ATLANTA, GEORGIA - A Gwinnett County grand jury had decided not to pursue charges in the Taser gun-related death of an inmate at the county jail.

Inmate Frederick Williams died last year after Gwinnett deputies used a Taser gun to subdue him.

Williams' widow, Yanga Williams, said he was in a rage when she called officers to her home last May. She says her husband's violent behavior was due to his failure to take medication for epilepsy.

Eleven deputies and a video camera were there when he arrived at the Gwinnett County Jail in handcuffs, and his feet bound, but still fighting.

The video, taken by the Gwinnett County Sheriff's Department and obtained by 11Alive News, shows Williams struggling as deputies tried to remove the handcuffs and place him in a restraint chair.

A deputy then uses a Taser on Williams. A deputy is shown placing the Taser against Williams' chest a total of five times. Eventually, he passes out.

"I do feel there's some criminal act in this," Yanga Williams said.

An investigation by the sheriff's department concluded deputies acted properly. A police investigation also cleared the deputies of criminal wrongdoing.

"It's a terrible, terrible incident, but nothing criminal happened, certainly nothing criminal from my deputies," said Gwinnett County Sheriff Butch Conway.

According to the Gwinnett county medical examiner, it is unclear if the Taser caused Williams' death.

District Attorney Danny Porter provided details of the investigations to a grand jury and that grand jury decided not to pursue an investigation of their own. They, however, chose not to view the videotape taken at the jail.

"They were aware of the tape and the disturbing aspects of it, but chose not to view it," Porter said. "They chose not to see it and chose not to go any farther."

"For all intents and purposes, this ends my case," he said.

"At times it gets pretty frustrating, frustrating to the point where I want to scream," Yanga Williams said.

She has hired a lawyer, and may turn her frustration into a civil lawsuit. She has not seen the video tape, but Melvin Johnson, her lawyer has. "We're horrified by what we've seen," he said.

"Mr. Porter told the wife in my presence that because the wife did not notify him or did not ask his permission, basically, to bring in the feds, he's pissed off, for a lack of a better word, and is no longer bringing charges," he added.

Johnson says Porter presented the wrong evidence to the grand jury and he wants the officers indicted.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is still conducting its probe.

Frederick Williams last words as he was carried into the Gwinnett County jail were, "Don't kill me, man. Don't kill me." It turned out to be an unheeded plea - minutes later he was dead after receiving 5 direct stuns from a Taser gun in the span of 60 seconds. [...]

Before sending the case to the grand jury the DA declined to prosecute any of the deputies involved in the incident.

Is this a tragic accident or criminal (or civil) negligence? Watch the video for yourselves [Windows Media] and see if you think the application of 5 direct tasers shots to the chest was an appropriate level of force. Be sure to listen for the line, "Do you want it again?" from one of the deputies, which might change your mind if you were initially inclined to give deputies the benefit of the doubt.

05/01/05 "Kyodo News" - - The U.S. military plans to allow regional combatant commanders to request the president for approval to carry out preemptive nuclear strikes against possible attacks on the United States or its allies with weapons of mass destruction, according to a draft new nuclear operations paper (Link to original document .pdf file).

The paper, drafted by the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the U.S. Armed Forces, also revealed that submarines which make port calls in Yokosuka, Sasebo and Okinawa in Japan are prepared for reloading nuclear warheads if necessary to deal with a crisis. 

The March 15 draft paper, a copy of which was made available, is titled "Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations" providing "guidelines for the joint employment of forces in nuclear operations...for the employment of U.S. nuclear forces, command and control relationships, and weapons effect considerations." 

"There are numerous nonstate organizations (terrorist, criminal) and about 30 nations with WMD programs, including many regional states," the paper says in allowing combatant commanders in the Pacific and other theaters to maintain an option of preemptive strikes against "rogue" states and terrorists and "request presidential approval for use of nuclear weapons" under set conditions. 

The paper identifies nuclear, biological and chemical weapons as requiring preemptive strikes to prevent their use. 

But allowing preemptive nuclear strikes against possible biological and chemical attacks effectively contradicts a "negative security assurance" policy declared by the U.S. administration of President Bill Clinton 10 years ago on the occasion of an international conference to review the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. 

Creating a treaty on negative security assurances to commit nuclear powers not to use nuclear weapons against countries without nuclear weapons remains one of the most contentious issues for the 35-year-old NPT regime. 

A JCS official said the paper "is still a draft which has to be finalized," but indicated that it is aimed at guiding "cross-spectrum" combatant commanders how to jointly carry out operations based on the Nuclear Posture Review report adopted three years ago by the administration of President George W. Bush. 

Citing North Korea, Iran and some other countries as threats, the report set out contingencies for which U.S. nuclear strikes must be prepared and called for developing earth-penetrating nuclear bombs to destroy hidden underground military facilities, including those for storing WMD and ballistic missiles. 

"The nature (of the paper) is to explain not details but cross spectrum for how to conduct operations," the official said, noting that it "means for all services, Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine." 

In 1991 after the end of the Cold War, the United States removed its ground-based nuclear weapons in Asia and Europe as well as strategic nuclear warheads on warships and submarines. 

But the paper says the United States is prepared to revive those sea-based nuclear arms. 

"Nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missiles, removed from ships and submarines under the 1991 Presidential Nuclear Initiative, are secured in central areas where they remain available, if necessary for a crisis," the paper says. 

The paper also underlined that the United States retains a contingency scenario of limited nuclear wars in East Asia and the Middle East. 

"Geographic combatant commanders may request presidential approval for use of nuclear weapons for a variety of conditions," the paper says. 

The paper lists eight conditions such as "an adversary using or intending to use WMD against U.S. multinational or alliance forces or civilian populations" and "imminent attack from adversary biological weapons that only effects from nuclear weapons can safely destroy." 

The conditions also include "attacks on adversary installations including WMD, deep, hardened bunkers containing chemical or biological weapons" and countering "potentially overwhelming adversary conventional forces." 

The U.S. Stock market gained a bit by the end of the week, with the Dow closing at 10,192.51, up 0.34% from the previous Friday’s close of 10, 157.71. It was a volatile week, however, with the Dow gaining 122 points on Friday. The NASDAQ, while also gaining nearly a percent on Friday lost ground for the week, closing at 1921.65, down 0.55% compared to the previous week’s close of 1932.19. The yield on the ten-year U.S. Treasury bond closed at 4.20 percent down from last week’s 4.25%. The dollar rose against the euro closing at .7772 dollars to a euro, up 0.44% from last week’s .7738. A euro then, would buy 1.2866 dollars compared to the previous week’s close of 1.3066 dollars. Oil dropped sharply last week, below $50 at $49.72, down 11.4% from the previous week’s $55.39. Oil in euros would be 38.64 euros a barrel, down 9.7% compared to last week’s 42.39 Gold closed at $435.50 per ounce, down a dollar (0.23%) from the previous week’s close of $436.50. In euros, an ounce of gold would cost 338.49, down 1.3% from last week’s 334.07. An ounce of gold would buy 8.76 barrels of oil, up 11.2% from last week’s 7.88 barrels.

Before we break out the champagne about the growth in stocks and the drop in oil prices on Friday, we need to look at the reason for it:

Economy Surprises Experts With Sudden Slowdown

By Nell Henderson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 29, 2005; E01

U.S. economic growth slowed sharply in the first three months of the year, to the weakest pace in two years, as surging energy costs caused consumers and businesses to rein in their spending.

The nation's gross domestic product, which is the value of all goods and services produced, rose at a 3.1 percent annual rate during the first quarter, down from a 3.8 percent rate in the final three months of last year, the Commerce Department said yesterday.

The news confirmed other recent signs of a cooling economy. Job growth, retail sales, factory production and consumer confidence fell in March. New orders for big-ticket manufactured goods have declined in each of the past three months. The trade deficit keeps growing to new monthly records.

The economy has slowed after two years in which growth was boosted by government stimulus -- in the form of tax cuts and low interest rates -- provided in response to extraordinary turmoil.

The Fed cut its benchmark rate dramatically, from 6.5 percent in late 2000 to 1 percent by June 2003, to support the economy through a succession of shocks, including the bursting of the late 1990s investment bubble, the 2001 recession, the terrorist attacks that year, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and corporate scandals.

The White House and Congress also passed several tax cuts during that time, spurring additional household spending. Policymakers had expected that consumers would keep the economy going at a decent pace until businesses eventually rejoined the game and started investing, expanding and hiring again with some gusto.

That last piece of the recovery seemed to be falling into place late last year, when business spending on nonresidential structures, equipment and software rose at double-digit rates. Economists had hoped that would continue into the new year, even after the end-of-December expiration of a tax break designed to boost investment, providing plenty of fuel for economic growth even as consumers grew winded.

Instead, business spending in that category slowed in the first quarter, rising at a 4.7 percent annual rate, down from a 14.5 percent pace in the previous quarter.
Meanwhile, consumers also pulled back, finding their wallets pinched by gasoline prices above $2 a gallon, lagging wage growth and rising interest rates. Consumer spending rose at a 3.5 percent annual rate in the January-through-March period, down from a 4.2 percent pace in the October-through-December quarter.

The slowing U.S. economy led investors to conclude that there is now less pressure on the Federal Reserve Board to raise interest rates, which led to a rise in stocks. The way the mainstream press is describing this weakening (a “soft patch”) presumes that we were in a healthy recovery in the last four years. There is nothing healthy about an anemic expansion fueled by government military spending, tax cuts and personal debt built on asset inflation, or as Kurt Richebacher put it, “wealth deception:”

The Great Wealth Deception

April 27, 2005

This is the most important economic question in and for the world: Has the U.S. economy's rebound since 2001 been aborted, or is it only delayed? Our rigorous disagreement with the global optimistic consensus over this question begins with four observations that we regard as crucial:
1. In the past four years, the U.S. economy has received the most prodigious monetary and fiscal stimulus in history. Yet by any measure, its rebound from the 2001 recession is by far the weakest on record in the post-World War II period.

2. Record-low interest rates boosted asset prices and, in their wake, an unprecedented debt-and-spending binge on the part of the consumer.

3. What resulted was a badly structured economic recovery, which - due to grossly lacking growth in capital investment, employment and wage and salary income - never gained the necessary traction to become self-sustainable.

4. Sustained and sufficiently strong economic growth implicitly requires a return to strong business fixed capital spending. We see no chance of this happening. Above all, the outlook for business profits is dismal from the macro perspective.

This takes us to the enormous structural changes that the Fed's new monetary "bubble policy" has imparted to the U.S. economy over the years. While consumption, residential building and government spending soared, unprecedented imbalances developed in the economy - record-low saving; a record-high trade deficit; a vertical surge of household indebtedness; anemic employment and income growth from wages and salaries; outsized government deficits; and protracted, unusual weakness in business fixed investment.

None of these shortfalls is a typical feature of the business cycle. Instead, they are all of unusual structural nature. Yet the bullish U.S. consensus simply ignores them, bragging instead about the U.S. economy's resilience and its ability to outperform most industrialized countries.

To be sure, all these structural deformations tend to impede economic growth. Some, like the trade deficit and slumping investment, do so with immediate effect; others become repressive only gradually and in the longer run. Budget deficits stimulate demand as long as they rise. An existing budget deficit, however large, loses this effect. Rather, it tends to become a drag on the economy. In the past few years, clearly, the massive monetary and fiscal pump-priming policies have more than offset all these growth-impairing influences.

