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P
I C T U R E O F T H E D
A Y
Note
to readers:
Due to technical difficulties, yesterday's
page (April 3rd) was not uploaded until this morning. It can
be accessed here: April
3, 2005 Signs of the Times.
DU
Death Toll Tops 11,000
Nationwide Media Blackout Keeps U.S. Public Ignorant About
This Important Story |
By James P. Tucker Jr.
American Free Press
March 26, 2005 |
The death toll from the highly
toxic weapons component known as depleted uranium (DU)
has reached 11,000 soldiers and the growing scandal
may be the reason behind Anthony Principi's departure
as secretary of the Veterans Affairs Department.
This view was expressed by Arthur Bernklau, executive
director of Veterans for Constitutional Law in New York,
writing in Preventive Psychiatry E-Newsletter.
"The real reason for Mr. Principi's departure
was really never given," Bernklau said. "However,
a special report published by eminent scientist Leuren
Moret naming depleted uranium as the definitive cause
of 'Gulf War Syndrome' has fed a growing scandal about
the continued use of uranium munitions by the U.S. military."
The "malady [from DU] that thousands of our military
have suffered and died from has finally been identified
as the cause of this sickness, eliminating the guessing...
The terrible truth is now being revealed," Bernklau
said.
Of the 580,400 soldiers who served
in Gulf War I, 11,000 are now dead, he said. By the
year 2000, there were 325,000 on permanent medical disability.
More than a decade later, more than half (56 percent)
who served in Gulf War I have permanent medical problems.
The disability rate for veterans of the world wars of
the last century was 5 percent, rising to 10 percent
in Vietnam.
"The VA secretary was aware of this fact as far
back as 2000," Bernklau said. "He and the
Bush administration have been hiding these facts, but
now, thanks to Moret's report, it is far too big to
hide or to cover up."
Terry Johnson, public affairs specialist
at the VA, recently reported that veterans of both Persian
Gulf wars now on disability total 518,739, Bernklau
said.
"The long-term effect of DU is a virtual death
sentence," Bernklau said. "Marion Fulk, a
nuclear chemist, who retired from the Lawrence Livermore
Nuclear Weapons Lab, and was also involved in the Manhattan
Project, interprets the new and rapid malignancies in
the soldiers [from the second war] as 'spectacular'
- and a matter of concern.' "
While this important story appeared
in a Washington newspaper and the wire services, it
did not receive national exposure - a compelling sign
that the American public is being kept in the dark about
the terrible effects of this toxic weapon. |
"Anyone who has the power to make you believe
absurdities also has the power to make you commit
atrocities."
- Voltaire (1694-1778)
Everyone who knows me knows I won't be preaching any
kind of old time religion anytime soon. And yet, the
problem that we seem to have lost our souls seems to
be the main problem in the world right now.
I have lately been fond of saying religion doesn't
help anyone see God, doesn't help anyone connect with
the divine or sacred aspects of things, which is just
another way of saying that religion ultimately blocks
us from appreciating the finer things in life, things
that usually can make us happy. The most important is
an objective respect for all life.
Religion actually prevents all
that. It's a terraforming of the mind that permits only
acceptable rituals, etched-in-stone prescriptions for
all life's situations. As a consequence, we condemn
things that make other people happy. Two random examples
that come to mind are love between homosexuals and appreciating
people whose skin color is different from our own. I
don't want to veer off into either of those subjects,
but I just want to ask what right does any of us have
to make judgments on things that are really none of
our business.
Aren't kindness and compassion the ultimate currency?
When the time comes to die you will think they are -
count on it.
Religion creates an archetypal
behavioral template for the distribution of misinformation.
If people accept religion, they're more likely to embrace
authoritarianism, which is why the neocons embrace the
evangelicals. Religions belong to the Dark Ages. Ultimately,
religious people cannot perceive reality, because they're
fogged in by a false template of default auto-suggestions.
Also, religion provides them with a license to be irresponsible
and duplicitous, because they think they will be "forgiven."
As one philosopher whose name I've now forgotten once
suggested, religion doesn't teach you how to be good,
it only teaches you how to pretend to be good.
Several items that have crossed my cyberdesk in the
last day all stick in my mind as some kind of vortex
by which to understand what is happening to us all at
this time.
They involve the brainwashing aspects of religions
and, judging by the behavior of American soldiers in
Iraq, also the loss of our souls. But mostly they show
why you can't rely on religion to find your soul.
The first, from Russia, was forwarded by a respected
pagan philosopher and titled "The secret of Jewish
circumcision and the meaning of the Jewish skull cap."
For purposes of the point I am trying to make, I will
cull some of its thoughts:
It should be pointed out here that the Jews are not
the only bio-robots among us. Majority of people do
not demonstrate individual thinking or behavior and
can be easily programmed. Their heads can easily be
filled with stereotypes, which those in power select
for the crowd programming and control. And most people
are not even aware that they are being programmed and
turned into the bio-robots.
Control of information can be effected by limiting
available information, by selectively withholding information,
falsifying, feeding selective information that presents
distorted view of the world and so on.
If a person is open to such manipulations of the information
field around him, he would ... think that his decisions
and actions are made independently. And yet he is a
bio-robot ... being programmed by someone else.
Why the Jewish baby boys are circumcised on the eighth
day?
The secret to this lies in the occult knowledge. Levites
possess that knowledge. And incidentally, they do not
perform circumcision on their own babies, they do that
only to their "livestock" - the Jews.
During the first eight days only three lower Chakras
are developed. All the higher Chakras remain undeveloped
in the body of a circumcised Jew. In other words - a
circumcised Jew is only half a person - with mutilated
soul and brain.
Jewish circumcision ritual produces real bio-robots
that cannot tell the difference between good and evil,
and who cannot be reprogrammed.
We have all seen that religious Jews wear a skull cap.
The meaning of it is very profound - that skull cap
covers the highest, seventh human chakra - Sahasrara,
which is located at the top of the head. The Jews close
it, thus cutting themselves off the Cosmos. Note that
the Catholic Pope and the highest catholic priests also
carry skull caps. If you try to talk with a circumcised
Jew about philosophy, you would encounter such fanaticism,
that it would be senseless to continue the conversation.
That's what it means to be dealing with a bio-robot!
Chakra of the third eye is not developed among contemporary
Europeans, in this respect the Jews are no different
from the others. But in ancient times this Chakra was
well developed among a much greater percentage of people.
One of the most important human chakras is Anahata
(heart). Practically all normal people feel it. Probably
every language has an expression, "I can feel it
with my heart." And it is true that people can
feel many things with their heart. It can feel trouble,
suffer, feel pains of conscience, shame, to feel fear,
to love, to hate, to feel compassion, pity, to be able
to commiserate, to feel good and evil . A person without
a developed heart Chakra is rude, compassionless, "heartless."
All circumcised Jews are like that.
If you try to tell the circumcised Jew about these
feelings, he would not understand you. He would think
that you are either a fool or an actor. It is probably
similar to trying to describe colors to a color-blind
person. It should be noted that Jesus from Nazareth,
who called himself Christ, was also a Jew, who was circumcised
on eighth day. (Luke 2:21)
Yes, I know, that's a load to contemplate.
Do your best. Your future depends on it. And there's
more.
My friend Professor Minja, the distinguished Serbian
thinker, furnished me a short essay which I spent all
day reading and rereading, and even after I had pored
over it, I could not underestimate its impact or its
importance. It was the foreword to a new book, for which
I do not have the publishing information, but is titled
"A New World is Possible," by Dunja and Ljubodrag
Simonovic.
The most dramatic truth is: capitalism can survive
death of the man as a human and biological being. For
capitalism a "traditional man" is merely a
temporary means of its own reproduction. "Consumer-man"
represents a transitional phase in the capitalism-caused
process of mutation of man towards the "highest"
form of capitalistic man: a robot-man. "Terminators"
and other robotized freaks which are products of the
Hollywood entertainment industry which creates a "vision
of future" degenerated in a capitalist manner,
incarnate creative powers, alienated from the man, which
become vehicles for destruction of man and life. A
new "super race" of robotized humanoids is
being created, which should clash with "traditional
mankind", meaning with people capable of loving,
thinking, daydreaming, fighting for freedom and survival
– and impose their rule over the Earth.
Instead of the new world the "new man" is
being created – who has been reduced to the level
of humanity which cannot jeopardize the ruling order.
Exactly so. This is precisely what's
happening in our world today.
The Simonovics explain: "The final stage of a
combat between mankind and capitalism is in progress."
Our "technical civilization" is creating a
"dehumanized and denaturalized man," a description
that reminded me of the warning issued by the great
and largely inscrutable French Situationist philosopher
Guy Debord ("The Society of the Spectacle') more
than 40 years ago, when he ranted about "society's
real unreality" sliding humanity into a "generalized
autism."
