gathering economic weakness, combined with negative real yields on US Treasury securities and growing political pressure to weaken the dollar will lead to significant dollar depreciation against most currencies.
Economic growth in Asia, Europe and Latin America will also weaken in 2007. Slowing global economic growth will be very bad news for equity markets around the world. Dollar depreciation and rising international energy and grain prices will be good news for precious metals.
Impact of instability on commodity prices
While global geopolitical instability has ratcheted higher every year since the terrorist attacks on the US in September 2001, global asset markets have hardly responded. In 2006, many of the world's stock markets, including America's, reached record highs. As geopolitical instability increases further in 2007 the probability of major disruptions in energy supplies will grow.
Instability in the Middle East and Africa is very likely to increase in 2007. Intensification of Iraq's civil war, conflict between Washington and Tehran, escalating war between the Israelis and Palestinians, and growing domestic pressure on Lebanon's US-backed government will heighten instability in the Middle East. This instability will help fuel growing unrest in Sudan, Chad, Congo and Somalia, provoking significant military conflicts in Africa. Afghanistan's insurgency is also expected to become more violent, prompting the gradual withdrawal of NATO forces.
Unprecedented global geopolitical instability will have its most obvious impact on international commodity prices. More frequent energy supply disruptions in the Middle East and Africa, combined with accelerating natural oil production declines in the world's largest oil fields, will keep crude oil and natural gas prices buoyant. Slower than anticipated global economic growth will not push oil prices lower in 2007.
Production discipline - much greater than generally understood - among the world's major oil exporters will ensure oil supply growth remains below demand growth. The continued rise of global energy prices in 2007, paired with growing demand for renewable energy, will produce further strong increases in international grain prices. In 2006, corn and wheat prices in the US jumped by 70% and 60% respectively. Much of this jump occurred between September and December.
Rapid growth of ethanol production capacity worldwide has contributed to this leap in corn and wheat prices. Prices for soybeans and other oilseeds have also begun to head higher on the back of rapidly growing global demand for biodiesel fuel. The substantial increase in petroleum-related energy prices since 2001 is only one factor behind growing demand for biofuels. Increasingly stringent environmental regulations, energy security concerns and targeted levels for alternative energy use in many countries is also driving demand for biofuels.
Inflation and recession
The growing use of corn, wheat, soybeans and other grains to produce biofuels is expected to nearly double prices for these commodities in 2007. In addition to grain-related foods, prices for other food staples that are grain-dependent, including meat and milk products, will also head higher in 2007. The result will be much higher than expected US inflation. Consumer price inflation (CPI) in the US is already significantly higher than CPI in Germany, Switzerland, the UK and Japan. In 2007, US inflation will accelerate, widening the inflation gap between it and other countries.
By every measure, inflation in the US has clearly accelerated since 2004. In 2005, the Federal Reserve's preferred measure of inflation, the personal consumption expenditure (PCE) deflator exceeded 2% for the first time since 1995. The core PCE has continued to accelerate in 2006, and will likely top 2.5% by the end of the year. This is significant because the Fed's stated aim is to keep core PCE between 1.5% and 2%. The steady acceleration of core PCE shows that inflation from rising energy prices has penetrated the broader US economy.
Despite the obvious acceleration of inflation, the Federal Reserve shifted monetary policy into neutral in late summer. The Fed has justified more accommodative monetary policy in the face of rising inflation by suggesting that slowing US economic growth will eventually mitigate inflation. This is a huge gamble because US inflation is being pushed higher by supply-driven energy price shocks rather than demand. In 2007, continued energy supply shocks are likely to feed a grain supply shock, stoking a sharp increase in food price inflation and further acceleration of core PCE.
The stated logic behind the Fed's monetary policy change is spurious, to say the least. A 12-year-old child could grasp the idea that energy supply problems are pushing US inflation higher and that these supply problems are likely to intensify in 2007. This suggests that another explanation must be behind the Fed's shift to more accommodative monetary policy. The most likely seems to be growing concern among Fed policymakers over increasing systemic problems for the US financial system arising from the collapse of the US housing market.
Between 2001 and 2005, very low interest rates in the US, combined with the proliferation of non-traditional mortgage products and easy credit access, allowed many American households to convert substantial home price gains into income gains through cash-out mortgage refinancing. Cash-out mortgage refinancing accounted for about 50% of all mortgage refinancing between 2001 and 2004. In 2005, cash-out mortgage refinancing accounted for 73% of all mortgage refinancing. In the first half of 2006, cash-out refinancing accounted for a staggering 87% of all refinancing.
Home price appreciation in the US slowed sharply in the first half of 2006. In the third quarter of 2006, home prices began to fall steeply. According to data from the US Census Bureau, new home prices dropped nearly 10% in September 2006 from the same period in 2005. This marks the sharpest fall in US home prices in 35 years. Rising inventories of unsold homes have been pushing home prices lower.
Recently, America's largest home builders and home sellers have begun trying to convince investors and home buyers that the housing market has stabilized. Falling long-term interest rates have reduced mortgage rates, encouraging a very small number of buyers to return to the market. However, the housing sector's weak pulse is very likely to vanish again in early 2007 as confusion over Federal Reserve policy mounts, the pace of inflation quickens and financial markets in the US swoon.
America's economic fairytale has turned into a nightmare and very few investors realize it. In addition to producing a sudden and sharp decline in household income by eliminating the prospect of new mortgage refinancing for many Americans, declining prices for new and existing homes will have a strong negative impact on the US financial system, severely restraining credit growth. Falling home prices, especially in what were once the hottest housing and mortgage markets in the US, have caused mortgage default rates and foreclosures to surge higher.
The combination of rising defaults, foreclosures and falling collateral values is beginning to weaken the balance sheets of mortgage lenders, including several of America's largest banks. Growing weakness in the banking sector is very alarming. Banking sector and economic crises in many countries over the past 25 years can be traced to overly enthusiastic credit growth used to finance either capital investment or real estate speculation, or both. Japan offers a stunning example of what can happen after a real estate bubble bursts.
The Federal Reserve appears determined to let financial markets "self-correct" in order to adjust interest rates to changing expectations for economic growth and inflation. Self-correction is a defining feature of financial markets. However, with the Fed rudderless, it is very unlikely that this self-correction will occur in an orderly and gradual manner. Rather, such self-correction will be sudden and sharp.
Dollar devaluation
Growing concern at the Federal Reserve over the impact of rapidly rising mortgage defaults and foreclosures on the US banking system will prevent it from tightening monetary policy in 2007. Inflation in the US is already substantially higher than inflation in Europe and Japan. Rising energy prices joined by rising food prices will have a greater impact on inflation in the US than in Europe and Japan because dollar depreciation is expected to partially offset rising dollar-based commodity prices in 2007.
In addition, inflation will rise from a much lower base in Europe and Japan than in the US. As a result, US inflation will be much higher than inflation in most other countries in 2007. More importantly, real yields on US Treasury securities, which are only marginally positive now, are expected to become negative in 2007 as US inflation climbs higher and the Fed begins to cut interest rates.
At the same time, real yields on European and Japanese government bonds, which are already higher than real yields in the US, are expected to move higher. The growing real yield gap between the US and other countries will place enormous downward pressure on the dollar. Waning Fed credibility and increasing political pressure in the US for dollar depreciation will speed the dollar's decline.
Democrats will take control of the US Congress in January 2007. Democrats have a strong history of economic intervention and are very likely to use trade and exchange rate policy changes in an attempt to reinvigorate rapidly slowing US economic growth. Asia's economic giants, Japan and China, are likely to take the brunt of any economic policy changes engineered in the US Congress.
Legislation in the US aimed at prying open export markets in Japan and China is likely to inflame already substantial trade tensions, especially between Washington and Beijing. Meanwhile, the implicit change in US exchange rate policy that will precede such legislation will increase downward pressure on the value of the dollar against all major currencies, particularly the yen.
The dollar is likely to depreciate by at least 20% against the yen, the Swiss franc, the euro and the pound in 2007. The dollar will also depreciate against the currencies of emerging market commodity exporters. Finally, Beijing will probably allow the yuan to appreciate about 10% against the dollar. Rather than political pressure from Washington, continued high energy prices and soaring grain prices will motivate the revaluation of the yuan.