Assessing the U.S. economy's future performance, it is necessary to distinguish between two opposite macro forces: One is the drag on the economy exerted by the various structural distortions; the other is the enormous demand-pull fostered by the housing bubble and the associated rampant credit creation.

Measured by real GDP growth, the demand-pull driven by the housing bubble has, so far, overpowered the structural drags, provided you believe in the accuracy of the GDP numbers. We do not. Yet even by this measure, as repeatedly explained, it is actually by far the U.S. economy's weakest recovery on record in the postwar period. In fact, measuring the growth of employment and wage and salary income, there has been no recovery at all.

Our stance has always been and remains simple. Asset bubbles and their demand effects invariably fade over time; structural effects invariably worsen over time if not attended to. It is our strong assumption that the negative structural effects are overtaking the positive bubble effects.

We come to another feature of economic recoveries that American policymakers and economists flatly ignore. That is its pattern or composition.

Past cyclical recoveries were spearheaded by three demand components: durable consumer goods, residential building and business fixed investment, regularly following prior sharp downturns caused by tight money during the recession. Importantly, the tight money had always created pent-up demand in these three categories, which promptly catapulted the economy upward when monetary policy eased. For sure, the pent-up demand played a key role in the recovery dynamics.

With its rapid and drastic rate cuts, the Fed rewrote the rules of the traditional business cycle and related policies. It managed a seamless transition from equity bubble to housing bubble. Consumer spending on durable goods continued to forge ahead during the 2001 recession at an annual rate of 4.3%. Residential building never retreated, while business fixed investment took an unusual plunge.

From 2000-04, consumer spending soared by 27.3% on durable goods and 25.4% on residential building. Government spending, too, rose sharply, by 13.9%. Together, the three components accounted for 123% of real GDP growth.

But in the rest of the economy, it was all misery. Despite a modest rebound, business nonfinancial fixed investment in 2004 was still down 0.2% from 2000. Exports of goods posted a minimal gain of 0.1%, whereas imports of goods shot up by 16.5%.

…For generations of economists, it used to be a truism that "wealth creation" implies capital formation in terms of generating income-creating tangible assets. The emphasis was on capital formation and the associated income creation. To indiscriminately put this label of "wealth creation" on rising asset prices in the absence of any income creation is plainly a novel usurpation of this concept. It is in essence wealth creation through a stroke of the pen.

Measured by their net worth (market value of household assets minus debts), American households have amassed unprecedented riches in the past few years, despite spending in excess of their current income as never before.

…The growth of home mortgages exploded from an annual rate of $368.3 billion in 2000 to an annual rate of $884.9 billion in 2004, compared with a simultaneous increase in residential building from $446.9 billion to $662.3 billion. Altogether, the United States experienced a credit expansion of close to $10 trillion during these four years. This equates with simultaneous nominal GDP growth of $1.9 trillion. America's financial system is really one gigantic credit-and-debt bubble.

…A credit expansion in the United States of close to $10 trillion - in relation to nominal GDP growth of barely $2 trillion over the last four years since 2000 - definitely represents more than the usual dose of inflationary credit excess. This is really hyperinflation in terms of credit creation.

More and more people blame Alan Greenspan for the asset inflation bubble, Morgan Stanley’s Stephen Roach prominent among them:

In all my years in this business, never before have I seen a central bank attempt to spin the debate as America’s Federal Reserve has over the past six or seven years. From the New Paradigm mantra of the late 1990s to today’s new theories of the current-account adjustment, the US central bank has led the charge in attempting to rewrite conventional macroeconomics and in making an effort to convince market participants of the wisdom of its revisionist theories. The problem is that this recasting of macro is very self-serving. It is a concentrated effort on the part of the Fed to exonerate itself from the Original Sin of failing to address asset bubbles. The result is an ever-deepening moral hazard dilemma that poses grave threats to financial markets.

I am not a believer in conspiracy theories. But the Fed’s behavior since the late 1990s is starting to change my mind. It all began with Alan Greenspan’s worries over “irrational exuberance” on December 5, 1996, when a surging Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 6437. The subsequent Fed tightening in March 1997 was aimed not only at the asset bubble itself, but at the impacts such excessive appreciation in equity markets were having on the real economy -- consumers and businesses alike. It was a classic example of the Fed playing the role of the tough guy -- the central bank that, to paraphrase the words of former Chairman William McChesney Martin, “takes away the punchbowl just when the party is getting good.” Unfortunately, the tough guys weren’t so tough after all. Predictably, there was a huge outcry on Capitol Hill as the Fed took aim on the US stock market. But rather than stay the course as an independent central bank should, the Fed ran for cover in the face of political criticism. Not only were its initial bubble-containment efforts put aside, but Alan Greenspan went on to champion the notion of a sea-change in the macro climate -- a once-in-a-century productivity miracle that would justify the stock market’s exuberance as rational. That was the Original Sin that has since been compounded in the years that have followed.

Out of that pivotal moment in the late 1990s, a New Economy actually did come into being. But it was not the new economy of ever-accelerating productivity growth that infatuated the New Paradigm Crowd and legions of equity-market speculators. Instead, it was the Asset Economy that enabled consumers and businesses to draw on the pixie dust of a new source of purchasing power -- asset appreciation -- as a means to augment what has since turned into a stunning shortfall of organic domestic income generation.

Unfortunately, the asset-based spending model has given rise to many of the distortions and imbalances evident in the US today. That’s especially true of low saving rates, the housing bubble, high debt loads, and a runaway current account deficit. When the equity bubble burst, asset-dependent American consumers barely skipped a beat. Courtesy of an extraordinary shift to monetary accommodation, the pendulum of asset depreciation quickly swung into property markets; US house-price inflation has since surged to a 25-year high. To the extent that equity extraction from ever-rising property appreciation was viewed as a substitute for organic sources of labor income generation, hard-pressed consumers went deeply into debt to monetize the windfall. As a result, household sector indebtedness surged to nearly 90% of US GDP -- an all-time record and up over 20 percentage points from levels in the mid-1990s when the Asset Economy was born. Secure in the asset-driven spending posture that resulted, consumers saw no need to save the old-fashioned way out of earned labor income. That’s why the personal saving rate has collapsed and currently stands near zero. Asset-based consumption is also at the core of America’s current-account problem. In an income-based accounting framework, the “missing saving” has to come from somewhere. In this case, that “somewhere” is the foreign saver -- giving rise to the current-account and trade deficits required to attract the foreign capital. As a result, the US current-account gap probably exceeded 6.5% of GDP in the first quarter of 2005 -- easily another record and well in excess of the 4% deficit prevailing in the mid-1990s.

This whole story, in my view, remains balanced on the head of a pin of absurdly low real interest rates. And the Fed has certainly been pivotal in nurturing this low-interest-rate regime. In an extraordinary display of policy accommodation, the real federal funds rate is only now moving above the zero threshold after having spent three years in negative territory. Of course, a central bank has little choice to do otherwise if it has made a conscious decision to underwrite the Asset Economy. After all, it takes low interest rates to provide valuation support to most financial assets -- initially stocks, then bonds, and now property. Furthermore, it takes low rates to make refi debt -- and the equity extraction it sponsors -- look attractive from a carrying cost perspective. Low rates also discourage income-based saving by underscoring the paltry returns available to savers in traditional asset classes. A migration to riskier assets -- such as property and “spread” products (i.e., high-yield and emerging market debt) -- is encouraged as a result. And low real rates make it easier to finance an ever-widening current-account deficit -- especially if the incremental flows come from foreign central banks, where there is reason to tolerate subpar returns in exchange for currency competitiveness. In short, without low real interest rates, the Asset Economy -- and all of its inherent imbalances and excesses -- is nothing.

The Fed is not only hard at work in the engine room in keeping the magic alive with a super-accommodative monetary policy but is has also become the intellectual architect of the New Macro. Time and again, since Alan Greenspan rolled out his New Paradigm theory in the late 1990s, senior Federal Reserve policy makers have taken the lead role as proselytizers of a new macro spin that condones the saving, debt, property bubble, and current-account excesses of the Asset Economy. The examples are far too numerous to mention, but consider the following highlights:

* Chairman Greenspan has made light of traditional measures of household indebtedness -- even going so far as to urge consumers to move from fixed to floating rate obligations (see his February 23, 2004, speech, Understanding Household Debt Obligations. Note: All references are to speeches available on the Fed’s website at www.federalreserve.gov).

* Fed governors have also borrowed a page from the Roaring 1990s in denying the possibility of a housing bubble (see Chairman Greenspan’s October 19, 2004, speech, The Mortgage Market and Consumer Debt, and Governor Kohn’s April 1, 2004, speech, Monetary Policy and Imbalances).

* More recently, an army of senior Fed officials -- namely, Chairman Greenspan, Vice Chairman Ferguson, and Governors Bernanke and Kohn -- have unleashed a veritable broadside against the time-honored notion of the current-account adjustment (see their various 2005 speeches, especially Governor Kohn’s April 22 speech, Imbalances and the US Economy, Vice Chairman Ferguson’s April 20 speech, U.S. Current Account Deficit: Causes and Consequences, and Chairman Greenspan’s February 4 speech, Current Account).

* Governor Bernanke has also led the charge in coming up with a new theory of national saving -- that the United States is actually doing the world a favor by absorbing a so-called glut of global saving (see his April 14, 2005, speech, The Global Saving Glut and the U.S. Current Account Deficit); Vice Chairman Ferguson has been on a similar wavelength in dismissing concerns over subpar personal saving (see his October 6, 2004, speech, Questions and Reflections on the Personal Saving Rate).

Is this is an appropriate role for a central bank? In my view, absolutely not. The problem with an activist central bank is that decision makers in the real economy -- consumers and businesspeople alike -- mistake the Fed’s point of view for strategic advice. And so do financial market participants. After hearing the Fed pound the table, consumers feel left out if they don’t spend their housing equity. Business managers felt equally deprived in the late 1990s if their companies didn’t achieve the dotcom-type valuations in the stock market that Chairman Greenspan insisted in the late 1990s and even early 2000 were well grounded in a once-in-a-century productivity miracle. The resulting overhang of excess IT spending was a direct outgrowth of this perceived deprivation. Needless to say, when investors and financial speculators saw the equity train leave the station and the Fed condone the high growth of a productivity-led economy by leaving interest rates low, they saw no reason to believe that a bubble was about to burst. When consumers hear from a Fed chairman that it makes little sense to take on fixed rate debt, they rush to floating rate instruments; not by coincidence, the adjustable rate portion of newly originated mortgage debt shot up in the immediate aftermath of Chairman Greenspan’s comments on consumer indebtedness. And should asset-dependent, saving-short, overly indebted American consumers feel at risk if the Fed assures them that there is no housing bubble -- that the asset-based underpinnings of their decision making are well grounded? A record consumption share in the US economy -- 71% of GDP since 2002 versus a 67% norm over the 1975 to 2000 period -- speaks for itself.

The rhetorical flourishes of America’s central bankers have dug the US economy -- and by definition, a US-centric global economy -- into a deep hole. To this very day, the Fed has never confessed to the Original Sin of condoning the equity bubble. On the contrary, Greenspan & Company have been on the defensive ever since by dismissing the increasingly dangerous repercussions of the original post-bubble shakeout. Far from playing the role of the tough guy that is required of independent central bankers, the Fed has become an advocate of the easy money of a powerful liquidity cycle. One bubble has since begotten another -- from equities to bonds to fixed income spread products (i.e., emerging market and high-yield debt) to property. And financial markets have gone along for the ride -- not just in the US but also around the world as global investors and foreign central banks have rushed with reckless abandon to finance America’s record current-account deficit.

