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P
I C T U R E O F T H E D
A Y
Encounter
©2005 Pierre-Paul
Feyte
The small village of Qawawis is the most peaceful place
I have ever visited. Geographically, it is situated
south of Al-Khalil (Hebron) in the West Bank. Here a
handful of shepherding families live in caves cut from
the stony hill by hand. We are four internationals are
staying in the village with the families.
The days in Qawawis are seemingly alike: we get up
at dawn and are invited to breakfast, consisting primarily
of flat bread and hummus, in one of the caves. Afterwards
the herds are let out and we walk with the shepherds
as they graze their sheep in the open landscape. After
three or four hours we return to the village, have flat
bread and hummus and nap. Then we walk with the sheep
for another three or four hours and return at dusk.
At dinner time (rarely with any surprises), many of
the young boys from the village come to the cave we
dine in to practice their English, and teach us new
Arabic words. All socializing after dark is by light
of oil lamps, since the village is without electricity.
Nevertheless, I have yet to find a place in Palestine
with better reception for my cellular phone. Paradoxically,
the good reception is due to the surrounding illegal
settlements, equipped with cellphone towers, new roads,
running water, electricity, plenty of guns and telephone
wires, primarily funded with Israeli citizens' tax money.
These settlements are the reason we are here. Harassment
of Palestinians in the proximity of settlements is more
the rule than exception, but a couple of years ago the
violence against the village escalated, and when two
villagers were shot, most of the families had already
moved to the neighboring village of Yatta.
The Israeli army moved in and forced the rest of the
inhabitants to move for "security reasons".
Some Israeli settlers moved into the caves, but were
also evacuated from the village by the army, which then
bulldozed several caves and wells. The Israeli separation
wall was planned to annex this part of the West Bank
and the village was in the way of a new military base.
After filing complaints and a hard legal fight, especially
from Israeli peace organization Ta'ayush, there was
a small change in the path of the separation wall, moving
it closer to the Green Line, and the Israeli Supreme
Court saying ruled that villagers had the right to return
to their land.
One month ago some of the families moved back to the
village along with peace activists from the International
Solidarity Movement (ISM), on a rotational basis as
an international presence. During this month the villagers
have suffered daily visits from settlers threatening
them with guns or throwing rocks at sheep and shepherds.
On Shabbat (Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath), the settlers
often make a tour of the village, showing the caves
and telling make-believe stories of how they used to
live in the caves, and how the original inhabitants
moved out for better housing in Yatta. All this I already
knew, and yet I was not thoroughly prepared for our
first confrontation with the religious fanatics.
Purim mask and an Uzi
"Nazis! Jew killers! Go back to Germany!"
Suddenly everything seems chaotic. Five minutes ago
a white pick-up came to a halt, and two young men exited.
I and another international calmly approached them,
remembering our training in de-escalation of possibly
violent situations. One of the males was dressed in
orthodox manner, complete with light colored loose clothing,
head covered with a kippah and curly black locks of
hair at the temples. The other was sporting a yellow
Purim* mask, depicting a skull, and an Uzi.
After a couple of weeks in this country, I am still
not comfortable with seeing guns, and the adrenalin
was pumping through our veins as we got closer and diplomatically
asked if we could be of any assistance, without response.
The two men started running around screaming, tossing
rocks at sheep and shepherds. Our de-escalation was
seemingly a gross failure, since still more cars kept
coming and everyone that got out seemed very angry with
us.
"Nazis! Jew killers! Go back
to Germany! You! Are you German?" An extremely
animated woman in her thirties is pointing at me. Out
of confusion I just answered her: "Ehm no, I'm
from Denmark."
"Yeah, Danish people, you're
really good at killing Jews too!"
The other two internationals come running and we all
try to get between the shepherds and the 10 angry settlers,
who are throwing rocks and telling us how easily they
could kill us, whilst pointing at us with their machine
guns. A military vehicle notices the episode and pulls
up curbside.
Three young soldiers get out
just to stand around and do nothing, despite the fact
that we repeatedly ask, as the settlers begin to kick
and beat us. Not until
a grown man has thrown himself on top of our female
American friend and punched her many times in the face,
neck and chest, does one of the soldiers help to get
him off of her. Afterwards
the soldier decides to help the man find his glasses.
We draw back toward the village with the shepherds,
as the screaming settlers try to get past the soldiers.
We phoned the police as soon as the two youngsters
got out of the pick-up, and were positively surprised
that they promised to come quickly. I had heard that
the police often don't really handle cases involving
settlers out of fear. My positive attitude toward the
Israeli Police did not last long. It took several calls
before they finally showed up one and a half hour later.
We tried to explain to them what happened, but soon
the settlers came driving down again and started yelling
in Hebrew at the police. Before we knew it, the police
had taken our passports, the settlers were going home,
and we are on our way to the police station. The police
station is situated in the middle of one of the largest
settlements in all of Palestine, Kiryat Arba, a name
with an ominous historical ring to it.
Pennywise
Kiryat Arba was Israel's first settlement, the approval
of which former Minister of Defense Moshe Dayan would
later call the most severe mistake in his career. The
huge settlement is situated adjacent to the municipal
boundaries of Al-Khalil (Hebron) and is home to about
7200 persons. As we were taken to the police station,
we slowly drove through this Disneyland of neat streets,
small grassy areas and hundreds of identical little
houses, with the characteristic diagonal red roofs,
placed on 6,000 dunams (1,500 acres) of confiscated
Palestinian land. For some reason this place reminds
me of Pennywise, the killer clown from the film based
on Stephen King's It, which terrified me as a child.
The Hebron area is known as one of the most difficult
in all of the West Bank, the cause of its problems the
settler issue. One of the most tragic and fatal examples
is the massacre in the Ibrahimi Mosque of 1994, when
American-Israeli physician Baruch Goldstein, entered
the mosque, shot dead 29 Muslim worshippers and wounded
another 125. In the old city of Al-Khalil, 500 Jewish
fundamentalists reside in four settlements. Once the
economic and social centre of Al-Khalil, the old city
has been transformed into a ghost town of shops welded
shut for "security reasons", military raids
and checkpoints.
The settlers claim to be a "continuation"
of the original Jewish community of the city but, in
1996, 40 members of the original Jewish community signed
a public petition asking for the evacuation of the settlers.
As a result of countless violent confrontations, the
daily life of the 150,000 Palestinian residents is troubled
with harassment, curfew and seemingly innumerable security
checks.
More than 600 days of curfew have been imposed on the
Palestinian population of Hebron and more than 74 homes
demolished, more often than not to give way to Jewish-only
roads. All this is overseen by about 1,500 soldiers
stationed in the old city. Their primary assignment
is to secure the safety of the 500 settlers, many of
whom are armed to the teeth and none of whom have to
go through humiliating security checks. Soldiers reside
in confiscated Palestinian homes and in Kiryat Arba,
where we are taken for questioning.
Go to jail, go directly to jail
We arrived in the police station
believing that we were going to file charges based on
the assault against us and the villagers. When we sat
down, we were told that we were now detained as the
settlers had filed charges against us for attacking
them. Welcome to Through the Looking Glass land.
We found out that all the settlers had all been allowed
to go home. We, on the other hand, are dragged through
hours of questioning, where we only were allowed to
defend ourselves against charges. After eight hours
we were offered to sign a paper forbidding us to return
to Qawawis.
We refused and were arrested
and put in jail. Harsh punishment for getting assaulted,
but in looking-glass land, it is not necessarily illogical
to believe that unarmed, non-violent peace activists
might attack crazy settlers armed with M-16s and Uzis.
The next day we were taken to a judge who dismissed
the charges against us, and acknowledged the importance
of an international presence in Qawawis. The settlers
continue their regular harassment in the area. Recently
a flock of sheep was poisoned with rat poison in the
neighbouring village of At-Tuwani.
The trouble created by mad,
fundamentalist settlers, who believe in a literal interpretation
of religious texts, is a well calculated part of the
Israeli government's policy of colonization.
The settlers, more or less knowingly, are doing the
governments bidding, but also the judicial system seems
very lenient when it comes to settlers. A
grave example is the story of an eleven-year-old Palestinian
boy, Hilmi Shusha who was "pistol whipped"
to death by a settler from Betar, on the way to Bethlehem
from Hebron, Nahum Korman. The perpetrator was arrested,
tried and acquitted on the grounds that "the child
died on his own as a result of emotional pressure".
On appeal, the Israeli Supreme Court characterized
the act as a "light killing",
and the settler received six months of community service
and a fine. The settlers, making up 6-7 % of the Israeli
population, are not at all alike. Many are simply attracted
to cheap government subsidized housing, but they are
all but threads in the Israeli cobweb of control over
the Occupied Territories. Along with the areas unilaterally
annexed with the "land grab wall", they are
facts on the ground and can be used as arguments in
future peace talks.
I feel like Alice who just stepped through the looking
glass. Not just because the letters here are written
from right to left. Not just because Al-Khalil (in Arabic)
as well as Hevron (in Hebrew) means "friend".
Not just because we were imprisoned for being assaulted.
More likely so because we in "The Western World"
seem to accept the image of Israel reflected in our
societies, an image missing important details. The Israeli
state does not care about the international commitments
that it pretends to respect. The separation wall and
the settlements have been declared illegal by the international
community.
Unfortunately Israel will continue to act with impunity
as long as American vetoes in the UN Security Council
and beneficial EU trade agreements send a clear signal
that we are more than ready to close our eyes to endless,
inhumane violations. The story of Qawawis is in no way
especially horrendous or extraordinary, it is just another
day in Palestine, Looking Glass land.
|
USD 2 million expected
to improve department's ability to manage voice transmissions,
efficiency of event reconstruction
By Eli Shimoni
Raanana-based Nice Systems Ltd. has struck an estimated
USD 2 million contract with the New York Fire Department
to improve management of emergency calls and radio transmissions.
Nice, a global provider of advanced solutions that
enable organizations to extract useful business information
from interactions with customers, was chosen by iXP
Corporation, a consulting and integration services company.
The Fire Department will provide its advanced solution
for the management of emergency communications.
The order follows the successful implementation of
Nice's solution with iXP for the New York Police Department.
Post- Sept. 11 praise
In the aftermath of the September 11 terror attacks,
the fire department won the praise of New Yorkers, including
former mayor Rudy Giuliani, and has worked since then
to ensure the highest standards in the reliability of
its communications infrastructure.
Nice's solution is expected to improve the department's
ability to capture, manage, and replay voice transmissions,
and to improving rescue operations' efficiency and accuracy
of event reconstruction. |
Kurdish chauvinist
and long-time lackey of the US Central Intelligence
Agency and the Zionist Mossad, 71-year old Jalal at-Talibani,
took the oath of puppet "president" of Iraq
on Thursday. The "inauguration" publicity
show was held under intense American guard inside the
headquarters of the US occupation in the area of the
Republican Palace in Baghdad, called the "green
zone" by the invaders.
