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P
I C T U R E O F T H E D
A Y
"Girl
Scout Hannah McVey of Rosamond, Calif., takes a photo as her
sister Caitlin adds a flag to the dozens surrounding a new
grave, of Army Pfc. Samuel Sungjune Lee, who died in the Iraq
war on March 28, 2005"
Ed:
Note the fact that, in this photo and caption from Reuters,
the phrase "died in the Iraq war" is used. Wasn't
it back in May 2003 that Bush announced "Mission Accomplished"?
What's this talk of "Iraq war"? Did we miss something?
Was Bush LYING to us??
Profit is the mantra of the
CEO. It is the goal that embodies the motives, agendas,
and actions of the modern corporation. And it is
this very goal that will lead all "profit at
any cost" corporations to their own self destruction.
How is this so?
Well behavior eminates from motivation and from
that agendas are set and parameters of operational
strategies to enable these profits are put into
place. It can be seen today
that an almost psychopathic set of events have transpired
and with it the rise of power and domination over
world events by multinational corporations.
To enable the maximum profit the
agenda of the present day corporation is to find
the most exploitable, undereducated, politically
powerless, and "most terrorizied" people
they can find to manufacture goods, provide services,
and ENABLE the PROFITS for those that INVEST in
this form of modern psychological slavery, physical
abuse, economic domination, and "fear mongering"
that is possible under a set of legal and military
strategies that enables the corporations to strip
the people of human rights, politital power, and
the abilities to act in civil disobedience to such
immoral and unjustified authority.
Multinational Corporations are legal money making
influence oriented investment vehicles that allow
the use of money to enable the all important and
worshiped profit to be had. That
profit then has lead the ideology of the corporation
to use any and all means neccessary to gain the
maximum amount of control and domination in any
profitable situation and has led them to form a
global investment coalition of elite rich self decieving
individuals that ascribe to a set of psychopathic
beliefs that rest on the ideals of profit through
"terror" and "terror" for profit,
which as we shall see is the reason that conventional
ideology wars to be abandoned and a new PsyOps oriented
war against the worker to be waged. A war
where the leaders do not promise a set of ideals
like freedom, but sell fear, uncertainty, and doubt
in the "terror" campaign. This PsyOps
campaign has at its core several values that are
common for this type of Psychologcial Warfare that
is being practiced by multinationals against the
common working people of the world.
1. The enemy is trying
to destroy your way of life and terrorize you.
2. In order to fight this kind
of enemy you must TRUST and SUPPORT the states platform.
3. The platform includes the use
of secret organizations to fight this new enemy.
4. The secret orginazations are
able to violate CIVIL LIBERTIES to fight the enemy.
5. Civil Liberties are too dangerous
with this type of enemy and must be curbed to protect
you.
6. You will be watched to determine
if you are in support of the official propaganda
platform.
7. If you are NOT supporting the
official propaganda then you will be marginalized
as a "terrorist"
8. Terrorists will be subject
to a range of behavior modifiing procedures to enable
mind control
9. If you do not submit your politcial
free will to the state you will be detained or terminated
by the states secret organization to enable profiling
and refinement of techniques to control a wider
range of free thinking people that would POSE A
THREAT TO THE CORPORATIONS PROFIT.
The above is highly simplfied in form but is adequate
to understand the operational techniques of this
model of human behavior control for profit by the
corporations "terror" agenda models.
In item #1 and #2 the citizen is put in a psychosocial
trap where he is in fear of his being and is given
a psychological out by being led to TRUST the STATE
and the same one who usually dispenses the fear
or "terror" information. The purpose of
this step is to align the thinking and the behavior
in a way as to hold the mind hostage to a certain
set of prescribed cercumstances including lowering
of trust of other free thinking humans, degrading
of social dialog and intercourse with propaganda,
marginalizing current civil institutions as being
to "liberal" and thus "unsafe in
a world of terror". If you accept this step
they have controlled your mind.
In item #3 to #7 the corporations set up a sham
orginazation in the states official government machiniary
with the title of "Protector of your Security".