The day is close at hand when US monetary policy must get real. At a minimum, that will require a normalization of real interest rates. Given the excesses that now exist, it may even require a federal funds rate that needs to move into the restrictive zone -- possibly as high as 5.5%. Yes, this would cause an outcry -- perhaps similar to that which occurred in the spring of 1997 on the occasion of the Original Sin. But in the end, there may be no other choice. Fedspeak has taken us into the greatest moral hazard dilemma of all -- how to wean an asset-dependent system from unsustainably low real interest rates without bringing the entire House of Cards down. The longer the Fed waits, the more perilous the exit strategy.

One of the things I have been meaning to write about recently, particularly in the context of strategically placed financial explosives that could cause the economy to collapse in a “controlled demolition” is the financial time bomb of derivatives and hedge funds. It occurred to me that one set of strategically placed explosives could easily be the derivatives market. Michel de Chabert-Ostland said this in a post from Le Metropole Café sent to me by a friend:

RE DERIVATIVES RISK TIME BOMB: I'll quote from the FT of April 11th, article by John Plender:

" Equally worrying is that the number and size of the black holes in the financial system appears to be increasing by the day. Take the burgeoning derivatives market. Of the $88,000bn notional value of derivatives at US-insured commercial banks at the end of 2004, according to the latest data from the US Comptroller of the Currency, no less than 93 per cent was traded in the non-transparent over-the-counter market in which banks trade directly with each other. Five banks account for 96 per cent of the $88,000bn. Most of their shareholders, I suspect, have little grasp of the risks involved. "

Do you fully realize the meaning of the words above " ....traded in the non-transparent over- the-counter market ". I read that to mean that NO ONE knows where the skeletons in the closet may be and when we do find out, it will be too late to act ( except for a few insiders who will get the news before you and I read about it ). The numbers above are simply mind boggling and I have to believe that, in the not distant future, there is going to be some hair raising losses and systemic financial problems. When this happens, the dollar will have its biggest single day fall ever, gold and silver will fly, and the stock market will take a severe tumble.

The problem, though, was that I didn’t understand enough about the reason why derivatives (basically leveraged futures contracts pegged to values of currencies, stock indexes, commodities or interest rates) present such risks to write about them. Then I read an article by the CEO of Financial Risk Management Advisors Co., Ed McCarthy, whose main point is that these financial instruments are so complicated that virtually NO ONE really understands them, which is a main reason why they present such risks for the whole financial system. He compares them to the types of financial arrangements made by Enron:

There is, at least, a workable hypothesis that the Enron rise and collapse is a possible microcosm of the global bubble ongoing, stoked by massive credit emanation currently believed to be the New Wave of Economic Growth. In its time, Enron was believed to be the new model of corporate growth, expanding exponentially more rapidly than prosaic forebears, incorporating marketing and financial genius, transforming industries and economies and enriching vast constituencies. It was, in fact, a gigantic scam and sham able to deceive with aplomb virtually all areas of expertise in understanding and analyzing risk and reward. A combination of fraud, greed, obliviousness, unbridled ego, unquestioned belief in growth, and fascinated obsession with financial innovation catalogues the “E” debacle. Virtually all these elements are in plentiful supply in global financial markets and the players therein as the world “reflates” with a vengeance in every nook and cranny having a medium of exchange and the means to exchange it.

There is no question of the criminality of many of the players in the Houston company’s demise, however, there is also clear proof that the complexities of modern finance are beyond the comprehension and understanding of many extremely intelligent and supposedly well informed “leaders” of the mammoth organizations now proliferating at excessively rapid growth rates across the global economy.

…Market and corporate growth have expanded beyond the ability of those in charge to be aware of and comprehend the indcredibly rapidly growing risks, both business and ethical/integrity, assumed in this growth!

… Layered on top of the “visible” credit expansion (balance sheet) and the aforementioned “repo” world of credit is a new game rapidly reaching prodigious proportions. CDS (Credit Default Swaps) is the fastest growing game in Speculation Town, the fastest growing gambling town in human financial history. A survey done by Fitch found the total under the purview of U.S. banking regulators at $3.1 Trillion by the end of 2004, having DOUBLED during the course of the preceding year. A recent look at the Bank for International Settlements year end derivatives numbers showed this category globally at $6.4Trillion and Bloomberg totals $8.4Trillion throughout all markets. By the way, the same annual compilation by the BIS showed total notional derivatives outstanding at the end of 2004 of $221 Trillion! The mind boggles.

… “Financial Engineering, applauded by the eminent Alan, may disperse risk, thereby reducing it, or it may contain the seeds of greater risk an/or deals of questionable or even fraudulent provenance. Warren Buffett, of unquestioned integrity, is now caught up in the Greenberg/AIG deal, of which he knew. The fact that on March 29, Berkshire said in a statement repeated in the WSJ 3/30 that Mr. Buffett “WAS NOT BRIEFED ON HOW THE TRANSACTIONS WERE STRUCTURED OR ON ANY IMPROPER USE OR PURPOSE OF THE TRANSACTIONS.” Leaves two possibilities. 1) He is dissimulating or 2) the size of Berkshire and General Re, the complexity of financial engineering and some generalizations by a, presumably, trusted subordinate after a non-detail conversation with Greenberg previously, left Buffett feeling comfortable about a questionable transaction.

We are inclined towards 2 above and that makes the point of the thesis: The best, most honest, brightest of CEO’s cannot possibly stay on top of what goes on in these complicated financial megaliths. If the presumed honest, such as Buffett cannot, how can anybody believe that it is possible in the convoluted world of an AIG, driven by a CEO consumed by the company’s stock price (per statements by Wall St. analysts on the pressure from “Hank” for laudatory comments) and executives, motivated by excessive compensation for achievement of outlandish financial goals, that anyone within the company actually knows what is really going on. AIG is clearly out of control and only time will tell the order of magnitude. The question is how many other Financial Giants and BFB’s (Big Famous Banks) are in similar condition.

As best as I can understand it, derivatives provide a hedging for financial institutions that protect them against normally foreseeable risks. The problem is that certain unusual circumstances can cause them to crash in unimaginably costly ways. What has kept money pouring into these devices is a tacit understanding that the U.S. Federal Reserve Board will step in in the case of a hedge fund collapse and flood the market with money to avoid the hedge fund collapse causing the collapse of the whole system. This happened in 1998 with the famous Long Term Capital Management bailout. Bailouts like that work until the one time it doesn’t work. What the bailout can accomplish is to spark rises in stock markets right after crises (see here) because investors see that the Fed has bet heavily on a rise in stocks. And that, in turn prevents smaller, more manageable crashes while increasing the magnitude of a crash when it finally does happen.

Two years ago, in March 2003, Robert Samuelson wrote the following in the Washington Post:

Just last week, legendary investor Warren Buffett denounced derivatives as "financial weapons of mass destruction" that could cause economic havoc. By contrast, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan says derivatives have improved economic stability. Who's right? This is an important debate, because derivatives have exploded and are implicated in two recent financial scandals -- Enron's bankruptcy and the near-bankruptcy in 1998 of Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM), a private investment fund.

…Hedging has spread far beyond the farm. Four-fifths of derivatives now involve interest rates; another 10 percent or so involve currency exchange rates. These provide protection for companies whose businesses involve lots of debt or foreign trade. One benefit, Greenspan has argued, has been the mortgage-refinancing boom. Investors in mortgage-backed securities face the risk that, if interest rates fall, homeowners will refinance. Investors lose. To minimize that risk, they can hedge against lower interest rates. If they couldn't, they might impose larger prepayment penalties or charge higher interest rates.

Similarly, Greenspan has noted that despite $1 trillion in worldwide lending to telecommunications companies from 1998 to 2001, the subsequent telecom bankruptcies have not caused any major bank failures. One reason, he contends, is that banks spread their lending risks to other investors (say, insurance companies) through "credit derivatives." Dispersing risk has made the financial system sturdier, he argues.

Buffett doesn't deny derivatives' theoretical benefits. Indeed, he's not worried by standard futures contracts such as wheat (traded on exchanges, such as the Chicago Mercantile Exchange). What frightens him is the possibility that newer derivatives (traded "over the counter'' -- between one customer and another) could trigger a panic. Financial markets require trust. Without it, people won't deal with each other. Credit and confidence shrivel. To Buffett, derivatives are "time bombs" that could shatter confidence in three ways.

First, a few big banks dominate the market. Among U.S. banks, seven (led by JPMorgan Chase, Citibank and Bank of America) account for 96 percent of derivatives holdings. "The troubles of one could quickly infect the others," he writes.

Second, weakness could feed on itself. A company whose credit rating is lowered -- for whatever reason -- typically has to put up more collateral against its derivatives contracts. A "corporate meltdown" and defaults could ensue because the company needs more cash just when cash is least available.

Third, complex accounting rules for derivatives can lead to overstatements of profits (this was true of Enron) and confusion. All the "long footnotes" on derivatives convince Buffett "that we don't understand how much risk" is involved.

…Even Greenspan concedes "the remote possibility of a chain reaction, a cascading sequence of defaults" that would impel the Fed, heeding Bagehot, to try to rescue the financial system -- an outcome that no one should want.

That was two years ago. Since then, the growth of derivatives has continued to explode, calling into question the ability of the Federal Reserve Board to rescue the system in case of a default. Now we see this:

Hedge Fund Assets Top $1 Trillion for First Time

From Bloomberg News
April 28, 2005

Hedge funds attracted a record $27.4 billion from institutional and wealthy investors in the first quarter, helping to push assets to more than $1 trillion for the first time, according to Hedge Fund Research Inc.

Money streamed in faster than at any other time since Hedge Fund Research began gathering data in 2000, topping the fourth quarter's $27 billion, the firm said Wednesday.

Total industry assets reached $1.01 trillion, it said.

Pension funds, endowments and other big investors have been pouring money into the loosely regulated private pools to boost returns and diversify their investments. Hedge funds pursue a wide range of investment strategies, unlike most conventional mutual funds, which tend to buy and hold stocks or bonds.

Hedge fund assets have grown from $39 billion in 1990, when there were 610 funds. There now are more than 7,900 funds.

Common sense should tell us that the exponential growth in hyper-complex financial instruments may lead to a hyper-collapse at the point when the default tsunami becomes greater than anything the U.S. Federal Reserve Board can handle. That day may be coming soon, since, in the end, the Fed represents the hegemony of the U.S. dollar and the U.S. empire, both of which are now running on fumes.

RANCHO BERNARDO – Police are investigating the distribution of hundreds of fliers here promoting a neo-Nazi group.

Although the two-page notice is headlined "Support Our Troops. Bring them home and put them on the Mexican Border!" much of the missive is an anti-Israel and anti-Semitic message.

The flier says "powerful Jewish lobbyists and advisers who had wormed their way into the Bush administration" are responsible for the U.S. involvement in Iraq.

The second page is a membership application to the organization, the National Alliance, listing a post office box in Hillsboro, W. Va. Applicants are asked to certify that "I am a white person of good moral character with no disqualifying characteristics."