Sliding stock markets
Economic growth in China is likely to slip towards 6% in 2007. Beijing's enormous fiscal latitude will ensure that ramped up fiscal spending will partially offset significant weakness in China's US-oriented export sector. Accelerated yuan revaluation against the dollar will help offset the inflationary impact of rising energy and grain prices. Economic growth in Japan will probably fall below 1.5% in 2007 due to export sector weakness. In addition to importing all of its energy needs, Japan relies on imports of US corn for sustaining domestic meat production. This reliance on energy and grain imports will encourage the Bank of Japan to push the yen higher against the dollar to contain inflation.
Economic growth in Korea should slow towards 1% in 2007. Growing tensions between Washington and Pyongyang will undermine private consumption and investment while much weaker US- and China-bound exports will slow export sector growth. Like Japan, Korea is also a major importer of US corn. Won appreciation against the dollar will be limited by growing security concerns. As a result, inflation will accelerate, further undermining the won.
Economic growth in South and Southeast Asia will also slow sharply. In addition to slowing US economic growth, increasing global geopolitical instability will lead to more frequent and violent terrorist attacks, especially in India, Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand. These attacks will produce further political and social instability. Foreign capital flight, driven by much slower than expected economic growth and a sharp correction in US equities, will make these countries Asia's worst investment performers in 2007.
Economic growth in Latin America will also suffer from the US downturn in 2007. Mexico, where political and social instability are expected to increase substantially while US-bound exports grind to a halt, should follow the US into recession. Capital flight will weaken the peso, preventing exchange rate appreciation from offsetting the impact of sharply higher corn prices on the domestic food industry.
Economic growth in Brazil, Colombia and Peru will also slow sharply in 2007. Brazil's export sector will benefit from soaring grain prices, while Colombia and Peru will suffer from the same. Equities in all four countries will follow US equities downward. Economic growth in Venezuela, Ecuador and Argentina will benefit from soaring commodity prices. This will not prevent equity market correction, but should underpin exchange rates in all three countries.
With the notable exception of Turkey, economic growth in Europe should suffer the least from slowing US economic growth in 2007. Monetary policy in the EU will tighten further, underpinning currency appreciation. Economic interdependence between EU members will insulate the region somewhat from slowing economic growth in the rest of the world. Russia will benefit from rising commodity prices. Despite more promising economic prospects, equities across Europe will follow US equities in a sharp correction.
Bond markets around the world are likely to be very volatile in 2007. Rapidly changing economic growth and inflation expectations will produce wide price swings. This volatility will be led by US bonds, which will see falling yields in early 2007 be replaced by rising yields in mid-2007 as inflation increases and foreign capital flight accelerates. Spreads on emerging market bonds will widen with falling equity markets around the world. Commodities, including energy, grains and precious metals, will probably perform much better than traditional investment assets as both investors and central banks speed diversification.
Jephraim P Gundzik is president of Condor Advisers. Condor Advisers provides investment risk analysis to individuals and institutions worldwide. Visit www.condoradvisers.com for more information.
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Belarus Threatens to Stop Gas Deliveries to Europe
27.12.2006
DW staff
Belarus implied that unless Russian gas giant Gazprom backs off of demands for a hefty price increase, it might keep gas from being transported through its pipelines to western Europe.
"We are inter-dependent," Belarus's Deputy Prime Minister Vladimir Semashko said at Minsk airport late Tuesday after returning home from fruitless gas negotiations in Moscow. "If I don't have a domestic gas supply contract, Gazprom won't have a transit deal."
Gazprom acknowledged that its latest round of negotiations with Belarus on a steep price increase failed, but said Europe was safe due to gas reserves in Germany and Austria to guard against possible cuts.
"Unfortunately, negotiations in fact ended without a result," Gazprom spokesman Sergei Kupriyanov said on Russian state television, Vesti 24.
Gazprom has threatened to reduce deliveries to Belarus on January 1 if the ex-Soviet republic refuses to pay higher prices from 2007 and share control of its pipelines with the Russian firm.
However, Kupriyanov assured that western European clients would not be affected by the row, which is similar to a crisis between Gazprom and Ukraine at the start of 2006.
Gazprom cut supplies to Hungary in Jan. 2006 due to a dispute with Ukraine
Then, Gazprom temporarily cut off supplies to Ukraine, which produced gas shortages in Europe in the dead of winter.
Gazprom, the world's largest gas producer, supplies a quarter of Europe's gas needs. The cut-off to Ukraine prompted European leaders to raise concerns over reliance on Russia.
About 80 percent of the Russian gas piped to Europe transits through Ukraine and about 20 percent through Belarus.
Gas in European storage
A Russian gas industry source told Reuters news agency that Gazprom had stored much more gas than in Germany and Austria as compared to last year and could cover contracts in Europe for several weeks if needed.
The industry source said extra gas had been pumped into Rheden, the biggest storage facility in Germany, belonging to Wingas, a joint venture of Gazprom and Germany's petrochemical giant BASF. Extra gas has also apparently been stored in its Haidach storage facility in Austria.
Kupriyanov has confirmed extra European gas reserves: "There are no grounds for concern among European consumers," he told state television Vesti 24.
Agreement still possible
A Belarussian energy ministry official who wished to remain anonymous told Russian news agency Interfax that he still hoped for an accord with Gazprom. "We continue to formulate our position, and we hope for a softening of Gazprom's position," the official said.
He described threats by Gazprom that Belarus could face a cut-off as "rather brusque."
Belarus currently pays Gazprom $46.68 per 1,000 cubic meters (35,315 cubic feet) of gas.
Gazprom has said it wants to charge around $200, unless Belarus agrees to sell 50 percent of its pipeline operator Beltransgaz, giving the Russian state-owned giant an important strategic foothold on the European Union's eastern border.
Earlier on Tuesday, Gazprom said it was prepared to scale back and charge only $110 dollars per 1,000 cubic meters.
Kupriyanov said that by comparison, Ukraine would pay $130 for gas in 2007. European consumers pay over $250.
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Iran nuclear tension sends oil prices up
Wed 27 Dec 2006
OIL prices were on the rise again yesterday, amid concern at Iran's reaction to tough United Nations sanctions aimed at tempering the country's nuclear programme.
A barrel of oil rose by 58 cents to US$63 in London following the Christmas break, while it lifted 50 cents to $62.91 in New York. The price hike followed declines earlier this month as a mild winter and reports of slower economic growth in the US eased pressure on demand for heating oil. The Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries has already said it is keen to tighten up worldwide supplies in a bid to stop prices falling. However, oil prices climbed following concern that Iran - one of the world's largest oil producers - could ignore calls for it to tone down its nuclear ambitions.
The UN Security Council voted unanimously on Saturday to impose sanctions on Iran for refusing to suspend its uranium enrichment work. The crackdown, which comes after two months of negotiations, has increased international pressure on Tehran to prove it is not trying to make nuclear weapons.
The sanctions order all countries to stop supplying Iran with materials and technology that could contribute to its nuclear and missile programmes.
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Chinese tiger economy shows no sign of slowing
NICK BEVENS
BUSINESS EDITOR
Wed 27 Dec 2006
CHINA's economy is expected to continue its barnstorming expansion in the New Year, according to the country's state think-tank and central bank.
The world's fastest-growing economy, still relatively inflation-free, is expected to grow by around 9.5 per cent in 2007 as anticipated rises in domestic consumption offset slowing fixed-asset investment and foreign trade, the State Information Centre predicted in a report yesterday.
The body - part of the country's top economic planning agency, the National Development and Reform Commission - said that it expected gross domestic product to grow within a range of 8.5 per cent to 10.5 per cent next year.
The economy is on track to record its fourth straight year of double-digit growth in 2006, but many economists expect it to slow modestly in 2007.
Annual consumer price inflation has remained at below 2 per cent all of this year, but it jumped to 1.9 per cent in November from 1.4 per cent in October largely because of rapid growth in food prices.
The Information Centre said that it saw annual growth in fixed-asset investment slowing to around 20 per cent in 2007 due to recent government measures to rein in runaway capital spending, which peaked at 31.3 per cent annual growth in the first half.
The think-tank said that consumer prices would probably rise 2 per cent next year, as retail sales expanded by about 12.5 per cent.
Imports and exports would slow, but the trade surplus would expand to around $180 billion, it said.
Export growth would fall 10 percentage points to about 15 per cent partly on further yuan appreciation and lower export tax rebates, it added.
Annual growth in China's broad M2 money supply - which slowed in November to 16.8 per cent from 17.1 per cent in October - should reach 16 per cent next year, it said.
The domestic A-share market, which has almost doubled its value in 2006, would gain a further 20-30 per cent next year, said the report, jointly prepared by the Shanghai Securities News.