This is the psychologcial clue that this institution
is here to protect you from the terrorist influences
and attacks. This is the propganda orginization
and terror enforcement branch of this corporation
controlled profit support center. Its job is to
marginzalize and to ensure no actual factual or
useful information or actions that would enable
the workers to gain security and actual fair working
conditions could arise. This is always operated
in secret and is designed to minimize any groups
or individuals that subscribe to liberal concepts
like democratic self rule, open honest communications
of issues or facts, educational or informational
outlets that would or could define agendas contraty
to the corporations profit motives.
In items #8 and #9 should any "free thinkers",
activites, socialist, democracts, leftists, or anybody
else that is not mind controled by the psy ops techniques
or propaganda will be detained and questioned and
labels and made an example of so as to maximize
the fear instilled in the target population for
exploitation for profit by the CORPORATION.
Anyone that has a free mind use it to free other
minds. Any minds in bondage to the corporations
propganda "take the RED
pill" and "see what the TRUTH actually
is"
The TRUTH will set you FREE.
Please see the following
links to educate yourself on how this is being used
now and how it was used in the past.
http://www.redrat.net/BUSH_WAR/DHS.htm
http://www.redrat.net/BUSH_WAR/orde... http://www.uruknet.info/?p=12131&hd...
http://www.douglasvalentine.com/art... http://www.antiwar.com/
http://www.informationclearinghouse... http://www.nyu.edu/globalbeat/
http://www.albasrah.net/index1.html |
On Monday, May
23, 2005, FOX affiliate WSVN-TV sent Patrick Fraser,
with only a BS in Journalism from UF-Gainsville,
to tangle
with Scientist Dr. A.K. Dewdney over the 9/11 Pentagon
quagmire. Dr. Dewdney: "If we are right the
implications are profound."
Reporter: "Right or right off the wacko chart,
common sense tells you its not likely. In fact common
sense tells you its not only outrageous -- its ridiculous
and one well known skeptic has another description
for it -- laughable." INDEED, 'laughable' describes
most of this article.
As the pioneer 9/11 researcher Kee Dewdney struck
gold when he proved
beyond a shadow of doubt that extended cell phone
calls from airliners were a fable of the Bush Administration
on 9/11. That was the first foot in the doorway
to 9/11 Truth.
As most Americans are unfamilar with using the Scientific
Method in solving problems, everyone should pay
attention when Kee Dewdney demonstates the use of
the Scientific Method in explaining 9/11. BY THE
WAY, the Scientific Method completely funks
the Fed Govt. 9/11 conspiracy theory.
Links to Kee's 9/11 research here
As an affiliate of FOX network, WSVN-TV should focus
on the Hollywood-style Towering Inferos or lack
thereof on 9/11. In the RENSE article, Sneak
Preview - 911 Pentagon Tapes Firefighter Russell
Dodge said:
"There were two vehicles burning,
along with a construction trailer - we didn't know
at the time, but that trailer was the main producer
of smoke on the outside of the building. He said
the foam units got there and concentrated on the
area of the construction trailer, which was producing
some severe fires and subsequent mini explosions
due to highly flammable chemicals in it THAN on
the actual point of impact from the hijacked aircraft.
The 'construction trailer', actually a large generator
trailer with its own 500 gallon diesel tank, was
not used but kept for an emergency. As there was
no need for the large extra tank nearby, the tank
apparently was filled with a crude oil-diesel oil
mixture, similar to an orchard smudge pot, and remotely
ignited to create the enormous smoke plume . Note
that the smoke from the burning trailer is whitish.
Witnesses said the aircraft hardly penetrated the
brick Pentagon wall before an explosion blew it
to bits. Apparently that explosion is caught here.
See the RENSE article, Sneak Preview - 911 Pentagon
Tapes http://www.rense.com/general64/911et.htm
Note that the circled area around the generator
trailer was also ignited.
This photo JUST AFTER the Explosion
shows a bonfire in front of the impact area with
its smoke plume and the Generator trailer area highlighted
with its smoke plume just getting a start. Of course,
NO Pentagon section down.