Underlining the sectarian division of the country imposed
by the US occupation, Ghazi al-Yawur, a US stooge of
Sunni Arab background, and `Adil `Abd al-Mahdi, a Shi`i
collaborator, took oaths as "vice-presidents"
of the puppet "authority."
The most important position in the puppet regime is
to be occupied by another Shi`i. The chief of the collaborationist
Da`wah Party, Ibrahim al-Ja`fari, whom Sunni circles
accuse of involvement in planned sectarian atrocities
against members of their community, is to be "prime-minister."
With the office of "prime minister" assigned
to a Shi`i and the "presidency" designated
as a Kurdish position, the stooge "representative"
of the Sunni Arab community has been consigned to the
largely ceremonial position of "speaker" of
the puppet "parliament." That individual is,
like the "president" of the state, however,
to carry out his functions with one Kurdish and one
Shi`i "deputy speaker."
All these sectarian offices are to function under the
auspices of the US occupation whose military actually
runs the country's affairs under political guidance
from Washington through the American ambassador.
The Americans have imposed the sectarian division of
offices in the puppet regime as a part of an effort
to sow inter-ethnic and sectarian dissention in order
to try to split the country and facilitate Zionist and
American domination in Iraq and throughout the Arab
region. |
The U.S. State Department on Thursday advised American
citizens to defer any unnecessary travel to Israel and
the territories citing growing efforts to thwart recent
diplomatic achievements and the disengagement plan.
Although "terrorist attacks within Israel have
declined in both frequency and associated casualties,"
the travel warning states, "the potential for further
violence remains high." Israeli security services
report that they are investigating between 40 and 60
planned terrorist attacks at any given time, the travel
warning says.
Besides the threat originating from Palestinian militant
groups, the upcoming Israeli pullout from the entire
Gaza Strip and four settlements in northern Samaria
are also cited as a potential source of danger. The
disengagement "could lead to violence in Israel
by settler groups."
"Settlers are reportedly planning
acts of civil disobedience and other protests that at
best will be severely disruptive and at worst may result
in physical confrontations leading to violence,"
the State Department warning states.
Furthermore, the U.S. government has
received information indicating that American interests
within Israel could be the focus of terrorist attacks.
For these reasons, the State Department urges U.S.
citizens in Israel to remain vigilant while traveling
and those in the Gaza Strip to exit immediately.
"Overall conditions of lawlessness prevail"
in the Gaza Strip, the travel warning states, "Israeli
military operations continue, and areas of violent conflict
shift rapidly and unpredictably." |
An explosion at an
outdoor bazaar popular with tourists in Cairo's old
city yesterday killed up to four people and wounded
around 18 others. One witness said a man on a motorcycle
set off a bomb in the middle of a group of foreigners.
The blast - the first attack targeting foreigners in
the Egyptian capital in more than seven years - was
near the al-Azhar mosque; the wounded included more
than 10 Egyptians, two Americans, two Turks, two Italians,
two French citizens and a Briton, the health ministry
said. Two of the dead were believed to be a French woman
and an American man.
The blast rocked al-Moski street, a narrow lane of
tourist shops and clothes sellers - often crammed with
foreigners and Egyptian shoppers - near the main bazaar
of Khan al-Khalili.
Rabab Rifaat, an Egyptian woman who was shopping in
a store several yards from the blast, said she heard
"a boom, a horrible sound. Everyone started running".
She then saw a head flying through
the air. A large, organised tour group was in
the street, buying items at a market when the explosion
went off, she said. Six or seven people were seen lying
on the ground afterwards and an Egyptian man ran with
burns on his back and his clothes torn, Ms Rifaat said.
It was unclear if those on the ground were dead or wounded. |
CAIRO, April 8 (Xinhuanet)
-- Four people were killed and 18 others wounded in a
deadly blast in the Egyptian capital on Thursday, which
analysts say was not an accident but a sabotage aimed
at Egypt's social stability and national economy.
With no group having claimed responsibility
so far, police are working hard to look into the assault
and determine its cause.
Initial reports said the explosion might be traced to
a bomb thrown by a man on a motorcycle. If confirmed,
analysts here say, this will lead to an assumption that
the attack was probably premeditated.
One of the major objectives of the Egyptian extremist
groups has for long been devastating Egypt's tourism industry
by scaring away foreign tourists.
In an interview with Xinhua,
political analyst Azzem Tarek noted that Thursday's blast
was a result of regional instability and intensified domestic
contradiction.
Some countries, in the name of anti-terror
campaign or democracy, use force to violate international
laws and interfere with other countries' internal affairs,
which is in the fact futile in promoting anti-terror efforts
but instead, putting a premium on the spreading of terrorism,
said Tarek.
It is true that the slow economic development and democratic
process in some Arab countries have given terrorists an
excuse for launching attacks, but the major root cause
for mounting terrorist activities is misusing or excessive
using of force in dealing with problems arisen in international
relations, said Tarek.
He said the US-led military operations in Afghanistan
and Iraq opened the Pandora's box which triggered a spate
of terrorism prevalence across the world, especially in
the Middle East.
The intensified social contradiction in Egypt is another
factor, he said.
Like most of the terror attacks in the 1990s, Thursday's
explosion apparently targeted foreign tourists,"
said Saber Rabie, a professor of political science at
Cairo University.
It was the second attack against tourists in Egypt in
six months. Last October, three car bombs exploded almost
simultaneously outside the Taba Hilton Hotel and two tourists
camps in the Sinai peninsula.
"They (the extremists) wanted to destroy the national
economy by devastating one of its pillars: tourism industry,"
said Rabie.
The Cairo blast occurred near an open-air market in
Cairo's Old City, which hundreds of tourists visited every
day to buy souvenirs and traditional handicrafts.
Egypt, reputed highly for its ancient relics and sunny
coastlines, earned about 6.1 billion US dollars from tourism
in 2004.
Tourism officials said the Sinai bombings last year
caused a loss of about 200 million dollars for tourism
revenue in 2004, as the number of tourists was reduced
by 200,000 as a result of the attacks.
Mahmoud Amr, a jewelry dealer at a store near the explosion
site, said he was worried by the attack as, like other
terror activities in the past, it may have a negative
impact on his business.
"Of course, I'm worried," he said. "After
the media reports, people around the world surely think
Egypt is a dangerous country."
"When they decide not to come to visit this country,
how can I make a living by selling items to tourists?"
he said.
Egypt's economy is experiencing a hard period of times
witnessed by sluggish development and high unemployment
rate in addition to price hikes. In the past nine months,
prices have jumped up by more than 30 percent.
Such sluggish economy has triggered off the long-accumulated
social problems, said Tarek.
Since last December, the Egyptian opposition parties
have organized several anti-government demonstrations,
demanding the political reform. Such activities are becoming
more and more frequent, arousing concerns over the country's
stability.
Should the Egyptian government fail to find out an appropriate
solution to the economic problem, the country will face
serious social crisis, Tarek said. |
CAIRO, April 8 (Xinhuanet)
-- Egyptian officials on Friday moved to assure foreign
visitors that they are safe in the country, downplaying
the significance of an explosion in Cairo's Old City late
Thursday afternoon.
Egyptian Minister of Tourism Ahmed al-Maghrabi told reporters
that police are working hard to determine the cause of
the blast, saying foreign tourists should not be scared
away from Egypt.
"Incidents like this could turn out to be acts
of one individual," Maghrabi said, adding "people
should not be scared
away from this country."
According to the official, the death toll of the blast
rose to three, including a French woman and a US national.
He said the third victim has not yet been identified,
though some media reports said the third dead was the
bomber himself.
The explosion took place at around 5:00 p.m. (1500
GMT) Thursday in an open-air market close to al-Azhar
mosque, one of the most revered shrines in the Sunni
Muslim world.
No group has claimed responsibility so far.
Meanwhile, the US embassy in Cairo on Friday warned
its citizens against visiting places teeming with tourists.
"All residents of and visitors to Egypt should
be especially vigilant and avoid areas of Cairo where
large numbers of tourists congregate," said a statement
from the embassy.
Thursday's explosion is the first fatal attack against
foreign tourists in more than seven years in Cairo and
the second major attack in Egypt in six months.
Last October, three car bombs exploded almost simultaneously
outside the Taba Hilton hotel and two tourist camps
55 km farther south.
Egyptian investigators found eight Egyptians and a
Palestinian were behind the bombings but denied they
belonged to a larger terror organization.
Some people said the incident has
reminded the Egyptians of the tumultuous 1990s when
Islamic extremists staged a series of attacks across
the country. |
LONDON, April 8 (Xinhuanet)
-- Britain's intelligence chiefs have admitted for the
first time that claims they made about Saddam Hussein's
weapons of mass destruction were wrong.
"We are concerned at the
amount of intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction
that has now had to be withdrawn," said the
Intelligence and Security Committee Wednesday.
The committee also referred to the Butler inquiry, which
described the MI6 agent behind the claim that Iraq could
deploy chemical weapons within 45 minutes as open to "serious
doubts" and "seriously flawed."
The admission was made in an 2004-2005 annual report
of the committee presented to the Parliament early this
week.
Late last year the intelligence committee reviewed key
judgments on Iraq's capacity of weapons of mass destruction
and programs behind the government's now discredited dossier
published in September 2002, the committee disclosed.
The committee blames the lack
of communication between ministers and the Secret Intelligence
Service, MI6. It noted that ministerial cabinet
committee on the intelligence services has not met since
December 2003, and even that meeting was the first in
more than seven years. "Regular meetings would "enable
collective discussion by ministers of intelligence priorities
and developments," it said.
At the moment, it added, "ministers discuss intelligence
only in the context of crisis or single-issue meetings."
Three MI6 agents were "withdrawn" after the
invasion of Iraq, among them, there is one who claimed
that Iraq was still making chemical and biological weapons. |
From the BBC's capitulation
to the Israeli government, to the rush to eulogise a
deeply reactionary Pope, pressure on the media is leading
to insidious new state propaganda.
Can you imagine the BBC apologising to a rogue regime
that practises racism and ethnic cleansing; that has
"effectively legalised the use of torture"
(Amnesty); that holds international law in contempt,
having defied hundreds of UN resolutions and built an
apartheid wall in defiance of the International Court
of Justice; that has demolished thousands of people's
homes and given its soldiers the right to assassinate;
and whose leader was judged "personally responsible"
for the massacre of more than 2,000 people?
Can you imagine the BBC saying sorry to Saddam Hussein's
Iraq, or other official demons, for broadcasting an
uncensored interview with a courageous dissident of
that country, a man who spent 19 years in prison, mostly
in solitary confinement? Of course not.
Yet last month, the BBC apologised "confidentially"
to a regime with such a record, so that its correspondent
would be allowed back, having promised to abide by a
system of censorship that continues to gag the dissident.
The regime is Ariel Sharon's in Israel, whose war crimes,
appalling human rights record and enduring lawlessness
continue to be granted a certificate of exemption not
only by the US-dominated west but by respectable journalism.
The Blair government's collusion with the Sharon gang
is reflected in the BBC's "balanced" coverage
of a repression described by Nelson Mandela as "the
greatest moral issue of the age". Simon Wilson,
the correspondent made to apologise for a proper, important
and long-overdue interview with Mordechai Vanunu, will
know better in future.