It added that the yuan might appreciate a further 3 to 4 per cent next year. The yuan has gained 3.7 per cent since it was revalued by 2.1 per cent to 8.11 per dollar on 21 July 2005, and freed from a dollar peg to float within managed bands.
Since then, Beijing has frequently said that it was committed to letting the yuan become more flexible over time, but that it must do so at its own pace, despite US pressure to allow it to appreciate more quickly.
The yuan has now appreciated a further 3.7 per cent since the 2005 revaluation, with the pace of revaluation having picked up in recent months.
However, many US critics say the currency remains seriously undervalued, giving Chinese exports an unfair advantage in global markets.
Property investment, meanwhile, would still grow by about 21 per cent despite the government crackdown on the sector and tightening land controls, it said, while retail sales would grow about 12.5 per cent.
MORE OF THE SAME FOR JAPAN
THE Japanese government has kept its assessment of its economy unchanged in its latest monthly report, after a surprise downgrade for the first time in almost two years, last month.
"The economy is recovering, although there is some weakness in consumption," the cabinet office said in its December report. Weak consumption - which has cast doubts on the strength of the recovery in recent months - had been added to the assessment of the economy last month when the government downgraded it for the first time since December 2004.
The December report described personal consumption as "generally flat" - the same description used last month - citing sluggishness in the pace of rises in employees' income.
"As for the outlook, personal consumption, with improvement in employment, is expected to increase if the growth of income changes for the better," it said.
Revised data showed earlier this month that Japan's economy grew a softer-than-expected 0.2 per cent in July-September, from a preliminary reading of 0.5 per cent, due to sluggish consumption and a downward revision to capital expenditure. It was the seventh straight quarter of growth.
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Mysteries
The Other Mystery of Easter Island
Posted by Stephanie Benson on December 26th, 2006 at 1:15 pm
Easter Island is branded into popular consciousness as the home of the mysterious and towering moai statues, but these are not the only curiosity the South Pacific island holds. Where the moai are fascinating for their unknown purpose and mysterious craftsmen, the island's lost language of Rongorongo is equally perplexing. The unique written language seems to have appeared suddenly in the 1700s, but within just two centuries it was exiled to obscurity.
Known as Rapa Nui to the island's inhabitants, Rongorongo is a writing system comprised of pictographs. It has been found carved into many oblong wooden tablets and other artifacts from the island's history. The art of writing was not known in any nearby islands and the script's mere existence is sufficient to confound anthropologists. The most plausible explanation so far has been that the Easter Islanders were inspired by the writing they observed in 1770 when the Spanish claimed the island. However, despite its recency, no linguist or archaeologist has been able to successfully decipher the Rongorongo language.
When early Europeans discovered Easter Island, its somewhat isolated ecosystem was suffering from the effects of limited natural resources, deforestation, and overpopulation. Over the following years the island's population of four thousand or so was slowly eroded by Western disease and deportation by slave traders. By 1877, only about one hundred and ten inhabitants remained. Rongorongo was one victim of these circumstances. The colonizers of Easter Island had decided that the strange language was too closely tied to the inhabitants' pagan past, and forbade it as a form of communication. Missionaries forced the inhabitants to destroy the tablets with Rongorongo inscriptions.
In 1864, Father Joseph Eyraud became the first non-islander to record Rongorongo. Writing before the ultimate decline of the Eastern Island society, he noted that "one finds in all the houses wooden tables or staffs covered with sorts of hieroglyphs." Despite his interest in the subject, he was not able to find an Islander willing to translate the texts. The islanders were understandably reluctant to help, given that the Europeans forcefully suppressed the use of their native writing.
Rongorongo TabletsSome time later, Bishop Florentin Jaussen of Tahiti attempted to translate the texts. A young Easter Islander named Metero claimed to be able to read Rongorongo, and for fifteen days the bishop kept a record while the boy dictated from the inscriptions. Bishop Jaussen gave up the effort when he realized that Metero was a fraud; the boy had assigned several meanings to the same symbol.
In 1886 Paymaster William Thompson of the ship USS Mohican became interested in the pictographic system during a journey to collect artifacts for the National Museum in Washington. He had obtained two rare tablets engraved with the script and was curious about their meaning. He asked eighty-three-year-old islander Ure Va'e Iko for assistance in translation because his age made him more likely to have knowledge of the language. The man reluctantly admitted to knowing what the tablets said, but did not wish to break the orders of the missionaries. As a result, Ure Va'e Iko refused to touch the tablets, let alone decipher them.
Thompson was determined, however, and decided that Ure Va'e Iko might be more forthcoming under the influence of alcohol. After having a few drinks kindly provided by Thompson, the Easter Islander looked at the tablets once again. The old man burst into song, singing a fertility chant which described the mating of gods and goddesses. William Thompson and his companions quickly took down his words. This was potentially a big breakthrough, but Thomson struggled with assigning words to the pictographs. Furthermore, he couldn't find another Islander who was willing to confirm the accuracy of this translation. While Thompson was ultimately unable to read Rongorongo, the translation that Iko provided has remained one of the most valuable clues on how to decipher the tablets.
An Indus valley connection?In the following decades, many scholars have attempted to make sense of this mystery. In 1932, Wilhelm de Hevesy tried to link Rongorongo to the Indus script of the Indus Valley Civilization in India, claiming that as many as forty Rongorongo symbols had a correlating symbol in the script from India. Further examination found this link to be much more superficial than originally believed. In the 1950s, Thomas Barthel became one of the first linguists of the modern era to make a study of Rongorongo. He stated that system contained 120 basic elements that, when combined, formed 1500 different signs. Furthermore, he asserted that the symbols represented both objects and ideas. This made it more difficult to produce a translation because an individual symbol could potentially represent an entire phrase. Barthel was successful, however, in identifying an artifact known as the Mamri tablet as a lunar calendar.
Some of the most recent research has been conducted by a linguist named Steven Fischer. Having studied nearly every surviving example of Rongorongo, he took particular interest in a four-foot-long scepter that had once been the property of an Easter Island Chief. The artifact is covered in pictographs, and Fischer noticed that every third symbol on this staff has an additional "phallus-like" symbol attached to it. This led Fischer to believe that all Rongorongo texts have a structure steeped in counts of three, or triads. He has also studied Ure Va'e Iko's fertility chant, which lent additional support to the concept. Iko had always named a god first, his goddess mate second, and their offspring third. Fischer has also tried to make the claim that all Rongorongo texts relate creation myths. Looking at another text, he has suggested that a sentence with a symbol of a bird, a fish, and a sun reads "All the birds copulated with fish: there issued forth the sun." While this could be the translation, it bears little resemblance to Ure Va'e Iko's chant about the matings of gods and goddesses.
Rongorongo naturally commands a great deal of interest from linguists, anthropologists, and archaeologists. Only twenty-five texts are know to have survived. Should anyone find a workable translation for Rongorongo, the knowledge stored on the remaining tablets might explain the mysterious statues of Easter Island, the sudden appearance of the written language, and the island's history and customs as whole. However, much like the statues which have so captivated popular imagination, Rongorongo has so far defied all attempts at explanation.
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Unknown Objects Photographed over Oshawa, Ontario, Canada
UFO Casebook
On Dec. 23, 2006, here in Oshawa, we had great clear skies. I took a moment to sky watch around after 12:30 PM, and took some pictures facing south, over Lake Ontario.
This particular photo caught my eye of two unknowns photographed. The top one near the clouds appears disc shaped, as the bottom one appears capsule shaped and brilliant white. The temperature was unusually warm here, even bringing out insects .I can't really say what has been photographed.
Although, while sky watching, I could see flashes in the sky-like a camera flashes. I also observed these white things of size high in the sky from a distance, facing south towards the lake .I'll leave it up to you in evaluating.
Take care and a Happy NEW Year to you and all.
Paul
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Missing slab could unlock mysteries of past
By RALPH LOOS
Staff WriterSunday, 12/24/06
Missing: one incised slab.
Collector value: thousands of dollars.
Historical value: priceless.
For the past few years, archaeologist Tracy Brown has combed flea markets and collector shows across Tennessee and the Southeast, hoping to stumble upon the owner of a small stone slab first discovered in east Nashville 40 years ago.
On the rock, a 14-by-13-inch slab that dates from the Mississippian Period (1000-1450 A.D.), is an artistic image that the ancient inhabitants of a mound site etched into its surface with primitive stone tools.