The Simonovics further explain: "Capitalism has
eradicated the man from his (natural) environment and
has cut off the roots trough which he had drawn life-creating
force. Cities are 'gardens' of capitalism where
degenerated creatures 'grow'. Dog excrement, gasoline
and sewerage stench, glaring advertisements and police
car rotating lights that howl through the night –
this is the environment of the 'free world' man.
By destroying the natural environment capitalism creates
increasingly extreme climatic conditions in which the
man is struggling harder and harder to survive –
and creates artificial living conditions accessible
solely to the richest layer of population, which cause
definitive degeneration of man as a natural being. 'Humanization
of life' is being limited to creation of micro-climatic
conditions, of special capitalistic incubators –
completely commercialized artificial living conditions
to which degenerated people are appropriate."
If that doesn't describe our post 9/11
condition I don't know what does. We live in a society
that deliberately misses the point of just about everything.
We argue about sports and brands of religion while our
government kills hundreds of innocent people every day,
and when people like me try to point that out to you,
many of you get very upset and run and hide. How difficult
is it for you to admit we have been robotized?
A few more mindbusters from the Siminovics (for whom
I will get the publishing information, because this
is one book I plan to read):
Capitalism systematically destroys the man's ability
and need to raise essential questions about his own
(social) existence, as well as his potentials to provide
answers to them. Almost the entire media space is controlled
by those who destroy life and marginalize the essential
while attributing crucial dimension to the marginal.
"Sensational affairs", "historical matches",
media "star" shows, "spectacular"
Hollywood films and TV soap operas – become the
vehicle for averting of people's attention from the
issue which determines survival of mankind or its idiotization.
Blocking of conscience and giving
vent to the man's repressed being, his growing discontent,
fear, anxiety – and insemination of man by the
ruling spirit of capitalism wherefrom the "positive
man" should be born – this is the essence
of the "spectacle". Therefore the growing
importance of sport.
The story of the "American
dream" is over. Assassinations of Martin
Luther King, of John Lennon and other numerous people
who fought for the human world – have clearly
demonstrated that the notion of "a better society"
represented the greatest threat to the ruling capitalist
groups for it provided a possibility for development
of a political platform that could direct the growing
discontent of the oppressed toward creation of a new
(righteous) world. The major goal of the capitalist
propaganda machinery is to kill the people's hope that
the future is possible and that fighting for it does
make sense.
Ideologists of capitalism represent things as if nothing
serious was going on – as if the world were not
brought to the very edge of total ruin.
It is not any more the fear of the
man that has to face his own unavoidable natural death,
but the anxiety of the man who has to confront the increasingly
realistic possibility of destruction of life on Earth,
and consequently of mankind itself.
Capitalism has not only deprived the man of his spiritual
homeland (Heimatlosichkeit) but also of his vital environment
through annihilation of nature and of man as biological
being; it does not only deprive the man of his human
essence, but questions his survival.
So .... with those two heavy stories percolating in
my brain, the third element of today's picture of the
world came crashing down on me in yet a third e-mail.
It was Paul
Rockwell's story about what Army reservist Aiden
Delgado saw during his stint at the notorious Abu Ghraib
prison and provides as clear as picture of what America
has become - and what all Americans are responsible
for - as anything I have read.
What Rockwell quoted the soldier as saying about "the
breakdown of moral order within the U.S. military, a
pattern of violence and terror that exceeds the bounds
of what is legally and morally permissible in time of
war," is actually something quite worse - it is
the breakdown of civilization enthusiastically triggered
by the leaders of the American armed forces. Rockwell
quoting Delgado:
The worst incident that I was privy to was in late
November. The prisoners were protesting nightly because
of their living conditions. They protested the cold,
the lack of clothing, the rotting food that was causing
dysentery. And they wanted cigarettes. They tore up
pieces of clothing, made banners and signs. One demonstration
became intense and got unruly. The prisoners picked
up stones, pieces of wood, and threw them at the guards.
One of my buddies got hit in the face. He got a bloody
nose. But he wasn't hurt. The guards asked permission
to use lethal force. They got it. They opened fire on
the prisoners with the machine guns. They shot twelve
and killed three. I know because
I talked to the guy who did the killing. He showed me
these grisly photographs, and he bragged about the results.
"Oh," he said, "I shot this guy in the
face. See, his head is split open." He talked like
the Terminator. "I shot this guy in the groin,
he took three days to bleed to death." I
was shocked. This was the nicest guy you would ever
want to meet. He was a family man, a really courteous
guy, a devout Christian. I was stunned and said to him:
"You shot an unarmed man behind barbed wire for
throwing a stone." He said, "Well, I knelt
down. I said a prayer, stood up and gunned them all
down." There was a complete disconnect between
what he had done and his own morality.
Originally writing in Motion Magazine, Rockwell asked
Delgado: "The theologian Reinhold Niebuhr tell
us that, with the sanction of the state, driven by nationalism,
moral, decent individuals become killers and torturers
in groups. You attribute the break of restraint to racism.
When did the process of dehumanization of Arabs begin?"
Delgado recounted the words of his
own commander.
"Now don't go tell the media that you're going
over there to kill some ragheads and burn some turbans."
Everybody laughed, and he laughed
with them. I remember standing there in formation,
having grown up in Egypt. And I was thinking: "Oh,
my God, this is going to be a disaster. Our commander
has this anti-Arab attitude even before we go over."
The commander would give lectures about Islam. He said
that Muslims advocate a holy war against us, that Islam
promotes perpetual war. I've been surrounded by Muslims
for a decade, exposed to their culture. He is wrong.
So now we see the complete prostitution
of human society manifesting its evil face as basic
American policy. And as well, as the unquestioning attitude
of most Americans.
You see now unadorned the complete
and ugly truth. You may not turn to your religion for
help because your religion has blocked your own compassion,
and perhaps by circumcision (or perhaps one of many
other things) has blocked your ability to see with your
heart and discern what is truly right from what is truly
wrong.
Your allegiance to trivial capitalist folly has atrophied
your ability to perceive what are the truly important
things as you pile up those electronic trinkets to keep
yourself from admitting the love you do not have.
You have been turned into a mind-controlled
robot by the two things you have relied upon most for
guidance - your God and your country.
So what will you do on that one day soon when the gun
barrel is pointed at you? Your prayers and patriotism
will be meaningless, because they have been the very
causes of your misery.
Will you wake up then, when it is too
late? Or will you wake up now, when it is not? |
WASHINGTON - Former Defense Secretary
Caspar Weinberger, ex-CIA Director James Woolsey and
64 other retired arms control
specialists and diplomats are lined up in support
of John R. Bolton, whose nomination to be U.S. ambassador
to the United Nations has stirred controversy.
In a letter being delivered Monday
to Sen. Richard G. Lugar, chairman of the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee, other committee members and congressional
leaders, they said the attack on Bolton is really an
attack on President Bush's policies.
Last week, 62 critics of Bolton signed a letter calling
for his rejection by the Senate, especially
because of his opposition to the United States signing
a number of arms control treaties.
Bolton supporters said his stance
"reflects a clear-eyed necessity of the real limits"
of accords with other nations that demand one sided
terms from the United States. They included Max
Kampelman and Edward Rowny, arms control negotiators
in the Reagan administration. [...]
The counterattack, organized by Frank Gaffney, a Pentagon
official in the Reagan administration said Bolton "has
distinguished himself throughout a long and multifaceted
career."
It suggested critics of Bolton
positions on various arms control treaties are "misdirected"
because his views "are identical" to those
of Bush and that "their differences seem
to be with a man twice elected by the American people
to design and execute security policies, rather than
with one of his most effective and articulate officials
in advancing those policies." |
However bad the times may be
for American tanks or troops, it's springtime for ever-conglomerating
American munitions makers.
Lets face it, making war is fast superceding sports
as the American national pastime. Since
1980, overtly or covertly, the United States has been
involved in military actions in Grenada, Libya, Nicaragua,
Panama, Iraq, Afghanistan, El Salvador, Haiti, Somalia,
Yugoslavia, Liberia, Sudan, the Philippines, Colombia,
Haiti (again), Afghanistan (again) and Iraq (again)
and that's not even the full list. It stands
to reason when the voracious appetites of the military-corporate
complex are in constant need of feeding.
As representatives of a superpower devoted to (and
enamored with) war, it's hardly surprising that the
Pentagon and allied corporations are forever planning
more effective ways to kill, maim, and inflict pain
-- or that they plan to keep it that way. Whatever the
wars of the present, elaborate weapons systems for future
wars are already on the drawing boards. Planning for
the projected fighter-bombers and laser weapons of the
decades from 2030 to 2050 is underway. Meanwhile,
at the Department of Defense's (DoD's) blue-skies research
outfit, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
(DARPA), even wilder projects -- from futuristic exoskeletons
to Brain/Machine Interface initiatives -- are being
explored.