That is hardly new. Pressure applied to the BBC by
the Israel "lobby" has been so successful
that, as a Glasgow University study revealed, many viewers
of television news in Britain believe the Jewish "settlers",
whose illegal and often violent squatting on Palestinian
land has undermined hopes of real peace, are actually
Palestinians. What is new is the extent to which insidious
state propaganda has penetrated sections of the media
whose independence has been, until recently, accepted
by much of the public.
To appreciate this, one applies the Law of Opposites
and the Law of Silence. The Law of Opposites can be
applied to almost any news broadcast these days. The
long-awaited death of the Pope is a case in point. By
reversing the river of drivel about him - "the
people's Pope" (almost universal), "the man
who changed history" (Bush), "a shining example
. . . revered across all faiths and none" (Blair)
- you have the truth. This deeply reactionary man held
back history and destroyed lives all over the world
with his fanatical opposition to basic decencies such
as birth control. He called this "abominable",
spitting the word out, and so condemned millions, from
starving infants to babies born with Aids. In Latin
America, he publicly humiliated courageous priests whose
"preference for the poor" dared to cross the
medieval hierarchy he upheld. The claim that he "brought
down communism" is also the opposite of the truth.
As I learned when I reported his papal return to his
native Poland in 1979, the Catholic Church in that country,
whose conservatism he embodied, was a scheming bedfellow
of the Stalinist regime until the wind changed.
The Law of Opposites can be applied to the current
government/media fashion for saving Africa known as
the Year of Africa. The BBC has hosted a special conference
about this, just as Blair will host the G8 summit in
July with "eradicating Africa's poverty" as
its theme. This is "Britain's big chance",
wrote Polly Toynbee in the Guardian, "to engage
the rich with debt relief, aid, fair trade, carbon emissions
and Aids-crippled Africa". She added: "On
debt and trade, Labour has done well."
The opposite is true. Like the rest of the impoverished
world, African countries qualify for Gordon Brown's
enlightenment only if they agree to impose on their
people the deadly strictures of the World Trade Organisation,
the IMF and the World Bank - such as the destruction
of tariffs protecting sustainable economies and the
privatising of water and other natural resources. At
the same time, they are "encouraged" to buy
weapons from British arms companies, especially if they
have a civil war under way or there is a tension with
a neighbour.
The Law of Silence is applied to crimes committed not
by official demons - Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic
et al - but by western governments. An Australian Broadcasting
Corporation correspondent, Eric Campbell, recently promoting
a book of his adventures, described the broadcast "coverage"
of the war in Iraq. "Live satellite is a travesty,"
he said. "Basically, if [the reporters] are on
satellite, they haven't seen anything. The correspondent
is read the stories from the wire and told that is what
they have to say on air - that's in the majority of
cases."
That may help to explain why the horror of the American
attack on Fallujah has yet to be reported by all the
major broadcasters. By contrast, independent journalists
such as Dahr Jamail have reported doctors describing
the slaughter by US marines of civilians carrying white
flags. This slaughter was videotaped, including the
killing of most of a family of 12. One witness described
how his mother had been shot in the head and his father
through the heart, and how a six-year-old boy standing
over his dead parents, crying, was shot dead. None of
this has appeared on British television. When asked,
a BBC spokesperson said: "The conduct of coalition
forces has been examined at length by BBC programmes."
That is demonstrably untrue.
Similarly, the Law of Silence applies to the likely
American attack on Iran. Scott Ritter, the UN weapons
inspector who in 1999 disclosed that Saddam Hussein
had no weapons of mass destruction and was thereafter
virtually blackballed, has recently revealed that, according
to a Pentagon official, Iran will be attacked in June.
Again, Ritter has been ignored by most of the media.
As Bush's and Blair's "democracy is on the march
in the Middle East" propaganda is reported uncritically,
the Law of Silence applies to the Bush regime's campaign
to subvert and overthrow Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. President
Chavez is arguably the most democratically elected leader
in Latin America, if not the world (nine elections),
and his own "preference for the poor" has
diverted the proceeds of the world's fourth-biggest
oil supplier to the majority of Venezuelans.
Last year, I did a long interview with Jeremy Bowen,
a BBC reporter I admire, for a programme about war correspondents.
Although I guessed that what was really wanted were
my tales of journalistic derring-do on the front line,
I set about describing how journalists often produced
veiled propaganda for western power - by accepting "our"
version or by omitting the unpalatable, such as the
atrocities of western state terrorism: a major taboo.
I emphasised that this censorship was not conspiratorial,
but often unconscious, even subliminal; such was our
training and grooming. My contribution did not appear. |
LAUREL, Del. - A man wearing a
bulletproof vest killed two people and wounded four
others Thursday during a shooting rampage in Maryland
and Delaware before police arrested him, authorities
said.
Police said the suspect also carjacked a vehicle, shot
and killed a dog and rammed a SUV into a chain link
fence and over a utility meter during the crime spree.
Delaware State Police Cpl. Jeff Oldham said authorities
had determined a motive for the attacks, but were not
releasing details. Police said the suspect, Allison
L. Norman, 22, did not know any of the victims.
"Quite a morning for a little rural town,"
said Laurel's mayor, John Shwed.
Norman was charged with first-degree murder and handgun
violations, officials said. He failed Wednesday to appear
in court for a motions hearing on four earlier firearms
charges. Clerk Mark Bowen said the court issued a $10,000
bench warrant for Norman.
The attacks started in Laurel, where three men were
shot, and continued across the border in Maryland, where
the suspect fled on foot before being caught. The three
other people were shot in Salisbury, Md., including
one who died, Oldham said.
Two people were shot at an apartment building in Laurel,
and another at a nearby shopping center. "It was
just poom, poom, poom, poom. It just scared me so bad,"
said Matilda Smith, a resident of the apartment building.
She saw a young man covered in blood fall off an air-conditioning
unit he had been sitting on, about 20 feet from her
door step. "To me, what I could see was nothing
but blood; it shook me up," she said. "I stood
there and couldn't believe what I was seeing."
At the shopping center, a trail of blood led down a
road. Witnesses said a man was shot on side of the road,
then staggered along the storefronts before collapsing.
The mayor said this victim was apparently shot while
trying to hitch a ride from the suspect as he fled the
scene.
In Salisbury, Md., he allegedly carjacked a vehicle
and was involved in an accident, police said. Maryland
State Police said the suspect was wearing the bulletproof
vest and carrying a handgun when he was caught in Salisbury.
"He was obviously prepared for a confrontation,"
said Col. Thomas Hutchins, the Maryland State Police
superintendent.
Of the four wounded, two were listed in very serious
condition.
Norman's girlfriend, Ashley Dean of Seaford, Del.,
told WBOC-TV in Salisbury that she didn't believe her
boyfriend was involved.
"Why would he do this?"
Dean said. "Why would he do this? He has no reason
to." |
CANTON, Texas - Schools
in Canton, Texas, were in lockdown Thursday as police
hunted for a man with a hit list who shot and wounded
a football coach Thursday at the high school his son
attended.
The suspect, Jeffrey Doyle Robertson, 45, was carried
out of the woods on a stretcher a few hours later, after
his truck was found abandoned near a golf course outside
Canton. His condition was not immediately disclosed.
Gary Joe Kinne, who is also the Canton High School
(search) athletic director, was shot in the school's
field house with an AK-47 (search) rifle, according
to the state's Homeland Security office. Kinne was airlifted
to a hospital in nearby Tyler. Authorities were not
releasing his condition but his father told FOX News
around 2 p.m. Thursday afternoon that Kinne was out
of surgery, was conscious and was in critical condition.
The Homeland Security office
identified the shooter as Robertson, who fled
the scene in a 2004 black Dodge pickup. Robertson had
other weapons in his truck and had made statements that
he had a hit list and would not be taken alive, spokeswoman
Sophie Yanez said.
KDFW reported that after the suspect exited the truck,
he called a friend on a cell phone and said he was going
to try to commit suicide by slitting his wrists in a
nearby wooded area. Those reports are so far unconfirmed.
Police were not clear on the motive, but authorities
have received reports that Robertson and the coach had
an "altercation" sometime after Kinne took
over the program in 2003, said Jasmine Andresen, a Texas
Department of Public Safety officer. Robertson's son
was on the team.
Robertson's truck apparently was found abandoned near
a golf course off Interstate 20 between Tyler and Canton
about two hours after the shooting, authorities said.
"The Sheriff's Department, DPS and Texas Rangers
are all out here, but I haven't seen anything,"
said Justin Hill, who works at the Garden Valley Golf
Course's pro shop in Lindale. "No one's running
around here with an AK-47." [...] |
TSA
slated for dismantling
White House asks agency's director to step down |
By Sara Kehaulani Goo
MSNBC
11:32 p.m. ET April 7, 2005 |
The Transportation Security Administration,
once the flagship agency in the nation's $20 billion
effort to protect air travelers, is now slated for dismantling.
The latest sign came yesterday
when the Bush administration asked David M. Stone, the
TSA's director, to step down in June, according to aviation
and government sources. Stone is the third top
administrator to leave the three-year-old agency, which
was swiftly created in the chaos and patriotism following
the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The TSA absorbed
divisions of other agencies such as Federal Aviation
Administration only to find itself now the victim of
a massive reorganization of the Department of Homeland
Security.
The TSA has been plagued by operational missteps, public
relations blunders and criticism of its performance
from both the public and legislators. Its
"No Fly" list has mistakenly snared senators.
Its security screeners have been arrested for stealing
from luggage, and its passenger pat-downs have set off
an outcry from women.
Under provisions of President Bush's 2006 budget proposal
favored by Congress, the TSA will lose its signature
programs in the reorganization of Homeland Security.
The agency will likely become just manager of airport
security screeners -- a responsibility that itself could
diminish as private screening companies increasingly
seek a comeback at U.S. airports.
The agency's very existence, in fact, remains an open
question, given that the legislation creating the Department
of Homeland Security contains a clause permitting the
elimination of TSA as "distinct entity" after
November 2004. "TSA, at the end of the day,
is going to look more like the Postal Service,"
said Paul C. Light, a public service professor at New
York University and a Brookings Institution scholar
who has tracked the agency since its birth in February
2002. Light calls the TSA "one of the federal government's
greatest successes of the past half century," and
likens it to the creation of the National Aeronautics
and Space Administration in the late 1950s, which was
also born amid great public excitement to serve an urgent
national need.
More narrow role
But TSA's time in the spotlight is over and it should
now step back to serve a more narrow role, Light said.
"It's a labor-intensive delivery organization that
is not going to be making many public policy decisions.
Its basic job is to train and deploy screeners,"
he said.
Bush administration officials say they
don't expect the demise of TSA, adding they will know
little about the future of the agency until new Homeland
Security Sec. Michael Chertoff completes his review
of the department, which will likely prompt a major
overhaul.