But the artifact is coveted more for what is not etched onto its face than what is.
"It's unique because it is the only slab of six found that does not have clear Southeastern Ceremonial Complex symbols on it," Brown said.
He has quizzed collector groups, questioned fellow archaeologists and talked to "just about anyone who might come into contact with this kind of item."
"It's like fishing the ocean," Brown said.
So far he's had nary a nibble.
"There's an excellent chance this piece of history is sitting in somebody's rock garden or on some kid's dresser as a trinket," said Brown, who is based in Oak Ridge.
Brown said the slab isn't stolen property, and he is not interested in purchasing it. Professional archaeologists do not collect, buy, sell or appraise prehistoric artifacts, he said. He simply wants to examine it, make some notes, measure it, photograph it and give it right back to the person who owns it.
"What many people don't know about archaeology is that the item itself isn't as important as how the item fits into the 'big picture' with other items found at a site," he said. "It's like a giant puzzle where you know you're never going to find all the pieces. So you try to find as many as you can."
Unusual symbols on slab
Southeastern Ceremonial Complex symbols are found on Mississippian Period artifacts from sites throughout the Southeast and as far west as eastern Oklahoma. At one time, the somewhat bizarre symbols were interpreted as important elements of a pan-Southeastern American Indian religion with a strong emphasis on sun veneration and human death.
The slab in question does feature a snake, which is common as symbols go. "But taken as a whole, the individual symbols and the picture on this stone do not have an SCC flavor about them," Brown said. "This is important and at least suggests that the iconography on the stone may be more personal in nature and important to the life of one or more individuals in an ancient society."
Although the ancient tales told by the missing slab take place more than a thousand years ago, the story about the slab begins in the mid-1990s, which is when it went missing.
The widow of a collector apparently gave it away.
"All together, she probably gave away $100,000 in artifacts for nothing," Brown said. "The person who got them for free ended up selling them to collectors. Some of the items were bigger-ticket items, but the slab I'm looking for was probably among a large group of items that might have went for 10, 15 or 20 bucks at a flea market."
Six slabs found in area
The missing slab - one of six that have been discovered in Middle Tennessee - was found at a large Mississippian site in east Nashville in the autumn of 1968. A now-deceased local artifact collector, Malcolm Parker, former director of The Parthenon, found the incised slab in a stone box at an original burial site.
The first of the six slabs was discovered on Rocky Creek in Trousdale County
in 1874 and was named after Gates P. Thruston, a Nashville-area antiquarian who authored Antiquities of Tennessee in 1890.
The slab, now known as the Thruston Tablet, was interpretated by Thruston as a commemoration of an important political or social event in the life of a local Mississippian Period community, Brown said.
The second stone was found at the Castalian Springs mound site, now owned by the state, in Sumner County in 1892. Etchings on that stone show the upper body of a human figure ceremonially dressed as a raptorial bird.
"This representation and the sun symbol on his chest are typical of the SCC, and the stone no doubt dates to the same time as the mounds," Brown said. He added that Kevin Smith in the Department of Anthropology at Middle Tennessee State University has conducted field school excavations at the Castalian Springs site the past two summers.
A slab found at the Arnold site in Brentwood in the early-middle 1960s was the third such stone found and the last before the subject of Brown's search.
Two more were found later along the Cumberland River in east Nashville in 1975.
To archaeologists and historians, the stones are valuable for "what they can tell us about the technology, social organization and belief systems of the original Middle Tennesseans who lived here before we Euro-Americans and Afro-Americans arrived," Brown said.
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Ancient pyramids discovered in Bosnia
By Mark Whitehorn ? More by this author
Published Tuesday 26th December 2006 10:02 GMT
The Great Pyramid of Giza is the sole survivor of the Seven Wonders of the World. An Arab proverb says that: "Man fears time, yet time fears the Pyramids", a reference to the fact that the pyramid has survived for about 4,500 years and, in that time, has lost a mere 10 metres off its incredible 145 metre height.
Composed of two million blocks of stone, each weighing more than two tonnes, this was not erected by George Wimpey and Co in a fortnight. For approximately 43 centuries it was the world's tallest man-made structure.
Or so we thought. Reports are emerging from Bosnia-Herzegovina of structures that make the pyramid of Giza look like a scale model (see http://www.bosnianpyramids.org/, http://www.bosnianpyramid.com/, and http://www.bosnian-pyramid.com/).
At 267 metres tall, the Pyramid of the Sun blows the Egyptian opposition into the weeds. If that wasn't enough, it is simply one of a number of pyramids located in the same region - there are also the Pyramids of the Sun, the Dragon and, most recently discovered, Love.
These revelations are not simply about who has the biggest bragging rights for historic civil engineering projects. Structures like these take colossal man power to create - estimates for a single Egyptian pyramid run into tens of millions of man hours.
Such a workforce means, in turn, huge logistical organisation - land cultivation, food transport, housing, water, waste disposal etc. The simple existence of these gigantic man-made structures in Europe means the entire history of the development of human civilization will have to be rewritten with Bosnia-Herzegovina at its centre.
All of which appears to be just fine by Semir Osmanagi? who is at the centre of these discoveries. He is referred to on bosnianpyramid.com as "Bosnia's Indiana Jones" which is either a reference to the hat and boots that he affects or his extraordinary archaeological discoveries. Not a man who appears to eschew modesty, he is quoted as saying: "My discovery will change human history".
As might be imagined, this is a very big deal in Bosnia-Herzegovina where it forms the focus of a nightly reality TV show. We strongly recommend that you visit the web sites and that you examine the other evidence that is accumulating daily on the web, such as this video, where you can see, and weigh, for yourself the evidence that this is a man-made structure.
Of course, the cynical sceptics amongst you may feel that claims like these are so fantastic as to be unbelievable, but that is not the case. We believe the reason the claims are unbelievable is more simple; they are wrong.
How can we be so sure? We have been talking to Professor John Parker of Cambridge University, the director of the Botanic Garden and also Professor of Botany at St Catharine's College. He's actually travelled there and seen the evidence first hand.
El Reg: How did you come to visit the site?
Professor Parker: I visited the site in August this year as part of a visit to Sarajevo with one of the professors there. My colleague in Sarajevo invited me to come and see this phenomenon so we made our way to the site and climbed to the top of one of the hills which was being referred to as the Pyramid of the Sun. As we climbed the hill we passed, as you would expect, Nefertiti's café and stalls selling little models of the pyramids. I must admit I began to wonder where we were.
The top of the hill was being cleared and they were digging away the surface to the depth of about a metre, exposing what looked for all the world like concrete spilling down the slopes of the hill. These inclined, flat sheets consisted of aggregate in a matrix and I gathered that these were being put forward as a man-made phenomenon. It was quite impressive: large slabs, some of them up to 50 or 60 metres long. It was explained to me as man-made concrete that had been cast as slabs with shuttering between them. This is exactly the way in which, today, we cover large areas with concrete. We use shuttering to limit the size of the slabs and the spaces left when the shuttering is removed allow for expansion.
So, having seen that, we went across the valley to the Pyramid of the Moon, a slightly lower hill, and again we went through a mass of little stalls selling this time, Mayan step pyramid models.
In contrast to the Pyramid of the Sun, where the slabs of concrete lie parallel to the side of the hill, the material that makes up the Pyramid of the Moon lies in horizontal sheets. The flat sheets of exposed material have a sort of ripple effect on the top and the whole surface broken by regular lines into what looks like crazy paving with most of the fracture lines of the crazy paving roughly parallel to each other. It is broken up into rough rectangular blocks but laid so closely together that they look just as if they have been laid by human hand.
El Reg: But you weren't convinced?
Professor Parker: Well, no, because I'd seen this kind of thing before. It is a perfect example of a fossilised beach, essentially little mud ripples on a beach which then becomes fossilised. What they were doing was cutting into the hillside to expose this beautiful raised beach.
As you looked at the profile that they had cut you saw the layers above it and every time they came to a slightly harder layer that showed that phenomenon, so they exposed it back. They were cutting the side of the hill into a series of steps, each one about a metre and a half or two meters. Hence the Pyramid of the Moon is described a stepped pyramid, as opposed to the Pyramid of the Sun where the sides are flat.
El Reg: So, what about the "concrete" on the Pyramid of the Sun?
Professor Parker: It is a natural material. When you looked at the whole site there was a very turbulent river which came down (and they are really turbulent in Bosnia) which had cut a deep valley through the mainly limestone area in which we found ourselves. However, the river rises in the mountains to the West which are mainly acidic. So the "concrete" is made of the embedded stones that were washed down from the acidic mountains deposited in an alkaline substrate.