This photo shows the generator trailer
area producing an enormous smoke plume with the
bonfire in front of the impact area about the same
as the last photo but a better show for the camera
shots sent around the world.
Witnesses said they thought explosive
charges were set off inside the Pentagon 'impact
area' to make it appear that the aircraft actually
passed the front wall when it really didn't. That
would explain large fire development even outside
the impact area.
Here the firetruck is directing foam at the large
fuel tank only with a minor fire still burning on
the generator trailer.
|
Several people
are now claiming that is not what happened at all.
They claim that the plane that crashed was not a
passenger jet at all, and that it was all a plot
to mislead the American people. Here's the nighteam's
Patrick Fraser with his special report: "Pentagon
Plot."
WSVN -- We never put a man on the moon, these pictures
were taken in the Nevada desert the conspiracy theories
claimed...
President Kennedy was not shot just by Lee Harvey
Oswald. The CIA was involved...
And now this one..it was not a passenger plan that
crashed into The Pentagon on September 11th.
Scientist Dr. A.K. Dewdney: "I mean how much
evidence do people need."
A.K. Dewdney is one of several scientists who have
investigated the pentagon crash and concluded something
devious and diabolical happened that day.
Their proof...
They say a Boeing 757 was never found at The Pentagon,
that only one engine was found and that engine does
not seem to match the engine from a 757, that airplane
crashes leave wreckage, they mess up the ground
-- Not at The Pentagon.
Patrick Fraser: "Dr. Dewdney you also wrote
that the wings are missing from the crash site --
I thought they were incinerated in the enormous
blaze inside The Pentagon."
Dr. Dewdney: "The structure of the wings dictate
that the wings should have sheared off. The fact
that there is no wing debris outside the building
indicates it was not a 757 that struck the pentagon."
Another point the conspiracy buffs make -- the
hole in the side of The Pentagon is too small for
a 757 to fit thru. One web page even superimposes
a 757 onto the ground to prove its point.
Dr. Dewdney: "So all of this evidence is just
sitting there waiting for people to examine it."
The conspiracy theories even claim to have video
proof from a security camera outside The Pentagon
as the plane neared the building -- they claim the
picture is not a 757.
But they are not certain what type of craft it
is.
Dr.Dewdney: "The guesses vary from an F-16
loaded with a depleted uranium warhead -- possibly
a cruise missile."
But if its a cruise missile, what happened to the
plane and its passengers. Dr. Dewdney says they
don't know, however they say they do know who is
behind the conspiracy.
Dewdney says all the September 11th attacks were
planned or allowed to happen to fuel a war with
terrorists and as an excuse to invade and gain control
of the oil in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Dr. Dewdney: "If we are right the implications
are profound."
Right or right off the wacko chart, common sense
tells you its not likely. In fact common sense tells
you its not only outrageous -- its ridiculous and
one well known skeptic has another description for
it -- laughable.
James Randi from the Randi Educational Foundation:
"Come on, in order to do a thing like that
you would have to have a conspiracy that would involve
thousands of people..all of whom would have to be
completely silent. Now thats impossible to do."
We showed James Randi the claims of Dewdney's scientific
group, and he countered each one -- beginning with
the hole in The Pentagon.
James Randi: "Now the hole isnt big enough.
Oh I see now you know how big the hole should be
do you? No, that's data that we simply don't have."
As for those missing wings -- easy to explain Randi
says.
James Randi: "That the fuselage penetrates
the brick wall and the wings fold back just like
an umbrella."
Finally the people who helped Dewdney research
his theories are all well educated, very intelligent
people which Randi says proves one more thing.
James Randi: "Well-educated intelligent people
doesn't mean smart people."
Dewdney's reply -- prove him wrong.
Dr. Dewdney: "By all means get in touch with
us none of us want to spend our time doing this
if we are just wasting our time if we are wrong."
And even if he is wrong, a few people may believe
him -- but a few million won't.