"TSA has taken significant steps to enhance the
nation's transportation and aviation security over the
course of the past two years and TSA continues to have
the confidence, not only of nation's air travelers,
but of departmental leadership, to continue in this
important mission," said Homeland Security spokesman
Brian Roehrkasse. "Secretary Chertoff is open to
adjustments in the way that DHS does business but will
not advocate for or against any change until a thorough
review of the changes are complete." The review
is expected to be completed in May or June. The government
has pumped more money into airline security than any
other Homeland Security effort. Much of it goes toward
salaries for more than 45,000 security screeners at
over 400 airports. Travelers know TSA mostly by its
operations at the airport security checkpoint, a highly
public role that magnifies the agency's smallest blunders
and often forces it to have to defend itself. [...]
Bit by bit, however, the agency's responsibilities
have steadily dwindled amid a succession of directors.
Many of its operations have been folded into the Department
of Homeland Security, which it joined in 2003. TSA scrapped
early plans to create a broad law-enforcement division.
The air marshals, who lobbied to leave the agency, were
transferred to the department's Immigration and Customs
Enforcement division -- to the dismay of TSA leaders.
Next, the explosives unit left. Now, the agency's high-tech
research labs in Atlantic City are also going to another
division of the department. [...]
'Selectee' list
Stone, 52, believes the exercise shows that TSA still
serves a critical role in the nation's intelligence
network. He has told new Homeland
Security Sec. Michael Chertoff that he hopes the agency
will keep this role. Airlines have complained
that hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent passengers,
and even pilots, have been added to TSA's "selectee"
list or that some names are confused with those on the
"No Fly" list, subjecting travelers to delays
and hassles at the airport.
At a February meeting between
TSA and 18 major carriers, airline representatives were
asked who had crew members on the list and "they
all raised their hands," said one airline source
who was present. Airline officials said crew
members on the list must be stripped of their badges
and cannot perform their duties, according to TSA rules.
Stone said "one or two" pilots who are approved
to carry guns in the cockpit have been put on the selectee
list in the past year. He said he recalls a "handful"
of other pilots who have been added to the selectee
list because they were involved in "outrageous"
incidents. He cited an incident
last year in which an intoxicated pilot punched a patron
at a restaurant and threatened him.
"We take all of these incidents seriously and
we work to resolve them quickly because we know that
people's livelihoods are at stake," said TSA spokesman
Mark Hatfield. [...] |
Resistance remains
a national calling for all Iraqis in the face of US
designs, writes Mousa Al-Husseini.
April 7, 2005 - On 11 April 2003, Iraqi resistance
set out to free Iraq. Since then, it managed not only
to restore pride to all Iraqis and Arabs, but also to
make Bush's racist administration change tack repeatedly.
But the conflict in Iraq is not just between the occupation
forces and the resistance. The picture is quite murky,
for someone is plotting behind the scenes. Some individuals
or groups are murdering hundreds of innocent people.
These individuals and groups are not part of the resistance.
They are foisted upon the scene to tarnish and discredit
the valiant resistance. Let me elaborate.
It did not take long for Iraqi resistance to spring
into action. Less than two weeks after the war was over,
resistance began to trickle, developing into a flood.
At some point, over 40 operations were reported in a
single day. Unlike most liberation movements that take
years of painstaking planning, of indoctrinating supporters,
recruiting militants and moving from rural to urban
areas, Iraqi resistance was born strong, fully-fledged,
and ready to take on the enemy in the heart of Iraqi
cities. Also, the Iraqi resistance depended on purely
domestic capabilities rather than on foreign support.
The Americans often claim that Iraqi resistance is
nothing more than reckless operations by militants from
outside Iraq. Neither the occupation forces nor their
local friends have ever been able to prove that Iraqi
resistance is not homegrown. Surely, there is nothing
wrong with non-Iraqi Arab militants joining the ranks
of the resistance. Thousands of Iraqis have fought along
their Arab brethren across the region in the past. When
Italy invaded Libya in 1908, Shia ulema issued an edict
urging Iraqis to go to Libya and wage jihad.
Some people maintain that the resistance is nothing
more than an opportunistic campaign mounted by the disgruntled
cronies of a defunct regime. This can not be true. Opportunists
and mercenaries are self-serving by nature. The first
impulse of the opportunists of the old regime was to
turn coat and jump into the occupation's bandwagon.
The only Baathists who joined the resistance are the
ones who are independent-minded, the ones who still
believe in the purity of early Baathist tradition --
tradition once maintained by men such as Fouad Al-Rikabi,
Iyad Thabit and Abdul-Wahhab Al-Ghariri. Many people
in Iraq want the Americans out. Most of the public to
start with, as well as patriotic Baathists, Marxists,
Nasserists and pan-Arabists, all of whom are involved
in the resistance in one way or another.
The Americas were shocked to see resistance on such
a scale. Their first reaction was to claim that it was
of a sectarian nature, confined in what they dubbed
"the Sunni Triangle". This was laughable,
for it was not long before Shia followers of Al-Sadr
launched an insurgence in Najaf and the south. Many
Shias are known to have fought and died in Falluja.
Whenever major terrorist operations happened, it was
mostly with US knowledge or involvement. Israel's
Mossad planned major terror operations in Iraq, recruiting
2,000 mercenaries before the war and sending them to
various Iraqi cities to offer protection and support
to the occupation forces. The mercenaries mount horrific
attacks, and these are soon blamed on Abu Mosaab Al-Zarqawi,
a shadowy figure who I have reason to believe was killed
in the second week of hostilities. If dead, Al-Zarqawi
cannot refute US allegations. If alive, he is perhaps
in a US base somewhere. For a full review of this argument
readers may consult my book, Iraqi Resistance and US
Counter-Terror.
The Americans kill and maim, destroy entire cities,
just to terrorise inhabitants and discourage them from
abetting the resistance. They did so in Najaf, Falluja,
Samarra, Talafar and the Sadr neighbourhood in Baghdad.
If terror is defined as "military attacks against
civilians to achieve political goals", there is
no doubt in my mind as to who are the true terrorists
in Iraq. They sent lackeys, who served as ministers
and top officials in the Interim Governing Council and
interim government, on a spree of theft and graft. Dozens
of American-imposed agents amassed incredible fortunes
over the past two years. The elections were a US ploy.
The Iraqis went to the elections because they were told
that elections were a peaceful means for ending occupation.
The Basic Law for the Administration of the State mentions
that a legitimate government is entitled to ask the
occupation forces to leave.
I believe that the Iraqi resistance will continue,
particularly in the south. The Iraqis know that the
Americans did not come as liberators, but as occupiers.
They know that Al- Zarqawi is just a ghost. When asked
about the recent bombing in their city, many inhabitants
in Al-Hilla blamed the Americans, saying that the blast
was caused by a bomb planted professionally and detonated
by remote control, not by a suicide bomber as the authorities
claimed. Another US ploy is that of staging anti-violence
protests. In these protests, every participant is paid
$10 and given a free meal. Buying protesters is, if
you ask me, a sign of guilt.
Religious figures told the public that elections would
be the first step to the end of occupation. Soon after
the elections these figures dropped any mention of the
occupation. Freedom-seeking Iraqis now have no other
option but to continue the resistance. The US has its
own agenda in Iraq. It claimed that Iraq had weapons
of mass destruction and that the Iraqi government may
offer these weapons to terrorists targeting the US,
along the lines of 11 September attacks. These were
false accusations, as now we all know. The
US simply wants to destroy Iraq so as to make Israel
safer. |
There was probably
a sigh of relief in the US embassy in Baghdad and in
the White House when Iraq's National Assembly finally
elected a speaker on Sunday, setting the stage for Wednesday's
installation of a new president. Haggling between the
main winners of the January 30 election over the division
of the political spoils has dragged on for weeks. Just
last week the assembly's second attempt to choose a
speaker ended in a debacle with politicians exchanging
bitter public recriminations before the TV cameras were
finally turned off.
By contrast, assembly members were on their best behaviour
for Wednesday's formal proceedings. Jalal Talabani,
a major figure in the Kurdistan Alliance (KA), was chosen
as president. The KA, which is dominated by Talibani's
Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and rival Kurdistan
Democratic Party (KDP), took just over 25 percent of
the vote in January. Adel Abdul Mahdi, a leading figure
in the Shiite-dominated United Iraqi Alliance (UIA)
that won nearly 50 percent of the vote, and outgoing
president Ghazi Yawar were installed as vice presidents.
Yawar, a Sunni, whose party won less than two percent
of the vote after Sunnis overwhelmingly heeded calls
for a boycott, was the immediate cause of last week's
fiasco. He turned down the post of assembly speaker
at the last minute and demanded a higher political price,
upsetting the precarious balance that had been negotiated
between the major parties. The UIA and KA, and presumably
behind the scenes top US officials, had been attempting
to find a Sunni politician to provide a façade
of unity.
In the end, it was a process of elimination. Of the
handful of Sunni assembly members, most have associations
with the ousted Baathist regime and were vetoed by the
UIA. Most of the remainder were UIA members and thus
were unacceptable to the KA. When Yawar refused the
job, it left only Hachim Hassani-an American-trained
economist who spent two decades in the US before returning
to Iraq after the invasion. His party-the Iraqi Islamic
Party-expelled him last year when he refused resign
his position as industry minister to protest against
the US military's destruction of the city of Fallujah.
The assembly session of Wednesday was replete with
empty rhetoric about the beginnings of a new, united
democratic Iraq. "This is a new Iraq-an Iraq that
elects a Kurd to be president and a former Arab president
as his deputy. What more could the world want from us?"
the speaker Hassani declared. The US embassy was obviously
delighted with its handiwork. An American official told
the Los Angeles Times: "We thought it was a very
good day, and [Iraqis] should be very pleased."
But tensions were not far below the surface. Following
the carefully scripted presidential election, a sharp
exchange broke out after Shiite deputies accused the
outgoing administration of interim prime minister Ayad
Allawi of accelerating the installation of former Baathist
military officers and officials in top posts. Several
called for Allawi to be censured and for all appointments
made after the January 30 election to be invalidated.
Allawi, who was not at the assembly session, was defended
by his deputy, Barham Saleh, a Kurd, who declared: "We
should not treat the government as a defendant here."
Then, as reported in the Wall Street Journal, he "blamed
the US, which effectively controls Iraq's security institutions."
This astonishing admission not only demonstrates the
puppet character of the new government, but the absurdity
of US denunciations of the former dictatorship. Having
ousted Saddam Hussein, the US is now increasingly relying
on Baathist officers and officials to carry on the work
of the old regime-the ruthless suppression of any opposition.
Formally, the presidential commission, comprising the
president and two vice-presidents, had two weeks to
choose a prime minister and a cabinet for the assembly
to approve. In fact, most of the arrangements had already
been put in place as part of the complex negotiations
between the UIA and KA over the filling of political
posts. Kurdish leaders have been determined to exploit
to the hilt their effective veto over the initial presidential
choices, which require a two-thirds, rather than a simple
majority.
Yesterday, leading UIA figure and head of the fundamentalist
Dawa Party, Ibrahim al Jafaari, was named prime minister.