One Rancho Bernardo resident said she was upset about receiving it.
"My late husband was in the Air Force, and I definitely support the troops," Betty Stoneburner said yesterday.

"But this had nothing to do with supporting our troops. It was an anti-Semitic piece and I wanted no part of it."

Stoneburner said she found the flier on her driveway Sunday morning when she went out to pick up her newspaper. She said she looked up and down the street and could see one at every home.

She estimated that 220 to 240 homes are on her street, Rueda Acayan, and nearby Camino Ancho, in the Oaks North neighborhood.

San Diego police were not aware of the flier until asked about it Tuesday by this reporter.

"It doesn't appear as though a crime has occurred," San Diego police Detective Margaret Wiegand-Pierce said yesterday. "There was no advocacy of any violence or crime in the flier, but we are investigating it further.

"We have no idea where they might have come from." [...]

Morris Casuto, regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, said yesterday that he had heard about the flier in Rancho Bernardo and that one had also been distributed in a North Coast community. He declined to say where.

"I think this group is one of the more virulent racist and anti-Semitic groups in the United States," Casuto said. "But their membership is dwindling since their former leader, William Pierce, died, and they are trying to build it up.

"This is a group that is looking for recruits, but this type of message has no impact at all. I think most people are horrified by the nature of the material."

Ariel Sharon travelled to the United States as a hero of peace, as if he had already evacuated Gaza and only the follow-up remained to be worked out. What has completely disappeared from the public agenda is what is happening, meanwhile, in the West Bank. The media continue to deluge us daily with disengagement storms, like the Nitzanim bubble. But for now the disengagement exists only on paper. On the ground, no settler has yet received compensation. Even those who agreed to accept compensation are now waiting, because if they have a chance to get Nitzanim settlement on Gaza's beach — the pearl of Israeli real estate — why hurry?

In the meantime, three and a half months before the projected date of evacuation, it is still not clear where the evacuees will be housed until the discussions regarding their final relocation destination are concluded. Contrary to the prevailing impression, no infrastructure has been set up even for their temporary dwellings.

On 8 April 2005, Ofer Petersburg reported in Yediot Ahronot that "The Settlement Department of the Jewish Agency, responsible for providing the 'caravillas' [the caravans that were supposed to host the evacuated settlers temporarily] has so far received no order from the government."

If Sharon intends to evacuate the Gaza settlements, he is doing so with outrageous inefficiency. He is far more efficient in the West Bank. There, plans are carried out precisely as scheduled. Right from the start, during the first agreements between Sharon and Netanyahu one year ago about the disengagement plan, it was agreed that the disengagement would not be put into effect before the separation fence was completed on the western side of the West Bank.[1]

Indeed, the construction of the wall is moving towards completion. In July, which is the announced date for the beginning of the Gaza evacuation, the wall surrounding East Jerusalem and cutting it off from the West Bank, will be in place. The Palestinians who live there will be able to leave only with permits. The centre of life in the West Bank will become an enclosed prison. As well, the northern wall, which has already imprisoned the residents of Tulkarem, Qalqilya and Mas'ha, and which has robbed them of their land, continues to advance southwards. Now the bulldozers are headed for the land of Bil'in and Safa, bordering the settlements of Modi'in Elit. The farmers who are losing their land are trying to stand their ground, together with Israeli opponents of the wall. But who will hear about their sufferings and their struggle amidst the tumult over the disengagement?

The disengagement plan was born in February 2004, at the height of a wave of international criticism over the wall and on the eve of the opening of deliberations at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. In the ruling that was handed down in July, the Court determined that the route of the wall was a blatant and serious violation of international law. Moreover, the court indicated that there was a danger of "a further change in the demographic composition as a result of the departure of the Palestinian population from certain areas" (at para 122). In other words, the court warned of a process of transfer.

According to United Nations data, 237,000 Palestinians will be trapped between the wall and the Green Line and 160,000 others will remain on the Palestinian side, cut off from their land. The route that was approved at the government's meeting in February 2005 reduces their number only slightly.[2]

What is to be expected for those people, for the farmers who lose their land, for the imprisoned who are cut off from their families and their livelihoods? In the ghost towns of Tulkarem and Qalqilya and the villages around Mas'ha, many have already left in order to seek subsistence on the edges of towns in the centre of the West Bank. How much longer will the others be able to hold on under conditions of despair and atrophy, inside villages which have become prisons?

"Transfer" is associated in the collective memory with trucks arriving at night to take Palestinians across the border, as occurred in some places in 1948. But behind the smoke screen of disengagement, a process of slow and hidden transfer is being carried out in the West Bank today. It is not easy to judge which method of "transferring" people from their land is more cruel. Nearly 400,000 people, about half the number of Palestinians who were forced to leave their land in 1948, are now candidates for "voluntary emigration" to refugee camps in the West Bank. And all this is currently being passed over in silence because maybe Sharon will disengage.

Prof. Tanya Reinhart is a lecturer in linguistics, media and cultural studies at the Tel Aviv University. She is the author of several books, including Israel/Palestine: How to End the War of 1948, from which this article was excerpted from an updated chapter. This article first appered in Yediot Aharonot on 13 April 2005 and was translated from Hebrew by Mark Marshall.

Footnotes

1. For example, some reports from April last year:

Some weeks ago I happened to watch Oliver Stone’s great production Born the Fourth of July for the second time. In the movie, Ron Kovic (played by the handsome as always Tom Cruise) signs up for the army. He wants to go to Vietnam to fight Communism. “Better dead then red” is his motto. He leaves for Vietnam as a well-trained, young, brave American standing up for democracy fully prepared to die in order to fight the Communist threat wherever it arises. When he comes back from Vietnam, he is paralyzed from the waist and down. But he’s not meet by his fellow citizens as a hero. Instead he is met by demonstrators in his own age setting American flags on fire. He doesn’t understand why. Expressing his hatred for the demonstrators when at the Bronx Veteran Hospital, he soon comes to realize the black nurses have quite another view of the war. As a male nurse explains to him, “Vietnam is the White man’s war, the rich man’s war.” Later, as many other Americans in Vietnam, Kovic came to realize that war was not about democracy at all. Young Americans like himself were sent there to oppress a people fighting for their own freedom.

Some decades later, the world’s biggest war-machine is now under way with genocide once again, this time in Iraq. The mass slaughtering is implemented by young boys who aren’t really sure why they’re there, but it’s ordered by the White House on behalf of a ruthless, powerful elite. It was no surprise that Iraq didn’t possess any weapons of mass destruction. After all the U.S. is not stupid enough to attack a state that actually so does – it could be dangerous! But although we for sure know that this war indeed was not a “preemptive war” or about “liberating” Iraq, the “war for oil”-theory - adopted by the greater majority in the anti-war movement - loses ground by the day. One ought to at least question if oil was the main reason for going to war. Oil tastes good, but the Americans want cheap oil, not expensive. The occupation of Iraq cost the American tax payers more then 5.8 Billion dollars a month. [1] Thus, it would have been cheaper to support dictators in the region instead of overthrowing them – with the result of almost no oil at all. But this is not a White man’s war. Nor is it the oil companies’ war. No, this is a Zionist war.

In his outstanding essay The Shadow of Zog, Israeli author Israel Shamir writes about what was probably the real reason for invading Iraq:

“As the head of the Occupation Administration, Jay Garner's task is to create a new Iraq, friendly to Israel. The Jerusalem Post, a hard-line Zionist daily published by Conrad Black, friend of Pinochet and Sharon, carried an interview with one of his wannabe Quislings, Ahmad Chalabi's right hand man, Musawi.

'Musawi talks enthusiastically of his hopes for the closest possible ties with Israel. There will be no place for Palestinians in the new Iraq, for the large Palestinian community is regarded by INC leaders (and presumably by their Zionist instructors) as a loathsome fifth column. Instead, an 'arc of peace'; would run from Turkey, through Iraq and Jordan to Israel, creating a new fulcrum in the Middle East.'

The Occupation Regime in Iraq was installed by the US army in the interests of Zionists, and it may be rightly called ZOG, Zionist Occupation Government if anything.”[2]

The war on Iraq – just like the U.S.-threats against Iran – can be traced to Israel’s interests in the region. Israel and its powerful lobby has for long been after the U.S. to deal with the Iraqi regime. The destabilization of the region is more favorable to Israel than it is to the U.S. After discussing “what is possibly the unacknowledged real reason and motive behind the policy” of going to war on Iraq, historian Paul W. Schroeder, in a footnote, wrote that if this is accurate

“it would represent something to my knowledge unique in history. It is common for great powers to try to fight wars by proxy, getting smaller powers to fight for their interests. This would be the first instance I know where a great power (in fact, a superpower) would do the fighting as the proxy of a small client state.”[3]

The Jews constitute no more then between 2% and 2.5% of the American population, a fact which seems hard to believe for most Americans. According to a pull, published in October 2002, the average non-Jewish American believed that no less then 18% of the population were Jews.

Every fourth American asked answered that between 10% and 19% of the Americans were Jewish, while almost every fifth guessed that the Jews constitute between 20% and 29%. Some 12% thought the number was between 30 and 49%! “Pretty wild?” Lenni Brenner comments, and continues:

“But why should gentile Americans know better? Their guesses are based on what they see. Turn on the TV, go to the movies, pick up a newspaper, follow an election, and in every case Jewish involvement is far above 2.5%. (...) Twelve percent of our Jews think they are 2% of Americans, 13% think Jews are 3%, and 11% say they don't know, which is also a 'proper' answer. But 7 % of America's Jews think they are 1% of Americans. Five percent of the Jews thought Jews are 4%. Ten percent of the Jews said they are 5%. Eighteen percent believed Jews are 6-10%. Six percent estimated our Jews to be 11-15%, and 18% of America's Jews projected themselves as over 15% of the population, a whopping margin of error of over 600%.”[4]

However, being a Jew does not make one a Zionist (although, unfortunately, almost all organized Jews are Zionists). In fact, the majority of the (non-organized) American Jews opposed the Iraqi War. But the way too powerful Israel lobby did support it. Its strong support for the war was definitely a major factor that shouldn’t be overseen. Still today Zionist Jews stands for a big share of the contributions to the two big parties in America. As the Swedish daily Aftonbladet pointed out,

“The Jews pump enormous amounts of money into American politics, 30 times more then the Arab Americans. They have power. They rule by the motto 'money talks'.”[5]

As a matter of fact, close to half the American billionaires are Jews (This phenomenon is however not limited to the United States. Six of the seven Russian Oligarchs are Jews![6]). In his foreword to late Professor Israel Shahak’s great book Jewish history, Jewish religion, the American dissident and author, Gore Vidal reveals a story which has affected the Middle East in a crucial way during the last sixty years:

“Sometime in the late 1950s, that world-class gossip and occasional historian, John F. Kennedy, told me how, in 1948, Harry S. Truman had been pretty much abandoned by everyone when he came to run for president. Then an American Zionist brought him two million dollars in cash, in a suitcase, aboard his whistle-stop campaign train. 'That's why our recognition of Israel was rushed through so fast.' As neither Jack nor I was an antisemite (unlike his father and my grandfather) we took this to be just another funny story about Truman and the serene corruption of American politics. (...)

I shall not rehearse the wars and alarms of that unhappy region. But I will say that the hasty invention of Israel has poisoned the political and intellectual life of the USA, Israel's unlikely patron.