By the way we spoke with The Pentagon
about the conspiracy theory, and they said, "it's
so ridiculous, we don't even address it." |
06/02/05 - - The
U.S. government gave the slave trade a boost by
offering money for al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters.
Afghan and Pakistani warlords simply rounded up
people who looked Arab or foreign and sold them
to the Americans as captured fighters. The "fighters"
apparently included relief workers, refugees, and
Arab businessmen. The tribunals looking into the
classification of Guantanamo prisoners as "enemy
combatants" have uncovered numerous examples
of hapless victims of a naive U.S. government too
flush with money.
The Bush administration,
of course, denies that it bought its detainees,
as it denies everything. However, on May
31, 2005, Michelle Faul of the Associated Press
reported that in March 2002, leaflets and broadcasts
from helicopters in Afghanistan enticed Afghans
to "Hand over the Arabs and feed your families
for a lifetime." One leaflet said: "You
can receive millions of dollars. This is enough
to take care of your family, your village, your
tribe for the rest of your life, pay for livestock
and doctors and school books and housing for all
your people."
Najeeb al-Nauimi, a former Qatar justice minister,
leads a group of lawyers representing 100 detainees
who were sold to the naive Americans. He says a
consortium of wealthy Arabs are buying back fellow
citizens kidnapped by Pakistani gangs before they
can be sold to the Americans.
More is going on here than merely unintended consequences
of a harebrained policy. The Bush administration
has proven itself to be utterly irresponsible in
the use of power. And it keeps demanding more power,
including the suspension of our civil liberties
in order to better fight "terrorism."
Aside from 9/11, an event of several
years ago, the only terrorism the U.S. has experienced
is the terrorism Bush created by invading Iraq.
Why are we worried about Osama bin Laden when the
moronic Bush administration is so adept at creating
terrorism?
Notice the pattern. Bush creates
terrorism and then suspends our civil liberties
in the name of his war on terror.
The real terror Americans experience comes from
their own government. Indeed, consider the terror
the accounting firm, Arthur Andersen, and its 85,000
worldwide employees experienced as a result of the
Gestapo tactics of federal prosecutors. Prosecutors
used a stupid jury and a weak-minded judge to convict
an entire accounting firm for the actions of the
few accountants who handled the Enron account. It
was completely clear at the time that whereas a
case existed against a few individual accountants,
no case existed against the firm itself. Arbitrary
and capricious prosecutors grabbed power. The American
public was so whipped up in a frenzy over Enron
that it didn't care whose blood was spilled. Just
as someone had to pay for 9/11 – even if it
is our own troops and tens of thousands of innocent
Iraqis who had no more to do with 9/11 than the
U.S. troops who are losing their lives and limbs
– someone had to pay for Enron. So the prosecutors
destroyed Arthur Andersen, one of the top 10 companies
in the world ranked by market value and one of America's
greatest assets.
Now the U.S. Supreme Court has reversed the conviction.
The highest court says Arthur Andersen was not guilty.
But how do we bring Arthur Andersen back to life
and restore the reputations and careers of its many
thousands of employees? Federal prosecutors effectively
executed the firm and destroyed the highly valuable
asset.
Don't expect Bush, who admits no mistake, to make
restitution for the criminal actions of his Department
of Justice (sic). The remedy is a civil suit by
all the partners and employees of Arthur Andersen
against the U.S. government for damages. I think
$1 trillion is a good number. It is a figure demanded
by justice. And it will serve the cause of peace
by bankrupting the warmongering Bush administration
and applying the brake to Bush's wars of empire.
Dr. Roberts is John M. Olin Fellow at the Institute
for Political Economy and Research Fellow at the
Independent Institute. He is a former associate
editor of the Wall Street Journal and a former assistant
secretary of the U.S. Treasury. He is the co-author
of The Tyranny of Good Intentions
|
Let's consider an item from
the news of about two weeks ago:
A British citizen leaked a memo to London's Sunday
Times. The memo was of the written account of a
meeting that a man named Richard Dearlove had with
the Bush administration in July 2002. Dearlove was
the head of the England's MI-6, the equivalent of
the CIA. On July 23, 2002, Dearlove briefed Tony
Blair about the meeting. He said that Bush was determined
to attack Iraq. He said that Bush knew that U.S.
intelligence had no evidence of weapons of mass
destruction in Iraq and no links to foreign terrorists,
that there was no imminent danger to the U.S. from
Iraq. But, since Bush was determined to go to war,
"Intelligence and facts are being fixed around
the policy." "Fixed" means faked,
manufactured, conjured, hyped - the product of whole
cloth fabrication.