Such projects, as flashy as they are frightening, are
magnets for reporters (and writers like yours truly),
but it's important not to lose sight of the many more
mundane weapons currently being produced that will be
pressed into service in the nearer term in Iraq, Afghanistan,
or some other locale the U.S. decides to add to the
list of nations where it will turn people into casualties
or "collateral damage" in the next few years.
These projects aren't as sexy as building future robotic
warriors, but they're at least as dangerous and deadly,
so lets take a quick look at a few of the weapons our
tax dollars are supporting today, before they hurt,
maim, and kill tomorrow.
Set Phasers on Extreme Pain
Recently, the Air Force Research Laboratory called
for "research in support of the Directed Energy
Bioeffects Division of the Human Effectiveness Directorate."
The researchers were to "conduct innovative research
on the effects of directed energy technologies"
on people and animals. What types of innovative research?
One area involved identifying "biological tissue
thresholds (minimum visible lesion) and damage mechanisms
from laser and non-laser sources." In
other words, how excruciating can you make it without
leaving telltale thermal burns? And a prime area of
study? "Pain thresholds." Further,
there was a call for work to: "Determine the effects
of electromagnetic and biomechanical insults on the
human-body." Sounds like something out of Star
Trek, right? Weaponry of the distant future? Think again.
In a Tomdispatch piece last spring, I mentioned a "painful
energy beam" weapon, the Active Denial System,
that was about to be field-tested by the military. Recent
reports indicate that military Humvees will be outfitted
with exactly this weapon by the end of the year.
I'm sad to report that the Active Denial System isn't
the only futuristic weapon set to be deployed in the
near-term. Pulsed Energy Projectiles (PEPs) are also
barreling down the weaponry-testing turnpike. They are
part of a whole new generation of weapons systems that
the Pentagon promotes under the label "non-lethal."
The term conveniently obscures the fact that such weapons
are meant to cause intense physical agony without any
of the normal physical signs of trauma. (This, by the
way, should make them -- or their miniaturized descendents
-- excellent devices for clandestine torture).
PEPs utilize bursts of electrically-charged
gas (plasma) that yield an electromagnetic pulse on
impact with a solid object. Such pulses affect nerve
cells in humans (and animals) causing searing pain.
PEPs are designed to inflict "excruciating pain
from up to 2 kilometers away" No one knows the
long-term physical or psychological effects of this
weapon, which is set to roll-out in 2007 and
is designed specifically to be employed against unruly
civilians. But let's remember, the Pentagon isn't
the Food and Drug Administration. No need to test for
future effects when it comes to weapons aimed at someone
else.
20th Century Weaponry for 21st Century Killing
Just recently the Department of Defense's Defense Contracting
Command-Washington put out a call for various technologies
capable of "near-immediate transition to operations/production
at the completion of evaluation." In other words,
make it snappy.
In addition to a plethora of high-tech devices, from
laser-sights for weapons to battlefield computers, the
U.S. Special Operations Forces had a special request:
40mm rifle-launched flechette grenades. For the
uninitiated, flechettes are razor-sharp deadly darts
with fins at their blunt ends. During the Vietnam War,
flechette weaponry was praised for its ability to shred
people alive and virtually nail them to trees. The
question is, where will those Special Ops forces use
the grenades and which people will be torn to bits by
a new generation of American flechettes. Only time will
tell, but one thing is certain -- it will happen.
The Special Ops troops aren't the only ones with special
requests. The Army has also put out a call to arms.
While Army officials recently hailed the M240B 7.62mm
Medium Machine Gun as providing "significantly
improved reliability and more lethal medium support
fire to ground units," they just issued a contract
to FN Manufacturing Inc. produce a lighter-weight, hybrid
titanium/steel variant of the weapon (known as the M240E6).
And these are just a few of the new and improved weapons
systems being readied to be rushed onto near-future
American battlefields.
Shell Shock
Obviously, the military is purchasing guns and other
weapons for a reason: to injure, maim, and kill. But
the extent of the killing being planned for can only
be grasped if one examines the amounts of ammunition
being purchased. Let's look at recent DoD contracts
awarded to just one firm -- Alliant Lake City Small
Caliber Ammunition Company, L.L.C., a subsidiary of
weapons-industry giant Alliant Techsystems (ATK):
Awarded Nov. 24, 2004:
"a delivery order amount of $231,663,020 as part
of a $303,040,883 firm-fixed-price contract for various
Cal .22, Cal .30, 5.56mm, and 7.62mm small caliber ammunition
cartridges." Work is expected to be completed by
Sept. 30, 2006.
Awarded Feb. 7, 2005:
"a delivery order amount of $20,689,101 as part
of a $363,844,808 firm-fixed-price contract for various
5.56mm and 7.62mm Small Caliber Ammunition Cartridges."
Work is expected to be completed by Sept. 30, 2006.
Awarded March 4, 2005:
"a delivery order amount of $8,236,906 as part
of a $372,586,618 firm-fixed-price contract for 5.56mm,
7.62mm, and .50 caliber ammunition cartridges."
Work is expected to be completed by Sept. 30, 2006.
You and I can buy 400 rounds of 7.62mm rifle ammunition
for less than $40. Imagine, then, what federal purchasing
power and hundreds of millions of dollars can buy!
Alliant Ammunition and Powder Co. is also making certain
that, as the years go by, ammo-capacity won't be lacking.
In February 2005, Alliant was awarded "a delivery
order amount of $19,400,000 as part of a $69,733,068
firm-fixed-price contract for Services to Modernize
Equipment at the Lake City Army Ammunition Plant"
-- a government-owned facility operated by ATK. Alliant
notes that this year it is churning out 1.2 billion
rounds of small-caliber ammunition at its Lake City
plant alone. But that,
it seems, isn't enough when future war planning is taken
into account. As it happens, ATK and the Army are aiming
to increase the plant's "annual capacity to support
the anticipated Department of Defense demand of between
1.5 billion and 1.8 billion rounds by 2006." Think
about it. In this year, alone, one single ATK plant
will produce enough ammunition, at one bullet each,
to execute every man, woman, and child in the world's
most populous nation -- and next year they're upping
the ante.
The Military-Corporate Complex's Merchants of Death
Once upon a time, a company like ATK would have been
classified as one of the world's "Merchants of
Death." Then again, once upon a time -- we're talking
about the 1930s here -- the Senate was a place where
America's representatives were willing to launch probing
inquiries into the ways in which arms manufacturers
and their huge profits as well as their influences on
international conflicts were linked to the dead of various
lands. Back then, simple partisanship was set aside
as the Senate's Democratic majority appointed North
Dakota's Republican Sen. Gerald P. Nye to head the "Senate
Munitions Committee."
While today's fawning House members can barely get
aging baseball heroes to talk to them, the 1930s inquiry
hauled some of the most powerful men in the world like
J.P. Morgan, Jr. and Pierre du Pont before the committee.
Even back in the 1930s, however, the nascent military-industrial
complex was just too powerful and so the Senate Munitions
Committee was eventually thwarted in its investigations.
As a result, the committee's goal of nationalizing the
American arms industry went down in flames.
Today, the very idea of such
a committee even attempting such an investigation is
simply beyond the pale. The planning for futuristic
war of various horrific sorts, not to speak of the production
and purchase of weapons and ammunition by the military-corporate
complex, is now beyond reproach, accepted without question
as necessary for national (now homeland) security --
a concept which long ago trumped the notion of national
defense.
The Future Is Now
While the military-academic complex and DARPA scientists
are hard at work creating the sort of killing machines
that a generation back were the stuff of unbelievable
sci-fi novels, old-fashioned firearms and even new energy
weapons are being readied for use by the American imperial
army tomorrow or just a few short years in the future.
In February 2005, Day & Zimmerman
Inc., a mega-company with its corporate fingers dipped
in everything from nuclear security and munitions production
to cryogenics and travel services, inked a deal to deliver
445,288 M67 fragmentation hand grenades (which produce
casualties within an effective range of 15 meters) to
the Army in 2006. In which country will a civilian
will lose an eye, a leg, or a life as a result? Weapons
made to kill are made to be used. This
year ATK's Lake City Army Ammunition Plant will produce
1.2 billion rounds of ammunition at the DoD's behest
and the company proudly proclaims, "Approximately
75 percent of the ammunition produced annually is consumed."
With all those exotic pain rays, flechettes, super-efficient
machine guns, and rounds and rounds of ammunition readied
for action -- and they represent only a small part of
the spectrum of weaponry and munitions being produced
for war, American-style -- more people are sure to die,
while others assumedly will experience "intense
pain" from PEPs weapons and the like. Back in October
of last year, a team of researchers from Johns Hopkins
University, Columbia University, and Al-Mustansiriya
University in Baghdad, knocking on thousands of doors
throughout Iraq, demonstrated that an estimated 100,000
civilians had already died violently as the direct or
indirect consequence of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
The main cause of these deaths: attacks by coalition
(read as "U.S.") forces. The future promises
more of the same.