Unlikely, because no other minority in American history has ever hijacked so much money from the American taxpayers in order to invest in a 'homeland'. It is as if the American taxpayer had been obliged to support the Pope in his reconquest of the Papal States simply because one third of our people are Roman Catholic. Had this been attempted, there would have been a great uproar and Congress would have said no. But a religious minority of less than two per cent has bought or intimidated seventy senators (the necessary two thirds to overcome an unlikely presidential veto) while enjoying support of the media.”

Shahak himself translated an article which appeared in hebrew in Kivunim, the journal of The World Zionist Organization, in February 1982, and has become known as the Kivunim-plan. The article, written by a Oded Yinon, had the title A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties and its idea for the Middle East was “based on the division of the whole area into small states, and the dissolution of all the existing Arab states,” as Shahak summarized it. Although he considered it way too optimistic, or in fact “pure fantasy,” Shahak added that

“The idea that all the Arab states should be broken down, by Israel, into small units, occurs again and again in Israeli strategic thinking. For example, Ze'ev Schiff, the military correspondent of Ha'aretz (and probably the most knowledgeable in Israel, on this topic) writes about the "best" that can happen for Israeli interests in Iraq: "The dissolution of Iraq into a Shi'ite state, a Sunni state and the separation of the Kurdish part" (Ha'aretz 6/2/1982). Actually, this aspect of the plan is very old.”[7]

As happens, in the New York Times in November 2003, an article appeared by former president of the Council on Foreign Relations and a former editor of the Times, Leslie H. Gelb, with the headline The three-state solution. The idea presented was that the U.S. should consider dividing Iraq into three different states with “Kurds in the north, Sunnis in the center and Shiites in the south.” Gelb writes that “This three-state solution has been unthinkable in Washington for decades... But times have changed.”[8] Thus, the plan conceived by Zionists is everything but dead.

While almost the whole world denounces Israel’s brutal treatment of the Palestinian people, the Zionists demonstrate their control over Washington. Not only do they finance a great deal of the presidential campaigns, they also have mainstream media in their control. “For the media is the nerve system of a modern state,” writes Shamir.

“Modern democracy in practice in a very complicated society can be compared to a sophisticated computer. Its machinery can function successfully on one condition: there is a free flow of information across the system. While every input is instinctively checked and sieved on one criterion, whether it is good for Jews, it is not odd that the machine produces such freak output as “revenge on Babylon for its destruction of Jerusalem in BC 586”. Indeed, in long-gone 1948 the first ruler of Israel, David Ben Gurion, promised: "We shall mete historic vengeance to Assyria, Aram and Egypt". Now it comes to pass, as Iraq, Syria and Egypt are targeted by Zog.”[9]

Three decades after the death of Ben Gurion, the Guardian reports that “troops from the US-led force in Iraq have caused widespread damage and severe contamination to the remains of the ancient city of Babylon.”[10] It took some time, but the prophecy has come true. But the late Ben Gurion did not just have dreams of meting revenge. He had dreams of creating a Greater Israel, too. In a speech in Knesset, on the third day of the Suez War, as then Prime Minister he recognized that the real purpose of fighting the war was “the restoration of the Kingdom of David and Salomon” to its biblical borders.[11] His successor Ariel Sharon has the same dream, and is fully prepared to fulfil it when given the opportunity. When the time is right, the mass slaughter and expulsion of the remaining Palestinians in the region will take place, no doubt.

Jeff Blankfort refers to Washington as the "the Zionists' Most Important Occupied Territory". He is right. Zionist Jews are more powerful then ever before. With the devoted support from Zionist Christians, Israel’s interests are secured. The Zionist grip over American foreign policy on the Middle East has become impossible to deny. It is not in the interest of America to always do what’s best for Israel. The U.S. is not ruled by the Americans, but by an elite and lobbies that finances (and threatens) politicians into obedience. Fighting wars in countries most Americans can’t find on maps are of course not in the interest of the people. Despite greedy capitalists, there is one major factor that has to be taken into consideration when finding the motives for war. Far too many underestimate the strong importance Zionism plays in American foreign (and, to a lesser extent, domestic) affairs.

The U.S. is a “lobbyocracy” – a state ruled by powerful lobbies. Politicians are dependent of financial support from them to even stand a chance in electoral races. So is the case with the contemporary regime in Washington. President Bush and colleague war criminals in the White house have stocks in the war industry and are financed by it. They personally gain from the war. However, the American foreign policy on the Middle East and the unreserved U.S. support to Israel cannot be explained simply by this fact. Control over the Iraqi oil supplies alone are not reason enough for sending 150 000 American Soldiers to Iraq, at a so high cost. It is important to acknowledge that there is devoted Zionists in leading positions fully prepared to do whatever necessary as long as it’s good for Israel. I’m speaking of the neoconservatives, shortly refered to as the neocons. Actually, Israel was the main issue for the neocons to leave the Democratic Party, where they once were to be found. Back in 1993, Professor of Political Science, Benyamin Ginsburg wrote:

“One major factor that drew them inexorably to the right was their attachment to Israel and their growing frustration during the 1960s with a Democratic party that was becoming increasingly opposed to American military preparedness and increasingly enamored of Third World causes. In the Reaganite right's hard-line anti-communism, commitment to American military strength, and willingness to intervene politically and militarily in the affairs of other nations to promote democratic values (and American interests), neocons found a political movement that would guarantee Israel's security.”[12]

The neocons’ commitment to Israel, the great influence of the Jewish lobby and the captivation of the Christian Communities by Zionism, is indeed the explanation for the constant U.S. support to Israel. It might seem foreign to some, but today it would be wrong referring to Israel as the client state of U.S. Nowadays it’s more correct to say it’s the other way around if anything. This was well put by Israeli born musician Gilad Atzmon, when interwieved:

“I think that originally Israel was there to support western colonialism (Balfour Declaration, etc.). It didn't stop there. American administrations realised in the late '70s and '80s that the only real danger to western globalization is Arab opposition and Islamic resistance. Israel was there to maintain a continuous conflict in the region. The Americans got involved in the peace process, not in order to push for peace, but rather to maintain the conflict forever. So, in a sense, at least historically, you are right. Israel was there to serve American interests, but things have changed. In the last ten years we face a shift in the balance of power. The new bond between Zionists, Republican, and right-wing Christian groups introduced a completely new phase in the American-Israeli relationship. I think that American people would do themselves a great favour if they start to scrutinise the acts of their government. Americans should ask themselves whether it is American interests that are looked after or rather Israeli ones. The war in Iraq is a good place to start such an intellectual exercise.”[13]

In the case of the war on Iraq, the interests of greedy politicians selling themselves to the highest bidder (or keeping their mouth shut if they disagree), and the interests of the devoted Zionists as the neocons are, goes hand in hand. Peace will not come to the Middle East until the Americans have liberated themselves from the Zionist’s grip over Washington and some peoples´ conviction of always doing what’s best for Israel over what’s best for America. Conservative Pat Buchanan well summarized what the neocons´ ideology is all about:

“What these neoconservatives seek is to conscript American blood to make the world safe for Israel. They want the peace of the sword imposed on Islam and American soldiers to die if necessary to impose it.”[14]

Truer words have never been written. In the end the Americans, just like Kovic, will have to ask themselves the one crucial question: What is it all good for us?

[1] Iraq Monthly War Cost Rises To $5.8 Billion, Set To Go Higher; http://www.parapundit.com/archives/002494.html

[2] Shadow of Zog; http://www.israelshamir.net/english/shadowofzog.html

[3] Iraq: The Case Against Preemptive War; http://www.amconmag.com/10_21/iraq.html

[4] The Demographics of American Jews; http://www.counterpunch.org/brenner10242003.html

[5] Freden dör på stadens gator; http://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/0010/15/israel.html

[6] The Oligarchs, by Uri Avnery; http://www.counterpunch.org/avnery08032004.html

[7] A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eightees, translated by Israel Shahak with a foreword; http://student.cs.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/articles/article0005345.html

[8] The three-state solution, by Leslie H. Gelb, New York Times, November 25 2003; http://quicksitebuilder.cnet.com/supfacts/id365.html

[9] Shadow of Zog; http://www.israelshamir.net/english/shadowofzog.html

[10] Destroying Babylon; http://dahrjamailiraq.com/weblog/archives/dispatches/000171.php

[11] Jewish History, Jewish Religion, by Israel Shahak (p. 8 in the Swedish edition)

[12] Quoted in “The Shadow of Zog”.

[13] The Gilad Atzmon Interview; http://sf.indymedia.org/news/2004/01/1674134.php

[14] Whose war?; http://www.amconmag.com/03_24_03/cover.html

Easter has no fixed abode; this most important movable feast of the Orthodox Christian year flies like a shuttle between March and May and weaves the diverse important dates into a single metaphysical narrative. In the memorable year 2000, it coincided with the Western Easter proclaiming Christendom’s underlying bedrock unity. Last year, the Good Friday fell on April 9, the Deir Yassin Massacre Day, when apostles’ children were slaughtered by Jewish terrorists in the land of Christ. This year, Resurrection Sunday comes on May Day, weaving back the unnecessary tear between the Reds and the Christ. The Russians, among whom I celebrate today, christened it Krasnaya Pascha, “Red Easter”.

In this unique country – nay, civilisation, - thousands of men and women stand up for the all-night long Easter service and in the morning join mass demos under the Red banner. Paradox? Not really. Even universal faiths have some local colour, and Russian Communism and Russian Orthodox Church share the same background. On every turn of their development, whether in their old Pravoslav Tsardom, or in the Red Republic, the Russians strove for unity and brotherhood of Man, were motivated by compassion and acceptance of losers. They consistently rejected Mammon. The Russians despise money and material belongings; for them, poverty is a welcome sign of an honest man rather than a mark of social leprosy as in the West. They suspect rather than admire a moneybag. The old adage of ‘the Spiritual East’ as opposed to ‘materialistic’ West still holds true: who does not like East, does not love Spirit.

Comment: A recent poll taken in Russia confirms this suspicion of the moneybags. See the article Few Russians Take Pride in Country’s Super-Rich. The poll found that:

39 percent of respondents said they felt ashamed that Russia had so many billionaires, 15 percent were envious as they would like to see their own names on the list; another 15 percent said it made them curious and only 7 percent said they felt proud of their compatriots. 24 percent were undecided.

Younger respondents proved more tolerant in their attitude towards billionaires. 28 percent of respondents aged 18-24 said they themselves would like to become rich; 21 percent of the same age group take an interest in information about billionaires. 16 percent of the younger respondents have a sense of pride because of the country’s rich, while 13 percent said they felt shame that there were so many rich people in Russia.

More of the older respondents expressed shame because of Russia’s rich. 62 percent of the respondents aged over 60 said they felt shame for Russia. Respondents with high incomes, on the contrary, feel no shame at all and dream of getting on the list themselves.

I came to Russia for the last weeks of their Lent and for Easter. The spring was unusually long and cold; until recently, white snow covered the eternally green boughs of the pines and naked white bodies of birches in the forest. Thick ice allowed fishermen to drill holes and catch fish in the frozen streams until mid-April. It was good: Russia is beautiful like a bride in her white dress of snow and ice, while pink-cheeked and blue-eyed Russian girls in their modest fur coats are irresistible in the frosty days. And the churches with their multicoloured onions and domes are clad in exquisite icons and frescoes, glorifying Our Lady.