El Reg: What about the marks of the shuttering?
Professor Parker: As the conglomerate formed and then subsequently cracked, the cracks were filled in with calcite which would be crystallised from the calcium carbonate and dolomite which makes up the matrix. If you looked at the cracks between the slabs carefully - and this is what told me straight away that it was natural - you could see that individual stones that were embedded in the matrix were shattered through.
In other words, you regularly find single stones, embedded in two slabs, cut neatly through by the "shuttering" lines. It seems highly unlikely that human beings would split stones and place the two halves neatly on either side of a piece of shuttering. But natural cracks will run through both the stones and the matrix. So the cracks are clearly a post-construction phenomenon, not a pre-construction one.
El Reg: Ok, that explains the materials found on the two hills, but how did it get there in the first place?
Professor Parker: Remember that turbulent river. You've got the aggregate which came from the acidic mountains and it came down into a calcareous lake where the big stones had settled out with the calcareous substrate to make the aggregate on one side of the valley. That explains the "concrete". On the other side of the valley the mud was left and was depositing out as beaches which were obviously a drying lake surface and I should think alternately wetting and drying. It was quite obvious that it was part of one kind of system, probably a delta type system.
Geologically it was absolutely fascinating. I've never seen a better example of this. At the same time one of my colleagues, Dr Mary Edmunds, found the most perfect fossils in the material they'd excavated on the Pyramid of the Moon. They were simply beautiful - you broke open every piece of this supposedly man-made material and inside were things like pine seeds perfectly preserved with their wings so you could even identify the species of pine - Pinus nigra that grows there still - and also birch leaves: it was full of just wonderful sub-fossil material. That alone told us that it was clearly a post-glacial phenomenon, relatively recent - less than 12,000 years old.
El Reg: So, if the "concrete" is natural, and formed in a lake, why is it now at such an angle, forming the sloping sides of a hill?
Professor Parker: The way I was thinking about the conglomerate - why it looked like a triangle - was that if you think about the river constantly undermining soft substrate with a hard crust it becomes rather like a crème brulée. As soon as you take away the cream from below there's nothing to hold the upper material and it will collapse, and of course it will tend to shatter, if it is a flat plate, into triangular slabs. I think what you'd got is this material shattered into one of these triangular slabs which gives you the triangular shape and when you excavate it of course the conglomerate is now facing down the hill.
El Reg: So, the site is worthless?
Professor Parker: Absolutely not. I spent considerable time looking at the fossils because I've never seen any so good from a post-glacial site. It's very sad because you could have got the most detailed and intimate knowledge of the changes in vegetation patterns from the post-glacial era. It is so clearly a natural phenomenon that it should be investigated as a natural phenomenon rather than being shrouded in all this magic and mystery.
I am worried about it because the Bosnian people deserve better than this. They are a wonderful people who have suffered so much. In this site they have a fabulous natural phenomenon and the danger is that the people and the country could become a laughing stock if the site continues to be interpreted in this way.
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Looking to the Future
We'll all be cyborgs someday, scientist says
27/12/2006
Miami Herald
A scientist at the University of Reading is in the vanguard of futurists who look forward to the day when most humans are implanted with computer microchips -- and he's using himself as his own guinea pig.
In Casino Royale, the latest James Bond movie, Bond is implanted with a microchip that allows headquarters to track his whereabouts and monitor his vital signs.
If a British cybernetics expert is right, the day will come when most people are implanted with chips -- and the real-life chips will do a lot more than Bond's does in the movie.
Kevin Warwick, a professor of cybernetics at the University of Reading, has first-hand knowledge. In 1998, he had a chip surgically inserted into his left arm, becoming he believes the first human ever implanted with a computer chip.
Since then, he's had a more sophisticated chip connected directly to his nervous system. He is still working toward his grandest experiment: having a chip implanted in his brain.
''I want to become a cyborg,'' he said with an infectious grin. "I can see the advantages.''
A cyborg, for the record, is a mixture of man and machine. And cybernetics is the study of communication and control between humans and computers.
IN THE MAD LAB
Warwick, who is 52, presides excitedly over the apparent chaos at the university's MAD lab. (The name stands not for madness but Mobile Autonomic Devices.)
Cables and machine parts litter the work benches. On the floor, two robots the size of model cars race around, mapping their environment and learning how not to bump into things. Nearby, a robot with a skull for a head works on combining the input from his various senses -- audio, video, ultrasonics, radar and infrared -- to interpret what's going on around it.
And in another lab on campus, computers are being controlled by living tissue taken from the brains of rats.
But Warwick's most daring experiments have been on himself. On Aug. 24, 1998, as the BBC filmed, doctors made a small incision in Warwick's left arm, slid in a thin inch-long glass capsule, and stitched him back up.
The capsule contained silicon microchips that announced Warwick's presence to other computers. His office doors swung open as he approached. Lights flicked on as he entered. His computer said hello and told him how many e-mails were waiting.
That chip stayed in for a couple of weeks. It's now on display at the Science Museum in London.
In 2002, doctors sliced open Warwick's left wrist and implanted a much smaller and more sophisticated device. For three months, its 100 electrodes were connected to his median nerves, linking his nervous system to a computer.
''I moved my hand, and my neural signals were sent over the Internet to open and close a robot hand,'' he said.
Not only that: The robotic hand had sensors. As it grasped a sponge or an eyeglasses case, it sent information back to Warwick.
''It was tremendously exciting,'' Warwick said. "I experienced it as signals in my brain -- which my brain was quite happy to recognize as feedback from the robot hand's fingertips.''
FUTURE POSSIBILITIES
The research has significant medical implications.
Paralyzed people might regain movement if one chip were implanted above the break in the nerves and another below to receive the impulses, Warwick said.
More intelligent chips in the brains of people with Parkinson's disease might sense when tremors were on the way and signal the brain to stop them.
''It's like a computer brain out-thinking a human brain,'' he said.
But Warwick's biggest experiment, in which he will have a chip implanted in his brain, is seven or eight years away. He will attempt thought communication -- ''literally the first brain-to-brain communication,'' he said.
''That excites me beyond all proportion,'' he said. "Nothing is going to stop me from doing that.''
ETHICAL QUESTIONS
Not everyone approves of Warwick. From time to time, he receives missives from people he calls ''religious extremists'' telling him he is tampering with God's work.
And in an opinion piece this month in the Toronto Star, Kevin Haggerty, an associate professor of criminology at the University of Alberta, called Warwick part of the ''advance guard'' trying to expand chip technology as widely as possible. The day will come, Haggerty warned, when all people will be chipped and the government will be able to track them all the time, recording their smallest behavioral traits.
CHIPS IN OPERATION
Despite differing over the desirability of implantation, Warwick and Haggerty agree on a great deal.
For one thing, the procedure is now more common.
More and more pet owners are taking advantage of chip implants that transmit identification to veterinarians.
Still, Warwick said, important questions will have to be answered for humans.
''Is it OK to upgrade? What about the people who don't upgrade?'' he asked. "If they don't upgrade, they could become some sort of subspecies.''
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Toxoplasma gondii 'turns women into sex kittens'
News.com.au
26/12/2006
A COMMON parasite can increase a women's attractiveness to the opposite sex but also make men more stupid, an Australian researcher says.
About 40 per cent of the world's population is infected with Toxoplasma gondii, including about eight million Australians.
Human infection generally occurs when people eat raw or undercooked meat that has cysts containing the parasite, or accidentally ingest some of the parasite's eggs excreted by an infected cat.
The parasite is known to be dangerous to pregnant women as it can cause disability or abortion of the unborn child, and can also kill people whose immune systems are weakened.
Until recently it was thought to be an insignificant disease in healthy people, Sydney University of Technology infectious disease researcher Nicky Boulter said, but new research has revealed its mind-altering properties.
"Interestingly, the effect of infection is different between men and women,'' Dr Boulter writes in the latest issue of Australasian Science magazine.
"Infected men have lower IQs, achieve a lower level of education and have shorter attention spans. They are also more likely to break rules and take risks, be more independent, more anti-social, suspicious, jealous and morose, and are deemed less attractive to women.
"On the other hand, infected women tend to be more outgoing, friendly, more promiscuous, and are considered more attractive to men compared with non-infected controls.
"In short, it can make men behave like alley cats and women behave like sex kittens''.
