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P
I C T U R E O F T H E D
A Y
Microcosm
©2004 Pierre-Paul
Feyte
Imagine a Twilight Zone episode
where an average guy wakes up one morning to discover
that in his world, every second person he meets is actually
an emotionless automaton. He now lives on a planet half-filled
with semi-conscious robots, who for all intents and
purposes are indistinguishable from normal human beings.
They walk, talk and behave the same, have the same physical
characteristics, and appear identical to regular people
in all aspects.
The one thing that differentiates these robots from
normal folks in the show is that they are "programmed"
upon meeting the man to try to steal something from
him or harm him in some way. Imagine the hero of this
episode trying to distinguish between the robots and
regular folks as he goes about his day. When someone
approaches him and says "good morning", he
wouldn't know whether the greeting is genuine and sincere
or whether he is about to get conned, beaten up or mugged.
As the man goes about his ordinary day, his reality
slowly becomes more and more bizarre, as he now has
a 50% chance of coming across a real fellow human being
or one of these robots who while perhaps not threatening
direct harm, will indeed try to steal from him or swindle
him in some way. As awareness of this new reality becomes
more clear to our hero, we find him becoming ever more
increasingly paranoid, as he nevers knows who to trust
and who to suspect, and soon starts becoming paranoid
about everybody. His waking world has now become a nightmarish
reality where his physical life and very survival is
under constant threat of harm or loss.
What is our hero to do to prevent from going stark
raving mad?
Well, he soon begins to discover that by sitting back
and dispassionately observing the actions of others,
he is presented with subtle clues as to the inner orientation
of these robotic types that now populate his world and
how they may differ ever so slightly from ordinary humans.
And although it may take quite a bit of time and a serious
amount of study, he soon learns that because the robots
function by running automatic programs, the robot can
be correctly identified by seeing which "program"
is in orperation.
Before the climax of the show when the robots start
behaving more and more conspicuous and outrageous, the
hero has now become confident in his ability to discern
between them and regular folks, and has soon formed
a group of real human beings by making them aware of
existence of the robot types.
And like in all Hollywood episodes, the hero and his
gang of fearless comrades overcome the evil robotic
takeover and emerge triumphant at the end when he wakes
up to find everything back to normal.
If only it were so easy.
The editors here at Signs
of the Times, with some inspiration from the Cassiopaean
website and the writings of Boris
Mouravieff, have a theory that the above "fictional"
Twighlight Zone episode, is perhaps a more accurate
description of our present reality than most people
would care to admit.
Without sounding alarmist or overly paranoid, the hypothesis
that there may indeed be "two
races" of human beings occupying our planet
is interesting in that it explains so very much about
our present-day society and why humanity has found itself
in the mess it's currently in. Scholars, Theologians
and Philosophers have debated the question of "the
nature of evil" and why a loving compassionate
God can allow bad things to happen to good people. Yet
despite all the efforts to understand these questions,
no consensus has ever been reached that adequately explains
this phenomenon.
But what if it's not a question of "good versus
evil", but an objective understanding of the way
things are. Is it so far fetched to consider that perhaps
half population of the planet are human by appearance
only? If this hypothesis is valid, perhaps these robotic
types are simply programmed to react in certain self-serving
and entropic ways, and can never know what it "feels
like" to be empathetic towards others. Is it possible
that real human beings, those who truly care when others
are hurt or suffering, live, intermingle and share the
planet with a race of emotionless automatons, or reaction
machines? Could there even be a sociological or
competative advantage for this this type of robot person
who by their very nature would rise to the upper echelons
of the control system.
If true, it certainly would go a long way in explaining
how an obvious moron
and psychopath like George
Bush, can become elected leader of the most powerful
country in the world. It also explains how some soldiers
might experience a rush
of joy when shooting down innocent civilians whereas
a another soldier might experience enormous guilt and
remorse after taking another life. Considering the rash
of murders, suicides and serial killings that seem a
daily occurance in the United states these days, this
Twilight Zone of reality we now find ourselves in would
make Hannibal Lector proud. |
WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — He
was trusted as a Cub Scout leader, respected as a churchgoing
family man and accepted as a regular guy with a secure
marriage, a steady job and all the other trappings of
middle-class success.
He was also, according to police,
an insatiable murderer who tortured and killed strangers
over 17 years, boasting about his crimes in taunting,
gruesome letters and poems that he mailed to police
and the news media.
Dennis L. Rader, a 59-year-old municipal worker
suspected of being the BTK killer responsible for 10
murders, is believed by authorities to have led a Jekyll-and-Hyde
existence.
Experts on the criminal mind
say that is not unusual for serial killers. But
what sets Rader apart is his remarkably stable life
and deep roots in the community.
“Mostly, serial killer are drifters,”
said Michael Rustigan, a California criminologist. “Typically
they’re single, have problems with women, are
in and out of jobs, in and out of relationships.”
But in Rader’s case, he said, “We’ve
rarely seen serial killers so well-integrated into the
community.”
Rader has called the Wichita area home almost his
entire life, earning a criminal justice degree at a
local university. The father of two — he has a
grown daughter and son — had been married for
nearly 34 years and held jobs for long periods, including
a position at a home security firm for 15 years, part
of the time as installation manager.
Rader was arrested Friday by police, who said they
were confident he is BTK — the
killer’s self-coined name that stands for “Bind,
Torture and Kill.” He was charged Tuesday
with 10 murders committed between 1974 and 1991 and
is being held on $10 million bail. The BTK killer terrified
the Wichita area from the late 1970s through the mid-1980s;
most of the victims were strangled, others were stabbed
or shot. In one instance, the killer called 911 to report
the homicide; in another, The Wichita Eagle-Beacon was
alerted to a letter in a library book that provided
details of some murders only the killer could have known.
The killer resurfaced last March — the 30th
anniversary of his first murders — with a series
of letters to police and the media. One included a photocopy
of the driver’s license of one of his victims.
Police will not say what led them to Rader, but his
arrest stunned many in suburban Park City, where he
lived for more than 25 years and worked as a compliance
officer, handling code violations and stray dogs.
Some described him as a friendly,
solicitous man who helped neighbors and recently brought
spaghetti sauce and a salad to a supper at Christ Lutheran
Church, where he was an usher, president of the council
and a member for 30 years.
“Dennis was in church as often as I was,”
said pastor Michael Clark.
But others say he could be a
nitpicker and a bully, always looking to cite
his neighbors for petty violations, once using a tape
measure to determine if a neighbor’s grass was
too long.
If Rader turns out to be BTK, he will not be the first
serial killer to engage in what some experts call doubling
— leading two lives. They cite other examples:
Gary Ridgeway, the Green River killer, was a truck painter.
Jeffrey Dahmer worked in a candy factory. John W. Gacy
was a building contractor who sometimes performed as
a clown.
“They lead a benign,
if not friendly and helpful life with family and friends.
Then they kill strangers,” said Jack Levin,
author of several books on serial killers and the director
of the Brudnick Center on Violence at Northeastern University
in Boston. “It’s
almost like the death camp doctor who goes home and
plays with his children.”
These two lives are “the way they survive. That’s
the way they’re not detected,” said Steve
Egger, a serial killer expert and associate professor
of criminology at the University of Houston-Clear Lake.
“Their actions with people
who love them, with people they associate with, are
very natural. But they’re able to split off and
compartmentalize these fantasies they have ... then
they go out and have to act on them.”
Rustigan, the California criminologist, said he wonders
how Rader, if he is the BTK killer, could hide a sinister
life from his wife.
“You can fake ‘nice guy’ at work,”
he said. “But how do you fake ‘nice guy’
when you’re married? That’s a very powerful
question in this case.”
Rader’s pastor said Rader and his wife, Paula,
were close. “They were
always together — except if one of them was sick,”
Clark said. “It was as solid a marriage as any.”
Clark said he has consoled members of Rader’s
family, who have remained in seclusion and are bewildered
by the allegations. “There’s no such thing
as reality for them,” he said.
If Rader is found to be the BTK killer, some experts
say it also will be noteworthy that he managed to carry
on for so many years without drawing suspicion in a
community where neighbors know and socialize with each
other.
“It would be relatively easy in Miami or New
York City,” Rustigan said, “but how do you
keep this secret so well in a small-knit community?”
Howard Brodsky, a Wichita psychologist who consulted
on the BTK case in the 1970s, said that is one of the
big unanswered questions. Brodsky said that when he
heard of Rader’s arrest, he was surprised the
complaints by neighbors about his overbearing behavior
did not eventually raise red flags.
“He was able to keep up a better
act than I thought,” Brodsky said. “Or maybe
he just surrounded himself with a lot more naive people.”
|
A Woodbury man who lied about
being licensed to practice psychology in Minnesota testified
that a convicted sex offender did not meet the threshold
to be civilly committed, according to court documents
and perjury charges filed Monday.
Michael J. Nilan, 55, testified last
summer that Edward V. Martin was not a "sexually
dangerous person" or "sexual psychopathic
person," according to documents.
The court's first expert, however, had found that
Martin was a "sexually dangerous person,"
but the court ruled not to order Martin civilly committed.
It allows the state to hold a sex offender indefinitely
after the prison sentence is complete.
Nilan's testimony was rescinded in September when
a Hennepin County lawyer raised doubts about his credibility.
The case was retried, and the court is deciding whether
to commit Martin, who tried to rape a woman in 1989
and has been convicted of multiple counts of first-degree
criminal sexual conduct.
"The most significant repercussion is that everyone
will be more careful in checking the credentials of
people," said Hennepin County Chief District Judge
Lucy Wieland. Hennepin County Attorney Amy Klobuchar
called the case "disturbing for the justice system."