The Russian Christianity is centred on the Lady. Her image occupies the place usually preserved for the Cross in the Western churches. She is often presented as the Queen sitting on the throne with the crowned Child on her lap. If Dan Brown were to visit Russia, he would never write his Da Vinci Code, for the female divinity is not suppressed or replaced in this country. In his very American bestseller, the Catholic Church tries to suppress the cult of Mary Magdalene as it is afraid of femininity; while the Jews (of all people) protect and guard Mary’s remains. In real life, Jews have no female saints and dislike Our Lady even more than they dislike Her Son, while the Church venerates the Lady and adores the female saints. But Dan Brown had to fit his perfectly normal, true and justified longing for the Earth-connected Mediatrix into the Judaeo-American neo-Calvinist picture of the world, where Jews are always right and the church is always wrong. That is why he turned everything upside down; the New York Times spread its fame and the public bought it.

In Russia, he won’t be able to misrepresent: here, the Lady reigns supreme, and the Russians have no need or fear of the Magdalene’s remains. If recovered, she would be venerated like every saint; for indeed the Orthodox Church grants her the highest rank of holiness, ‘equal to Apostles’. That is why the Gnostic heresy does not fascinate the Russians as it does the Westerners. Russian priests are married men; and it completely undermines another complaint of Dan Brown.

On a deeper level, relationship of Man and Nature in the Russian Orthodox Universe differs from the Western view. The Nature represented by the Mother of God is divine, connected with the Spirit and bears Him in Her womb. The Russians do not feel the need to change Nature; they try to fit into their landscape.

This attitude is successful as we can learn from mass attendance of churches – in no place in the West you will find so many believers; but again, Russia is not in the West. The Western Churches will do well if they draw from this reservoir of spirit and tradition.

Today, the Russian Reds are reconciled with the Church; Zuganov’s Communist Party is in favour of the Pravoslav tradition. It is a good change, for the Reds’ advent to power and subsequent loss can’t be understood but in context of Russian spiritual quest. The Russian communists did not overthrew the Tsar as it is claimed. In October 1917, they removed the liberal Westernisers who seized the power in February same year. The liberals were for introducing capitalism in Russia; but the Russian soul had a very strong faith-based rejection of Mammon. The Communists were as anti-Mammonite as anybody; they modernised Russia, they created a society of mutual support. They could not give villas and Cadillac cars to everybody, so they gave what they could. Everybody had more or less the same: they had their safe and assured employment, their free accommodation, free electricity, telephone, heating, public transport.

But they forgot to attend to spiritual needs of the Russians. They forgot the teleological ‘What for’. And people can’t live without a purpose. This lack of purpose became obvious when the pressing material needs of the people were satisfied. The Russians accepted Communism – not in order to live better; they had a greater goal of spiritual perfection. The trouble began from the top: the de-spiritualised Soviet elites of the last decades drifted to the right; they loved Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, and accepted the neo-liberal world-view long time before the collapse.

Indeed, in the West, the neo-liberals solved the problem of “What for” by creating massive social insecurity: people are not liable to think of spirit if they can be thrown out of their homes by a bank. Gorbachev copied their solution when he allowed the Soviet ship to capsize. He was supported by the pro-Western liberals, the heirs of February 1917 reformers.

The West is full of variety and contains many ideas and paradigms. But the Russian Westernisers were narrow-minded lot; they embraced the Chicago school of Milton Friedman with fervour, despised Russian people, their history and tradition. They privatised Russian property, sold it to the trans-national companies and tried to integrate Russia as a supplier of raw materials. However, their victory was not as final and conclusive as they thought.

There are clear signs of Russians reasserting their history after the clean break of 1991. It is not only churches lovingly restored and filled with worshippers; not only restoration of historic names – thus Kalinin Avenue (named after a Soviet leader) became again the Invention of the Cross street. It was done by the winners of 1991. But the Soviet past is being reasserted, too. The great celebrations of V-day due on May, 9 are a sign of the change. The liberal reformers of 1991 asserted that there was no difference between the Communists and the Nazis, between Hitler and Stalin. They mocked the veterans saying “Pity you weren’t defeated: we would live like Germans”. They forbade celebrations of the V-day: not out of love to Hitler, but because of their hate to the Soviet anti-Mammonite past.

This year, every street in Russia bears some congratulatory poster blessing the vets for their great victory. Here again, it is not a sign of hate to Germany or to Nazis, but of reconciliation with the Soviet past. Stalin is referred to in much more positive words. It’s not that the Russians miss Gulag or industrialisation; but Stalin and his rule are a part and parcel of Russian history.

The struggle for Russian future is far from over; it just started. Some people may think that this great country became an irrelevancy, a rusty oil pipeline and a consumer of Chinese goods and American ideas. But Russia is alive: the Russians write great books still unknown in the West, make new great cinema, and think of new solutions to the problems. Their problems are our problems, too: the Soviet collapse coincided with (or ushered in) the global Ice Age of social deep freezing. More and more people in the once-protected West find themselves marginalised; the Third World outpoured unto New York and London; compassion is outlawed; spiritual search is non-existent.

But Russians had additional problems, too. The US rulers are too ruthless, too keen: they try to use the critical moment to strip Russia of its assets and enslave its people. Thus a new challenge to Russia came into being; and great civilisations are formed by their responses to the challenges. The recently demised Russian thinker Alexander Panarin wrote of invigorating cold wind of challenge waking up the Russian soul from its long slumber. He believed that the Orthodox Christian paradigm has a way to deal with the coming neo-liberal Ice Age by bringing in the Christian Eros as the force to revitalise the Universe. Russia may yet raise again the banner to summon the defeated, the outcast, the disenfranchised, the discarded against the new Masters of the World, he wrote.

Will it happen? Russia is on the crossroads. While President Putin’s ability to change and lead powerful reform can’t be dismissed out of hand, there are other options. The Americans are fomenting an Orange revolution in Russia like they did in the Ukraine; but destabilisation can have unpredictable consequences. Nobody could expect the Bolshevik victory even a few months before it occurred. Yes, the Bolsheviks were supported by the German General Staff, by New York Jewish bankers and by the British Intelligence – but in the end they dispatched the yesteryear supporters without a thank you. This eventuality can be repeated. While return to Soviet Communism is as unlikely as restoration of the Pravoslav Empire, creative forces of the Russians may still move mankind forward, out of the present impasse. The divine spark in Man’s soul is not easy to extinguish, the Spirit will win as sure as Christ is Risen.

BERLIN - Neo-Nazi crime in Germany has soared to its highest level since 2000, the chief of Germany's police trade union warned on Wednesday.

Konrad Freiberg said there were over 12,000 right-wing extremist crimes reported in Germany last year - the highest level in the past four years.

Berlin's Tagesspiegel newspaper gave the figure for last year as 12,051. Official data is due in the coming weeks.

This would be the second highest level of neo-Nazi crime since Germany began reporting nationwide figures in 1992. The worst year for far-right crime was 2000 when 15,951 cases were reported.

In comparison, there were 10,795 neo-Nazi crimes in 2003 and 10,054 in 2001, said a spokesman for the police union. [...]

Seven months before September 11, 2001, the US State Department issued a human rights report on Uzbekistan. It was a catalogue of horrors.

The police repeatedly tortured prisoners, State Department officials wrote, noting the most common techniques were "beating, often with blunt weapons, and asphyxiation with a gas mask".

Separately, international human rights groups had reported that torture in Uzbek jails included boiling body parts, using electric shocks on genitals and pulling off fingernails and toenails with pliers. Two prisoners were boiled to death, the groups reported.

Immediately after the September 11 attacks, however, the Bush Administration turned to Uzbekistan as a partner in the "war on terror".

The former Soviet republic granted the US the use of a military base for fighting the Taliban across the border in Afghanistan. The US has given Uzbekistan more than $US500 million ($640 milllion) for border control and other security measures.

There is now growing evidence that the US has sent terrorist suspects to Uzbekistan for detention and interrogation, even as Uzbekistan's treatment of its own prisoners continues to be attacked around the world, including by the State Department.

The so-called rendition program, under which the CIA transfers terrorist suspects to foreign countries to be held and interrogated, has linked the US to several states with poor human rights records. But the turnabout in relations with Uzbekistan is particularly sharp.

Before September 11 there was little high-level contact between Washington and Tashkent, the Uzbek capital, beyond US criticism of Uzbekistan.

Its role as a surrogate jailer for the US has been confirmed by current and former intelligence officials working in Europe, the Middle East and the US. And there is other evidence of the US's reliance on Uzbekistan. On September 21, 2003, two US-registered aircraft landed at Tashkent's airport, flight logs obtained by The New York Times show.

Former and past intelligence officers have confirmed that the two aircraft were frequently used to ferry terrorist suspects around the world for questioning.

The logs show at least seven flights were made to Uzbekistan by those planes from early 2002 to late 2003, but the records are incomplete.

A high-level military investigation into allegations of abuse of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has concluded that several prisoners were mistreated or humiliated, perhaps illegally, as a result of efforts to gain information.

The report on the investigation will deal with accounts by FBI agents who complained after witnessing detainees subjected to several forms of harsh treatment.

International efforts to persuade North Korea to abandon its suspected nuclear weapons programme were in danger of unravelling yesterday amid reports that it has launched a short-range conventional missile into the Sea of Japan.

"It appears that there was a test of a short-range missile by the North Koreans and it landed in the Sea of Japan," the White House chief of staff, Andrew Card, told CNN.

US agencies were still assessing the information to determine exactly what took place.

Article continues Yonhap, the official South Korean news agency, quoted intelligence officials in Seoul saying a missile was launched just north of Hamhung on North Korea's east coast.

Japanese media had earlier quoted government sources as saying that the missile, launched at around 8am Japanese time, had a range of about 60 miles and was most likely to have been an anti-ship or small ballistic missile. It was not immediately clear whether the launch was a test.

There have been US warnings that Pyongyang has been preparing to conduct an underground nuclear test, possibly within two months.

The launch of a missile would almost certainly damage the prospects for the multi-party nuclear talks involving the two Koreas, China, the US, Russia and Japan, which have been stalled for almost a year.

But analysts say such launches are part of a familiar negotiating tactic - that of creating a minor crisis which could force concessions.

The North is thought to have test-fired short-range missiles into the sea at least three times in 2003 amid condemnation of its suspected nuclear ambitions. In 1998 it test-fired a long-range missile over Japanese territory and into the Pacific Ocean, which prompted Tokyo to start work on missile defence with the US.

The US defence intelligence agency has said that Pyongyang could soon be able to mount a nuclear warhead on a missile capable of striking the US west coast.

In February North Korea said it had nuclear weapons, and would no longer take part in the six-party negotiations, citing bellicose language from the Bush administration. It later said it would return to talks if Washington showed more "trustworthy sincerity".

Concern was raised when Pyongyang shut down a 5,000kW nuclear reactor: weapons-grade plutonium can be extracted from fuel rods that have been removed from reactors and left to cool.

The North's calls for more aid, coupled with direct talks with the US, have so far been unsuccessful. It has also demanded an apology from the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, for calling it an "outpost of tyranny" this year.

Last Thursday George Bush labelled the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, a "dangerous person" and a "tyrant".

A day later the official North Korean news agency quoted the North Korean foreign ministry as calling Mr Bush a "hooligan, bereft of any personality as a human being, to say nothing of stature as president of a country. He is a half-baked man in terms of morality, and a philistine whom we can never deal with."