So we got aluminum tubes, mushroom clouds imported
from Niger, biological weapons labs in weather trucks,
fear and trembling, the phony ultimatums to Saddam
Hussein to turn over the weapons he didn't have
and thus couldn't. We got the call to arms, the
stifling of dissent, the parade of retired generals
strategizing on the "news" shows, with
us or against us, flags in the lapel, a craven media
afraid to look for a truth that might disturb their
corporate owners who would profit from the war.
Shock and Awe. Fallujah. Abu Ghraib.
It was all a lie.
Many of us have said for a
long time it was a lie. But here it is in black
and white: Lies from a president who has taken a
sacred trust to uphold the Constitution of the United
States.
So, what does it mean? It means that our president
and all of his administration are war criminals.
It's as simple as that. They lied to the American
people, have killed and injured and traumatized
thousands of American men and women doing their
patriotic duty, killed at least 100,000 Iraqi civilians,
destroyed Iraq's infrastructure and poisoned its
environment, squandered billions and billions of
our tax dollars, made a mockery of American integrity
in the world, changed the course of history, tortured
Iraqi prisoners, and bound us intractably to an
insane situation that they have no idea how to fix
because they had no plan, but greed and empire,
in the first place.
What does it mean? It means that everyone in this
administration should be impeached. It means that
our Maine Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins
and our Congressmen Tom Allen and Mike Michaud should
call for immediate impeachment. They
were lied to by their president, voted for war,
and are thus complicit in the multiple betrayals
of the American people unless they stand up now
for the truth.
Richard Nixon was impeached
for a cover-up of a two-bit break-in. William
Cohen, a young Maine Republican, played an important
role for the prosecution in those proceedings. Bill
Clinton was impeached for lying about sex with an
intern. Now we have
the irrefutable evidence that George W. Bush lied
about the reasons for taking the United States to
war. The intelligence wasn't flawed. The
weapons weren't hidden. Our elected leaders were
lying.
Democracy, like any sound relationship between
people, is built on trust. We trust our leaders
to tell the truth so that the consent that we give
them is honestly informed. If the consent is won
through manipulation, propaganda, fear, or lies,
the basis of our democracy has been subverted. It
is no longer democracy at all, but we continue to
call it that because we have not the courage or
stamina to demand its overhaul.
We live a lie when we fail to hold leaders accountable
for their lies. By not calling now for impeachment,
we are saying that we condone hypocrisy, pseudo-democracy,
and murdering thousands of Americans and Iraqis
for strategic control of energy resources that we
have no right to. Patriotism demands that we insist
on the ideals of democracy, not that we support
the "leaders" who cynically destroy them.
What's curious is why anyone like
me should have to even point this out. Don't our
senators and congressmen feel betrayed? Are they
content to continue the murdering rather than do
what truth demands? Do they think they can lie to
history, too? Do they think that this little Iraq
problem will somehow just go away, that the courageous
resistance to the United States occupation will
give up and hand Bush the keys to the oil wells?
Do they think that any of the grave crises facing
the world now - energy consumption, global warming,
species extinction - can be solved by lying about
them?
We are living in an age of no accountability. It's
also an age upon which may hang the survival of
human life on this earth. One should not bet one's
future on people who abjure responsibility. The
first courageous step is to come to terms with what
we know is true: America's president lied to America's
people to create an unnecessary war. I ask Sens.
Snowe and Collins, Reps. Allen and Michaud to take
that step. Begin impeachment proceedings. It's really
no more or less than their duty. It's also the first
step toward restoring America's integrity. |
Patriot
Act II?