Nilan was charged Monday with
three counts of perjury and three counts of practicing
psychology without a license over testifying in three
cases, two involving sexual predators. He did
not return messages left at his home.
Nilan, who was paid $6,120 by
the state for testifying in the case, also lied about
having a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from a correspondence
school, Madison University, and a master of arts
degree in clinical psychology from the University of
St. Thomas, according to the charges. He actually has
a doctorate in psychology from Madison University and
a master of arts degree in counseling psychology from
St. Thomas.
He also said he graduated from
the University of Wisconsin-Madison, but the school
has no record that he ever attended. [...] |
CHICAGO (AP) - Authorities said
Tuesday they are investigating whether the shooting
deaths of a federal judge's husband and her frail, 89-year-old
mother were the work of white supremacists out for revenge.
The killings came a month before white supremacist
Matt Hale was scheduled to be sentenced for trying to
have the judge, Joan Humphrey Lefkow, killed over her
handling of a trademark dispute involving his hate group.
Police said they were looking
at the possibility the crime was committed by hate groups
but cautioned that it was "but one facet of our
investigation." Still, from the federal
courthouse to the family's neighbourhood, the talk was
about Lefkow's involvement in the white supremacist
case.
"There is much speculation about possible links
between this crime and the possible involvement of hate
groups. We are looking in many, many directions, but
it would be far too early to draw any definitive links,"
said James Molloy, Chicago's chief of detectives.
The judge and other members of her family were placed
under federal protection after the killings.
On Monday, the judge came home to discover the bodies
of her husband, Michael Lefkow, 64, a lawyer, and her
mother, Donna Humphrey, in the basement of the Lefkows'
North Side house.
A federal source who spoke on condition of anonymity
said the victims had been shot
in the head. Another source said that police
found two .22-calibre casings and that a window at the
house had been broken.
The two victims would have been easy
to overpower. Lefkow family friend Thomas Robb described
them as "very vulnerable people," explaining
that Humphrey, who was visiting from Denver, needed
two canes to walk. Michael Lefkow had undergone surgery
last week to repair a ruptured Achilles tendon and was
on crutches, he said.
"All of us are horrified by the murder of Judge
Lefkow's husband and mother. Nothing can prepare us
for such a stunning, tragic event," said Charles
Kocoras, chief federal judge for the Northern District
of Illinois.
Hale's father, retired East Peoria policeman Russell
Hale, dismissed the notion that his son may have been
involved in the slayings, saying he is under constant
surveillance by authorities.
"There would be no way he could order anything,"
Hale said. "It's ridiculous."
By Tuesday morning, news articles of the killings
had been posted on white supremacist websites, along
with "RAHOWA!," meaning "racial holy
war."
In a discussion on a white
nationalist website in 2003, members had posted the
Lefkows' home address. Anti-Defamation
League official Mark Pitcavage said another white supremacist's
short-wave radio show last April had discussed killing
the judge.
Investigators looking for a motive for the slayings
searched for clues from the judge's professional life,
including her role presiding over cases involving Hale
and others.
During Hale's murder-plot trial, prosecutors contended
that he was furious when Lefkow ordered him to stop
using the name World Church of the Creator because it
had been trademarked by an Oregon religious group that
has no ties to Hale.
Hale, 33, is awaiting sentencing April 6 for the murder
plot. Police would not say whether they have attempted
to talk with him.
As recently as last year, federal
authorities took the murder plot seriously enough that
they provided Lefkow with protection for at least a
few weeks and Chicago police stepped up patrols of her
neighbourhood. The Lefkows took their own security
measures, installing cameras on their front porch, said
Mike Miner, a longtime friend of Michael Lefkow.
Michael Lefkow was active along with his wife in the
Episcopal Church, and they had four daughters plus a
fifth from his previous marriage. |
AKRON, Ohio -- A Springfield
Township mother broke down in tears as she was sentenced
to 10 years in prison in connection with the death of
her 13-month-old daughter.
Vanessa McGlumphy, 25, and the baby's father made statements
to the court Wednesday, NewsChannel5 reported.
McGlumphy, pleaded guilty last month to involuntary manslaughter
and child endangering for not protecting her daughter.
The toddler died last October. She suffered a broken
neck, a severed liver and 12 broken ribs. She also had
been struck 40 times with a needle on the bottom of both
feet and the side of her head, the prosecutor said.
McGlumphy said that she thought her boyfriend, Daniel
Duffield, 32, sacrificed her child because he is a different
religion than she is and that they performed a ritual
on the girl as a result of his belief. McGlumphy characterized
Duffield as a "black pagan," the prosecutor
said.
Duffield was found guilty Tuesday of involuntary manslaughter
and murder in the death of the toddler.
He will be sentenced March 9. He faces 15 years to life
in prison. |
Core
Values |
Global Eye
By Chris Floyd
Published: February 25, 2005 |
Day in and day out, patriotic
American dissidents on both the left and the right keep
shovelling through the bloody muck of the Bush Imperium.
The filth is endless, Augean; Salon.com recently catalogued
34 ongoing major scandals, equalling or surpassing the
depravity of Watergate. Yet still the patriots bend
to the task, tossing up steaming piles of ugly truth
before the public.
And with every loud splattering of fresh Bushflop,
there's a flurry of hope that this time, the dirt will
stick; this time, the stench of corruption will be so
overwhelming that the nation's long-somnolent conscience
will be aroused. Yet each time, the rancid slurry just
disappears down the drain: The Bushists tell their butt-covering
lies, the "watchdogs" of the media wag their
tails and all is well again in the land that Gore Vidal
so aptly dubbed the United States of Amnesia. No scandal,
no matter how outrageous, ever gains any traction. But
there is a simple reason why patriots on both the right
and the left are stymied: because the center is rotten
to its well-wadded, self-righteous, wilfully ignorant
core. We speak here of the nation's "great and
good," pillars of the community and stalwarts of
the established order, the "captains, merchant
bankers, eminent men of letters, the generous patrons
of art, the statesmen and the rulers, distinguished
civil servants, chairmen of many committees, industrial
lords and petty contractors," in T.S. Eliot's words
-- to which we might add, as a modern gloss, the highly
credentialed academics, extremely well-remunerated corporate
journalists, politically wired churchmen and the innumerable
massagers of public opinion and commercial desire.
It is this center -- which
prides itself on being sensible, moderate, decent and
respectable -- that has become morally corrupted beyond
measure, perhaps beyond remedy. Here, where there
should be thunderous denunciations of the Bush regime's
rape of American honor -- a litany of sins that includes
aggressive war, the decimation of cities, vile acts
of torture, kidnappings, "renditions," imprisonment
without charges, indefinite detention, assassinations,
war profiteering and the exaltation of presidential
power above the reach of law -- there has been only
silent acquiescence, or the rare, decorous, timorous
murmur, or, increasingly, enthusiastic support.
An obscure news story from last week, buried in the
back pages -- if noted at all -- provides a vivid glimpse
of the center rot. It was an ordinary wire piece from
Knight-Ridder, standard Washington wonkery about a bureaucratic
turf battle. It dealt with one of the recommendations
of the "9-11 Commission" -- that assemblage
of the great and good whose "independent"
investigation of the 2001 terrorist attacks on America
unearthed a vast tangle of criminal negligence and fatal
incompetence for which, miraculously, not a single member
of the great and good bore the least responsibility.
The commission issued a slew of recommendations for
upgrading national security, including the much-ballyhooed
creation of a new "Director of National Intelligence"
to oversee the ever-spreading octopus of U.S. "security
organs" -- 15 separate spy agencies at last count
(that we know about). The wisdom of this advice was
borne out by George W. Bush's choice for the post: John
Negroponte, the death-squad enabler and atrocity manager
best known for burying evidence of CIA-sponsored murders,
massacres and torture in Central America during the
Reagan-Bush I years. Fresh from not-dissimilar duties
in Baghdad, this distinguished civil servant is now
bringing his dark arts to the Homeland -- to general
approval from the stalwarts.
But the sages had another, lesser-known recommendation:
consolidating "all secret U.S. paramilitary operations,
whether clandestine or covert" within the Pentagon.
This would make such operations "more robust,"
the worthies said. But the CIA objected to having its
own secret armies taken away. After months of negotiation,
it was decided last week that the Pentagon and CIA would
keep their separate paramilitary capabilities.
What exactly are these "paramilitary operations"
which the commission, the U.S. Congress and all our
stalwarts think we should have more of? As Knight-Ridder
notes, they are actions "conducted by armed units
that do not belong to conventional military formations"
-- in other words, terrorist groups, according to the
Bush regime's own definition. Those designated as terrorists
by Bush should not be covered by the Geneva Conventions,
we are told, because they are not part of a "conventional
military formation." They're outlaws, Bush says,
fit to be killed or locked up without charges. Yet of
course he commands the largest collection of such "outlaws"
in the world.
And "outlaw" is no
metaphorical term here. As Knight-Ridder explains,
specifically "covert" operations are those
"in which the U.S. government wants to be able
to deny any involvement" because they "at
times violate international law or the laws of war."
Here we come to the crux of the rot. Not a single
Establishment stalwart involved in the matter -- not
Congress, nor the Commission, nor the President, nor
the press -- objected in the least to this horrifying
reality: that the U.S. government
routinely violates "international law and the laws
of war" in secret terrorist actions by "unconventional"
forces, including CIA operatives, local proxies and
hired killers. It's simply accepted, across the
board, as standard practice. In fact, the only concern
about these admittedly criminal actions -- directed
by unrestricted presidential fiat, with their true ends
(Counterterrorism? Personal enrichment? Political power
games? Ideological zealotry?) forever hidden from public
scrutiny -- is how to make them more "robust,"
more efficient and more deadly.