BAGHDAD - About 30 Iraqis were killed and more than 50 were wounded when a bomb exploded at a funeral Sunday, while at least 10 more people died in other violent incidents.

At least 110 people, including 11 U.S. soldiers, have been killed in a wave of attacks since the Iraqi National Assembly chose a Shia-dominated cabinet on Thursday. The minority Sunnis are believed to be the main supporters of the militant attacks.

Sunni factions had been promised six ministers and one deputy prime minister, but they received four portfolios considered relatively insignificant.

In the most deadly attack Sunday, a Kurdish official was being buried in Tal Afar in northern Iraq when a suicide car bomb blew up.

Many other well-planned car bombings and ambushes were reported on Sunday in Baghdad and other places in Iraq.

Iraqi police are a frequent target.

BERLIN: An estranged husband in Germany shot to death five members of his family and then turned the gun on himself, later dying of his injuries, police said.

Police believe family problems prompted the 41-year-old German from the southwestern town of Rheinfelden to kill his wife, two young children and parents before he shot himself.

The man alerted authorities to his whereabouts on Saturday evening in an emergency call and then hung up, police from nearby Loerrach said in a statement.

At the scene, officers found the bodies of his Somalia-born wife, 30, his daughter, 7, his 4-year-old son, and his parents, who were both in their seventies. They found the man lying seriously injured in a bedroom with a revolver next to him.

Police said a note the man left suggested domestic tensions and the couple's impending divorce sparked the shootings. The couple had been living apart for some months.

They believe the husband first shot his parents and children and waited for his wife before killing her and shooting himself.

MEXICO CITY, May 1 (Xinhuanet) -- Millions of Latin Americans took to the streets on Sunday to mark Labor Day and demand higher pay, more jobs and better work conditions, while Cuba called for a lift of US blockade and sanctions against it.

More than 1 million Cubans gathered in Havana's Revolution Square to celebrate the holiday. They demanded that the United States lift the four-decade sanctions against Cuba and condemned the United States for abusing the prisoners detained in Guantanamo Bay.

Fidel Castro Ruz, president of the Council of State and Council of Ministers, said at the rally that Cuba did not collapse after decades of US sanctions and blockade and this shows a failure of Washington's anti-Cuba policy.

He criticized the United States for harboring Cuban terrorist Luis Posada Carriles, who is reportedly in the United States and is believed to involved in the 1976 bombing of a Cuban civilian airliner that killed all the 73 people on board as well as a failed attempt to assassinate Castro with explosives in Panama in November 2001.

He said the Posada case "reveals the empire's (the United States') immense hypocrisy, lies, and singular cynicism."

Millions of Cubans attended rallies held throughout the country.

In Brazil, about 2 million people gathered in Sao Paulo and marched through the downtown to demand better pay, tax cuts and more employment.

In Venezuela, thousands of people held peaceful demonstrations in Caracas and called for higher pay and better working conditions.

In Mexico City, tens of thousands of people gathered in the Zocalo Square. They protested the government's failure to improve employment and demanded better pay.

Similar rallies also were held in Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Ecuador and Bolivia.

Daniel Tammet is talking. As he talks, he studies my shirt and counts the stitches. Ever since the age of three, when he suffered an epileptic fit, Tammet has been obsessed with counting. Now he is 26, and a mathematical genius who can figure out cube roots quicker than a calculator and recall pi to 22,514 decimal places. He also happens to be autistic, which is why he can't drive a car, wire a plug, or tell right from left. He lives with extraordinary ability and disability.

Tammet is calculating 377 multiplied by 795. Actually, he isn't "calculating": there is nothing conscious about what he is doing. He arrives at the answer instantly. Since his epileptic fit, he has been able to see numbers as shapes, colours and textures. The number two, for instance, is a motion, and five is a clap of thunder. "When I multiply numbers together, I see two shapes. The image starts to change and evolve, and a third shape emerges. That's the answer. It's mental imagery. It's like maths without having to think."

Tammet is a "savant", an individual with an astonishing, extraordinary mental ability. An estimated 10% of the autistic population - and an estimated 1% of the non-autistic population - have savant abilities, but no one knows exactly why. A number of scientists now hope that Tammet might help us to understand better. Professor Allan Snyder, from the Centre for the Mind at the Australian National University in Canberra, explains why Tammet is of particular, and international, scientific interest. "Savants can't usually tell us how they do what they do," says Snyder. "It just comes to them. Daniel can. He describes what he sees in his head. That's why he's exciting. He could be the Rosetta Stone."

There are many theories about savants. Snyder, for instance, believes that we all possess the savant's extraordinary abilities - it is just a question of us learning how to access them. "Savants have usually had some kind of brain damage. Whether it's an onset of dementia later in life, a blow to the head or, in the case of Daniel, an epileptic fit. And it's that brain damage which creates the savant. I think that it's possible for a perfectly normal person to have access to these abilities, so working with Daniel could be very instructive."

Scans of the brains of autistic savants suggest that the right hemisphere might be compensating for damage in the left hemisphere. While many savants struggle with language and comprehension (skills associated primarily with the left hemisphere), they often have amazing skills in mathematics and memory (primarily right hemisphere skills). Typically, savants have a limited vocabulary, but there is nothing limited about Tammet's vocabulary.

Tammet is creating his own language, strongly influenced by the vowel and image-rich languages of northern Europe. (He already speaks French, German, Spanish, Lithuanian, Icelandic and Esperanto.) The vocabulary of his language - "Mänti", meaning a type of tree - reflects the relationships between different things. The word "ema", for instance, translates as "mother", and "ela" is what a mother creates: "life". "Päike" is "sun", and "päive" is what the sun creates: "day". Tammet hopes to launch Mänti in academic circles later this year, his own personal exploration of the power of words and their inter-relationship.

Professor Simon Baron-Cohen, director of the Autism Research Centre (ARC) at Cambridge University, is interested in what Mänti might teach us about savant ability. "I know of other savants who also speak a lot of languages," says Baron-Cohen. "But it's rare for them to be able to reflect on how they do it - let alone create a language of their own." The ARC team has started scanning Tammet's brain to find out if there are modules (for number, for example, or for colour, or for texture) that are connected in a way that is different from most of us. "It's too early to tell, but we hope it might throw some light on why we don't all have savant abilities."

Last year Tammet broke the European record for recalling pi, the mathematical constant, to the furthest decimal point. He found it easy, he says, because he didn't even have to "think". To him, pi isn't an abstract set of digits; it's a visual story, a film projected in front of his eyes. He learnt the number forwards and backwards and, last year, spent five hours recalling it in front of an adjudicator. He wanted to prove a point. "I memorised pi to 22,514 decimal places, and I am technically disabled. I just wanted to show people that disability needn't get in the way."

Tammet is softly spoken, and shy about making eye contact, which makes him seem younger than he is. He lives on the Kent coast, but never goes near the beach - there are too many pebbles to count. The thought of a mathematical problem with no solution makes him feel uncomfortable. Trips to the supermarket are always a chore. "There's too much mental stimulus. I have to look at every shape and texture. Every price, and every arrangement of fruit and vegetables. So instead of thinking,'What cheese do I want this week?', I'm just really uncomfortable."

Tammet has never been able to work 9 to 5. It would be too difficult to fit around his daily routine. For instance, he has to drink his cups of tea at exactly the same time every day. Things have to happen in the same order: he always brushes his teeth before he has his shower. "I have tried to be more flexible, but I always end up feeling more uncomfortable. Retaining a sense of control is really important. I like to do things in my own time, and in my own style, so an office with targets and bureaucracy just wouldn't work."

Instead, he has set up a business on his own, at home, writing email courses in language learning, numeracy and literacy for private clients. It has had the fringe benefit of keeping human interaction to a minimum. It also gives him time to work on the verb structures of Mänti.

Few people on the streets have recognised Tammet since his pi record attempt. But, when a documentary about his life is broadcast on Channel 5 later this year, all that will change. "The highlight of filming was to meet Kim Peek, the real-life character who inspired the film Rain Man. Before I watched Rain Man, I was frightened. As a nine-year-old schoolboy, you don't want people to point at the screen and say, 'That's you.' But I watched it, and felt a real connection. Getting to meet the real-life Rain Man was inspirational."

Peek was shy and introspective, but he sat and held Tammet's hand for hours. "We shared so much - our love of key dates from history, for instance. And our love of books. As a child, I regularly took over a room in the house and started my own lending library. I would separate out fiction and non-fiction, and then alphabetise them all. I even introduced a ticketing system. I love books so much. I've read more books than anyone else I know. So I was delighted when Kim wanted to meet in a library." Peek can read two pages simultaneously, one with each eye. He can also recall, in exact detail, the 7,600 books he has read. When he is at home in Utah, he spends afternoons at the Salt Lake City public library, memorising phone books and address directories."He is such a lovely man," says Tammet. "Kim says, 'You don't have to be handicapped to be different - everybody's different'. And he's right."

Like Peek, Tammet will read anything and everything, but his favourite book is a good dictionary, or the works of GK Chesterton. "With all those aphorisms," he says, "Chesterton was the Groucho Marx of his day." Tammet is also a Christian, and likes the fact that Chesterton addressed some complex religious ideas. "The other thing I like is that, judging by the descriptions of his home life, I reckon Chesterton was a savant. He couldn't dress himself, and would always forget where he was going. His poor wife."

Autistic savants have displayed a wide range of talents, from reciting all nine volumes of Grove's Dictionary Of Music to measuring exact distances with the naked eye. The blind American savant Leslie Lemke played Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No1, after he heard it for the first time, and he never had so much as a piano lesson. And the British savant Stephen Wiltshire was able to draw a highly accurate map of the London skyline from memory after a single helicopter trip over the city. Even so, Tammet could still turn out to be the more significant.

He was born on January 31 1979. He smiles as he points out that 31, 19, 79 and 1979 are all prime numbers - it's a kind of sign. He was actually born with another surname, which he prefers to keep private, but decided to change it by deed poll. It didn't fit with the way he saw himself. "I first saw 'Tammet' online. It means oak tree in Estonian, and I liked that association. Besides, I've always had a love of Estonian. Such a vowel rich language."

As a baby, he banged his head against the wall and cried constantly. Nobody knew what was wrong. His mother was anxious, and would swing him to sleep in a blanket. She breastfed him for two years. The only thing the doctors could say was that perhaps he was understimulated. Then, one afternoon when he was playing with his brother in the living room, he had an epileptic fit.

"I was given medication - round blue tablets - to control my seizures, and told not to go out in direct sunlight. I had to visit the hospital every month for regular blood tests. I hated those tests, but I knew they were necessary. To make up for it, my father would always buy me a cup of squash to drink while we sat in the waiting room. It was a worrying time because my Dad's father had epilepsy, and actually died of it, in the end. They were thinking, 'This is the end of Daniel's life'."

Tammet's mother was a secretarial assistant, and his father a steelplate worker. "They both left school without qualifications, but they made us feel special - all nine of us. As the oldest of nine, I suppose it's fair to say I've always felt special." Even if his younger brothers and sisters could throw and catch better than him, swim better, kick a ball better, Daniel was always the oldest. "They loved me because I was their big brother and I could read them stories."

He remembers being given a Ladybird book called Counting when he was four. "When I looked at the numbers I 'saw' images. It felt like a place I could go where I really belonged. That was great. I went to this other country whenever I could. I would sit on the floor in my bedroom and just count. I didn't notice that time was passing. It was only when my Mum shouted up for dinner, or someone knocked at my door, that I would snap out of it."