A broad right/left coalition is pushing Congress to
revise the Patriot Act's more egregious provisions
-- while we still can. |
By Dave Lindorff
In These Times
Posted June 1, 2005 |
Last October, agents from the
FBI and Treasury Department, accompanied by a gaggle
of TV news crews, raided the Columbia, Mo., offices
of a small charity called the Islamic-American Relief
Agency (IARA). Computers and records were seized,
and several hundred thousand dollars in donated
funds destined for relief work in Kenya were frozen.
There were no arrests or charges, though federal
agents visited the homes of many of the charity's
local donors. IARA, according to its attorney, Shereef
Akeel, was effectively shut down under a little-known
provision of the USA PATRIOT Act, which expanded
the International Emergency Economic Powers Act
to allow the government to freeze the assets of
organizations while it investigates for links to
terrorism.
"The government has
not presented one shred of evidence linking IARA
to funding for terror, but by seizing their funds
and interviewing their donors, they have effectively
destroyed the charity and created a chilling effect
in the Muslim community in Columbia," Akeel
says. He suggests the government may have
confused IARA, founded two decades ago as the Islamic
African Relief Agency (the name changed during the
Bosnia conflict when demands for aid moved beyond
an African focus), with a Sudan-based charity called
the Islamic African Relief Agency, which the government
claims has links to terrorists.
The USA PATRIOT (Uniting and Strengthening America
by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept
and Obstruct Terrorism) Act, signed into law six
weeks after the 9/11 attacks with no congressional
debate, faces review in Congress, as 16 of its provisions
"sunset" at the end of the year.
Patriots to Restore Checks and Balances (PRCB),
an unusual right/left coalition that includes the
ACLU, the American Conservative Union and the Free
Congress Foundation, is pressing to end some of
the act's particularly egregious civil liberties
abuses--specifically, the sneak-and-peek provision,
which allows the government to spy on people without
notifying them or obtaining a court order, and the
library provision, which grants federal authorities
the power to inspect library, video, and bookstore
user records without a warrant, and which bars librarians
and store owners from alerting customers.
ACLU national security lobbyist Lisa Graves says
the coalition is optimistic about winning some improvements.
"Judiciary Committee Chair Arlen Specter (R-Pa.)
held a 'critics' hearing last week," says Graves,
"which the last chair, Orrin Hatch, (R-Utah)
would never have done, and in the House, Judiciary
Chair James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisc.) has expressed
some 'concerns' about the act." The nationwide
grassroots movement, which has seen 383 communities,
including seven states, pass anti-Patriot Act resolutions,
has also put pressure on Congress to amend the law.
"I'm guessing the reforms we want in the act
could gain some traction," says Steve Lilienthal,
director of the Center for Privacy and Technology
Policy at the Free Congress Foundation, a conservative
member of the coalition. "It will be an uphill
battle, but I think we may win."
Not everyone, however, is happy with the notion
of reforming the law.
"There's a danger in trying to fix it,"
argues Michael Ratner, president of the Center for
Constitutional Rights, which has not joined the
coalition. "I'm afraid by working to fix problems
with a few provisions that have gotten attention--the
library provision and sneak-and-peek--the focus
is taken off of the really serious threats to freedom,
both in the Patriot Act and outside it.
"Things like the broadened
definition of terror, which can include blocking
a highway during a demonstration, or the enhancement
of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which
now allows the government to spy on ordinary criminal
suspects without showing probable cause or obtaining
a warrant, are horrible," says Ratner. "Whole
Islamic communities in the U.S. now live in terror
and fear. It's much worse than the spying on CISPES
[Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador]
in the '80s.
"Just because 9/11 happened, doesn't mean
you need new laws, " Ratner says. "The
government should have to prove why current laws
and powers don't work. It should have to justify
each new power given to law enforcement and intelligence
agencies. On some things, you have to stand on principle
and not compromise."