All the top cabinet posts-foreign affairs, defence,
interior, finance and oil-have already been shared out
between the competing ethnic and religious factions,
but are yet to be announced. Control of the key oil
ministry and its potentially lucrative benefits has
been a bitter point of contention between Kurdish and
Shiite leaders.
A house of cards
There is no guarantee that this laboriously constructed
political house of cards will last for long. Its chief
task is to formulate a new constitution by August, which,
after approval by referendum, paves the way for fresh
national elections early next year. But the drafting
of a constitution will only raise in a sharper form
all of the conflicting political interests that have
held up the process of selecting a government.
None of the rival ethnic and
religious factions has any solid base of support.
All the major parties supported
the illegal US-led invasion of Iraq and, in some cases,
were on the US payroll for more than a decade.
Incapable of meeting the genuine democratic aspirations
of the Iraqi people or solving the country's horrific
social crisis, these groups have deliberately stirred
up sectarian and ethnic divisions as a means of shoring
up support. The UIA and KA have each promoted the illusion
that the US occupation presented an opportunity for
the Shiites and Kurds, respectively, to end historic
subordination to the Sunni minority.
The UIA and KA do not represent the interests of working
people but competing factions of a thoroughly venal
Iraqi bourgeoisie. The newly installed president Jalal
Talabani is a case in point. Under the banner of "Kurdish
independence", he has manoeuvred and conspired
for decades with Iraq's neighbours, with the imperialist
powers including the US, and even with the Baathist
regime, in an effort to carve out a dominant role for
the PUK in north of Iraq.
The US-British imposition of a "no-fly zone"
on northern Iraq following 1990-91 Gulf War enabled
the PUK and KPD to establish an unprecedented measure
of autonomy. When the two rivals were not fighting each
other over territory and the profitable business of
oil smuggling, they were scheming with foreign intelligence
agencies, including the CIA and Mossad. The two parties
fully backed the US invasion calculating that Washington's
backing was essential for securing Kurdish autonomy
or even independence.
The issue has been at the centre of the latest political
wrangling between the UIA and KA. The Shiite establishment
calculates that it can exploit the country's Shiite
majority to assume political dominance throughout the
country and is hostile to any concessions to Kurdish
autonomy. The KA has sought to maximise the powers of
the Kurdish regional government, including control over
the Kurdish peshmerga militia.
A major bone of contention has been control over the
northern city of Kirkuk and nearby oilfields, which
are estimated to contain 6 percent of the world's oil
reserves. The KA is insisting that the region be incorporated
into the autonomous Kurdish region. Bitter disputes
have already broken out on the Kirkuk provincial council
between the Kurdish majority and Arab, Turkmen and Assyrian
minorities, who are challenging the legitimacy of the
recent election.
Far from settling these disputes,
the installation of a new government in Baghdad has
simply set the stage for the next round of conflict.
At the insistence of Kurdish parties, the so-called
Transitional Administrative Law, drawn up by former
US proconsul Paul Bremer, provides the KA with an effective
veto over the government and the constitution. As president,
Talibani can overrule any legislation passed in the
national assembly, which then requires a two-thirds
majority to pass it into law. The draft constitution
can be rejected if a two-thirds majority in just three
provinces vote against the enabling referendum.
The UIA and KA only agreed on the composition of a
new government when it became evident that the protracted
dispute was rapidly undermining what little credibility
the parties had as a result of the election. The Shiite
parties in particular had promoted the election as a
means of ending the US occupation and improving living
standards. Two months on, no government had been formed,
let alone addressed the needs and aspirations of Iraqis.
Late last week the Shiite religious establishment in
Najaf and Karbala began to sound the alarm bells and
to threaten mass protests if there was any further delay
in forming a government. Ali Rubaii, spokesman for Ayatollah
Ishaq Fayadh, told the Washington Post: "If there
was a choice for protests, the protests wouldn't be
typical. They would be protests in the millions. In
other countries, thousands of protesters can overthrow
a government."
Mohammed Hussein Hakim, a spokesman for Ayatollah Mohammed
Saeed Hakim, warned: "The street [ordinary Iraqis]
is uncomfortable. The people have paid a price for the
sake of democracy. It is not possible to leave their
sacrifices behind." A senior ayatollah in Karbala,
Mohammed Taqi Mudarassi, also underscored the highly
volatile situation: "The political crisis will
continue, and the result will perhaps be that Shiites
will use the weapon of millions protesting. The street
only needs a match."
These comments only underscore the irresolvable problems
that confront the new government which will not be able
to live up to the illusions and hopes that were cultivated
among ordinary Iraqis during the elections campaign.
The continuing armed resistance against US forces and
their Iraqi accomplices is just one indication of the
fact that many Iraqis regard any government formed under
US occupation as an illegitimate puppet regime.
In an article entitled "The Gates of Hell are
open in Iraq" in the British-based Guardian on
April 1, Jawad al-Halisi, secretary general of the Iraqi
National Foundation Congress, wrote: "The US-British
occupation of Iraq is poisoning all political processes
in my country and across the Middle East. The elections
held under the control of the occupying forces in January
were neither free nor fair. Instead of being a step
towards solving Iraq's problems, they have been used
to prolong foreign rule over the Iraqi people. Only
when the occupiers withdraw from the country can Iraq
take the first secure steps towards peace and stability."
These sentiments are certainly broadly felt inside
Iraq itself and point to deepening opposition to the
US occupation and its Iraqi collaborators. |
WASHINGTON - The US Army is considering
shorter tours of duty for troops deployed in Iraq and
Afghanistan if improving conditions allow commanders
to scale down the size of the US force there, a top
general said.
Lieutenant General Franklin Hagenbeck, deputy chief
of staff for personnel, said the army has studied six
and nine month tours and found that returning soldiers
and their families would prefer them to the punishing
12 month tours they now face.
"Soldiers will tell you they can take a deep breath
for six months and they can maintain that level of focus
and energy level for six months. In a 12 month tour
they can do it, but it takes a greater toll," Hagenbeck
told reporters.
Shorter tours of duty in combat zones would be more
appealing to worried parents of prospective recruits,
as well as to soldier's spouses, he said. About 53 percent
of the army's active duty force is married, he noted.
The 12-month tours will continue as
long as the situation in Iraq or Afghanistan requires
the current level of forces, now at about 145,000, the
general said.
"But what I would tell you is that we think multiple,
shorter tours is the ideal way to go ultimately,"
he said.
"If General Casey and General Abizaid make decisions
that would cause the numbers in Iraq and Afghanistan
to shrink, we have run some models that would allow
us to consider short tours," he said.
General George Casey, the commander of US forces in
Iraq, said last month he should be able to make fairly
significant reductions in US force levels by March.
Abizaid, head of the US Central Command, also has expressed
cautious optimism about conditions in Iraq since the
January 30 elections, and his commanders have said planning
for possible reductions should begin in earnest this
summer. [...] |
Fewer than half the
freshmen who enter Oakland public high schools -- just
48 of every 100 -- stick around long enough to graduate.
That's the devastating news from a recent California
study by the Harvard University Civil Rights Project
and the Urban Institute Education Policy Center in Washington,
D.C., whose researchers described high schools with
graduation rates lower than 60 percent as "dropout
factories.''
In the Bay Area, the study listed graduation rates
for Oakland and San Francisco. At The Chronicle's request,
the researchers also ran the numbers for seven other
large Bay Area districts: South San Francisco, Santa
Rosa High School, Novato, San Jose, West Contra Costa,
Hayward and Mount Diablo.
Oakland's graduation rate was substantially lower than
all of them.
The study estimated that dropouts cost the state $14
billion a year in lost wages, crime and jail time.[...]
In Oakland, 68 percent of the 50,400 public school
students are poor enough to qualify for the federal
lunch program. Their odds of getting a diploma are worse
than the 50-50 chance of winning a coin toss.
And that makes Oakland schools emblematic of one of
society's most vexing dilemmas: How to educate children
growing up amid violence, poverty, drugs, single parenthood,
teen pregnancy and unemployment. [...]
State education officials admit that their own dropout
numbers are based on guesswork and have urged the Legislature
to implement a student-tracking system that could tell
when students enroll anywhere in the state. But that
system is at least five years away.[...] |
As a student you have
the right to request that your private information is
not released to military recruiters and others. Complete
this Opt-Out form and give it to your Principal or School |
ZHANJIANG, China - When the flagship
of the U.S. Navy's 7th Fleet came into view on a recent
Monday afternoon, a Chinese naval band onshore quickly
began playing as two rows of Chinese sailors snapped
into formation and workers hurriedly finished tacking
down a red carpet.
The command ship, the Blue Ridge, answered with music
from its own band and raised a Chinese flag below Old
Glory.
But the most apt symbolism in the
stagecraft of the ceremonial visit came when the two
navies staged a tug-of-war - evoking their emerging
competition in East Asia.
While the American military is consumed with wars in
Iraq and Afghanistan, global terrorism, and the threat
of nuclear proliferation in North Korea and Iran, China
is presenting a new and strategically different security
concern to America in the western Pacific, as well as
to Japan and Taiwan, Pentagon and military officials
say.
China, these officials say, has smartly analyzed the
strengths and weaknesses of the American military and
focused its growing defense spending on weapons systems
that could exploit the perceived weaknesses in case
the United States ever needs to respond to fighting
in Taiwan.
This rapid military modernization is the major reason
President George W. Bush has warned the European Union
not to lift its arms embargo against China.
A decade ago, U.S. military planners dismissed the
threat of a Chinese attack against Taiwan as a 160-kilometer
infantry swim. Now, the Pentagon
believes that China has purchased or built enough amphibious
assault ships, submarines, fighter jets and short-range
missiles to pose an immediate threat to Taiwan
and to any American force that
might come to Taiwan's aid.
Even the most hawkish officials at the Pentagon do
not believe China is preparing for an imminent invasion
of Taiwan. Nor do analysts believe
China is any match for the United States military.
But as neighboring North Korea is erratically trying
to play the nuclear card, China is quietly challenging
America's reach in the western Pacific by concentrating
strategically on conventional forces.
"They are building their force to deter and delay
our ability to intervene in a Taiwan crisis," said
Eric McVadon, a former military attaché at the
U.S. Embassy in Beijing. "What they have done is
cleverly develop some capabilities that have the prospect
of attacking our niche vulnerabilities."
Japan, America's closest ally in East Asia, and China's
rival for regional dominance, is also watching China's
buildup. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi echoed Bush
by warning Europe against removing the arms embargo.
A think tank affiliated with Japan's Defense Ministry
criticized China's increased military spending and warned
it was rushing to prepare for possible conflict with
Taiwan - an assertion China sharply denied.
The growing friction between Japan
and China, fueled by rising nationalism in both countries,
is just one of the political developments exacerbating
tensions in East Asia.
In March, China passed a controversial new "anti-secession"
law authorizing a military attack if top leaders believe
Taiwan moves too far toward independence - a move that
brought hundreds of thousands of people in Taiwan out
in protest last month.