The great societal bulwarks that should mitigate the
abuse of power have instead embraced the barbaric ethos
of brute force in order to maintain their own comfort,
privilege and self-regard. For them, law has become
a pretty sham and honor is a fiction, while respectability
and decency are fairy tales for fools and children.
Truth will never hold where the center is so murderously
corrupted. |
Most of us get them, those e-mails
promising bushels of porn, the end of impotence, permanently
flaccid mortgage rates or lucrative friendships with
wayward African princes seeking bank accounts to bunk
with. It's harmless clutter. It's also a reminder that
marketing sugared in smut and guile always finds an
audience, otherwise its retailers wouldn't keep at it.
So it's natural for the merchants
of Operation Iraqi Freedom to hitch their pipeline to
our in-boxes. They sell porn of a different kind --
the pornography of war as a beautiful
thing, as an orgy of good news the media just won't
show because, as one incensed e-mail has it, "a
Bush-hating media and Democratic Party would rather
see the world blow up than lose their power." (If
it's possible for the propagandist to find good news
in Iraq it must be equally possible to find a Democrat
still in power in the United States.)
The good-news e-mails show
little Iraqi kids holding up signs that say "Thank
you very much Mr. Bush" or matronly women doing
the same with "Iraqi people happy today,"
pictures of American soldiers cradling olive-skinned
kids and showering them with school supplies, and similarly
posed presumptions of triumph that reproduce President
Bush's "Mission Accomplished" sketch on the
USS Abraham Lincoln almost two years ago, but on location.
The pictures are a counterweight
to the "isolated" bad news the media obsesses
over, those images of torture, bombings, kidnappings,
beheadings, maiming and killing of Americans and Iraqis
alike. Isolation has its toll: Doubtless, some
time this week the 1,500th American soldier will be
killed in Iraq -- "Thank you very much Mr. Bush"
-- and some time this month the 11,000th American will
be wounded, disfigured, mutilated and either returned
to duty for another crack at making Iraqis happy or
returned home to a lifetime subscription to PTSD.
Still, it must be a good thing. Here's the latest
variant of lists making their way across the Internet
since 2003: "Did you know that 47 countries have
re-established their embassies in Iraq? Did you know
that the Iraqi government employs 1.2 million people?
Did you know that 3,100 schools have been renovated,
364 schools are under rehabilitation, 263 schools are
now under construction and 38 new schools have been
built in Iraq? Did you know that 25 Iraqi students departed
for the United States in January 2004 for the re-established
Fulbright program?" And so on.
The stuff is written simply
and factually, but in that bullying tone of self-evidence
that omits the relevance of evidence -- context, proof,
explanation, perspective.
How many of those embassies are basement annexes to
the same obscure countries sharecropping their way to
American favors as part of the "Coalition of the
Willing"? What's the use of a government employing
1.2 million people if it can't pay them? How many of
those Band-aided schools were wrecked by American bombs?
Twenty-five students from Iraq are studying in American
universities on Fulbright scholarships for the first
time in 14 years. But American sanctions had something
to do with keeping them out so long. And in the spirit
of the Fulbright program's aim to foster "mutual
understanding" between nations, it would be newsworthy
if American students were lining up to study in Iraq.
They're not.
It's pointless to get caught up in the game. Entire
Web sites are devoted to verifying some claims and,
unfortunately, debunking most. Unfortunately, because
no one should be cheering against good news. But a war
costing $2 billion a week -- or $4,000 per Iraqi per
year -- had better yield some results worth cheering
about other than the Fallujah-style flattening of cities,
the surrender of much of the country to anarchy, or
a hemorrhage of American tax-dollars that will eventually
make the United Nations' $67 billion oil-for-food scandal
look quaint in comparison. True, there's a lack of honest
reporting. But the unreported scandal from this end
is that the investment in deficit-digging tax-dollars
is yielding so little return except for the contractors
and mercenaries in on the loot. The unreported tragedy
from the Iraqi perspective is that the investment in
lives is yielding still nothing more than finger-paint
parodies of democracy. We'd be better off going home
and sending every Iraqi man, woman and child a $4,000
annual check. |
I lost a friend last week. These
things happen - I'm bad at people, after all - but I
can't say I'm not pissed off. Last week I also talked
to a nice lady who was great at describing loss, the
details of loss, the amputated future, the lack of company.
Because I'm bad at people it took me a long time to
remember she was so well-informed because her husband
died a while ago. I mean, ages ago, but she hasn't forgotten
him. Which is odd, isn't it ? She wants to be able to
talk to her husband, I want to be able to talk to my
friend - but we shouldn't. We should be over it.
How do I know? Because I should be caring about how
a bony tart and a petulant clothes horse choose to christen
their spawn. I should be fretting over whether a lack
of established royal precedent at Windsor register office
will cause Camilla to spontaneously combust. I should
want to see more and more and more of Jimmy Carr. Then
I would be part of the real world, the things that matter,
the questions that deserve every scrap of media attention
they get.
Particularly, I should keep away from anything to
do with unpleasantness, injury, or loss - they have
no place in a modern media environment. Take Lance Corporal
Andres Raya. I shouldn't think about him. He's dead
now. He made it through Iraq, went home to California
and couldn't take it. He committed suicide by cop in
a three-hour gun fight. But he doesn't matter. Or Baha
Mousa, he's never going to get the kind of headlines
he might if he'd shagged Jordan, or shat himself in
a celebrity detox special. He's dead now. Our troops
killed him. But if that matters at all it's as an indication
of how stressed war can make the modern soldier. His
brother Ala'a misses him, but he probably lacks perspective.
Abdul Wali, he's dead now. He died after being interrogated
by a CIA contractor in Afghanistan, but so what? Then
there's Zaydun al-Samarrai. He's dead now. His cousin
Marwan Hassoun is upset about this, but you can be sure
he's overreacting - after all Sgt Tracy Perkins, one
of the people who drowned al-Samarrai in the Tigris,
was only given a six-month sentence, so it can't have
been a big deal. Hanan Saleh Matrud, she's dead now.
After they shot her in Basra, the British army paid
her family £390 compensation, which is fair enough
because she was only eight and might not have amounted
to much.
Hussain Adbulkadr Youssouf Mustafa says he had a stick
shoved up his rectum by US troops at Bagram air base
in Afghanistan and he has the gall to complain. Didar
Khalan says he was tortured for a week by the Patriotic
Union of Kurdistan until he finally gave false testimony
against Mullah Krekar, testimony that was later presented
as a valid basis for prosecution by US authorities.
He claims his arm was broken and that he was made to
stand in a freezing room without clothing and sit on
blocks of ice. Which would have made a terrific reality
special, but sadly, no one thought ahead.
Wesam Abdulrahman Ahmed Al Deemawi was at Bagram,
where he was threatened with dogs, stripped, photographed
in obscene positions and placed in a cage with a hook
and a hanging rope. He's not happy, either, when surely
he should just be glad nobody killed him.
If either of them actually wanted the public's attention
they should realise that having Kelly Osbourne shove
a stick up their arse would have done it, or having
someone, you know, attractive in those obscene photos.
Think of how popular Hugh Grant's arrest snap still
remains, and that barely suggests the erotic action
that preceded his bust.
Surely, if we've learned nothing else from fusiliers
Kenyon, Larkin and Cooley, it's that people really don't
want to look at tubby, petrified Muslims trying to fake
sodomy. We like our soft porn nipped and tucked. Or
if it has to be ugly, it should involve paparazzi shots
of stars that everyone is tired of, such as Mickey Rourke
or Dirty Den.
Army specialist James Kiehl, he's dead now. He was
killed in the same attack that won Jessica Lynch so
much air time, but that wasn't enough to make him famous.
Lance Corporal Shaun Brierley and Lt Philip Green, they're
dead now. They died for Mr Blair, but that doesn't mean
anyone should have heard of them. Peter Mahoney, he
fought for Mr Blair, too. He's dead now. Killed himself.
But that was last year - his wife and four children
will be fine.
How do I know? Because that's the way the real world
works. Remember all those poor, dead 9/11 victims we're
supposed to be avenging? Many of their fragmentary remains
have been dumped in the Fresh Kills landfill without
even a memorial. Because we're over them. We can get
over anything. It's the only way. |
A bomb exploded by a US military
column in the village of al-Bu Faraj north of Ramadi
and west of Baghdad, destroying one Zil troop transport
and reportedly killing nine US
soldiers and one Lebanese translator who held
American citizenship and was collaborating with the
occupation troops.
The correspondent of Mafkarat al-Islam in Ramadi reported
witnesses who were nearby at the time the bomb went
off and were wounded by pieces of flying shrapnel as
saying that the Resistance planted the high-explosive
bomb under a large pile of cow dung that is used as
fertilizer for farm fields which was sitting by the
side of the road, and which the American soldiers paid
no attention to.
The bomb went off by a Zil vehicle that was carrying
11 US troops on their way to the village to carry out
routine raids and searches of houses – something
they usually do every Wednesday. The explosion reportedly
killed nine of the Americans in the vehicle and wounded
the other two.
Two US helicopters landed to evacuate the bodies.