No one should be surprised by these figures -- though
many were (and many also continue to deny the validity
of these numbers). It's obvious that, if you build them;
they will kill. And you thought that we were supposed
to "err on the side of life"?
Nick Turse is a doctoral candidate at the Center
for the History & Ethics of Public Health in the
Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University.
He writes for the Los Angeles Times, the Village Voice
and regularly for Tomdispatch on the military-corporate
complex and the homeland security state. |
I drove Pat and Alice
Carey up the coast of Lebanon this week to look at some
castles. Pat is a builder from County Wicklow, brave
enough to take a holiday with his wife in Beirut when
all others are thinking of running away. But I wanted
to know what he thought of 12th-century construction
work.
How did he rate a crusader keep? The most beautiful
of Lebanon's castles is the smallest; a dinky-toy
palisade on an outcrop of rock near the village of Batroun.
You have to climb a set of well-polished steps –
no handrails, for this is Lebanon – up the sheer
side of Mseilha castle and then clamber over doorsills
into the dark, damp interior.
So we padded around the battlements for half an hour.
"Strongly made or they wouldn't still be
here," Pat remarked. "But you wouldn't
find any company ready to put up the insurance. And
in winter, it must have been very, very cold."
And after some minutes, he looked at me with some intensity.
"It's like being in a prison," he said.
And he was right. The only view of the outside world
was through the archers' loopholes in the walls.
Inside was darkness. The world outside was cut off by
the castle defences. I could just see the splashing
river to the south of the castle and, on the distant
horizon, a mountainside. That was all the defenders
– Crusaders or Mamlukes – would have seen.
It was the only contact they had with the land they
were occupying.
Up at Tripoli is Lebanon's biggest keep, the
massive Castle of St Gilles that still towers ominously
over the port city with its delicate minarets and mass
of concrete hovels. Two shell holes – remnants
of Lebanon's 1975-1990 civil war – have
been smashed into the walls, but the interior of the
castle is a world of its own; a world, that is, of stables
and eating halls and dungeons. It was empty –
the tourists have almost all fled Lebanon – and
we felt the oppressive isolation of this terrible place.
Pat knew his Crusader castles. "When you besieged
them, the only way to get inside was by pushing timber
under the foundations and setting fire to the wood.
When they turned to ash, the walls came tumbling down.
The defenders didn't throw boiling water from
the ramparts. They threw sand on to the attackers. The
sand would get inside their armour and start to burn
them until they were in too much pain to fight. But
it's the same thing here in Tripoli as in the
little castle. You can hardly see the city through the
arrow slits. It's another – bigger –
prison."
And so I sat on the cold stone floor and stared through
a loophole and, sure enough, I could see only a single
minaret and a few square metres of roadway. I was in
darkness. Just as the Crusaders who built this fortress
must have been in darkness.
Indeed, Raymond de Saint-Gilles spent years besieging
the city, looking down in anger from his great fortress,
built on the "Pilgrim's Mountain", at
the stout burghers of Tripoli who were constantly re-supplied
by boat from Egypt. Raymond himself died in the castle,
facing the city he dreamed of capturing but could not
live to enter.
And of course, far to the east, in the ancient land
of Mesopotamia, there stand today equally stout if less
aesthetic barricades around another great occupying
army. The castles of the Americans are made of pre-stressed
concrete and steel but they serve the same purpose and
doom those who built them to live in prisons.
From the "Green Zone" in the centre of Baghdad,
the authorities and their Iraqi satellites can see little
of the city and country they claim to govern. Sleeping
around the gloomy republican palace of Saddam Hussein,
they can stare over the parapets or peek through the
machine-gun embrasures on the perimeter wall –
but that is as much as most will ever see of Iraq.
The Tigris is almost as invisible as that stream sloshing
past the castle of Mseilha. The British embassy inside
the "Green Zone" flies its diplomats into
Baghdad airport, airlifts them by helicopter into the
fortress – and there they sit until recalled to
London.
Indeed, the Crusaders in Lebanon – men with thunderous
names like Tancred and Bohemond and Baldwin –
used a system of control remarkably similar to the US
Marines and the 82nd Airborne. They positioned their
castles at a day's ride – or a day's
sailing down the coast in the case of Lebanon –
from each other, venturing forth only to travel between
their keeps.
And then out of the east, from Syria and also from
the Caliphate of Baghdad and from Persia came the "hashashin",
the "Assassins" – the Crusaders brought
the word back to Europe – who turned the Shia
faith into an extremist doctrine, regarding assassination
of the enemy as a religious duty.
Anyone who doubts the relevance of these "foreign
fighters" to the present-day Iraq should read the
history of ancient Tripoli by that redoubtable Lebanese-Armenian
historian Nina Jidejian, which covers the period of
the Assassins and was published at the height of the
Lebanese civil war.
"It was believed that the terrorists partook of
hashish to induce ecstatic visions of paradise before
setting out to perform their sacred duty and to face
martyrdom…" she writes. "The arrival
of the Crusaders had added to … latent discontent
and created a favourable terrain for their activities."
Ouch.
One of the Assassins' first victims was the Count
of Montferrat, leader of the Third Crusade who had besieged
Acre in 1191 – "Saint Jean d'Acre"
to the Christians – and who met his death at the
hands of men sent by the Persian "terrorist"
leader, Hassan-i Sabbah. The Assassins treated Saladin's
Muslim army with equal scorn – they made two attempts
to murder him – and within 100 years had set up
their own castles around Tripoli. They established a
"mother fortress" from which – and here
I quote a 13th century Arab geographer – "the
Assassins chosen are sent out thence to all countries
and lands to slay kings and great men."
And so it is not so hard, in the dank hallways of the
Castle of St Gilles to see the folly of America's
occupation of Iraq. Cut off from the people they rule,
squeezed into their fortresses, under constant attack
from "foreign fighters", the Crusaders dreams
were destroyed.
Sitting behind the loophole in the castle at Tripoli,
I could even see new meaning in Osama bin Laden's
constant references to the Americans as "the Crusader
armies". The Crusades, too, were founded on a neo-conservative
theology. The knights were going to protect the Christians
of the Holy Land; they were going to "liberate"
Jerusalem – "Mission Accomplished" –
and ended up taking the spoils of the Levant, creating
petty kingdoms which they claimed to control, living
fearfully behind their stone defences. Their Arab opponents
of the time did indeed possess a weapon of mass destruction
for the Crusaders. It was called Islam.
"You can see why the Crusaders couldn't
last here," Pat said as we walked out of the huge
gateway of the Castle of St Gilles. "I wonder if
they ever knew who they were fighting."
I just resisted asking him if he'd come along
on my next trip to Baghdad, so I could hear part two
of the builder's wisdom. |
You should be! You've
been lied to. Your tax money has been taken from you
and spent under false pretenses. Your children have
been sent off to kill and be killed in an illegal war
launched with lies. You who fought in the war and think
you came back home healthy, well, you've been lied to
as well. Your health is all downhill from here (ask
any Vet from Desert Storm), and your children will have
a higher incidence of birth defects because that depleted
uranium isn't as harmless as you were told it was. And
those VA medical benefits you were promised? That was
a lie too. Are you angry yet?
And those of you who sold your better judgment for
a free hot-dog and a flag at a Clear Channel sponsored
pro-Bush rally, well, you were lied to as well, and
worse, made to look totally stupid before the rest of
the world. The media which walked right past peace demonstrations
to video tape the Clear Channel party plastered your
face across the TV sets of the planet, waving your flag
and shouting "Sig WMD! Sig WMD" and singing
"Dubya Dubya Uber Alles" or something to that
effect. And here you stand now, with egg on your collective
faces, finally facing up to what your more intelligent
neighbors knew all along; There were no weapons of mass
destruction in Iraq. Bush made a total fool of you.
The whole world is laughing at you. Those lacking the
courage to admit they were wrong will no doubt descend
into the ranks of fanatical "true believers",
ready to drink the Kool-Aid for his highnessness der
Dubyer. For the rest of you brave enough to admit you
were fooled, are you angry yet?
And for you Congressional types reading this web site
(and I know that many of you do), Bush made total jackasses
out of you as well. Under the Constitution, which you
are sworn to uphold, only Congress can declare war.
Changing the name to "police action" or "battle"
does not get you off of the hook. When our army marches
into another nation to take it over, that's a war by
any meaningful definition of the word. So, you passed
a bill that authorized the President to send in the
military to Iraq, but ONLY if the President could prove
that Saddam was hiding weapons of mass destruction in
defiance of UN Resolution 1441. The President said he
had proof, and you did not check him on it. And now
that the world knows that the President did not actually
have any such proof, the world knows that the US Congress
failed in their job. You were had, used, swindled, conned,
etc. Bush bypassed you. He got his illegal war right
past you. The President has made the entire Congress
look like weak and impotent idiots and fools before
the rest of the world for not exercising due diligence
over a serious matter like war. Are you angry yet?