One day his brother asked him a sum. "He asked me to multiply something in my head - like 'What is 82 x 82 x 82 x 82?' I just looked at the floor and closed my eyes. My back went very straight and I made my hands into fists. But after five or 10 seconds, the answer just flowed out of my mouth. He asked me several others, and I got every one right. My parents didn't seem surprised. And they never put pressure on me to perform for the neighbours. They knew I was different, but wanted me to have a normal life as far as possible."

Tammet could see the car park of his infant school from his bedroom window, which made him feel safe. "I loved assembly because we got to sing hymns. The notes formed a pattern in my head, just like the numbers did." The other children didn't know what to make of him, and would tease him. The minute the bell went for playtime he would rush off. "I went to the playground, but not to play. The place was surrounded by trees. While the other children were playing football, I would just stand and count the leaves."

As Tammet grew older, he developed an obsessive need to collect - everything from conkers to newspapers. "I remember seeing a ladybird for the first time," he says. "I loved it so much, I went round searching every hedge and every leaf for more. I collected hundreds, and took them to show the teacher. He was amazed, and asked me to get on with some assignment. While I was busy he instructed a classmate to take the tub outside and let the ladybirds go. I was so upset that I cried when I found out. He didn't understand my world."

Tammet may have been teased at school, but his teachers were always protective. "I think my parents must have had a word with them, so I was pretty much left alone." He found it hard to socialise with anyone outside the family, and, with the advent of adolesence, his shyness got worse.

After leaving school with three A-levels (History, French and German, all grade Bs), he decided he wanted to teach - only not the predictable, learn-by-rote type of teaching. For a start, he went to teach in Lithuania, and he worked as a volunteer. "Because I was there of my own free will, I was given a lot of leeway. The times of the classes weren't set in stone, and the structures were all of my own making. It was also the first time I was introduced as 'Daniel' rather than 'the guy who can do weird stuff in his head'. It was such a pleasant relief." Later, he returned home to live with his parents, and found work as a maths tutor.

He met the great love of his life, a software engineer called Neil, online. It began, as these things do, with emailed pictures, but ended up with a face-to-face meeting. "Because I can't drive, Neil offered to pick me up at my parents' house, and drive me back to his house in Kent. He was silent all the way back. I thought, 'Oh dear, this isn't going well'. Just before we got to his house, he stopped the car. He reached over and pulled out a bouquet of flowers. I only found out later that he was quiet because he likes to concentrate when he's driving."

Neil is shy, like Tammet. They live, happily, on a quiet cul-de-sac. The only aspect of Tammet's autism that causes them problems is his lack of empathy. "There's a saying in Judaism, if somebody has a relative who has hanged themselves, don't ask them where you should hang your coat. I need to remember that. Like the time I kept quizzing a friend of Neil's who had just lost her mother. I was asking her all these questions about faith and death. But that's down to my condition - no taboos."

When he isn't working, Tammet likes to hang out with his friends on the church quiz team. His knowledge of popular culture lets him down, but he's a shoo-in when it comes to the maths questions. "I do love numbers," he says. "It isn't only an intellectual or aloof thing that I do. I really feel that there is an emotional attachment, a caring for numbers. I think this is a human thing - in the same way that a poet humanises a river or a tree through metaphor, my world gives me a sense of numbers as personal. It sounds silly, but numbers are my friends."

Deadly bird flu is mutating to spread from person to person, bringing a disastrous global pandemic closer, experts fear.

Evidence from South-east Asia suggests that the virus, which could kill tens of millions of people worldwide, is becoming less virulent, but at the same time more infectious to people.

Death rates from the virus have plunged in northern Vietnam, says the World Health Organisation (WHO), though it is still killing more of its victims than any previous outbreak. The instances where it appears to have spread from person to person are rising.

Six weeks ago, The Independent on Sunday revealed that the Government had told mortuaries and emergency services to prepare for up to 750,000 deaths from the disease in Britain. Flu pandemics occur when three developments take place: a virus emerges to which humans have little or no immunity; it is able to infect people; and it mutates to spread efficiently among them.

The bird flu virus - codenamed H5NI - has crossed the first two barriers, and experts fear it is now about to breach the third.

"It's a very different virus that might suddenly become extremely transmissible," said Peter Horby, of the WHO office in Hanoi.

He said that it was impossible to predict when that might happen, but there were "a number of indications" that the virus was already becoming more dangerous.

Ironically, one of the main ones is that the virus is becoming a less ruthless killer. By allowing more of its victims to survive, it enables them to live to infect other people. [...]

TORONTO - Canada geese can carry antibiotic-resistant superbugs and may be spreading bacteria such as E. coli and salmonella wherever they migrate, a study suggests.

Researchers with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control spent months testing goose feces from four water areas in Georgia and North Carolina to see if the birds could pick up and deposit E. coli.

They found antibiotic-resistant strains even though the birds hadn't been treated with drugs.

Geese from a North Carolina flock that often lingered near a pig farm had particularly high levels of the superbugs – and often showed resistance to more than one antibiotic, the researchers found.

Pig farms, like other livestock-rearing operations, can use high levels of antibiotics to tamp down diseases.

"Some of these geese were landing in a lagoon that had some run-off from a pig operation," said Dr. Scott Weese, of the Ontario Veterinary College in Guelph.

"So presumably there was resistance in E. coli from some of the pigs. The geese landed in the environment and through just normal eating or grooming in that environment, they ingested the E. coli."

Although the flocks observed were non-migratory, the U.S. study – posted on the CDC's Emerging Infectious Diseases website – concludes that Canada geese could spread the pathogens.

"This species could serve to disperse bacteria between widely separated locations," warned the study, to be published in the June issue of a medical journal called Emerging Infectious Diseases.

"In addition, since these birds use farm ponds and waste lagoons and graze on pastures inhabited by cattle and other livestock, the opportunities exist for new health problems in wildlife populations to emerge."

Weese, who studies diseases that can pass between humans and animals, said that scientists have recently realized that some pathogens previously thought to be found either in animals or in humans are actually found in both.

However, he said the study shouldn't spark panic. The kinds of bugs found in the birds, E. coli and salmonella, are common – and, study or no study, most people don't want to get very close to bird droppings.

LONDON, May 2 (IranMania) - A strong earthquake jolted Zarand in the southern Kerman province at 00:15 hours local time (1945 GMT) Monday morning.

The seismological base affiliated to Tehran University geophysics institute measured the tremors at 5.5 degrees on the opend-ended richter scale.

The epicenter of the quake was centered at 'Douhoyeh' and 'Hectan'in the vicinity of Zarand.

There are no reports of damages or injuries.

In February a strong earthquake shook Zarand causing widespread destruction in the area.

The quake, measuring 6.4 on the open-ended Richter scale, struck the town at 05:55 hours local time (0225 GMT) on Feb 22, 2005, killing over 600 people and injuring over thousands of others.

The epicenter of the quake was 60 kilometers (35 miles) northwest of the city of Kerman.

The quake destroyed four villages by 100 percent and damaged some 40 villages by over 25 percent.

A killer earthquake with a magnitude of 6.7 on the Richter scale flattened the historical city of Bam in the same province on Dec 26, 2003, killing over 30,000 people and injuring thousands more.

Iran is situated on some of the world's most active seismic fault lines and quakes of varying magnitudes are of usual occurrence.

A killer earthquake with a magnitude of 6.7 on the Richter scale flattened the historical city of Bam in the same province on December 26, 2003, killing over 30,000 people and injuring thousands more.

Iran is situated on some of the world's most active seismic fault lines and quakes of varying magnitudes are of usual occurrence.

MANILA, Ark. - A mild earthquake Sunday morning, centered in far northeastern Arkansas, was felt across a wide area of the nation's center, a geologist says, but no major damage was reported.

The U.S. Geological Survey reported that the quake, magnitude 4.1, occurred at 7:36 a.m. CDT. The tremor was centered about 4 miles south-southeast of Manila, in Mississippi County. [...]

FREDERICTON - Flooding is easing in the upper reaches of New Brunswick's St. John River valley, but the water is still rising downstream, the province's Emergency Measures Organization and River Watch 2005 said on Sunday.

"Persons living or working along the lower St. John River and in low-lying areas should remain on the alert and take steps to protect their property," a news release said.

In some areas, the only way to get around is on canoe.

From Jemseg, roughly halfway between Fredericton and Saint John, down to salt water, the river is still rising. But upriver from the town, it has peaked and is beginning to drop.

Even so, for Fredericton and nearby areas, "flooding is expected to continue for the next few days as the water levels slowly decrease," EMO said. [...]

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. -- April made a stormy exit in Alabama.
Thunderstorms this weekend brought a flood threat to coastal retreats along the Styx and Fish rivers, and downed some trees and knocked out power in the Birmingham metro area.

The National Weather Service warned residents along the rivers in south Baldwin County to brace for high water caused by the downpour.

The Styx River near Elsanor was expected to crest near 17.7 feet early Sunday and fall back below flood stage Sunday evening. Moderate flooding was forecast for the Fish River near Silverhill. The river was expected to crest near 14.7 feet early Sunday and fall back below flood stage early Monday.

The thunderstorms, packing high winds and lightning, also moved across north-central Alabama early today. The storms caused nearly 16,000 temporary power outages in the Birmingham-Hoover metro area. [...]

Experts at the Climate Modeling Group at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO), part of The Earth Institute at Columbia University, expect drought to worsen in the Plains and the West over the next several years due to La Niña-like conditions. LDEO's "Persistent Drought in North America" Web site provides an in-depth examination of drought in this region.

Using observations and models, LDEO scientists learned that all the major dry and wet events in the American West in the last century and a half were forced by slowing varying tropical Pacific sea surface temperatures (SSTs). On the Web site, Climate Modeling Group scientists show that decadal variations of these SSTs are predictable to a modest degree a few years in advance.

The group’s research on whether rising greenhouse gases will induce an El Niño-like (causing increased precipitation over the American West) or La Niña-like (causing less precipitation over the American West) response in the tropical Pacific Ocean provides additional insight on whether the American West is entering a more drought-prone period than any seen since European settlement. [...]

MADRID: Spain has suffered its driest winter and early spring since records began almost 60 years ago, data from meteorologists showed on Friday.

Rainfall from November to the end of March this year was 37 per cent below the average for the period and the lowest since records started in 1947, the National Meteorological Office said.

With water reserves in Spain at just 60 per cent of full capacity, farmers fearing water rationing say they are planting fewer crops.

Neighbouring Portugal is suffering its worst drought for 25 years and authorities there have imposed irrigation restrictions in the south, a popular tourist destination.

An international team of astronomers reports April 29 the confirmation of the discovery of a giant planet, approximately five times the mass of Jupiter, that is gravitationally bound to a young brown dwarf. This discovery puts an end to a yearlong discussion on the nature of this object, which started with the detection of a red object close to the brown dwarf.

In February and March of this year, the astronomers took new images of the young brown dwarf and its giant planet companion with the state-of-the-science NACO instrument on the European Southern Observatory's (ESO) Very Large Telescope in northern Chile. The planet is near the southern constellation of Hydra and approximately 200 light years from Earth.

"Our new images show convincingly that this really is a planet, the first planet that has ever been imaged outside of our solar system," said Gael Chauvin, astronomer at the ESO and leader of the team of astronomers who conducted the study. [...]