In a report posted at 10:45am Mecca time Wednesday morning,
the Mafkarat al-Islam correspondent reported that the
burned-out wrecked hulk of the vehicle was still lying
in the road. US forces completely encircled the area
at the time of writing. They
launched a wave of raids and arrests, taking four men
and one seven-year-old child into custody. The
boy’s father was martyred in recent fighting in
Hit, and his mother’s pleading with the Americans
did not prevent their arresting him and taking him off
to prison with the men. |
A bomb exploded by a US military
column in the ar-Rifa‘i area west of al-Hadithah
in al-Anbar Province at 3pm Wednesday afternoon local
time, Mafkarat al-Islam reported. The blast destroyed
one Humvee and disabled a second, reportedly
killing seven American troops.
The correspondent in al-Hadithah reported that a high-explosive
bomb exploded by the column made up of several Humvees
of various types, destroying one and disabling the vehicle
immediately behind it in the column. In addition to
the seven Americans killed there were others who were
wounded, the correspondent noted. He said that the blast
was so powerful that one of the bodies of the dead Americans
was blown nearly 10 meters by the force of the explosion
into a stream of brackish water. Eyewitnesses and sources
in the local puppet police confirmed that fact, noting
that the Americans spent nearly half an hour searching
before they found that body.
Witnesses said that the wounded were able to pick
themselves up and get into other vehicles in the column.
American forces encircled the
scene of the attack, firing tear gas grenades and noise
bombs off. One US soldier opened fire on at the giant,
government-owned electricity generator that supplies
the city with power, as a sort of revenge on the local
people for the attack. The
American troops regard the local people in the area
as the real backbone of the Resistance.
Bombs Reportedly Kill Eight US Troops Southwest
Of Hit
Three Iraqi Resistance bombs exploded by a US military
column made up of 11 various vehicles in the al-Jam‘iyah
neighborhood to the south west of Hit at 4pm local time
Wednesday afternoon. The blast destroyed two Humvees
and disabled a third. Eight US
troops were killed and three more received “mortal”
wounds, according to the local Mafkarat al-Islam
correspondent.
Witnesses said that members of the Iraqi Resistance
planted five bombs on the main al-Jam‘iyah road,
with each bomb about 15 meters from the next. The American
troops were able to discover two of the bombs and detonate
them using a mechanical robot but failed to find three
of the bombs and those then exploded when the US column
passed by.
The bombs struck three vehicles in the American column
at nearly the same time, completely destroying two Humvees
and disabling a third. Eight American troops were reportedly
killed by the explosions and three more wounded.
A source in the puppet so-called “Iraqi rapid
deployment unit” in al-Hadithah told Mafkarat
al-Islam that 11 Americans were killed or wounded on
Wednesday and two Humvees destroyed and one disabled,
confirming the story above.
After the blast, US forces
encircled the area of the attack. Using loudspeakers
they announced that the city would be receive “corrective
punishment,” the first part of which on
Wednesday was the imposition of a curfew on the residents
of the city from 3pm until 7am the next morning. The
Americans threatened to keep the curfew in force for
many long days if local residents do not turn over Resistance
fighters to the invader troops. They
also indicated that they would cut off electricity and
water from the local people in coming days.
Resistance Shoots Down US Chinook Helicopter
Resistance forces opened fire and struck a US Chinook
helicopter, setting its rear section ablaze and forcing
it down in the al-Kubaysat area near the US base in
the city of ar-Rutbah.in al-Anbar Province on the way
to the Jordanian border.
The correspondent of Mafkarat al-Islam was unable
to ascertain the nature or extent of US losses in the
attack. Residents of the area who were nearby when the
helicopter went down reported hearing a powerful explosion
when it hit the ground.
Salah Ad-Din Province Without All US-Backed Police
Forces Who Resign En Masse
The Iraqi so-called police in Salah ad-Din Province,
which includes the cities of Samarra’, Tikrit,
al-Bayji, Balad, and ad-Dulu‘iyah, announced that
they were suspending their service in the police force.
Many of them resigned from the force altogether.
The correspondent of Mafkarat al-Islam reported Major
General Ahmad Jabr, the commander of the police in Salah
ad-Din Province announced on local television on Wednesday
that the entire force in the
province, an estimated 8,000 men, were going on general
strike.
General Jabr said the move was in protest against
the US occupation forces storming of the building housing
the police command, where the
Americans arrested a number of policemen and officers
in the force, accusing them of cooperating with the
Iraqi Resistance and serving them.
The correspondent of Mafkarat al-Islam in Samarra’
reported that the Samarra’ Police had also gone
on general strike.
Meanwhile, Mafkarat al-Islam correspondents in various
cities in the province report that
more than 70 percent of the members of the puppet police
force in al-Bayji, Balad, and ad-Dulu‘iyah handed
in their weapons and left the police stations and abandoned
all patrols. The correspondents
write that at the present time there are no puppet police
working in the province where the rule of the occupation
regime is solely in the hands of the US forces.
The Americans for their part are reportedly searching
for a new commander for the provincial police after
General Jabr called his police strike, an action that
the Americans regard as “sabotaging security.”
In their report posted at 5:10pm Wednesday afternoon,
the correspondents wrote that there were unconfirmed
reports saying that the commander had in fact also resigned.
Rockets Blast US Base In Tall ‘Afar
Resistance forces in Tall ‘Afar, which is north
of Baghdad, fired four rockets into the main US base
in the city. The correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam
reported local witnesses as saying that the four rockets
blasted into the base where the Iraqi Army formerly
had an observation headquarters before the US invasion
in spring 2003.
The correspondent reported that the attack send dens
clouds of smoke rising into the sky over the US-occupied
facility as powerful explosions shook the base at 10am
Wednesday local time. Three US helicopters came in over
the area where they remained for a full hour.
Bomb Disables South Korean Military Vehicle
An Iraqi Resistance bomb exploded by a south Korean
military column in a residential section of downtown
Irbil in northern Iraq. The blast disabled one military
vehicle, Mafkarat al-Islam reported. No further information
was available because occupation forces had encircled
the area and prevented all access.
Resistance Bomb Kills Four Brits In Basra
In a dispatch posted at 9:40pm Mecca time Wednesday
night, the correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam in al-Basrah
reported that a short while before an Iraqi Resistance
bomb had exploded by a British military column made
up of four armored vehicles. The column had entered
the ash-Shuratah neighborhood in the northern part of
the city.
The correspondent reported that the blast destroyed
one armored vehicle and reportedly
killed four British soldiers. A source in the
“national guard” confirmed to the correspondent
that the blast left four British troops dead and one
armored vehicle destroyed. |
The dramatic changes
underway in Lebanon are signs of a "great democratic
experiment" ignited by the United States that could
sweep through the Middle East this year, says a scholar
of Islamic politics here.
"Democracy is knocking at the door of this country
and, if it's successful in Lebanon, it is going to ring
the doors of every Arab regime," says Nizar Hamzeh,
a political scientist at the American University in Beirut
and author of a new book on Islamic militia movements.
"I don't think any country in this region is going
to be spared from this wave."
At a mountain retreat yesterday outside Beirut, dozens
of leaders from Lebanon's diverse and newly united opposition
groups met to plot strategy two days after they and crowds
of protesters pressured the country's pro-Syrian government
into resigning.
The opposition has demanded that Syria withdraw all of
its military and intelligence services from Lebanon and
that Lebanese Syrian-backed security chiefs resign as
a precondition to joining any talks on forming a new government.
"The opposition considers essential in its demands
on the road to salvation and independence the total withdrawal
of the Syrian army and intelligence service from Lebanon,"
said the statement read by lawmaker Ahmad Fatfat.
"This step requires an official announcement from
Syria's president on the withdrawal of the Syrian forces
and its intelligence from Lebanon," he said.
It remains undecided whether Emile Lahoud, Lebanon's
unpopular, Syrian-backed president, will also step down
or take part in the process of choosing a caretaker government
until parliamentary elections in May.
The opposition says an independent government, rather
than a puppet regime of Syria, is needed to properly investigate
last month's murder of Lebanon's former prime minister,
Rafik Hariri, a beloved figure in Beirut whose death many
blame on Syria.
Also unclear is whether Syrian President Bashar Assad
is serious about the claim he made Tuesday that he will
withdraw his forces from Lebanon in the coming months
and end decades of Syrian control over its smaller neighbour.
"He should tell us how many months," Walid
Jumblatt, one of the main opposition leaders, said yesterday.
The departure of Syrian forces is the key demand of the
thousands of citizens who cram into a downtown Beirut
square each night, wrapped in Lebanese flags in what many
are calling the "Cedar Revolution," named after
the cedar tree that is Lebanon's national symbol.
Hamzeh said the difficult work of solving these issues
and bringing true democracy and sovereignty to Lebanon
now falls to its people. But he insisted yesterday that
the United States deserves the credit for inspiring the
winds of change in this region.
"Definitely the credit here is to
the United States and President (George W.) Bush,"
he said yesterday.
"What's happening in Lebanon is
not just power of the people, with all due respect to
them. Whether people like the U.S. or hate it, this process
of peaceful political transformation would not have started
if the U.S. had not initiated it."
Hamzeh said the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, coupled
with U.S. pressure on Syria and Iran to mend their ways
as sponsors of terrorism - what he calls "coercive
diplomacy that falls just short of war" - has emboldened
opposition movements throughout the Middle East and created
a climate of political opportunity in a region whose people
were desperate for change but needed international encouragement.
He said elections in Iraq and the Palestinian territories,
plus the prospect of genuinely free elections in Lebanon
and Egypt, are signs of a movement that could spread to
Jordan, the Gulf states and even Syria and Iran.
In Lebanon, however, Hamzeh said the rest is now up to
the country itself. "The U.S. can't fight all our
battles."
Some Lebanese at Beirut's protest camp agreed yesterday
the United States laid the groundwork for their goals.
The handful of people interviewed
by CanWest News Service said they were fans of Bush, but
also said the United States and Europe need to do much
more.