Our media has tried to teach us all that hate and anger
are bad. Anger must be "managed". Hate of
any and all kinds must be suppressed. Well, I am here
to tell you that certain hates and angers are not only
justified, they are essential. I hate drug dealers,
don't you? I hate liars, don't you? You're a sucker
if you don't. I hate spies who use deception to trick
our nation into doing things it ought not to be doing.
Hate and anger helped drive the British out of the colonies
1776. Hate and anger fueled the victory of WW2, which
is why Bush, with his lies, tried to trick us all (or
at least the gullible ones) into hating and being angry
at a designated target for invasion.
I am very angry. #$%^#%$ anger management, I am pissed
off! And if you carry any of the blood of those who
made this nation what it is today you have to be angry
too. You should be angry. You must be angry. Because
right now there is a battle about to start over whether
this nation will continue to be ruled by those who lie,
or whether the liars will be kicked out. Whether we
will have honest government or not. Whether we will
be slaves to liars, or free citizens with honorable
and respectful and fair government.
Be angry. Be very angry. Hate liars. Focus your anger
on them. Drive them from office and from the media.
There is no other choice but permanent servitude. |
Predictably, the death
of Karol Wojtyla, also known as Pope John Paul II, has
crowded out other news stories, for instance:
U.S IGNORED WMD REALITY IN IRAQ. "By the time
President Bush ordered U.S. troops to disarm Saddam
Hussein of the deadly weapons he was allegedly trying
to build, every piece of fresh evidence had been tested-and
disproved-by U.N. inspectors, according to a report
commissioned by the president and released Thursday,"
the Washington
Post reports early today. In other words, Bush groomed
a passel of lies and passed it off as a pretext to invade
a sovereign nation and kill more than 100,000 innocent
Iraqis. Now the Strausscons wants to blame this defective
intelligence-i.e., lies-on the CIA and the
"intelligence community."
Fact of the matter is, Cheney and the Strausscons knew
precisely what they were doing and that's why
they created the Office of Special Plans, essentially
a lie factory designed to produce "Feith-based
intelligence," a malodorous bouquet of falsification
and prevarication, a natural extension of "A Clean
Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,"
a venomous shibboleth written for Israeli settler leader
Benjamin Netanyahu by leading Strausscons Richard "Prince
of Darkness" Perle, Douglas Feith, David Wurmser
and his wife Meyrav. Naturally, none of this is mentioned
in the Post article. Instead, we are told the CIA is
to blame. Of course, the CIA deserves condemnation,
but not for Strausscon lies.
The "IAEA disputed CIA claims that Iraq was trying
to buy black-market aluminum tubes for a nuclear program.
The IAEA assessment, which turned out to be accurate,
was first shared with U.S. intelligence in July 2001,"
writes the Post. But if not for Strausscon friendly
Judith Miller and Michael Gordon at the New York Times,
this CIA wet dream would have never seen the light of
day. Bush's tubular excuse for what would eventually
become mass murder of a 100,000 Iraqis was trumpeted
by National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, VP Dick
Cheney, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher,
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, Deputy Secretary
of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Secretary of State Colin
Powell, and ultimately Bush himself in a saber-rattling
lie fest before the United Nations. (See Tim Dickinson's
West
Wing Pipe Dream for details.) Naturally, as we now
know, Bush's tubular excuse was nothing but a
lie floated expressly to scare the hell out of gullible
Americans and set the stage for mass murder.
If we are to believe the Post, it was all the fault
of the CIA and Cheney's cherry-picking operation
never existed.
BRITAIN GETS COLD FEET. "Britain plans to reduce
the size of its military force in Iraq from 9,000 to
3,500 soldiers within 12 months, as part of a phased
withdrawal from the war-torn country," reports
al-Jazeera.
Since Bush lapdog Tony Blair is up for election on May
5 and, according to Frank Luntz of the Times Online,
in "years of polling voters, I have never found
the public mood in Britain so disgruntled and disillusioned,"
the withdrawal announcement has near perfect timing.
If we are to believe Lt. Gen James Conway of the U.S.
Marines, the U.S. may start removing soldiers from Iraq
as well, as Iraqis are "starting to take control
of their own situation," or it is hoped they will
soon, anyway. Conway may as well wish for a pony. Naturally,
a big fat caveat is attached to Britain's announcement:
"Troop numbers in Iraq are continually kept under
review and we will remain in Iraq at the request of
the Iraqi authorities to provide security assistance
for the Iraqi forces. We are not going to speculate
on future troop levels and timescales," a Ministry
of Defense spokesman told al-Jazeera. Is it possible
everything is contingent on Blair's re-election?
IRAQ AND KUWAIT, OIL BUDDIES. Remember when Saddam
Hussein accused Kuwait of stealing its oil with horizontal
drilling and listed this as one of the reasons for invading
the sheikdom in 1990? Another reason was that the Iraqis
considered Kuwait an artificial contrivance, once a
province of Iraq (that is until the Brits came along
and lopped it off in 1923 and got themselves a handsome
"oil concession" in 1934). In September, 2000,
Iraq
once again made the accusation that Kuwait was stealing
some 300,000 barrels of oil per day, worth about $3
billion a year at the time. That was then, this is now.
"A joint Kuwait-Iraq commission is looking at how
to regulate oil production from a field covering their
joint territories, reported
AFP. Officials said the options were either to form
a joint production company or to hire a foreign company
for production." Freedom has its advantages.
SWISS "RAPPORTEUR" STATES THE OBVIOUS, IRAQI
KIDS MALNOURISHED. In Bushzarro world, truth is hated
and maligned. John Zarocostas, reporting for the Moonie
owned Washington Times, says the Bushcons are all atwitter
over the "anti-American rhetoric" (i.e., truth)
of Jean Ziegler, "a longtime critic of the United
States who is the U.N. special rapporteur on the right
to food." Zarocostas reports that in "a report
[issued by the UN's Commission on Human Rights],
the Swiss professor of sociology blamed the U.S.-led
invasion and occupation of Iraq for nearly doubling
malnutrition among children younger than 5." Kevin
E. Moley, U.S. ambassador, gave Ziegler heck for the
report. "First, he has not visited Iraq; secondly,
he is wrong," declaimed Moley. "So we wish
Jean Ziegler, in all his reporting, would stick to the
facts, but in his case it would leave him little to
say."
Ziegler is dismissed by the Moonie Times as a commie,
"a member of the executive committee of Socialist
International who teaches at the University of Geneva,
[and] was appointed in September 2000 by the former
High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson."
"Acute malnutrition among Iraqi children under
five years of ago had doubled since the US invasion
and occupation two years ago," Doug
Lorimer of Green Left writes, summarizing the UN
Commission on Human Rights report. "Reporting the
results of a study conducted last November by the Norwegian-based
Fafo Institute for Applied Social Science, Ziegler told
the 53-nation commission that more than a quarter of
Iraqi children did not get enough to eat. According
to the institute, last year 7.7% of Iraqi children under
five suffered acute malnutrition, compared to 4% prior
to the March 2003 US-led invasion…. Some 6.5 million
Iraqis, 25% of the entire population, remain highly
dependent on food rations according to the UN's
World Food Program. A WFP report released last May said
that just under half of that figure were so poor that
they have to resell part of their food rations to buy
basic necessities such as medicine and clothes. A further
3.6 million Iraqis, 14% of the population, would become
food insecure if the rationing system were discontinued."
Recall, before the twin invasions of the Iraqi people
by the Bush Cosa Nostra-punctuated with more than
a decade of murderous sanctions-Iraqi was a modern
nation with a high standard of living, subsidized health
care, education, food, and rent-in short, even
under the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, Iraq was the
envy of the Arab world. Bush Senior, Bubba Clinton,
and Bush the Junior worked long and hard to make Iraq
one of the poorest countries in the world.
A PARASITE NAMED JEBEL ALI FREE ZONE AUTHORITY. Killing
100,000 Iraqis (following the murder of more than a
million over the previous decade) is good for business,
as the Jebel Ali Free Zone Authority, or Jafza, informs
us. Jafza will participate in the "Rebuild Iraq
2005? exhibition in Amman, Jordan, according to AME
Info, billed as the "ultimate Middle East business
resource," sponsored by the likes of Shell Markets
Middle East, CNN International, and UPS, to name but
three. AME Info looks out for the interests of a large
"customer base," including such corporations
as Citibank, DaimlerChrysler, General Motors, Microsoft,
Motorola, and others.
"The show, which is in the second year running,
is a highly specialized show that focuses on the rebuilding
of Iraq's critical infrastructure in electricity,
water, oil, health, transportation, agriculture, and
telecommunications sectors," reports
AME Info. "The show is also the central rally
point for buyers, manufacturers, suppliers, and contractors,
as it gives them direct access to decision makers from
government bodies, organizations and companies who are
involved in the economic rebirth of Iraq."