Dr Boulter said the recent Czech Republic research was not conclusive, but was backed up by animal studies that found infection also changes the behaviour of mice.
The mice were more likely to take risks that increased their chance of being eaten by cats, which would allow the parasite to continue its life cycle.
Rodents treated with drugs that killed the parasites reversed their behaviour, Dr Boulter said.
Another study showed people who were infected but not showing symptoms were 2.7 times more likely than uninfected people to be involved in a car accident as a driver or pedestrian, while other research has linked the parasite to higher incidences of schizophrenia.
"The increasing body of evidence connecting Toxoplasma infection with changes in personality and mental state, combined with the extremely high incidence of human infection in both developing and developed countries, warrants increased government funding and research, in particular to find safe and effective treatments or vaccines,'' Dr Boulter said.
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More Dangerous Than Smoking? Death by Soda
By Joshua Frank, AlterNet. Posted December 27, 2006.
Drinking one soda a day could cause you to gain 15 pounds a year. Other related health risks include type 2 diabetes, heart disease, bowel cancer and nerve damage.
We are a country of overweight people. Americans are tipping the scales in record numbers, with approximately 130 million who are presently considered overweight or obese. Perhaps most alarmingly of all, half of all women aged 20 to 39 in the United States are included in these figures. Many factors contribute to the growing problem, from our sedentary lifestyles to our overindulgence in high-energy, low nutritional foods. Dealing with the crisis is not easy. The marketing of energy dense foods is a multi-billion dollar industry, and manufacturers of such products go to great lengths to ensure their shareholders continue to profit from the sales of nutrition-less foods.
Despite the barrage of marketing to the contrary, sales pitches, and misinformation, consumption of soda has been directly linked to both obesity as well as type 2 diabetes. Soft drinks are packed full of sugar and refined carbohydrates, both of which are undeniably correlated to these factors. Type 2 diabetes is also associated with a poor diet that is laden with high-fructose corn syrup and low in fiber. Research indicates that soft drinks largely contribute to this growing epidemic, with high school and college age kids being the most likely to consume sugar laden soda beverages on a regular basis.
Sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) are bad news, according to health experts, because they contribute to the obesity epidemic by providing empty calories, that is, calories that provide little or no nutritional value. Meaning, a person who slugs down too much soda is swallowing more than their body can handle. And this added energy isn't healthy energy -- it's energy derived from high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), i.e., highly refined sugar that has been chemically processed in order to excite your taste buds. It has been argued that too much HFCS in one's diet may offset the intake of solid food, yet does not produce a positive caloric balance. In turn, this over-consumption contributes to the slow development of obesity because the person is consuming more calories than their body can burn. And these days, people are drinking more soda than ever before. Perhaps not surprisingly, as portion sizes for soft drinks have increased, so have American waistlines.
Too put this dangerous pattern in to perspective, one regular 12-ounce can of sugar-sweetened soda contains approximately 150 calories with close to 50 grams of sugar. If this is added to the typical American diet, one can of soda per day could lead to a weight gain of 15 pounds in one year. Currently the consumption of soda accounts for about 8%-9% of total energy among children and adults, and studies suggest that it is most certainly having a negative effect on the people who consume it in such vast quantities. So what's so wrong with being overweight then, you ask? So what if soda has been linked to causing obesity? What's wrong with that? Well, plenty say scores of medical, health and public nutrition experts.
For starters, obesity increases the risk of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, bowel cancer as well as high blood pressure. Type 2 diabetes alone can contribute to cardiovascular disease, retinopathy (blindness), neuropathy (nerve damage), nephropathy (kidney damage), and other health complications. So if type 2 diabetes is highly associated with individuals who are obese, and obesity is linked to SSBs, then type 2 diabetes is highly associated with the consumption of SSBs because the consumption of SSBs is so highly associated with causing obesity. In short, if one consumes SSBs on a regular basis, they are more at risk of developing type 2 diabetes, which itself may cause many ailments. That's why being overweight is not a good thing for one's health. And that's why drinking copious amounts of sugar-sweetened beverages contributes to poor wellbeing byway of obesity and type 2 diabetes.
On top of causing one to gain unhealthy weight and spurring type 2 diabetes, SSBs may also contribute to the loss of bone density, which may cause one to be more susceptible to bone fractures. It has been argued that low bone density may be a result of high levels of phosphate, which is found in elevated amounts in sugar-sweetened cola. Such large amounts of phosphate may alter the calcium-phosphorus ratio in people whose bodies are still developing, or people who are most likely to consume SSBs, and consequently this can have a toxic effect on their bone development. If a growing individual has a low calcium intake it could jeopardize bone mass, which may then contribute to hip fractures and other bone related disorders later in life. Drinking a lot of SSBs while your body develops could have lasting, deadly effects on your health. So while it is clear that soda isn't good for you, it is also obvious that soda is downright bad for your health. It can make you overweight, suck the calcium out of your bones, and increase risk of type 2 diabetes, a leading cause of blindness. But that's not the kind of news the profiteers of big soda would ever want you to hear.
The marketing firms that barrage consumers with ads for their mouth-watering soft drinks hope to encourage you to drink more of their harmful products, not less of them. Indeed they have a financial incentive to do so. Their annual revenues are billions of dollars. To protect their interests, as Prof. Marion Nestle of NYU notes, the soda industry shells out tons of money to convince people to consume their products in mass quantities. In the late 1990s, Coca-Cola spent about $1.6 billion dollars in global marketing, with over $850 million spent in the United States alone. With that kind of lavish spending, it is little wonder why Coca-Cola is such a household name. Clearly, those who advocate for cutting down on the consumption of SSBs because of their negative health impacts are up against a very well financed opposition -- not unlike the anti-smoking activists who take on the shenanigans and deceit of Big Tobacco.
Nevertheless, Coca-Cola, like its competitors, is extremely savvy. They have inundated schools with their products. As Michele Simon, the author of Appetite for Profit, writes, "A 2003 government survey showed that 43 percent of elementary schools, 74 percent of middle schools, and 98 percent of high schools sold food through vending machines, snack bars, or other venues outside the federally supported school meal programs ... With public schools so desperate for funding, districts are lured into signing exclusive contracts (also known as "pouring rights" deals) with major beverage companies -- mainly Coca-Cola and PepsiCo".
In other words, these multinational corporations give millions of dollars to schools so that their districts and vending machines exclusively carry their goods. In reality, however, it comes down to one big clever marketing ploy: In the end these big corporations have hooked kids on their products while fooling people into believing they are virtuous corporate citizens because they support education.
Fortunately there is a growing movement across the country to ban sodas from schools. Indeed the feisty Killer Coke campaign, which focuses on the company's labor abuses and not Coke's negative health implications, has been successful is banning the product from over 10 major universities in the United States. But it would be wise to not just focus on the company's alleged murders in Colombia, and instead broaden the struggle against the soda industry by pointing out their complicity in the obesity epidemic worldwide.
Because death truly is the "real thing."
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Disappearing world: Global warming claims tropical island
24 December 2006
Independent
For the first time, an inhabited island has disappeared beneath rising seas. Environment Editor Geoffrey Lean reports
Rising seas, caused by global warming, have for the first time washed an inhabited island off the face of the Earth. The obliteration of Lohachara island, in India's part of the Sundarbans where the Ganges and the Brahmaputra rivers empty into the Bay of Bengal, marks the moment when one of the most apocalyptic predictions of environmentalists and climate scientists has started coming true.
As the seas continue to swell, they will swallow whole island nations, from the Maldives to the Marshall Islands, inundate vast areas of countries from Bangladesh to Egypt, and submerge parts of scores of coastal cities.
Eight years ago, as exclusively reported in The Independent on Sunday, the first uninhabited islands - in the Pacific atoll nation of Kiribati - vanished beneath the waves. The people of low-lying islands in Vanuatu, also in the Pacific, have been evacuated as a precaution, but the land still juts above the sea. The disappearance of Lohachara, once home to 10,000 people, is unprecedented.
It has been officially recorded in a six-year study of the Sunderbans by researchers at Calcutta's Jadavpur University. So remote is the island that the researchers first learned of its submergence, and that of an uninhabited neighbouring island, Suparibhanga, when they saw they had vanished from satellite pictures.
Two-thirds of nearby populated island Ghoramara has also been permanently inundated. Dr Sugata Hazra, director of the university's School of Oceanographic Studies, says "it is only a matter of some years" before it is swallowed up too. Dr Hazra says there are now a dozen "vanishing islands" in India's part of the delta. The area's 400 tigers are also in danger.