"The U.S. should invade Syria, just
like Iraq," said Peter Geagea, a university student.
"Syria has been talking for 15 years about leaving
Lebanon, and it never has. The only way is to force them
out."
At the nearby grave and memorial of Hariri, whose murder
helped spark the Beirut protests, businessman Nage Abesaad
said the Lebanese people, not the United States, are the
agents of change here.
"This is the first time that we've stood up together,
as one, and demanded freedom," he said. As for Lebanon
leading the rest of the Middle East into a new political
era, Abesaad was skeptical.
"We will have true democracy here, maybe,"
he said, "but in Syria, I don't know. If you want
real peace in the Middle East, you need to get rid of
the (ruling) Baath Party in Syria - the same way the U.S.
did in Iraq." |
On the streets of Beirut,
they call it the "intifada for independence."
In the corridors of Washington, they prefer to call it
the "Cedar Revolution."
In a media age, such branding could be crucial. The name
given to Lebanon's popular political movement is shorthand
for its historical roots and its future direction. The
label will help shape how the world understands Lebanon's
small but telling part of the ongoing struggle for democracy
throughout the Middle East.
The "intifada" brand emerged on Feb. 18 when
Beirut's Daily Star reported that the opposition leaders,
outraged by the Feb. 14 assassination of former prime
minister Rafiq Hariri, were "calling for an 'intifada
for independence'" as they stepped up attacks on
the government.
The Jerusalem Post reported that "the so-called
civilian intifada . . . has done what years of civil war
and internecine fighting failed to achieve. It brought
the citizens of Lebanon together as Lebanese."
When the protests forced the resignation of the pro-Syrian
prime minister on Monday, the Daily Star quoted opposition
leaders saying "the resignation marked the 'first
success of the peaceful intifada' it waged on the government."
A correspondent for the Morocco Times uses the same phrase.
And when the Daily Star interviewed an 18-year-old student
at Hariri's grave on Wednesday, she said, "we came
to thank him for starting this peaceful intifada for Lebanon's
freedom."
It's easy to see why the Bush administration
prefers not to adopt the "intifada" label. Intifada
is an Arabic word meaning "shaking off." It
was coined by Palestinians during their spontaneous uprising
against Israeli military occupation in 1987. To speak
of Lebanon's "intifada" places this month's
events in the tradition of the Palestinians' struggle
against Israeli occupation. And it implies that Syria,
a decaying Arab autocracy, and Israel, a favorite U.S.
ally, have something in common as occupying powers.
All of those ideas are credible on the
streets of Beirut, where Israel is remembered and reviled
for its 1982 invasion. The Israeli Defense Forces, led
by then defense minister Ariel Sharon, launched a surprise
attack designed to install a friendly government in Beirut.
Israel's bid to dominate the country collapsed amid fierce
factional fighting and massacres that devastated Beirut
and killed upwards of 10,000 civilians. In the ensuing
chaos, the Syrian military moved in, effectively installed
their own friendly government, and demanded the Lebanese
go along.
Given this history, the "Cedar Revolution"
brand is more congenial to the Bush administration. It
was coined by Undersecretary of State Paula Dobriansky
in a Feb. 28 news conference that touted President Bush's
foreign policy.
"In Lebanon, we see growing momentum for a Cedar
Revolution that is unifying the citizens of that nation
to the cause of true democracy and freedom from foreign
influence," Dobriansky declared. "Hopeful signs
span the globe and there should be no doubt that the years
ahead will be great ones for the cause of freedom."
The Cedar Tree is the national symbol and depicted prominently
on the Lebanese flag. The brand
name portrays the anti-Syrian protest movement as essentially
an effort to recover Lebanon's national tradition. It
gives the movement a Lebanese, not an Arabic, face.
It evokes benevolent nature, not unpleasant memories of
Israeli military might. It fits rather more comfortably
with Bush's foreign policy notion that "freedom is
on the march" in the Middle East.
But no one in the Lebanese press is
talking about "the Cedar Revolution." The cedar
tree is the traditional symbol of the country's Maronite
Christians, derived from a reference in the Christian
Bible (Psalms 92:12, "the righteous flourish like
the palm tree, and grow like a cedar in Lebanon."),
according to the Flags of the World Web site. It was incorporated
into the Lebanese flag in 1943 when Christians were a
majority of the population and the much poorer Shiite
Muslims living in the dusty south were all but shut out
of power.
That era is gone. Today, Shiites are the biggest single
ethnic/religious grouping in Lebanon. They are represented
by Hezbollah, the Shiite political party that holds 12
seats in the 128-member parliament. Denounced
by the United States as a terrorist organization, Hezbollah
is respected across the Lebanese political spectrum for
driving the Israelis out of southern Lebanon in 2000.
In the words of the newsweekly Monday Morning "the
alliance between Damascus and Hezbollah is now decisive"
in maintaining the country's pro-Syrian political order.
That's why opposition leader Walid Jumblatt is calling
for dialogue with Hezbollah. Jumblatt says he disagrees
with Washington's (and France's) insistence that Hezbollah
disarm immediately.
Al Manar, Hezbollah's TV station and Web site, reported
Wednesday that Jumblatt's representative will soon meet
with Hezbollah's leadership.
Hezbollah, it is safe to say, wants no part of a U.S.-backed
"Cedar Revolution." But it might be persuaded
to join an "intifada for independence," especially
if the new government would allow it to keep its weapons
after Syria departs.
A lot hangs on how the Lebanese brand this moment in
their political history.
|
PARIS, March 2 (AFP) -
French intelligence services were Wednesday studying two
videos of a reporter taken hostage in Iraq - one of which
was broadcast the day before - amid suspicions that Syria
had links to those holding her, media said.
The front pages of all of France's dailies were given
over to the latest video, initially shown by Italian television
station Sky-Italia Tuesday, which showed Florence Aubenas,
a senior correspondent of the Liberation newspaper, looking
gaunt and desperate.
"Please help me. My health is very bad. I'm very
bad psychologically also," Aubenas was seen pleading,
in English, her knees drawn up to her chest and sitting
in front of a plain reddish background.
"This is urgent now. Help me! I ask especially Mr
Didier Julia, the French deputy. Please Mr Julia. Help
me! It's urgent. Mr Julia help me!" she said in the
50-second video.
Technical experts at the DGSE foreign espionage service
and other branches of the defence ministry were analysing
the video to try to determine when and where it was taken.
The government and Liberation said an earlier video,
contained on a CD-ROM, had been received last week.
Liberation said Wednesday that that video, which lasted
40 seconds, was not made public at the demand of authorities,
who claimed to be observing a request by the kidnappers.
It showed Aubenas against a black background, essentially
making the same statement in English - but without the
reference to Julia.
In both cases, there has been no indication as to who
is holding Aubenas, nor mention of any demands nor of
Aubenas's Iraqi interpreter, Hussein Hanun al-Saadi, who
disappeared with her in Baghdad on January 5.
But the Julia reference has concerned and puzzled French
officials and the media - and raised speculation that
Syria might have a link to the hostage-takers.
Julia, an Arabic-speaking MP in President Jacques Chirac's
ruling UMP party, is seen as having ties to Damascus.
[...]
"Among the experts following the matter, the coincidence
of the open crisis over Lebanon... and the abduction gives
rise to many questions on what role might be played by
Syria, with whom Didier Julia has close contacts,"
Liberation said.
The French radio station Europe 1 reported that the head
of Syrian military intelligence, Assef Shwakat (who is
also brother-in-law to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad),
visited Paris discreetly last week and told French officials
his services were at their disposition in the Aubenas
case and "we are able to do something".
The radio said the broadcast of the video of Aubenas
following that visit raised the possibility that "the
Syrian secret services have taken control of the group
holding Florence Aubenas and want to use that card to
throw French diplomacy into total embarrassment."
Le Figaro, the centre-right daily, noted that Julia and
his team worked out of the Syrian capital Damascus during
their failed freelance mission last September.
It, too, noted a "coincidence" in that that
mission came to an unsuccessful end after France and the
United States pushed the UN resolution against Syria,
and hinted that Julia appeared to have been entirely relying
on Syrian authorities throughout his venture.
For the France-Soir newspaper, "Didier Julia has
always tapped his Syrian friendships for his actions in
the region." |
PARIS, March 2 (AFP) -
Didier Julia, the French lawmaker a reporter taken hostage
in Iraq called for by name in a video released by her abductors,
is seen as a maverick member of President Jacques Chirac's
ruling party - and someone with close ties to Syria and
the deposed regime of Saddam Hussein. [...]
A former archeaologist who speaks Arabic, Julia is familiar
with the Middle East.
He was also seen as a pro-Iraq lobbyist during the regime
of Saddam Hussein, and enjoyed contacts with Iraqi officials
from that era.
Many of those Iraqis are now believed to be active in
the insurgency battling US-led forces, some with the surreptitious
support of Syria. [...]
Several newspapers in France noted that, when Julia went
to Syria to oversee his failed mission, the French embassy
in Damscus stepped in to secure his Syrian visa with the
Syrian foreign ministry.
Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo also loaned a private
jet for the Julia team's use, adding to speculation that,
though the mission was unofficial, it might have taken
place in a larger, behind-the-scenes dealmaking environment.
With Aubenas now calling out for Julia by name, many
in France, starting with the journalist's employer, the
Liberation newspaper, believe she was directed to involve
the MP.
A previous video received last week by French officials
but not made public had Aubenas identifying herself in
a similar tone - but not making any reference to Julia,
according to the newspaper. |
VIENNA, — The
United States accused Iran yesterday of deceiving U.N.
inspectors over its nuclear-weapons program, amid reports
President Bush is leaning toward offering incentives to
Iran to give up arms development.