In other words, a gaggle of fantastically wealthy corporations
chomping at the bit to cash in on the misery of the
Iraqi people (see the previous news item), as directed
by "government bodies," that is to say the
United States and the puppet government installed in
Baghdad. As previously noted, no "economic rebirth"
would be necessary in Iraq if the Bush Cosa Nostra criminal
organization, with more than a little help of the United
States Congress, had not twice invaded Iraq and imposed
medieval siege sanctions on it.
History is nowhere to be found when vulture corporations
gather to pick over the bones of victimized people in
the third world. Bush I and II engineered the destruction
of Iraq's "critical infrastructure in electricity,
water, oil, health, transportation, agriculture, and
telecommunications" expressly for the sake of the
waiting vultures.
"President Bush [Senior] ordered the destruction
of facilities essential to civilian life and economic
productivity throughout Iraq," Mohamed
Ahmad Aljanabi wrote for the Institute for Policy
Research and Development. "Of the facilities targeted,
some were: electric power generators, water system reservoirs,
food processing and storage facilities, oil wells and
pumps, rice factories, just to mention a few. The U.S.
assault left Iraq in a near apocalyptic condition, as
reported by the first United Nations observers after
the war. The intention and effect of the bombing of
civilian life and activities was to systematically destroy
Iraq’s infrastructure, leaving it
in a 'pre-industrial' condition," in
short, leaving it to be "rebuilt" by the likes
of Bechtel, Halliburton, and presumably the parasites-in-waiting
in Jordan, a conclave salivating over the prospect of
making profits on the misery of millions of victims.
"Visitors and exhibitors alike would be able to
witness the offerings of Jafza, some of which that are
aimed exclusively for nurturing Iraqi businesses and
providing support for Iraqi businessmen who want to
do business with the rest of the world," says a
no-nonsense Abdalla Al Banna, Marketing Manager for
Jafza. "The prospects for growth in Iraq is unprecedented
[bombing usually does that], as key stake holders from
all over the world have understood the vast economic
potential of the country. Reconstruction of Iraq is
top priority for the countries in the region and the
world community at large, as its immediate beneficiaries
will be the millions of Iraqis, who will see a significant
improvement in the quality of their lives." Of
course, in order to improve "the quality of their
lives," Iraqis, under the neolib-neocon scheme,
will need money. However, as a study by the college
of economics at Baghdad University reported last year,
unemployment in Iraq is around 70%. "The number
of people out of work in Iraq has been on the rise since
the then US administrator Paul Bremer disbanded the
Iraqi army, security organizations and the Ministry
of Information-a decision that made hundreds of
thousands of people unemployed at the stroke of a pen,"
al-Jazeera
reported last August.
One has to wonder, however, what Jafza and its multinational
participants are smoking. So long as the U.S. occupies
Iraq there will be no peace and no opportunity for the
neolib-neocon camarilla and its corporate "customer
base" to profit from the premeditated destruction
of Iraq. In fact, if Bush and Crew realize the Strausscon
master plan-generational war delivered to Muslims
everywhere, especially in the Middle East-resistance
will spread and the chance Bechtel and General Motors
will "rebuild" what Bush-Clinton-Bush bombed
will be about as likely as a sunny day in Hell.
Meanwhile, we have the solemnization of Pope John Paul
II to consider, an event likely to chew up the rest
of the week as the pontiff will be on display and then
buried at St. Peter's Basilica Grotto on Friday.
Events in Iraq will surely take a backseat-in
fact, they will pretty much disappear from the corporate
media radar screen entirely. |
MELBOURNE - Oil prices raced to
an all-time peak on Monday, climbing toward $58 a barrel
as OPEC signaled it would discuss a second output rise
to try to quell the market's rally.
U.S. light crude hit a record $57.79 a barrel, surpassing
Friday's high of $57.70, which was triggered by a forecast
that prices could spike above $100 due to robust global
demand and tight spare capacity. [...]
"I would have thought prices would struggle to
go much higher. The market fundamentals suggest lower
prices," said Mark Pervan, an analyst with Daiwa
Securities in Melbourne.
"I think they will struggle to get over $60 in
the next couple of weeks -- that is a big psychological
barrier." [...] |
Mainstream Media Mum
on Meeting
Unreported in the corporate controlled press, the Israeli
boycott of the recent international Middle East peace
summit in London illustrates why the Israel-Palestine
conflict remains stuck in a quagmire after 57 years
and who is ultimately responsible.
Although Israel stayed away, its hard-line government
dictated the conference agenda and terms of discussion.
Foreign ministers and high-level delegations from 23
nations and six international organizations convened
in London on March 1 to try and advance the "peace
process" between the Palestinians and Israelis.
The attendees included the newly elected Palestinian
President Mahmoud Abbas, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan,Secretary
of State Condoleezza Rice, the European Union's
(EU) foreign policy chief Javier Solana and World Bank
president James D. Wolfensohn. Representatives from
the UN, EU, the United States and Russia-the "Quartet"
members who drafted the current peace plan known as
the "road map"-were also present for
the one-day conference at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference
Center.
Despite the presence of so many high-level delegations,
the international gathering, which Blair had originally
hoped would be, or lead to, a peace conference, was
unable to advance the peace process even one step because
the chief antagonist of the conflict in Palestine, the
Israeli government, simply boycotted the conference.
This, however, went unreported in the U.S. mainstream
media. (And in the British press too. Ed.)
"Israel refused to send anyone to the gathering,"
Rick Kelly reported on the web site wsws.org. "The
Likud-Labour coalition government of Ariel Sharon opposed
Blair's planned conference when he first floated
it after Bush's reelection last November. As
far as Israel was concerned, any discussion on its own
obligations or on 'final status' issues
related to the road map, the future of East Jerusalem,
the borders of any Palestinian state, or the right of
return for refugees was illegitimate.
"With the Bush administration's full support,
Sharon insisted that the only subject open for discussion
was how to best whip the Palestinian Authority (PA)
into line," Kelly wrote. "The British prime
minister quickly altered the character of the assembly
to meet these demands. It was not even possible to call
the gathering a conference, only a meeting."
Sharon has always avoided international
Middle East conferences, out of fear of being forced
to withdraw from the occupied territories in the West
Bank and Gaza. Rather than comply with international
law and UN resolutions calling for Israeli withdrawal,
Sharon continues to obstruct peace efforts by demanding
that the PA disarm groups resisting Israeli occupation
in the West Bank and Gaza.
Rather than report that the Sharon government had boycotted
the international conference, the controlled press in
the United States shifted its focus to the question
of Syria's military presence in Lebanon and U.S.
demands for a complete Syrian withdrawal.
The Palestinians had protested, saying the conference
would do nothing to press Israel to meet its obligations
or fulfill existing commitments to ease the occupation
or end the expansion of settlements.
"The London non-event on Palestine
was a superb exercise in obfuscation," The Dawn
wrote. "Boycotted by Israel, the meeting did not
even make a passing reference to the real issue-the
continued Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories."
Palestinian personal income has fallen by 40 percent
in the past few years and nearly half the Palestinians
live "below the poverty line." More than 600,000
Palestinians in the occupied territories "cannot
even afford the basic necessities for subsistence,"
according to a recent World Bank report titled "Palestinian
Economic Crisis."
It should be noted that the changes, demanded by the
Israeli government, to the conference's final
declaration were made before the foreign ministers and
delegates had even convened on March 1.
The final declaration was drawn up in advance in close
consultation with the Sharon government. Sharon's
closest adviser, Dov Weisglass, reportedly met twice
with aides to Blair in the two weeks prior to the meeting
and forced several changes to the prepared text.
Israel's Ha'aretz newspaper reported that
Weisglass had visited London the week before the conference
and asked that the Palestinian commitment to security
be strengthened in the document.
The original draft had stated that
Palestinian reform should be met by "reciprocal
action by Israel in relation to its own commitments."
Sharon, however, objected to this and had the statement
changed so that the conference participants merely "urged
and expected" Israeli action.
"Dutifully, Mr. Blair supported Mr. Sharon's
Gaza disengagement plan, but neither he nor Miss Rice
regretted Israel's boycott of the conference,"
The Dawn reported.
"Instead, they laid emphasis on reforms and for
the Palestinian Authority to act against those responsible
for the recent Tel Aviv bombing. The
real issues - the right of return for Palestinian
refugees, halting settlement activity, dismantling settlements
already built, condemning the Israeli massacre in Jenin,
the blowing up of Palestinian houses, and giving a date
for the withdrawal of Israeli troops - were
not even discussed," it wrote.
When the conference opened, the drastic changes to
the agenda demanded by Israel had reduced Blair's
original peace conference to a mere "meeting."
It is not "a peace conference," British Foreign
Secretary Jack Straw said, "nor will it deal with
the final status issues in the road map but we believe
it is a vital practical step towards restarting the
road map process."
Consequently, none of the real underlying issues of
the conflict in Palestine were discussed. As demanded
by Israel, Palestinian President Abbas was issued a
list of demands for political, security, and economic
reform, designed to demonstrate the PA's readiness
to suppress resistance to the Israeli occupation.