Until now the Carteret Islands off Papua New Guinea were expected to be the first populated ones to disappear, in about eight years' time, but Lohachara has beaten them to the dubious distinction.
Human cost of global warming: Rising seas will soon make 70,000 people homeless
Refugees from the vanished Lohachara island and the disappearing Ghoramara island have fled to Sagar, but this island has already lost 7,500 acres of land to the sea. In all, a dozen islands, home to 70,000 people, are in danger of being submerged by the rising seas.
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Amateur radio enthusiasts fight to save Morse Code
By Miguel Helft
Published: December 26, 2006
SAN FRANCISCO: It may be the ultimate SOS.
Morse Code is in distress.
The language of dots and dashes has been the lingua franca of amateur radio, a vibrant community of technology buffs and hobbyists who have provided a communications lifeline in emergencies and disasters.
But the American amateur radio community has been shaken by news that the U.S. government will no longer require Morse Code proficiency as a condition for an amateur, or ham, license. It was deemed dispensable because other modes of communicating over ham radio, like voice, teletype and even video, have grown in popularity.
While the decision had been expected, some ham radio operators fear that their exclusive club has been opened to the unwashed masses - and that the very survival of Morse Code is in question.
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"It's part of the dumbing down of America," said Nancy Kott, editor of World Radio magazine and a field representative for the Centers for Disease of Control and Prevention in Metamora, Michigan. "We live in a society today that wants something for nothing."
A female in a mostly male radio world, Kott is one of about 660,000 licensed ham operators in the United States and is the U.S. leader of Fists CW Club, an organization that calls itself the International Morse Preservation Society.
(An "open fist" was the hand position typically used by telegraph operators when sending Morse, which is sometimes called Continuous Wave, or CW. In the slang of ham radio, someone who sends fine code is said to have a good fist.)
Within 48 hours after the Federal Communication Commission moved earlier this month to drop the Morse requirement, a discussion on www.eham.net ran more than 380 messages and 57,000 words long, the equivalent of a short novel. The postings were divided roughly evenly between those lamenting and those praising the commission's decision.
"CW is just another mode and should not be afforded any special priority over others," wrote K4UUG, who like many radio aficionados identified himself online using his radio call sign. "Proficiency should not be required for those who do not wish to use the mode."
As part of its decision to eliminate the Morse requirement, the commission made essentially the same point.
Inside a hilltop trailer above Stanford University, a couple of veteran coders seemed to be taking the commission's decision in stride earlier this week. In a room cluttered with electronic equipment, they translated the dits and dahs that beeped in the background at dizzying speed, the chatter between someone in Canada, VE6NL to be precise, and someone off the coast of Antarctica, VP8CMH.
"It's a bit like a foreign language," said W6LD, whose real name is John Fore, a securities lawyer at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, a prominent Silicon Valley firm. "You learn it and it's fun to use it."
With thumb and forefinger barely touching the two metal ends of a Morse paddle, W6NL, aka David Leeson, unleashed his own stream of dits and dahs with the ease of a virtuoso to join the global conversation. "I fell head over heels for amateur radio when I was 4 or 5 years old and heard Morse Code signals from afar at the station of a 14-year- old," said Leeson, 69, a consulting professor of engineering at Stanford University. "I still remember the thrill."
The thrill turned into a hobby, and the hobby turned into a career in technology. In 1968, Leeson founded California Microwave, once a thriving but now defunct telecommunications equipment company. Now radio and Morse are just for fun, said Lesson, who is faculty adviser to the Stanford Amateur Radio Club, which once counted Bill Hewlett and David Packard as members.
Leeson and Fore are both active in radio contests, 48-hour competitions in which hams try to contact as many other hams as possible, often using Morse. Leeson has a station in the Galapagos Islands, where he goes several times a year with his wife, Barbara (K6BL), for contests. They once contacted as many as 17,000 other hams in a weekend. Fore, who is 50, and got his first license when he was 10, has a station in Aruba.
They embody the kind of utility-free passion for Morse that the futurist Paul Saffo said would ensure its survival.
"Freed from all pretense of practical relevance in an age of digital communications, Morse will now become the object of loving passion by radioheads, much as another 'dead' language, Latin, is kept alive today by Latin-speaking enthusiasts around the world," Saffo, a fellow at the Institute for the Future, wrote in his blog.
Morse Code was first devised in the 1830s for use in the telegraph. It later became an essential part of civilian, maritime and military radio communications. But the military has largely abandoned its use in favor of newer technologies, and the Coast Guard stopped listening for Morse SOS signals at sea during the 1990s.
The FCC first lifted the Morse Code requirement for entry-level licenses in 1991. It later dropped proficiency requirements for higher-level licenses to five words per minute, from 20. And after international regulations stopped mandating knowledge of it in 2003, it was only a matter of time until Morse Code no longer was required in the United States.
The demise of the Morse requirement, however, could be a boon for ham radio itself. After the FCC decision, demand for information about radio licenses surged from about 200 in a typical weekend to about 500, according to the American Radio Relay League, an organization representing ham radio operators.
"We are very pleased to see that," said David Sumner (K1ZZ), the league's chief executive.
That is no consolation for the most avid defenders of Morse.
"There is something magical about being able to put two wires together and start going dit-dit-dit dit-dit," said Kott, or WZ8C. "We are just going to have to get on the air and do what we do and hope for the best."
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Bush and Blair Zone
The Spirit of Christmas: Bush banned from birthplace of Jesus Christ
Global Research
26/12/2006
"Their entry into the church will tarnish it as [Bush's] hands are covered in the blood of the innocent..."
The Spirit of Christmas consists in spreading Peace and Justice.
The Spirit of Christmas is when War Criminals are banned from the Birthplace of Jesus Christ.
In April 2003 at the height of the military campaign directed against Iraq, the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem decided to ban President Bush and Prime Minister Blair from the birthplace of Jesus Christ.
"They are war criminals and murderers of children. Therefore the Church of Nativity decided to ban them access into the holy shrine for ever,"
"Their entry into the church will tarnish it as [Bush's] hands are covered in the blood of the innocent,"
The Church of the Nativity is under the authority of the Greek Orthodox church.
Of utmost significance, the US News media has not reported this story.
Spread the word to Church parishes in the US and around the World.
Unseat the War criminals.
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Bush Could Usher in a Very Dangerous New Year
By Robert Parry, Consortium News. Posted December 26, 2006.
Intelligence sources say President Bush -- along with Israel's Ehud Olmert and the UK's Tony Blair -- are weighing the possibility of Israeli-led attacks on Syria and Iran in early 2007, with the United States providing logistical back-up.
The first two or three months of 2007 represent a dangerous opening for an escalation of war in the Middle East, as George W. Bush will be tempted to "double-down" his gamble in Iraq by joining with Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and outgoing British Prime Minister Tony Blair to strike at Syria and Iran, intelligence sources say.
President Bush's goal would be to transcend the bloody quagmire bogging down U.S. forces in Iraq by achieving "regime change" in Syria and by destroying nuclear facilities in Iran, two blows intended to weaken Islamic militants in Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories.
The Israeli army and air force would carry the brunt of any new fighting albeit with the support of beefed-up U.S. ground and naval forces in the Middle East, the sources said. Bush is now considering a "surge" in U.S. troop levels in Iraq from about 140,000 to as many as 170,000. He also has dispatched a second aircraft carrier group to the coast of Iran.
So far, however, Bush has confronted stiff opposition from the Pentagon's Joint Chiefs of Staff to the plan for raising troop levels in Iraq, partly because the generals don't think it makes sense to commit more troops without a specific military mission.
But it's unclear how much the generals know about the expanded-war option which has been discussed sometimes in one-on-one meetings among the principals -- Bush, Olmert and Blair -- according to intelligence sources.
Since the Nov. 7 congressional elections, the three leaders have conducted a round-robin of meetings that on the surface seem to have little purpose. Olmert met privately with Bush on Nov. 13; Blair visited the White House on Dec. 7; and Blair conferred with Olmert in Israel on Dec. 18.
All three leaders could salvage their reputations if a wider war broke out in the Middle East and then broke in their favor.
Bush and Blair spearheaded the March 2003 invasion of Iraq that has since turned into a disastrous occupation. In summer 2006, Olmert launched offensives against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, drawing international condemnation for the deaths of hundreds of civilians and domestic criticism for his poorly designed war plans.