Declaring some sites off-limits to U.N. arms inspectors,
Iran said yesterday it fears that leaked information gathered
by them could help those planning a strike on its military
installations.
France, Britain and Germany, which criticized Iran for
not honoring its pledge to freeze all activities that
could be used to make weapons, are offering Iran economic
and political incentives to terminate the most sensitive
parts of its program. Iran has refused.
Backing the Europeans' approach would mark a significant
shift in strategy, as Bush has been reluctant to consider
incentives for Iran to avoid being seen as rewarding bad
behavior.
Under the new strategy, the United States would not block
Iranian attempts to start the process of joining the World
Trade Organization, and would not try to stop European
allies selling Iran parts for civilian aircraft, the officials
said.
In exchange, the U.S. would insist that Iran abandon
uranium enrichment, a demand Iran has so far rejected.
Some U.S. officials believe offering incentives would
strengthen the international community's hand by providing
a united front for punitive measures, such as U.N. sanctions,
if the incentives did not work.
Jackie Sanders, chief U.S. delegate to the board of the
International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog,
called a new agency report updating Iran's nuclear record
a "startling list of Iranian attempts to hide and
mislead and delay the work" of agency experts, and
urged other countries to support a U.S. drive to have
Iran referred to the U.N. Security Council for possible
sanctions.
Iran's refusal to grant IAEA inspectors renewed access
to the Parchin military site after an initial, severely
restricted visit last month was one of the issues raised
by the agency's review. The United States says Iran may
be testing high-explosive components for nuclear weapons,
using an inert core of depleted uranium at Parchin as
a dry run for a bomb that would use fissile material.
The IAEA says it has found no firm evidence that Iran's
nuclear program is intended for anything other than peacefully
generating electricity. The agency also has not been able
to support U.S. assertions that nearly 20 years of covert
nuclear programs discovered two years ago were aimed at
making nuclear weapons. |
BAGHDAD (AP) - The number
of U.S. military deaths in Iraq rose to 1,500, an Associated
Press count showed Thursday, as the military announced one
of its troops was killed in action just south of the capital. |
BUCHAREST, March 2 (Xinhuanet)
-- Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine have no intention of setting
up an anti-Russian alliance, Georgian President Mikhail
Saakashvili said on Wednesday in Moldovan capital Chisinau.
Saakashvili, who arrived in Chisinau on Wednesday for
a two-day visit just before the country's March 6 elections,
said that Georgia and Moldova demand all Russian troops
withdraw from their territories, but don't want to sabotage
the relations with Russia.
At a news conference after meeting with Moldovan President
Vladimir Voronin, Saakashivili said he came to Moldova
to support democracy, expressing his displeasure with
reports that he was getting himself involved in Moldova's
elections.
He pointed out that some external forces are still unwilling
tostop their interference in other countries' affairs
after having failed in Georgia and Ukraine.
"I have not come to support any of the candidates.
It is important for us for these elections to be free
and democratic, without pressure or blackmail," the
pro-western leader said.
Voronin told the news conference that leaders of Moldova,
Georgia and Ukraine all agreed that the importance of
relations with Russia should not be undervalued, but Russia
should abandon its imperial ambition.
Voroin met with Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko
during a brief visit to Kiev on Tuesday.
Saakashivili and Voronin also signed a joint declaration,
in which both leaders criticized separatist movements
in Moldova's breakaway region of Transdniestr and in Georgia's
regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
"Separatist leaders have created an international
criminal alliance," Vorinin said, describing separatism
as a source of crime, smuggling and general lawlessness.
"We concluded that separatist republics are 'a
black hole' where chaos rules. And we stated our determination
to join forces to resolve these problems," he added.
|
The US will continue
to press Russia on what it sees as backsliding on democracy
issues, U.S. secretary of state Condoleezza Rice said
in an interview published today, in Russian-language daily,
Vremya Novostei.
Assessing the Bratislava summit between U.S. president
George Bush and President Vladimir Putin, Rice said Washington’s
message to Moscow is cordial but firm concerning what
it fears is growing authoritarianism under Putin’s
watch, AFX news agency reports.
“We stated very clearly that we are concerned about
the course of democracy in Russia,” Rice is reported
to have said, according to a translation of her comments
to Vremya Novostei. “We retain these concerns. This
concerns a certain centralization of power in the Kremlin
and the state of the free press,” Rice said.
However, she added: “At the same time I would like
to assure you that we have very constructive relations
with Russia at this time. This is really the case, and
we plan to develop such relations.”
“We... are offering to launch an open dialogue
between our countries concerning questions that worry
us,” Rice said.
The U.S. has been critical of Putin’s decision
to scrap direct gubernatorial —- governor —-
elections and to eliminate single-mandate seat elections
to the State Duma lower house of parliament. All of the
national television stations have also fallen under state
control since Putin came to power in 2000. |
Anti-patriotic sentiments
widespread among Russia’s youth pose a threat to
national security, the deputy head of the State Duma committee
for education and science, Oleg Smolin, was quoted by
the RIA-Novosti news agency.
“This is a direct threat to Russia’s national
security comparable to terrorism,” Smolin told the
video conference “Youth — Future of Russia”,
held under the aegis of the Modern Humanitarian Academy.
Out of 50,000 Russian senior pupils and students at technical
schools, polled in 2004, 31 percent said they would like
to live outside Russia, while 20 percent were undecided,
Smolin said. |
U.S. Senator John McCain
has expressed fears that Russia will suppress further
democratic progress in former Soviet republics like Moldova.
“We hear reports that are disturbing about repression
of the [Moldovan] opposition, about failure to allow demonstrations
and gatherings,” McCain in a telephone interview
with Radio Free Europe.
The senator, who has co-sponsored a resolution in the
Senate calling for fairness and transparency in Moldova’s
elections, said Moldova is showing signs that its parliamentary
elections on March 6 might not prove to be free and fair.
|
WASHINGTON (AP) - Osama
bin Laden remains Public Enemy No. 1 but recent developments
raise questions about the ability of U.S. forces to track
down the elusive terrorist and the resources dedicated to
the hunt more than three years after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Fresh reminders of the unsuccessful search come as intelligence
officials indicated this week that bin Laden has been
in contact with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the top al-Qaida
figure in Iraq, enlisting his help in planning attacks
inside the United States. Current and former government
officials say there is no doubt that the Bush administration
wants bin Laden "dead or alive," as the president
said shortly after Sept. 11, 2001.
But skills and dollars may fall short of desire.
Army Gen. John Abizaid, chief of U.S. Central Command,
told the Senate Armed Services Committee this week that
bin Laden and the al-Qaida senior leadership have been
"our priority target" since Sept. 11 but added,
"it's important for all of us to know that military
forces do best in attacking the network as opposed to
looking for a specific person."
Pakistan's President Gen. Pervez Musharraf said in December
2004 "the trail has gone cold," and U.S. officials
largely agree.
Bin Laden is believed to have evaded capture first during
the 2001 battle of Tora Bora in Afghanistan and then by
hiding along the Afghan-Pakistani border with his top
deputy and a circle of supporters protecting him at all
costs. [...]
Meanwhile, bin Laden continues to operate. He released
a video addressed to the American people days before the
November elections, appearing healthy, shaven and lit
by studio lights.
Within the last several weeks, U.S. officials say bin
Laden has been in contact with al-Zarqawi, who first pledged
his loyalty to bin Laden in October. Al-Zarqawi is believed
to run his own network in Iraq - aligned with al-Qaida
and receptive to its cause but maintaining some autonomy.
Yet Vince Cannistraro, former head of the CIA's counterterrorism
centre, said the message may be good news: "If you've
got to go to Zarqawi to ask him to do operations in the
U.S., that sounds pretty desperate." |
PARIS (AP) - Sixty-six
people were going on trial Thursday for allegedly prostituting
children - some only months old - in one the biggest criminal
trials in France's history.
The case centres on the rapes and other abuses of a total
of 45 children in a low-income community in the western
town of Angers from 1999 to 2002. Thirty-nine of the defendants
face up to 30 years in prison on charges of rape of minors
under age 15 and "aggravated procuring" in the
prostitution ring.
The remaining suspects face charges of sexual violence
on minors and failure to denounce crimes, which carry
sentences of up to 10 years behind bars.
"To my knowledge, we've never seen a criminal case
of this magnitude in France," said Pascal Rouiller,
defence lawyer for five suspects.
The victims, ranging in age from six months to 14-years-old,
were often raped by their own parents or offered to other
adults in exchange for small amounts of money or parcels
of food.
Defence lawyers said some of the suspects, who allegedly
at times raped victims in gardeners' huts, were illiterate
and appeared not to fully understand the charges they
faced. |
But the UFO topic has
important political implications. We cannot afford to
ignore them. One of these is the damaging effect UFO secrecy
has had on our society. It is an issue that intimately
affects public policy, national security, and our very
freedom. Indeed, as I will argue, the topic of UFOs and
the extreme secrecy concerning them will determine a significant
course of our civilization’s future. [...]
What it looks like is that UFO secrecy has led to the
establishment of a secret network which controls access
to ET technology. While the network is international,
it uses the substantial resources of the U.S. black budget
and other secret military groups as a primary tool, to
engineer exotic technologies that enable it to maintain
scientific, military, and economic superiority. Yes, that’s
what it looks like.