"That the Israeli government
could dictate the terms of an international meeting
that it boycotted speaks volumes as to the real nature
of the relationship between London, Tel Aviv, and Washington,"
reporter Kelly noted. |
Lebanon's Hezbollah
said Saturday the recent series of blasts in the country
served the "Zionist enemy."
The Shiite group said in a statement that the four
explosions that struck the northeastern, predominantly
Christian areas, in the past three weeks were aimed
at planting sedition and division among the Lebanese.
The organization demanded the perpetrators of the bombings
be found and punished, saying those who carried out
the attacks were "serving the Zionist enemy and
its schemes."
It warned against the "dangers of the repercussions
of such acts, which target the security, stability and
civil peace" of Lebanon.
Hezbollah's statement came a day after an explosive
device blew up in the parking lot of a commercial center
in the Christian area of Brummana, 12 miles northeast
of Beirut.
The latest blast, said to have included 55 pounds of
explosives, slightly injured nine people, including
an American and a Kuwaiti whose identities were not
revealed.
It destroyed 12 cars, damaged more than 50 shops, a
sports club, a social club and two large warehouses.
|
Police tighten security around Temple Mount amid concerns
that Jewish extremists could target Muslims in bid to
stall pullout; IDF official says terrorists may use planned
right-wing rally as pretext to resume violence
JERUSALEM - The police are tightening security around
the Temple Mount amid fears that far-right extremists
may attempt to target the holy Muslim site in a bid
to stall the Gaza pullout.
Special sensors and closed-circuit cameras are expected
to be installed at sensitive areas and security has
been stepped up at the site.
Meanwhile, senior IDF intelligence officer Yossi Kuperwasser
warned terrorists could use a planned right-wing rally
at the Mount as a pretext to end the current lull in
violence.
Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas "wants
to act against the (terror) groups, but can't,"
Kuperwasser told the Knesset's Defense and Foreign
Affairs Committee Monday.
Officials monitoring Jewish extremists
The Hamas and Islamic Jihad may view the plan to bring
10,000 people to the site on April 10 as a reason to
resume terror attacks.
Muslims have already announced they would block the
rally with their bodies, while the Jerusalem police
said they would only allow small groups of Jews to visit
the Mount, in accordance with current regulations.
The defense establishment is monitoring hardcore far-right
activists, a group believed to number some 500 persons.
Only some have access to arms but all have a common
goal: to carry out terror acts in a bid to achieve political
goals.
The greatest concern involves dozens of anonymous activists,
who until recently had been unknown to police.
Better-known right wing activists such as Noam Federman,
Itamar Ben Gvir, and their associates have long been
under the surveillance of the Shin Bet and police.
Electronic security system
Last week, police announced several far-right extremists
have been banned from the Temple Mount in a bid to prevent
possible clashes.
In response to increasing threats on the Mount, the
Internal Security Ministry and police forces decided
to set up a system of electronic sensors at a cost of
about NIS 100 million (about USD 23 million).
The sensors are to be installed around the walls of
the mount and are designed to alert security forces
in the event of an attempted in the area. However, Police
are skeptical as to whether the massive security plan
would in fact be put into effect before the planned
Gaza pullout slated for July.
The Temple Mount - a volcano
For years the Temple Mount has been
viewed as a "volcano" that may erupt at
the slightest provocation, leading to severe local and
international ramifications.
The Shin Bet is seriously preparing for the possibility
that right-wing activists may try to engulf the area
in flames as part of their efforts to thwart the disengagement
plan.
Senior security officials warned Sunday that Jewish
extremists might attempt to target the Temple Mount.
"Attacking the Temple Mount could
result in a massive response against the State of Israel
not just by the Palestinians, but by the entire Islamic
world," one official said.
He said the defense establishment is making every effort
to foil any attempt to disrupt the calm at the Temple
Mount and has stepped up its intelligence and security
forces.
Possible scenarios
Police have examined a series of deadly scenarios in
recent months, including the following:
* Mortar attack on the Temple Mount from the Mount
of Olives
* An explosive device at the entrance to the Temple
Mount
* An explosive drone aimed at targeting worshippers
* Grenades attack on worshippers
* Gunfire directed at worshippers |
An Israeli firm is
preparing to use the West Bank quarry to dump 10,000
tonnes of garbage a month
Israeli authorities plan to dump garbage in Abu Shusha
quarry, between the Palestinian city of Nablus and the
Jewish settlement of Kedumim, ignoring international
laws governing the occupied territory, an Israeli newspaper
said on Monday, adding that the move will imperil Palestinian
water supplies.
Although it hasn't got a government approval for the
project yet, an Israeli firm is preparing to use the
West Bank's largest quarry to dump at least 10,000 tonnes
of garbage a month, Haaretz daily said.
Israeli and Palestinian officials couldn't be
reached for comment.
According to Haaretz report , the dump is against international
pacts that prohibit using any occupied lands unless
it benefits the local population.
The project, sponsored by a settler-owned firm, will
pollute the Mountain Aquifer, one or the main sources
of fresh water for Israel and the West Bank, the paper
said. |
JERUSALEM - The graves of the assassinated
Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and two other historic
Jewish figures were desecrated at the weekend by vandals
who scrawled hate slogans on the tombstones, police
said.
One of the slogans written on Rabin's grave in Jerusalem's
Mount Herzl cemetery read "Murderous Dog",
of a man who came to be hated by the extreme right for
signing the Oslo autonomy accords with the Palestinians.
He was shot dead at a peace rally in Tel Aviv in November
1995.
The tomb of his wife Lea Rabin, which lies just next
to that of her husband, had also been desecrated with
a similar slogan.
Meanwhile, the word "Hitler" was scrawled
in black paint on the tombs of Theodore Herzl, the original
visionary of Zionism, as well as that of David Ben Gurion,
who founded Israel in 1948.
The inscription "Hitler, the brain" was also
found on the graves of a dozen Israeli soldiers buried
in the cemetery.
Political leaders have voiced fears that the atmosphere
of incitement which marked the build-up to the killing
of Rabin is being replicated by opponents of the plan
to pull Jewish settlers out of the occupied Gaza Strip
beginning this summer.
According to Israeli Channel Two television, three
surveillance cameras filmed the vandals who desecrated
the graves of the Rabins and the police are attempting
to identify them.
Israeli public radio reported that the preliminary
police investigation indicated the perpetrators were
likely mentally deranged.
"A state that does not know how to assure the
security of its leaders, a state that also does not
manage to preserve their graves," was how the anti-settlement
movement Peace described the vandalism. |
Increase
follows expanded powers for terror investigation
WASHINGTON - The government requested and won approval
for a record number of special warrants last year for
secret wiretaps and searches of suspected terrorists
and spies, 75 percent more than in 2000, the Bush administration
disclosed Friday.
Assistant Attorney General William E. Moschella revealed
the figure in an annual report to Congress. Last year's
total of 1,754 approved warrants was only slightly higher
than the 1,724 approved in 2003. But the number has
climbed markedly since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks,
as authorities have moved aggressively against terror
suspects. In 2000, there were 1,003 warrants approved
under the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Since passage of the Patriot Act, the FBI can use such
warrants in investigations that aren't mostly
focused on foreign intelligence.
Operating with permission from
a secretive U.S. court that meets regularly at Justice
headquarters, the FBI has used such warrants to break
into homes, offices, hotel rooms and automobiles, install
hidden cameras, search luggage and eavesdrop on telephone
conversations. Agents also have pried into safe
deposit boxes, watched from afar with video cameras
and binoculars and intercepted e-mails.
Details about some FBI surveillance efforts last year
emerge from court records spread across different cases.
But only a fraction of such warrants
each year result in any kind of public disclosure, so
little is known outside classified circles about how
they work.
Last year, for example, the FBI used a special warrant
to search the home of Portland attorney Brandon Mayfield,
who was jailed in May after his fingerprint was incorrectly
matched to one found on a bag of detonators near the
scene of train bombings in Spain that killed 191 people
in March 2004. He was released after the FBI admitted
its mistake.
The Justice Department acknowledged the search as part
of a lawsuit Mayfield has filed against the U.S. government
in which he contends his rights were violated by his
arrest and by the investigation against him. |
Behind its picture postcard façade,
the Maldives are being run as a "secret dictatorship"
engaged in "arbitrary arrest, detention and torture",
according to a human rights report.
The Indian Ocean archipelago, a favourite luxury holiday
destination for well-heeled Westerners, relies on a
culture of repression and fear to prop up a brutal regime,
said the report by the Asian Centre for Human Rights,
entitled Maldives: The Dark Side of Life.
The former British protectorate, which gained independence
in 1965, has established itself as one of the world's
premier upmarket holiday spots, marketing itself as
"The sunny side of life".