China's most recent military white paper also alarmed
U.S. policymakers because it mentioned the United States
by name for the first time since 1998. It stated that
the American presence in the region "complicated
security factors."
China, meanwhile, blamed the United States and Japan
for meddling in a domestic Chinese matter when those
two countries recently issued a security statement that
listed peace in Taiwan as a "common strategic objective."
"The potential for a miscalculation or an incident
here has actually increased, just based on the rhetoric
over the past six months to a year," one U.S. intelligence
analyst in Washington said.
At the welcoming ceremony for the Blue Ridge here at
the hometown of China's South Sea Fleet, the American
commanding officer, Captain J. Stephen Maynard, and
his Chinese counterpart, Senior Captain Wen Rulang,
sidestepped questions about the anti-secession law and
military tensions.
Wen, Asked about China's military buildup and how America
should view it, praised the U.S. Navy as the most modern
in the world.
"As for China," he said, "our desire
is to upgrade China's self-defense capabilities."
But in China's view, self-defense involves Taiwan,
which it regards as a breakaway province and which the
United States has, by treaty, suggested it would help
defend. In 1996, when China fired missiles in warning
over the Taiwan Strait prior to Taiwanese elections,
President Bill Clinton responded by sending a battle
group to a position near Taiwan. Then,
China could do nothing about it. Now, analysts say,
it can.
In fact, U.S. carriers responding
to a crisis would now initially have to operate at least
800 kilometers, or 500 miles, from Taiwan, which would
reduce the number of jet fighter sorties they could
launch and cut their loiter time in international airspace
near Taiwan.
This is because China now has a modernizing fleet of
submarines, including new Russian-made nuclear subs
that can fire antiship missiles from a submerged position.
America would first need to subdue these submarines
before moving ships close to Taiwan.
China launched 13 attack submarines between 2002 and
2004, a period when it also built 23 ships that can
ferry armored vehicles and troops across the 160-kilometer-wide
strip of water to Taiwan.
"Their amphibious assault ship
building alone equals the entire U.S. navy shipbuilding
since 2002," said an intelligence official in Washington.
"It definitely represents a significant increase
in overall capacity."
In the worse-case scenario for a Taiwan crisis, any
delay in U.S. carriers reaching the island would mean
that the United States would initially depend on fighter
jets and bombers stationed on Guam and Okinawa, while
Chinese forces could use their amphibious ships to traverse
the narrow Strait. Some U.S. military
analysts believe China could now defeat Taiwan before
America could arrive at the scene. |
The US Senate will
vote no later than July on legislation that would slap
across-the-board tariffs on imports of Chinese goods
unless China agrees to revalue its currency.
The agreement, worked out by the Senate leadership
on Thursday, is the strongest sign yet that Congress
might pass overtly protectionist legislation if the
US trade balance with China continues to deteriorate.
The Senate failed on Wednesday on a 67-33 vote to kill
the legislation, offered by Charles Schumer, Democratic
senator, which would give China six months to revalue
the renminbi or face a 27.5 per cent tariff on all its
imports. The Senate leadership agreed to a final vote
on the measure later this year to avoid having it attached
to a bill authorising State Department programmes.
In the House of Representatives, Duncan Hunter, the
powerful Republican chairman of the armed services committee,
on Thursday also introduced legislation that would define
currency manipulation by a foreign government as an
export subsidy. This could then allow the US to offset
the subsidy by imposing duties on imports.
"Clearly the mood on China is getting more and
more intense. There is a lot of surprise at the amount
of Republican support," said Frank Vargo of the
National Association of Manufacturers, which wants tough
action on China but opposes the Schumer bill as a violation
of World Trade Organisation rules. [...]
The anger in Congress is being
driven in part by the rapid increase in the US trade
deficit with China. According to Chinese customs
figures compiled by Global Trade Information Services,
a US data company, US imports from China rose 37 per
cent in January and February, while US exports to China
fell by 10 per cent. [...]
The rumblings in Congress are
increasing pressure on the administration to declare
that China is manipulating its currency. The
US Treasury is set later this month to release its semi-annual
report to Congress on exchange rates. Mr Vargo said:
"They just can't find again that China is not manipulating
its currency."
Mr Snow on Thursday would not say what the Treasury
would conclude in the report. But Rob Nichols, Treasury
spokesman, signalled the administration would resist
such pressure. "The administration's financial
diplomacy approach has been effective and progress is
being made in moving China to a flexible exchange rate
regime," he said. |
Summary: The U.S. government
is manipulating all major U.S. financial markets - stocks,
treasuries, currencies. This article shows how it is possible
and how it is done, why it is done, who specifically is
doing it, when they do it, and where they get the money
to do it. |
Could Iraq be the undoing
of both major political parties that backed the war in
the West?
President
Bush is suffering from the worst poll numbers of any
second-term president in the spring after his reelection
since World War II. If the rest of his second term goes
like this, it could hand the Democrats the White House
in 2008.
Editor and Publisher put the poll in historical context
and found that Bush is relatively unpopular.
Mark
Murray gives some of the reasons for the fall in Bush's
popularity, but sees Bush's pitiful 45-48 percent poll
numbers as solid or good. The whole picture looks much
worse in historical context, which is further proof that
judgment about contemporary affairs made in a historical
vacuum is always flawed.
Murray points to public dislike of Bush's plan for privatizing
social security and its disgust at the Republicans' grave-robbing
grandstanding in the Schiavo case, as well as a general
feeling that the country is going in the wrong direction
(51%), as explanations for Bush's poor showing.
Murray mysteriously leaves out the petroleum factor. I
have been amazed that a doubling of gas prices was just
accepted by Americans as a matter of course and did not
become an issue in last year's presidential campaign.
The public still hates Jimmy Carter for allowing such
a thing (as if he could have done anything about it).
I presume that stoicism over petroleum prices was a by-product
of the war mentality. Maybe Americans felt that their
country had come under attack on September 11, and the
subsequent wars and gas price hikes just had to be borne.
But
the issue is finally emerging. In a recent poll, 58
% said the gas prices were creating a serious financial
hardship for them. USA Today reports, "Nearly half of
those polled — 48% — said they already have cut driving
to reduce their fuel bills, and 38% say they've trimmed
other household spending." People are also buying fewer
SUVs, which isn't going to help the US auto industry.
The present concern probably comes because the public
has begun to suspect that prices are not going back down.
About $10 a barrel of the current $57 a barrel for petroleum
probably derives from speculation and anxiety in the oil
markets resulting from the Iraq war and ongoing crisis.
Prices at the pump might be $1.80 rather than $2.20 if
it weren't for Iraq.
And then there is Iraq. In
a recent poll, "53 percent of Americans said the war
was not worth fighting, 57 percent said they disapprove
of the president's handling of Iraq and 70 percent said
the number of U.S. casualties, including more than 1,500
deaths, is an unacceptable price to pay there."
My American readers seem completely disinterested in British
politics, to my amazement. But
it is worth noting that Tony Blair has called for
elections May 5, isn't doing well in the polls, and admits
that the Iraq debacle has hurt him. His government has
been dogged by questions of whether Blair knew the war
to be illegal before he helped launch it, whether he promised
Bush to support such a war early in Bush's presidency,
and whether he knew or should have known how bad was the
intelligence on the basis of which it was set in motion.
The British public, unlike the American, actually cares,
moreover, about things like the Geneva Conventions and
international law, and the Iraq prison abuse scandals
have hurt Blair's image, as well. (Bush, on the other
hand, has been teflon in the US in the face of torture,
intelligence failures, and gross mismanagement of the
country he conquered, apparently because a majority of
Americans just doesn't care).
Italy's
Silvio Berlusconi is also running away from the Iraq
issue by announcing he'll start pulling out troops in
September, for the purposes of positioning himself in
his own upcoming election. He knows what happened to Aznar
in Spain.
Is Iraq becoming an electoral albatross around the necks
of the victors? |
WASHINGTON - President Bush's standing
with the public is slumping just three months into his
final term, but Americans have an even lower regard
for the job being done by Congress.
Bush's job approval is at 44 percent,
with 54 percent disapproving. Only 37 percent have a
favorable opinion of the work being done by the Republican-controlled
Congress, according to an AP-Ipsos poll.
Bush's job approval was at 49 percent in January, while
Congress was at 41 percent. [...]
The number supporting Bush's handling of some domestic
issues dipped between March and April, to 42 percent
for the economy and 38 percent for issues like education
and health care, according to the poll conducted for
The Associated Press by Ipsos-Public Affairs.
Support for the president's approach
to his top domestic priority, Social Security, remained
at 36 percent, while 58 percent oppose it.
Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio said Bush faces an
uphill battle with his plan to allow younger workers
to invest some of their Social Security taxes in personal
investment accounts. [...]
The president's poll standing
has been in the mid-40s to low-50s for the past two
years, said Matthew Dowd, who was a strategist
and pollster for Bush in the 2004 presidential campaign.
[...] |
President George W.
Bush has nominated a Jewish career diplomat as undersecretary
of defense for policy. Eric Edelman, currently ambassador
to Turkey, will replace Douglas Feith, who had already
announced his plans to retire this summer. Feith, who
also is Jewish, has been a lightning rod for criticism
of the Iraq war.
Edelman previously served as a national security adviser
to Vice President Dick Cheney, and as ambassador to
Finland. |
ROME -- President Bush, determined
not to upstage the funeral of Pope John Paul II, kept
an unusually low profile in Rome yesterday, although
former President Bill Clinton gave a television interview
watched by millions.
"He recognizes the significance of the moment,"
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said of Mr. Bush.
"And the focus rightly should be on the Holy Father."
Mr. Bush became the first president in years to conduct
a full day's schedule on foreign soil without allowing
a single press question, photograph or even fleeting
image on videotape. His father, the first President
Bush, also refrained from interviews. [...]
Photographers and TV news crews accompanying
Mr. Bush said they could not remember another foreign
trip during which they were unable to capture an image
of a president at least walking through a doorway.
The White House promised to issue a couple of photos
taken by in-house photographers, although some news
agencies are reluctant to publish such photos.
While Mr. Bush stayed out of sight during a dinner
with Mr. Berlusconi, photographers were able to watch
Mr. Clinton stroll through an elaborate formal garden
before the dinner at Villa Madama, a stunning hilltop
estate overlooking Rome.
Although the president steered clear of the press,
Mr. McClellan answered a few questions from reporters
on the substance of Mr. Bush's meetings.
The spokesman said the president and Mr. Berlusconi
discussed last month's accidental killing by U.S. troops
of an Italian intelligence officer who was rescuing
an Italian journalist in Iraq.
"Prime Minister Berlusconi wanted to talk about
it and the president welcomed the discussion,"
Mr. McClellan said. "The president reiterated our
regret over the incident." |
BERLIN - Failed terrorism prosecutions
in Germany and the Netherlands this week have highlighted
Europe's patchy record in securing
convictions and prompted some to ask if laws
need to be tightened.
Ihsan Garnaoui, a 34-year-old Tunisian, was acquitted
in Berlin on Wednesday of trying to form a terrorist
group, even though judges considered it proven that
he had planned to carry out at least one bomb attack
in Germany at the start of the Iraq war in March 2003.