We need to re-examine the major events of our history
and try to understand them in light of this. UFO reality
makes our actual history vastly different from what we
are taught in the standard books. With the existence of
a secret and extremely powerful group controlling this
subject and all that concerns it, a massive disinformation
network has become necessary. Who knows how far the disinformation
has gone? This is in itself a critical part of the reason
UFO secrecy has helped to kill off the American Republic.
Such levels of deception go beyond mere secrecy and make
it necessary to toss out the old system in all but name.
Recall my references in the first part of this article
to important non-ufological threats to human freedom.
For what is now apparent is that UFO secrecy has changed
our system of government so much over the years, that
various "corrections" have had to take place
so that the externals can to some extent conform with
the profound changes at the deeper levels. This has resulted
in what I am currently calling silent fascism. Silent
because the official powers are not acknowledging it as
such, but it is there all the same. One wonders what the
next "correction" could bring. [...]
For a democratically-based political system to function,
there must be a reasonable amount of congruence between
what people believe and what is actually the case. You
elect a member of congress with the idea that he or she
will represent your interests within the nation’s
primary instrument of political power: the Congress. Except
that Congress has been made irrelevant by other centers
of power, or been taken over by them.
You get your news from television or your newspaper with
the idea that the journalist on the other end is a kind
of watchdog, looking out for the public interest. Except
that the journalist is working for a corporation which
is itself antithetical to the public interest.
Unseen structures of power have evolved over the previous
generations, advancing sometimes slowly, sometimes with
a dramatic suddenness. But most people lack the conceptual
means by which to understand what is happening.
As I have suggested, I believe that a significant part
of that power structure involves the possession and exploitation
of UFO-related technology. And I certainly believe that
the secrecy has gone on for so long that it has become
integral to keeping the whole system together.
Once you start lying, how can you un-do the lie? Today,
UFO secrecy has been with the U.S. – and by extension
the world – for about sixty years. That’s
nearly as long as the Soviet Union existed on the basis
of its own labyrinthian web of lies. |
Up to 20 children are feared dead in a blast in
northern China, believed to have been caused by mining
explosives stored in a house near a school.
Local media said that 20 children died and the
elementary school was badly damaged in the blast yesterday
afternoon in Huogou village, Shanxi province. However,
the Communist Party secretary of Kecheng township, who
governs the village, claimed that just eight adults
and two children died.
"The adults were all men and the two children
were girls. Seven people have been injured. The owner
of the explosives also died," he said.
Amid contradictory reports, the state-run Xinhua news
agency put the death toll at 11.
A journalist from the local Shanxi Metropolitan Daily
said that police had isolated the area and were not
allowing reporters near the school. She said that the
school was very small and had about 18 pupils: "A
few students died and nine were injured. The explosion
killed many people in the homes around the blast."
The reporter feared that officials would try to cover
up the explosion because it happened days before the
annual meeting of the National People's Congress, or
parliament, in Beijing. It is traditionally a politically
sensitive time when the central government takes a dim
view of local man-made disasters.
As the blast occurred at a school, concealing it would
be more difficult, she added. [...] |
BEIJING (AP) - China closed 47,000
Internet cafes over a 10-month period last year in a
campaign aimed at creating a more wholesome environment
for children, a news report said Thursday.
China's leaders encourage Internet use for business
and education, but have expressed growing concern that
it gives children access to violent or sexually explicit
material, and have tried to block online criticism of
their Communist rule. The cafes closed in last year's
February to December crackdown had been "admitting
minors and engaged in dissemination of harmful cultural
information," the Communist Party newspaper People's
Daily said on its website.
It said the crackdown "aims to create a more
wholesome and safer environment for minors."
About 21,000 of the closed cafes might be allowed
to reopen after making unspecified changes, the newspaper
said, citing the Ministry of Culture. It said the business
licenses of 2,131 were revoked.
The report did not say what penalties the operators
of the closed cafes might face, or give any other details.
China has the world's second-largest number of Internet
users after the United States, with 87 million people
online.
The government said in October that it had detained
445 people for operating websites deemed pornographic,
and fined Internet cafe operators a total of 100 million
yuan or the equivalent of about $12 million US for letting
children play violent games. |
BILLINGS, MONT. - A judge in Montana
has granted a temporary injunction to stop the U.S.
government from reopening the border next week to Canadian
cattle.
The ruling comes in response to a lawsuit filed by the
Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund, United Stockgrowers
of America (R-CALF USA), which claims if the border
reopens it will cause producers immediate and irreparable
damage.
U.S. District Judge Richard Cebull, who said he would
give his written reasons Wednesday or Thursday, told
the lobby group for American ranchers that they should
apply for a permanent injunction.
It is likely the U.S. Department of Agriculture will
appeal his decision, but it is unknown whether an appeal
could be heard quickly enough to make a difference for
the reopening date.
The border was set to open to young cattle, those
under 30 months, starting on Monday, March 7, and Canadian
producers were beginning to ready shipments for the
first time in 21 months.
"It's definitely not a good day for our industry,"
said Ted Haney, president of the Canada Beef Export
Federation, adding that it may be time to start investigating
Canada's options under the World Trade Agreement or
the North American Free Trade Agreement.
R-CALF claims that reopening the
border will hurt the U.S. cattle industry economically,
pose a threat to consumers and create losses of up to
$3 billion US.
They said the border reopening would increase the
risk of importing contaminated beef products from cattle
infected with bovine spongiform encephalopathy –
mad cow disease – into the U.S. They argue that
would shatter consumer confidence in the American cattle
industry.
Canada would ship two million animals south in the
first 12 months if the border reopens, R-CALF says.
The American cattle industry has been reaping high prices
for their animals since the border closed.
The group also claims Canada has failed to adequately
test for BSE and that letting Canadian cattle into the
U.S. could harm trade negotiations with countries like
Japan. Japan closed its borders to the U.S. after a
Canadian-born cow tested positive in Washington state.
The U.S. banned Canadian cattle imports in May 2003
when mad cow disease was discovered in a Canadian cow.
Late last year, the U.S. Department
of Agriculture declared Canada was a minimal risk country.
During Wednesday's hearing, Cebull asked a number
of questions about whether American consumers would
be aware of where their beef came from and how great
the risk was of a BSE-infected animal crossing the border.
The USDA argued the risk would be minimal.
R-CALF succeeded last year in obtaining an injunction
to halt a USDA decision to allow additional cuts of
meat from Canada, also argued in front of Cebull.
International Trade Minister Jim Peterson said the
ruling was "a real setback."
"We will use every possible measure we can to
get the border reopened again," Peterson said.
"We received assurances the border would be open
March 7, we agreed it would be a science-based determination,
and the Americans came up and inspected all the processes
and found them to be the highest standard.
"I'm very disappointed." |
TORONTO -- Canadian Prime Minister
Paul Martin took office over a year ago, pledging to
improve badly strained relations with the United States.
But it appears that major setbacks in the North American
alliance have overshadowed any small steps forward.
The partnership took another hit when Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice canceled her trip to Ottawa,
tentatively scheduled next month, apparently to show
displeasure with Canada's decision to opt out of Washington's
anti-ballistic missile shield.
Prime Minister Paul Martin said Canada must be at
the table when any decision is made about an incoming
missile. Last week, however, he bowed to pressures to
protect his weak minority government and follow the
majority of Canadians who have condemned the missile
defense program as a rehash of Ronald Reagan's Star
Wars.
Martin said Ottawa would not take part in the development
or operation of the multibillion dollar program, which
is already testing interceptors based in Alaska and
California.
Outgoing U.S. Ambassador Paul Cellucci said Ottawa
had virtually given up sovereignty over its air space,
prompting a demand from Martin to be alerted and have
a say in any decision to take down an incoming missile.
Rice on Tuesday met with Canadian diplomats to discuss
the rift on the sidelines of an international conference
in London on Palestinian reform. A Bush administration
official told The Associated Press that Rice made clear
her disappointment with Canada's stance.
But many Canadians believe the defense
shield will never work and applaud their government
for not being bullied into joining it.
"The U.S. administration
is trying to peddle a system that doesn't work,"
said Robert Bothwell, a professor at the University
of Toronto who specializes in U.S.-Canadian relations.
"If Bush and Condoleezza
Rice want to stamp their little hoofies, well that's
tough."
In Washington, State Department spokesman Adam Ereli
denied Rice's trip to Ottawa was canceled over U.S.
displeasure at Canada's decision on the missile program,
instead calling it a scheduling conflict.
Martin's opponents are using the canceled meeting
to denounce him and his Liberal party.
"Martin had a chance to restore U.S.-Canadian
relations and I think he's blowing those chances,"
Conservative Leader Stephen Harper told reporters.
Martin stepped in as leader of a Liberal minority
government more than a year ago, promising to improve
relations. They had fallen to a new low when former
Prime Minister Jean Chretien declined to take part in
the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
Martin also has had to contend with an ugly row with
the United States over Canadian softwood lumber exports.
The debate has become so contentious, the World Trade
Organization has set up a panel to decide if Ottawa
can apply $3.43 billion in sanctions against Washington.
The United States and Canada have established the
world's largest trading partership, with some $1.8 billion
in trade across their border each day.
Martin appeared to gain traction
after persuading Washington to reopen the border next
week to Canadian beef. Several cases of mad cow
disease from Alberta prompted the United States to shut
down the border in May 2003, costing Canadian ranchers
$5 billion in lost revenue.
But then came the missile defense brouhaha.
Ottawa insists that Rice's no-show
has nothing to do with Canada's decision to leave ballistic
missile defense to the Americans.
But Nelson Wiseman, associate
professor of political science at the University of
Toronto, noted the same wording - a scheduling conflict
- was used when Bush canceled a state visit to Ottawa
in May 2003.