The Maldives boast a string of five-star resorts charging
up to £3,000 a night, guaranteeing rest, relaxation
and pampering amid white sands and palm-fringed beaches.
Life for the population of 300,000 is less sweet.
President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, in
power since 1978, has banned opposition parties. The
country's three newspapers are run by two cabinet ministers
and the president's brother-in-law, while Mr Gayoom
controls television and radio.
Tourist dollars are the lifeblood of the island republic's
economy, but horrific human rights abuses are being
committed within earshot of tourists, according to the
Delhi-based rights centre.
The report highlighted the fate of up to 20 political
prisoners held without trial and the deaths of four
inmates at the Maafushi Island prison in September 2003.
It alleges that guards responded to a protest over conditions
by beating one prisoner to death, then shooting dead
three and wounding 15 in the ensuing riot. The
President, who is under increasing international pressure
to make reforms, has promised multi-party democratic
elections "within one year." [...] |
Government employees studying whether
Yucca Mountain would be a suitable place to bury nuclear
waste acknowledged in e-mail messages to each other
that they had made up details about how they had done
their research in order to appear to meet quality standards,
according to some of the e-mails made public on Friday.
Some of the frank exchanges included instructions to
erase them.
The Energy Department, which is trying to open a waste
repository at the site, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas,
announced the existence of the e-mail messages two weeks
ago.
On Friday, a subcommittee of the House Committee on
government Reform released dozens of pages of the messages.
One analyst wrote that a computer
program had generated data that he could not explain,
so he withheld it from the quality assurance department,
known as QA.
"Don't look at the last 4 lines.
Those are a mystery," wrote the scientist.
"In the end I keep track of 2
sets of files, the ones that will keep QA happy and
the ones that were actually used," he wrote.
B. John Garrick, the chairman of the Nuclear Waste
Technical Review Board, a group of independent experts
established by Congress to monitor the Energy Department,
said it was too soon to draw conclusions but that "it
is disturbing to see such loosely framed discussions
between scientists."
Falsifying work
The theme running through the messages was that employees
were performing work that they did not believe would
meet the standards set by the quality assurance inspectors,
and were sometimes falsifying their work in ways that
they believed would satisfy the inspectors.
One scientist wrote that he feared he would be "taken
to the cleaners" by the inspectors because his
work did not refer to an established procedure laid
out in a scientific notebook, and he asked if he should
create such a notebook "and back-date the whole
thing??"
'Sound science'
The Energy Department and the
White House had said repeatedly that their recommendation
of the site was based on "sound science."
[...] |
A woman was killed
and three people seriously injured when a man wielding
a samurai sword ran amok in a German church yesterday.
Reports of the attack at the Methodist Christus church,
in Stuttgart, shook the normally quiet local Tamil community.
The alleged attacker, a 25-year-old man of Tamil origin,
was arrested.
A police investigator, Michael Kuehner, said the man
had been motivated by "personal reasons",
adding that he had made unspecified threats before Easter.
The attack took place at the start of an afternoon
service for around 65 Tamil people, including many children.
A police spokesman, Hermann Karpf, said: "He is
believed to be a Tamil, and the service was also a Tamil
service."
The church was cordoned off last night. A large pool
of blood, rubber gloves and clumps of hair lay on a
street corner. Police confirmed that a 43-year-old woman
had died, and that three other victims had suffered
serious chest, heart and arm injuries.
Police used pepper spray to overcome the suspect. "As
far as we know, there is no political background to
the case," Mr Karpf said.
A witness, who asked not to be named, was sitting on
his balcony near the church when the attack took place:
"I heard screaming and crying and when I looked
up, there were people covered in blood running out of
the church. [...] |
TRENTON, N.J. - Heavy rains drenched
parts of New Jersey over the weekend, flooding low-lying
areas and causing thousands of people to evacuate homes
threatened by the rising water.
The heavy rains began Saturday and persisted until
midday Sunday, prompting acting Gov. Richard J. Codey
to declare a state of emergency. Authorities urged hundreds
of residents in each of six counties to leave low-lying
areas and closed some state offices Monday near the
Delaware River.
"We haven't had any major or traumatic problems
so far, and that's what we're hoping to avoid with the
evacuations," said Art Charlton, public information
officer for Warren County.
Trenton Mayor Douglas H. Palmer ordered the evacuation
of a neighborhood known as "The Island" late
Saturday. Gas and electric service was shut off to homes,
while displaced residents were offered space at a high
school shelter.
Palmer said residents would not be
allowed to return until at least Wednesday, and further
evacuations may be needed.
In northern New Jersey, moderate to major flooding
was expected in seven rivers. All the rivers had crested
by early Sunday, and most were expected to reach at
least 2 feet above flood levels before slowly receding
Monday.
Some larger rivers, such as the Delaware, were expected
to continue rising through at least Monday afternoon.
Trenton city spokesman Kent Ashworth
said officials expected the Delaware to crest higher
than it did last September, when the remnants of Hurricane
Ivan forced thousands of residents to flee their homes
for several days.
In Pennsylvania, several people had to be rescued by
boat Sunday after rising floodwaters forced the evacuation
of about 200 homes in Northampton County. The water
reached nearly the level of traffic lights in the community
of Easton, flooding many downtown buildings. |
It was a dry, warm winter across
the Northwest, with experts in some areas saying they
can't remember the last time the snowpack was this low.
It was just the opposite in the Southwest, with record
winter rainfall that flooded deserts and caused murderous
landslides.
Strangely, both face the same worry: Conditions are
ripe for a bad wildfire season. Along with the dry forests
in the Northwest, all that rain in the Southwest has
fed lots of tall grass and brush that will become tinder
when it dries this summer.
Ordinarily, when April arrives, Jack Owen considers
himself lucky if any homeowners call his firm to remove
brush from around their houses. But in this dry year
in Oregon, his Wildfire Fuels Reduction is grinding
up trees and bushes as fast as it can.
By this time last year, Owen's company
in Bend had only done $1,200 in business. This year,
edgy homeowners already have given the company $18,000
worth of work.
"At this time last year, one reason I didn't have
much business was too much snow on the ground,"
he said.
Despite the rising threat, money for firefighting is
expected to be tight.
"It's a concern, but we've implemented a significant
number of cost management measures with our incident
management teams and folks out there on the fire line
looking at what we can do to cut our costs," said
Alice Forbes, assistant director of operations for the
Forest Service at the National Interagency Fire Center
in Boise, Idaho.
Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano has already authorized
more than $1.2 million for firefighters and equipment.
Some governors fear fewer National Guard troops will
be available to fight fires because of the war in Iraq,
though Rose Davis, spokeswoman for the fire center,
said plenty of other firefighters will be available.
[...]
In parts of Washington, Oregon, Idaho
and Montana, the snowpack is only about 25 percent to
50 percent of normal. The U.S. Drought Monitor, which
tracks conditions across the country, rates vast tracts
of Wyoming, Montana and Idaho as "exceptional drought,"
the worst of five drought categories.
"In a lot of places, there's no
comparison," Tom Perkins, a hydrologist with the
Natural Resources Conservation Service, said of the
snowpack. "It's never been this low before."
The fire season in the Northwest could start as soon
as late May. [...]
Southern California had its
second-wettest rainy season on record, and rainfall
in Arizona was well above normal. The snowpack in California's
southern Sierra Nevada was 53 percent above average,
and the Arizona Snowbowl ski area on northern Arizona's
highest mountain reported a seasonal total of 37 feet
of snow. [...] |
AgileTV is aiming to change the
way people watch TV, with a voice controlled television
remote control.
The Promptu remote is designed to replace a conventional
remote control and includes a "Talk" button
and a built-in microphone, together with an infra-red
receiver used in conjunction with an existing cable
box.
The remote control translates spoken commands into
speech features that are sent the receiver and then
to a small runtime application in the set-top box. The
actual voice recognition is performed at the cable head-end
on commodity PC based Linux systems. This can be tuned
to regional accents and can include a large vocabulary
database. The response is returned in around a second,
and an on screen prompt indicates when the command has
been understood.
The remote control can be told to change channel by
name or number, or show programme selections by up to
75 pre-defined categories. This perhaps demonstrates
the problem of genre classification for television programmes
and displays a certain North American bias. So
there are currently categories for Cheerleading and
Rodeo, but only one for Performing Arts, which might
indicate something about the intended market.
It comes with a handy reference card that helpfully
explains "You can also find an actor in an Adult
program by saying 'Find Adult Actor' and the actor's
name".
Voice control always seems to be a feature of visions
of the future. While not dismissing its potential application
for ensuring accessibility, the Promptu approach still
requires a remote control and the user needs to hold
down the Talk button when giving commands. However,
the real advantage is that it may eliminate the requirement
for keyboard entry when searching for titles, or adult
actors.
Promptu is currently on trial by Comcast and Time Warner
in the Philadelphia region. Comcast chief executive
Brian Roberts has been quoted as calling it "one
of my favourite new pieces of technology". |
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