The same day, Dutch teenager Samir Azzouz was cleared
of planning attacks on Amsterdam's Schiphol airport,
a nuclear reactor and government offices.
He had been found in possession of machinegun cartridges,
mock explosive devices, electrical circuitry, maps and
sketches of prominent buildings and chemicals prosecutors
said could be bomb ingredients.
Legal experts and security analysts
said such cases raise a difficult question: in the absence
of an actual attack, how close must a suspect be to
detonating a bomb before prosecutors can demonstrate
guilt?
They also highlight the irony that
early intervention by security forces to thwart a bombing
may make it harder to obtain convictions.
"We cannot wait until attacks
have been carried out and the dead are lying on the
street," prosecutor Silke Ritzert said in
her summing-up of the Garnaoui case.
EXECUTING THE PLOT
Key is whether a suspect has actually started to implement
an attack plan -- for example by recruiting associates,
carrying out reconnaissance of targets or actually building
a bomb.
"If I make a plan in my study at home to blow
up the U.S. embassy, and if those documents are discovered,
that will never be enough to send me to prison for a
terrorist plot," said Claude Moniquet, head of
the European Strategic Intelligence and Security Center
in Brussels.
"The actual execution has to have
started. That's very complicated and depends very much
on the opinion of the judges."
In the German trial, the lead judge described Garnaoui
as a dangerous man who trained at an al Qaeda camp in
Afghanistan and returned with the aim of carrying out
at least one bombing.
In his flat, investigators found computer files with
detailed circuit diagrams for a bomb, as well as chemicals,
mobile phones and watches which could have been used
as timers.
Although Garnaoui was jailed for three years and nine
months on lesser charges, the
terrorism case foundered on prosecutors' inability to
establish the target and timing of the supposed attack,
and contradictory and inconsistent
evidence from secret informants on his alleged attempts
to recruit accomplices.
Rainer Wendt, vice president of the German Police Union,
said the existence of an attack plan should have been
sufficient. "This verdict is completely incomprehensible
to the police, and dangerous in its effect," he
told Reuters.
In the Dutch case, teenager Azzouz was jailed for three
months for illegal possession of weapons but cleared
of terrorist charges.
"The court cannot come to a more
far-reaching conclusion than that the suspect had an
above-average interest in religious extremist violence,"
the judge ruled.
HARSHER LAWS MOOTED
Maxime Verhagen, Christian Democrat
leader in the Dutch parliament, said tougher laws might
be needed.
"I ask myself whether the men who flew into the
twin towers could have been convicted in the Netherlands
if their plans had been intercepted in good time,"
he said, referring to the al Qaeda attacks on the United
States on September 11, 2001.
Laetitia Griffith, member of parliament for the liberal
VVD party which is part of a governing coalition with
the Christian Democrats and centrist D66, said if
the acquittal was not overturned on appeal, her party
would investigate whether that was due to insufficient
evidence or weak laws.
"If the latter is the case then the VVD will not
shrink from presenting more complete legislation,"
she said.
Hundreds of terrorist suspects
have been arrested in Europe since 2001, but only a
small proportion successfully prosecuted. [...] |
Several violent incidents
were reported Thursday as groups of school students maintained
a campaign of protests against a government reform of
the education system.
In Paris a crowd of around 200 teenagers broke the windows
of the education authority building and occupied the hall
for several hours before being escorted out by riot police.
Elsewhere in the capital several secondary schools -
or lycees - were blockaded by students. A deputy headmaster
was hit on the head with a bottle, and a student was hospitalised
after being hit by an angry motorist trying to force a
way through the crowd.
In the northern city of Lille riot police used tear-gas
to disperse a crowd of around 300 who were throwing stones
in front of government offices. In the southern town of
Beziers seven students were detained after scuffles with
police.
Education Minister Francois Fillon promised before parliament
that "whenever there is an attempt to blockade we
will intervene."
"I will not allow a tiny minority to prevent the
smooth running of the education system just a few weeks
before the baccalaureat (leaving examination)," he
said.
The students were answering a call from a radical left-wing
committee to continue protests against Fillon's education
bill, despite the fact that it was voted through parliament
two weeks ago. They have the support of some teachers'
unions and parents' groups as well as the Communist party.
The bill is intended to halt the decline in educational
standards that today results in 150,000 French students
leaving high school at 18 with no qualification and 80,000
11-year-olds unable to read or write correctly.
Among its innovations are a "core" of knowledge
and skills to be attained by students; the extension of
foreign language teaching; and guaranteed extra tuition
for failing students via "individual success contracts."
The most controversial proposition - a reform of the
baccalaureat (high school leaving exam) to introduce an
element of continuous assessment - was dropped as a result
of earlier student protests. |
Shattering
shaman myths
Tedlock's new book explores female roots of shamanism |
By PATRICIA DONOVAN
Contributing Editor |
Shamanism, humankind's
oldest spiritual and healing tradition, is in many cultures
dominated by men, and Western skeptics often debunk its
effectiveness.
In a groundbreaking new book published last month by
Random House, however, Barbara Tedlock, professor of anthropology,
challenges the historical hegemony of the male shamanic
tradition, restores women to their essential place in
the history of spirituality and celebrates their continuing
role in the worldwide resurgence of shamanism.
Tedlock's book, "The Woman in a Shaman's Body,"
also presents empirical studies that find common shamanic
practices to be very effective in medical terms and discusses
why this is the case. [...]
A shaman is one who has been initiated into the ancient
tradition of walking "between" this and other
worlds while in a state of ecstatic trance known as "shamanic
ecstasy" or "shamanic flight." In this
state, the shaman acts as a bridge between worlds and
uses knowledge gained there to work with communities or
individuals.[...]
Tedlock brings to bear an abundance of evidence to support
her contention that shamanism originally was the domain
of women and that there still is a vital tradition of
female shamanism in many parts of the world.
Tedlock writes that the active pursuit of knowledge is
at the heart of shamanic practice. [...]
The book explains shamanic midwifery and the spiritual
powers released in childbirth and female cycles, shamanic
symbolism in weaving and other feminine arts, and "gender-shifting"
and male-female partnership in shamanic practice.
Women shamans, she says, have often practiced in the
fields of healing, birthing children, gathering and growing
food, keeping communities in balance, presiding over ceremonies
and rites of passage, maintaining relations with the dead,
teaching, ministering to those in need, communing with
nature to learn her secrets, preserving the wisdom traditions,
divining the future and dancing with gods and goddesses.
"These are shamanic arts," she says, "and
they are the arts of women."
The book had drawn praise from other anthropologists,
including Michael F. Brown, chair of the Department of
Anthropology and Sociology at Williams College, for its
clarity of thought, explanation of complex ideas in ordinary
language and the wealth of personal experience Tedlock
brings to her task. "Tedlock turns a century of scholarship
on its head by showing that women's mastery of shamanic
arts is the norm rather than the exception," Brown
says.[...] |
Researchers at the University
of Kansas and NASA say that a mass extinction on Earth hundreds
of millions of years ago could have been triggered by a
star explosion called a gamma-ray burst.
Science & TechnologyLawrence, Kan. - infoZine - Although
the researchers do not have direct evidence that a gamma-ray
burst activated the ancient extinction, their work is
based on atmospheric modeling.
Adrian Melott, KU professor of physics and astronomy;
Brian Thomas, a Ph.D. candidate whom Melott advises; and
Daniel Hogan, Leawood senior in physics, joined Charles
Jackman of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Laboratory, Greenbelt,
Md., in the discovery. A scientific paper describing their
findings appears in Astrophysical Journal Letters. Thomas
is the lead author of the paper.
The researchers calculated that gamma-ray radiation from
a relatively nearby star explosion, hitting the earth
for only 10 seconds, could deplete up to half of the atmosphere's
protective ozone layer. Recovery could take at least five
years. With the ozone layer damaged, ultraviolet radiation
from the sun could kill much of the life on land and near
the surface of oceans and lakes, and disrupt the food
chain.
NASA image Gamma-ray bursts in our Milky Way galaxy are
rare, but the researchers estimate that at least one nearby
likely hit the earth in the past billion years. Life on
Earth is thought to have appeared at least 3.5 billion
years ago.
"A gamma-ray burst originating within 6,000 light
years from Earth would have a devastating effect on life,"
Melott said. "We don't know exactly when one came,
but we're rather sure it did come -- and left its mark.
What's most surprising is that just a 10-second burst
can cause years of devastating ozone damage."
Gamma-ray bursts are the most powerful explosions known.
Most originate in distant galaxies, and a large percentage
likely arises from explosions of stars more than 15 times
more massive than our sun. A burst creates two oppositely
directed beams of gamma rays that race off into space.
A gamma-ray burst may have caused the Ordovician extinction
443 million years ago, killing 60 percent of all marine
invertebrates, Thomas said. Life was largely confined
to the sea, although there is evidence of primitive land
plants during this period.
This research, supported by a NASA astrobiology grant,
represents a thorough analysis of the "mass extinction"
hypothesis first announced by members of this science
team in September 2003. In the new work, the team used
detailed computer models to calculate the effects of a
nearby gamma-ray burst on the atmosphere and the consequences
for life.
Thomas and Jackman calculated the effect of a nearby
gamma-ray burst on the earth's atmosphere. Gamma rays,
a high-energy form of light, can break molecular nitrogen
into nitrogen atoms, which react with molecular oxygen
to form nitric oxide (NO). NO will destroy ozone and produce
nitrogen dioxide (NO2). NO2 will then react with atomic
oxygen to reform NO. More NO means more ozone destruction.
Computer models show that up to half the ozone layer is
destroyed within weeks. Five years on, at least 10 percent
is still destroyed.
Next, Thomas and Hogan calculated the effect of ultraviolet
radiation on life. Deep-sea creatures living several feet
below the water's surface would be protected. Surface-dwelling
plankton and other life near the surface, however, would
not survive. Plankton are the foundation of the marine
food chain.
Bruce Lieberman, KU associate professor of geology, originated
the idea that a gamma-ray burst specifically could have
caused the great Ordovician extinction, 200 million years
before the dinosaurs. An ice age is thought to have caused
this extinction. But a gamma-ray burst could have caused
a fast die-out early on and could have triggered the significant
drop in surface temperature on Earth.
"One unknown variable is the rate of local gamma-ray
bursts," Thomas said. "The bursts we detect
today originated far away billions of years ago, before
the earth formed. Among the billions of stars in our galaxy,
there's a good chance that a massive one relatively nearby
exploded and sent gamma rays our way."
The Swift mission, launched in November 2004, will help
determine recent burst rates. Other team members are Claude
Laird, project coordinator for the KU Center for Research,
and Richard Stolarski, John Cannizzo and Neil Gehrels
of NASA Goddard. |
Scientist said this week they had
drilled into the lower section of Earth's crust for
the first time and were poised to break through to the
mantle in coming years.
The Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) seeks
the elusive "Moho," a boundary formally known
as the Mohorovicic discontinuity. It marks the division
between Earth's brittle outer crust and the hotter,
softer mantle.
The depth of the Moho varies. This latest effort, which
drilled 4,644 feet (1,416 meters) below the ocean seafloor,
appears to have been 1,000 feet off to the side of where
it needed to be to pierce the Moho, according to one
reading of seismic data used to map the crust's varying
thickness.
The new hole, which took nearly eight weeks to drill,
is the third deepest ever made. The rock collection
brought back to the surface is providing new information
about the planet's composition.
"It will provide important clues on how ocean
crust forms," said Rodey Batiza, program director
for ocean drilling at the National Science Foundation
(NSF).
Already the types of rocks recovered
show that conventional interpretation of Earth's evolution
are "oversimplifying many of the features of the
ocean's crust," said expedition leader Jay Miller
of Texas A&M University. "Each time we drill
a hole, we learn that Earth's structure is more complex.
Our understanding of how the Earth evolved is changing
accordingly."
The latest drilling was done at the Atlantis Massif,
located at the intersection of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge
and the Atlantis fracture zone, two plates of the planet's
broken crust. The seafloor is shallower at the center
of this region and therefore easier to reach.
It's not clear yet whether drilling should continue
at the new hole or if another one should be started
in the effort the reach the mantle. Such work isn't
likely to begin again in the next year, said Barbara
John, a University of Wyoming geologist and one of the
co-chief scientists on the expedition.
"We need to evaluate all the data we have from
the cruise and re-analyze the seismic data, to determine
whether it's better to deepen the current hole or drill
elsewhere, or maybe even collect additional seismic
data to better constrain where to drill," John
told LiveScience. "Our major result is that we've
recovered the lower crust for the first time and have
confirmed that the Earth's crust at this locality is
more complicated than we thought."
John said mantle material will be evident when and
if it's brought up because it will have different texture
and chemistry and will contain different proportions
of minerals compared with rock in the crust.
Drillers use the vessel JOIDES Resolution. The 10-year,
$1.5 billion program is funded by the NSF and Japan's
Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and
Technology. |
To be sure, the Discovery
networks and their BBC production partners have prospered
of late by blurring those factual lines into a sort of
fiction-science, reimagining the past from dinosaurs to
dragons. With Supervolcano, they speculate on a frightening
future.
The someday-maybe supervolcano lies beneath Yellowstone
Park, where it powers Old Faithful. The bad news is that
should it erupt in its full glory, it will create "a
catastrophe on an unprecedented scale." The good
news, we're also told, is that the odds of it doing so
are 600,000 to 1, which makes you wonder why we're about
to spend two hours on the "1."
In its use of actors to tell a "true story"
that "just hasn't happened yet," Supervolcano
falls between documentary and docudrama. The problem with
mixing forms is that you sometimes end up with the best
traits of neither.
For a documentary, for example, the special effects are
better than average, but for a movie, they're far too
obviously computer-generated. And while it may be fine
for a documentary to adopt a detached tone, a movie that
ends with the United States volcanoed into pre-industrial
poverty needs to show considerably more compassion for
both victims and survivors.
There's no denying that the idea of
some Yellowstone volcano turning much of America into
a giant Pompeii is a scary one. The only comfort, I take
it, is that there's nothing we can do about it, so there's
no sense worrying about it. Which is why it might be best
just to let sleeping supervolcanoes lie. |
The number of people killed in
the December 26 tsunami disaster which devastated 11
Indian Ocean countries has been revised down to 217,000
after Indonesia drastically reduced its number of missing.
Indonesia remains the worst hit country, with 163,978
people dead or missing. According to the National Disaster
Relief Coordination Agency, the number confirmed dead
was 126,915 people while 37,063 were listed as missing.
Officials said the figure had
been reduced because many people listed as missing had
now been identified among more than half a million homeless
people living in temporary camps or other shelters.
[...] |
Winds ripping through central Florida
on Thursday flipped planes and trucks, damaged buildings,
snarled traffic and left a trail of downed trees and
blackouts.
Marion County officials reported that the storm had
damaged at least 20 homes, some severely, and left more
than 6,000 customers without power. At least four people,
including a pregnant teen riding a school bus, were
injured, officials said.
Mary Krulikowski said she was in her van picking up
her son from an Ocala high school when the storm "came
out of nowhere."
"The sky darkened, tree limbs started hitting
my van," she told the Ocala Star-Banner.
The Marion County Sheriff's Office said a tornado turned
over planes and tore off hangar doors at Ocala International
Airport. A National Weather Service spokesman said officials
were investigating whether a tornado had touched down.
Earlier, rains flooded already saturated parts of the
Panhandle.
A 100-foot section of Pensacola's landmark red clay
bluffs was washed away as 7 inches of rain fell over
a 24-hour period that ended Thursday morning. Part of
Scenic Highway, overlooking Escambia Bay atop the bluffs,
will be closed for several weeks while repairs are made,
police said.
Thunderstorms also caused scattered power outages.
In Gulf County, nearly 150 miles east of Pensacola,
about 65 homes and hundreds of secondary homes have
been flooded since last week and the water was expected
to stay high for several more days, said county Emergency
Management Director Larry Wells. |
BEIJING -- A magnitude-6.5
earthquake struck western Tibet early Friday, damaging
homes in a remote town but causing no deaths or injuries,
the government said.
The quake hit about 420 miles west of the Tibetan capital,
Lhasa, at 4:04 a.m., the earthquake reporting center in
Beijing said. [...]
Tibet suffers frequent strong earthquakes caused by the
collision of the Indian and Asian continental plates,
but damage and casualties normally are not heavy because
the mountainous region is sparsely populated.
Tibet suffered one of Asia's most powerful earthquakes
on record, a magnitude-8.6 temblor in August 1950. |
HONG KONG -- Several
earthquakes shook Indonesia over a 24-hour period, including
two that rattled a region hit last week by a quake that
killed more than 600 people, seismologists said Friday.
No damage or injuries were immediately reported.
The first quake to jolt the area around Nias Island
-- devastated by the 8.7-magnitude quake on March 28
-- struck late Thursday and had a magnitude of 5.6,
said U.S. Geological Survey seismologists. The second
quake of magnitude 5.0 happened about five hours later,
the survey said.
A weaker quake was reported near Simeulue, an island
group off the Sumatra's west coast that was also hit
hard by the March 28 quake, the survey said. The tremor
had a magnitude of 4.9, the survey said.
Another earthquake was centered beneath the Maluku
Sea in northeastern Indonesia. The 5.5-magnitude quake
hit early Friday about 142 miles northeast of Manado,
the provincial capital of North Sulawesi, the Hong Kong
Observatory said. [...] |
A series of large earthquakes have
struck parts of Indonesia over the past three days:
Magnitude
5.6 - SOUTHERN SUMATRA, INDONESIA on April 6, 2005
at 11:20:09 UTC
Magnitude
5.3 - NIAS REGION, INDONESIA on April 7, 2005 at
02:21:24 UTC
Magnitude
5.6 - NIAS REGION, INDONESIA on April 7, 2005 at
11:46:05 UTC
Magnitude
5.1 - NIAS REGION, INDONESIA April 7, 2005 at 15:23:58
UTC
Magnitude
5.0 - NIAS REGION, INDONESIA on April 7, 2005 at
16:40:52 UTC
Magnitude
5.5 - NIAS REGION, INDONESIA April 8, 2005 at 01:51:39
UTC
Magnitude
5.9 - KEPULAUAN BATU, INDONESIA on April 8, 2005
at 05:48:38 UTC
Two earthquakes also hit two different regions in China:
Magnitude
5.2 - SOUTHERN XINJIANG, CHINA on April 6, 2005
at 08:44:57 UTC
Magnitude
6.0 - WESTERN XIZANG on April 7, 2005 at 20:04:41
UTC |
A moderate earthquake occurred
at 11:38:17 (UTC) on Friday, April 8, 2005. The magnitude
5.8 event has been located SOUTHEAST OF THE LOYALTY
ISLANDS. (This event has been reviewed by a seismologist.)
|
As you know the world
didn't come to end today.
Now for the third time, Warren Jeffs is wrong about his
doomsday predictions.
2,500 of his most faithful followers gathered at a mysterious
sprawling complex in Eldorado, Texas. Wednesday, Jeffs
prophesied he and his followers would be caught up and
sent to heaven, while the rest of world would come to
an end. But you can see they are still there, and continue
to work on their new temple.[...]
Some people left behind by Jeffs in the twin towns of
Hildale and Colorado City say that while there might not
be violence Wednesday, they fear it will happen.
Many disaffected members of the FLDS church hope that
with Jeffs gone they can get their homes back. Jeffs is
the only trustee of the UEP, the group that owns most
of the homes and businesses in Hildale and Colorado City.
There is also fear that warren Jeffs is stirring up racial
hatred amongst his followers. A recent sermon by Jeffs
was secretly recorded by a dissident member of his church.
On the tape, Jeffs refers to the black race as "immoral,
filthy, people"
Jeffs voice on tape:
"You see some classes of the human family that are
black, uncouth, rude, and filthy... Uncomely, disagreeable,
and loathe in their habits… Wild and seemingly depraved
of nearly all the blessings of the intelligence that is
generally bestowed upon mankind."
Jeffs also warned his followers of "relationships
with blacks and of enjoying modern music". |
NEW YORK - Something must be wrong
in the land of Muppets. First PBS announced that "Sesame
Street" would kick off its 36th season this week
with a multiyear story arc about healthy habits. No
problem there; childhood obesity rates are soaring.
Then I learned of changes that turned my "Sesame
Street" world upside-down.
My beloved blue, furry monster
- who sang "C is for cookie, that's good enough
for me" - is now advocating eating healthy.
There's even a new song - "A Cookie Is a Sometimes
Food," where Cookie Monster learns there are "anytime"
foods and "sometimes" foods.
"Sacrilege!" I cried. "That's akin to
Oscar the Grouch being nice and clean." (Co-workers
gave me strange looks. But I didn't care.)
Being a journalist, I did the only thing I knew how
to do. I investigated why "Sesame Street"
gave Cookie Monster a health makeover.
The answer would lead me into a world where television
producers worked with health experts and politicians,
a place where Cookie Monster does care about his health,
and by association, the health of children. [...]
Even politicians have gotten into the act, filming
public service announcements with "Sesame Street"
residents. In one taping, Senate Majority Leader Bill
Frist taught Elmo to exercise - jumping up and down.
In another, Sen. Hillary Clinton and the small red monster
discuss the various textures and tastes of foods.
But what about their position on Cookiegate?
"Even Cookie Monster is learning
to control his cookie cravings," Frist told me
by e-mail. "His sage advice opened our eyes to
the simple joys of a tasty cookie and now reminds us
that moderation is the key to healthy living."
Cookie Monster was not available for comment. (I'm
hoping he hasn't gone too Hollywood.) [...]
Cookie Monster appears to be happy with the new "sometimes
food" song, because at the end he warbles: "Is
sometimes now?"
"Yes," he's told. [...] |
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