"There's a remarkable
parallel with what happened right after Canada made
its decision not to participate in Iraq,"
Wiseman said.
He said relations haven't deteriorated as dramatically
as some had predicted after Ottawa declined to back
the U.S.-led coalition that ousted Saddam Hussein. [...]
|
WINNIPEG – A Federal Express
courier truck carrying a package of anthrax collided
with a car in central Winnipeg on Wednesday, but officials
say the package was not damaged in the crash.
The truck was carrying five packages to the Canadian
Science Centre for Human and Animal Health, the federal
virology lab downtown. The packages
contained samples of anthrax, E. coli, salmonella, tuberculosis,
influenza and a sexually transmitted disease.
Officials with the lab say the microbes were not in
forms that could be lethal. The centre said it would
not ship the more dangerous form of anthrax through
a commercial courier.
The area surrounding the accident site – at
Logan Avenue and Sherbrook Street, just a few blocks
from the lab – was sealed off and the hazardous
materials unit was called in to assess the situation.
The intersection was reopened after it was determined
the situation was safe.
While none of the substances spilled, questions are
being raised about how dangerous goods are shipped to
the lab and about safety precautions taken for people
who live in the area. [...] |
MONTREAL (AP) _ An earthquake
measuring 3.5 magnitude struck along Quebec's border with
the United States Wednesday evening.
The epicenter was about five kilometers southwest of
Huntingdon, Quebec. The tremors were felt as far away
as Montreal.
The earthquake wasn't strong enough to cause damage,
said Cathy Woodgold of Natural Resources Canada.
"We wouldn't expect any damage from an earthquake
of this size," she said.
The earthquake took place in the western Quebec seismic
zone, an active area for quakes, she said. |
LIMA, Peru -- A strong earthquake
shook Peru's capital and the surrounding coast and mountains
Wednesday, but it did not cause injuries or damage,
Peru's Geophysics Institute said.
The quake with a preliminary magnitude 5.7 struck
at 8:48 a.m. in the Andes about 60 miles east of Lima,
where it was felt as a momentary shudder.
Closer to the epicenter, it caused people to flee
their homes and shops in Matucana, a town 50 miles east
of Lima, about 7,850 feet above sea level, local media
reported. |
A light earthquake struck northern
Arizona early Wednesday, causing people more than 100
miles away to report feeling the tremor, according to
the U.S. Geological Survey.
The 4.6-magnitude quake occurred at 4:13 a.m. local
time southwest of Winslow. It was the largest of seven
quakes in the area since Jan. 28, said Waverly Person,
a geophysicist at the USGS National Earthquake Information
Center in Golden, Colo.
Residents in Scottsdale, Gilbert, Flagstaff, Winslow,
Prescott and Phoenix contacted the USGS to report feeling
the quake.
No damage was reported. [...] |
JAKARTA. March 3 (Xinhuanet)
-- At least two people were killed and a number of houses
smashed Thursday in a landslide in Bandung regency of
West Java province of Indonesia, local media reported.
The landslide was triggered off by heavy rains, according
to local radio the Elshinta Online.
Garbage and mud struck four houses at 5:00 a.m. local
time, as the villagers slept, said the radio. |
BRUSSELS, March 2 (Xinhuanet)
-- Much of Europe on Wednesday plunged into near record
icy weather, leading to a spate of road accidents and
the death of at least four people.
In Switzerland, temperatures in a village of la Brevine
close to the frontier with France even dived to minus
34.4 Celsius. The temperatures in Rome also fell to
one of their lowest level in 200 years, with a record
low for the country of minus 32 Celsius in the mountains
separating Umbria and the Marches.
Three Romanians, including a one-month baby, died of
the cold, and temperatures in the capital, Bucharest,
fell to minus 20 Celsius, the lowest level in March
since 1900.
In Portugal, a 92-year-old man died in his own house
without heating system in Evora, 150 km southeast of
Lisbon.
Electricity consumption hit the highest point and fuel
oil suppliers said they were running out of stock.
The snow and ice also hampered traffic across the European
continent and led to a spate of road accidents. The
canal linking Berlin with the Polish port of Szczecin
has also been blocked due to the 14-centimeter thick
ice. |
At 2pm (NZT) Cyclone Percy - a
highest rating category five storm - was 222km south
west of the island of Palmerston and moving in a south-south
east direction.
Cook Islands police deputy commissioner Maara Tetava
told NZPA the storm had largely bypassed the atoll,
sparing it the damage experienced earlier this week
on the northern islands of Pukapuka and Nassau, where
just 10 buildings were left intact.
The storm was now heading south and if it maintained
its current course its centre was expected to pass about
240km from Rarotonga.
However the Australian-Pacific Centre for Emergency
and Disaster Information (APCEDI) said the storm was
expected to take a southeast turn at some stage, which
could bring it closer to Rarotonga.
Wind was gusting at more than 300kmh at its centre,
the APCEDI said on its website. [...] |
A mystery object near
the centre of our galaxy is sending out powerful pulses
of radio waves. It is unlike any known source.
A team of astronomers led by Scott Hyman of Sweet Briar
College, Virginia, US, detected the mysterious source
using the Very Large Array radio telescope in New Mexico.
The pulses are coming from a spot just to one side of
the galactic centre. Each pulse lasts about 10 minutes,
and they repeat regularly every 77 minutes. If, as the
researchers think, the source is near the centre of the
Milky Way, it would be one of the most powerful emitters
in the galaxy. The shape and timing of the pulses rules
out most known sources, such as radio pulsars.
The object could be a magnetar - a neutron star with
an ultra-strong magnetic field. "Magnetars store
plenty of energy to power the observed outbursts,"
says Hyman. Or it may be something entirely new. To find
out more, the team is studying it using the Green Bank
radio telescope in West Virginia, and hopes to use NASA's
Chandra space telescope to see if it is also spitting
out X-rays. |
A
stone commissioned to mark the millennium may be destroyed
after being blamed for bringing misfortunes of "biblical
proportions" to a city.
Since the Cursing Stone was placed
in Carlisle, the city has suffered floods, foot-and-mouth
disease, job losses and a goal famine for the football
team.
The 14-tonne granite artwork is carved with a 1,069-word
16th Century curse.
Now city councillor Jim Tootle wants the stone destroyed
and has tabled a motion to discuss it on 8 March.
The stone, which stands between the castle and the
museum, is inscribed with a curse first invoked by the
Archbishop of Glasgow in 1525 against cross border families,
known as the "reivers", who lived by stealing
cattle, rape and pillage.
Blessing included
It was designed by artist Gordon Young whose own family
was one of the "reivers".
Mr Tootle said: "Various Christian groups have
approached me, and they opposed it at the time and there
was a petition saying, please don't bring the stone
here and put the curse back on us.
"We have had floods, pestilence,
a great big fire in the city - it is of biblical proportions."
Council leader Mike Mitchelson said: "We're obliged
to address his comments, but estimate that it will cost
the council several thousands of pounds to remove the
stone.
"The council will need to look at whether the
removal of the stone is a financial priority for the
local area."
The city council also said local Christian groups,
including the Bishop of Carlisle, were consulted and
were in agreement with the Cursing Stone and a blessing
was included within the artwork. |
The ancient burgh has had its
ups and downs. Being turned into a corner of Glasgow
by the makers of River City may have been the last straw.
But can it have affected Dumbarton so badly that even
the dogs have lost the will to live?
Animal experts admitted yesterday
they had no explanation for a spate of what appear to
be canine suicides – all from the same spot.
At least five dogs have jumped
to their deaths from a bridge over a burn at Overtoun
House in the past six months.
In the most recent case, a woman out walking her dog
watched in disbelief as her pet suddenly vaulted over
the parapet and plunged 40ft to its death.
The bridge attracts visitors and dog-walkers, but
it already has an eerie past. It was the home of Lord
Overtoun, owner of a huge chemical works and pillar
of the Free Church, and was the location for a BBC TV
series Tales from the Madhouse.
But neither the dogs' shocked owners nor animal behavioural
experts have been able to explain why the pets have
turned the beauty spot into Rover's Leap.
Joyce Stewart, a leading animal behaviourist who regularly
works with the Scottish Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Animals (SSPCA), said the pattern of deaths
at the bridge was abnormal.
She said: "Dogs are very able to gauge the heights
and depths they can safely jump. Some people will say
this is very spooky and would look for another reason.
"I have never heard of a dog committing suicide.
Often if they know they are going to die, they might
go into hiding, but I have never heard of them actually
taking their own lives.
"This is very weird. For
five dogs to have done the same thing at the same spot
is very mysterious. But
there must be some rational explanation for it that
has just not emerged.
"The bridge and what has happened there need
to be urgently investigated."
Overtoun House was built in 1863 by James White, the
father of Lord Overtoun. It was built as an ornate religious
symbol and has the words "Fear God and keep His
commandments" carved into its walls.
Local historians describe it as a place where angels
and gargoyles are said to keep company.
It is now being renovated as a Christian Centre for
Hope & Healing – part of a £2.5m project
by Pastor Bob Hill.
But the outbreak of lemming-like behaviour has sent
shudders down the spines of animal welfare inspectors,
local residents and dog owners.
A spokeswoman for the SSPCA warned
dog owners to get their pets on leads around the bridge.
She added: "It does seem rather strange that
so many dogs are doing this at this same spot and it
must have been heartbreaking for the owners."
One owner, who lost her cocker spaniel when it recently
leapt off the bridge, said: "I know that a number
of other dogs have died after jumping from that spot.
I read somewhere that Dumbarton
is one of the most depressing places to live in Britain,
but I thought that meant for humans, not dogs."
|
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