The three leaders also find themselves cornered by political opponents. Bush's Republican Party lost control of both the House and Senate on Nov. 7; Blair succumbed to pressure from his own Labour Party and agreed to step down in spring 2007; and Olmert is suffering from widespread public disgust over the failed Lebanese war.
Yet, despite these reversals, the three leaders have rebuffed advice from more moderate advisers that they adopt less confrontational strategies and consider unconditional negotiations with their Muslim adversaries.
Most dramatically, Bush spurned a bipartisan Iraq Study Group plan that was co-authored by the Bush Family's long-time counselor, former Secretary of State James Baker.
Instead of heeding Baker's advice to begin a drawdown of U.S. troops from Iraq and start talks with Iran and Syria, Bush rejected the notion of a "graceful exit" and then set unacceptable preconditions for talks with Iran and Syria.
In other words, Baker tossed a life preserver to Bush who threw it back.
Victory agenda
Bush has continued to insist on "victory" in Iraq and has again ratcheted up his rhetoric. He now talks about waging a long war against Islamic "radicals and extremists," not just the original goal of defeating "terrorists with global reach."
At his news conference on Dec. 20, Bush cast this wider struggle against Islamists as a test of American manhood and perseverance by demonstrating to the enemy that "they can't run us out of the Middle East, that they can't intimidate America."
Bush suggested, too, that painful decisions lay ahead in the New Year.
"I'm not going to make predictions about what 2007 will look like in Iraq, except that it's going to require difficult choices and additional sacrifices, because the enemy is merciless and violent," Bush said.
Rather than scale back his neoconservative dream of transforming the Middle East, Bush argued for an expanded U.S. military to wage this long war.
"We must make sure that our military has the capability to stay in the fight for a long period of time," Bush said. "I'm not predicting any particular theater, but I am predicting that it's going to take a while for the ideology of liberty to finally triumph over the ideology of hate. ...
"We're in the beginning of a conflict between competing ideologies -- a conflict that will determine whether or not your children can live in a peace. A failure in the Middle East, for example, or failure in Iraq, or isolationism, will condemn a generation of young Americans to permanent threat from overseas."
So, rather than looking for a way out of the Iraq quagmire, Bush -- now waist deep in the muck -- is determined to press on.
Bush's dilemma, however, is that time is working against him. Not only are the American people increasingly angry about U.S. troops caught in the middle of a sectarian civil war in Iraq, but Bush's domestic and international political bases continue to erode.
Blair, who is widely derided in the United Kingdom as "Bush's poodle," is nearing the end of his tenure, and Bush's Republican Party is worried about Election 2008 if American soldiers are still dying in Iraq in two years.
Plus, few military analysts believe a temporary troop "surge" alone will stop the steady deterioration in Iraq. Bush acknowledged as much at his news conference.
"In order to do so ['the surge'], there must be a specific mission that can be accomplished with more troops," Bush said. "That's precisely what our commanders have said, as well as people who know a lot about military operations. And I agree with them that there's got to be a specific mission that can be accomplished with the addition of more troops before I agree on that strategy."
Though not making much sense as a way to quell the civil strife in Iraq, a U.S. military buildup could help protect American interests in Iraq if Israeli attacks on Syria and Iran touch off retaliation against U.S. and British targets.
Wider war
For Bush, this idea of expanding the war outside Iraq also is not new. Since spring 2006, Bush reportedly has been weighing military options for bombing Iran's nuclear facilities, but he has encountered resistance from senior U.S. military officers.
As investigative reporter Seymour Hersh wrote in The New Yorker, a number of senior U.S. officers were troubled by administration war planners who believed "bunker-busting" tactical nuclear weapons, known as B61-11s, were the only way to destroy Iran's nuclear facilities buried deep underground.
A former senior intelligence official told Hersh that the White House refused to remove the nuclear option from the plans despite objections from the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "Whenever anybody tries to get it out, they're shouted down," the ex-official said.
By late April 2006, however, the Joint Chiefs finally got the White House to agree that using nuclear weapons to destroy Iran's uranium-enrichment plant at Natanz, less than 200 miles south of Tehran, was politically unacceptable, Hersh reported.
"Bush and [Vice President Dick] Cheney were dead serious about the nuclear planning," one former senior intelligence official said.
But -- even with the nuclear option off the table -- senior U.S. military officials worried about the political and economic fallout from a massive bombing campaign against Iran. Hersh wrote:
"Inside the Pentagon, senior commanders have increasingly challenged the President's plans, according to active-duty and retired officers and officials. The generals and admirals have told the Administration that the bombing campaign will probably not succeed in destroying Iran's nuclear program. They have also warned that an attack could lead to serious economic, political, and military consequences for the United States."
Hersh quoted a retired four-star general as saying, "The system is starting to sense the end of the road, and they don't want to be condemned by history. They want to be able to say, 'We stood up.' "
Beyond the dangers from Iran's nuclear program, the Bush administration views the growing Shiite crescent across the Middle East as a threat to U.S. influence.
Washington Post foreign policy analyst Robin Wright wrote that U.S. officials told her that "for the United States, the broader goal is to strangle the axis of Hezbollah, Hamas, Syria and Iran, which the Bush administration believes is pooling resources to change the strategic playing field in the Middle East."
By summer 2006, Israeli sources were describing Bush's interest in finding a pretext to hit back at Syria and Iran. That opening came when border tensions with Hamas in Gaza and with Hezbollah in Lebanon led to the capture of three Israeli soldiers and a rapid Israeli escalation of the conflict into an air-and-ground campaign against Lebanon.
Bush and his neoconservative advisers saw the Israeli-Lebanese conflict as an opportunity to expand the fighting into Syria and achieve the long-sought "regime change" in Damascus, Israeli sources said.
One Israeli source told me that Bush's interest in spreading the war to Syria was considered "nuts" by some senior Israeli officials, although Prime Minister Olmert generally shared Bush's hard-line strategy against Islamic militants.
In an article on July 30, 2006. the Jerusalem Post also hinted at the Israeli rejection of Bush's suggestion of a wider war into Syria. "Defense officials told the Post ... that they were receiving indications from the US that America would be interested in seeing Israel attack Syria," the newspaper reported.
In August 2006, the Inter-Press Service provided additional details, reporting that the message was passed to Israel by Bush's deputy national security adviser Elliott Abrams, who had been a central figure in the Iran-Contra scandal of the 1980s.
"In a meeting with a very senior Israeli official, Abrams indicated that Washington would have no objection if Israel chose to extend the war beyond to its other northern neighbor, leaving the interlocutor in no doubt that the intended target was Syria," a source told the Inter-Press Service.
In December 2006, Meyray Wurmser, a leading U.S. neoconservative whose spouse is a Middle East adviser to Vice President Cheney, confirmed that neocons in and outside the Bush administration had hoped Israel would attack Syria as a means of undermining the insurgents in Iraq.
"If Syria had been defeated, the rebellion in Iraq would have ended," Wurmser said in an interview with Yitzhak Benhorin of the Ynet Web site. "A great part of it was the thought that Israel should fight against the real enemy, the one backing Hezbollah. ... If Israel had hit Syria, it would have been such a harsh blow for Iran that it would have weakened it and (changed) the strategic map in the Middle East."
In early 2007, the revival of this neoconservative strategy of using the Israeli military to oust the Syrian government and to inflict damage on Iran's nuclear program may represent a last-ditch -- and high-risk -- gamble by Bush and the neocons to salvage their historic legacy.
If that is the case, then Bush will approve "the surge" in U.S. forces into Iraq, which likely will be followed by some provocation that can be blamed on Syria or Iran, thus justifying the expanded war.
Betting the lives of American soldiers and countless civilians across the Middle East, Bush will follow the age-old adage of gambling addicts: in for a dime, in for a dollar.
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Plane carrying Blair slides off runway
www.chinaview.cn 2006-12-27 10:45:50
WASHINGTON, Dec. 26 (Xinhua) -- The plane carrying British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his family slid off a runway at Miami's airport late Tuesday night, The Miami Herald reported on its website.
But no one was injured as the British Airways flight carrying 343 passengers and crew overshot the runway after landing about 6:30 p.m. (2330 GMT) at Miami International Airport, airport spokesman Marc Henderson told the newspaper.
The cause of incident was still under investigation, he said.
The U.S. Secret Service is providing protection for the British government leader and his family during their South Florida visit.
The plane, which was not damaged, returned to a terminal and passengers were allowed to get off, Henderson said.
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