Graves concedes that Ratner may have a point. "The
9/11 Commission had a similar perspective,"
she says. "One of their recommendations was
that the administration should have the burden of
proof for any change in the laws that affect civil
liberties." But Graves says that the coalition's--and
ACLU's--view is that by joining right and left,
they can win at least some improvements, while repealing
the PATRIOT Act is not politically possible--at
least for now.
Meanwhile, Akeel and the IARA, taking matters in
their own hands, have sued in federal court in Washington,
D.C., to unblock the charity's funds. "I've
been getting letters from little kids in Kenya begging
for me to restore the money that was being sent
to support them," says Akeel.
Dave Lindorff, a frequent contributor to In
These Times, is the author of This Can't Be Happening:
Resisting the Disintegration of American Democracy.
His work can be found at www.thiscantbehappening.net. |
Code
Red |
By Chris Floyd
Published: June 3, 2005 |
Last month, we reported here
about Jeb Bush's courtroom efforts to crush the
life of an abused, poverty-stricken 6-year-old girl
in his gubernatorial satrapy of Florida. Later,
against all odds, a jury of ordinary citizens thwarted
the dynast's brutal will. But as befits a scion
of the ruling family, Bush is now brushing aside
this interference from the rabble and pressing ahead
with his plans to strip the little girl of all public
assistance.
Bush's minions went to court earlier this year
in a bid to cut off medical aid to Marissa Amora,
who, at the age of 2, had been abandoned by Jeb's
"Department of Children and Families"
despite overwhelming evidence of horrific past abuse
-- and the imminent danger of more to come. More
came. Within weeks, she was beaten almost to death;
then Jeb's agents tried to stop her medical treatment
and let her die. She survived their malign intervention
and is now thriving with a new family -- but still
suffers from permanent, catastrophic damage caused
by the entirely predictable beating she received
after the DCF cast her aside.
But late last month, the jury in the case issued
a stern rebuke to these perverted Bush Family values:
They awarded Marissa $35
million in damages for institutional neglect and
for her future medical care, with the DCF ordered
to pay the bulk of the costs. So, a happy ending,
right?
Don't be silly -- we're dealing
with the Bush-Walker gang here. And for almost
100 years, from their ammo-dealing days in World
War I to their heavy investments in Nazi Germany
to their profitable hook-ups with Arab oil tyrants
to their back-door buttressing of Saddam Hussein
to their present- day bonanza of blood money gushing
from the slaughter in Iraq, this clan of wingtipped
thugs has always built its fortune on the backs
-- and the bones - - of the poor. And no self-respecting
Bush clansman would ever let some uppity little
black girl and her foster mother make him look bad,
no matter how egregious his failures.
Jeb had three choices after the verdict. He could
have simply accepted responsibility for his agency's
horrible neglect and paid the full amount. Or he
could have accepted responsibility but asked that
the large award be reduced, as often happens in
such cases, which would still leave Marissa with
enough money to afford the extensive and costly
health care she will need for the rest of her life.
The first course would have been just and honorable;
the second, pragmatic yet not inherently cruel.
But honor, justice and responsibility
have no place in the Bush clan's ruthless operations.
So Jeb picked the third choice, the "nuclear
option." He asked an appeals court to throw
out the entire award -- even the damages levied
against other, non-state parties in the case --
leaving Marissa with absolutely nothing, The Palm
Beach Post reports.
Filing for dismissal, Bush's lawyers blasted the
jury for being too stupid to process the complex
documentation of the case and acting instead on
"prejudice and sympathy." While any "prejudice"
in the case would seem to lie with the lily-white
governor's attempt to grind a black child under
his heel, it's true that the jury probably did have
some measure of sympathy for a 6-year-old girl who
will have to be kept alive through a feeding tube
for the rest of her days because Bush's bureaucrats
failed to protect her from well-documented abuse.
But sympathy is for "girlie-men" in the
demented moral universe of the Bushist faction.
Or as one of the Bush Family's old business partners
once said, just before he launched an unprovoked
war of aggression against Poland based on lies,
propaganda and manipulated intelligence about a
bogus threat to the nation:
"Close your hearts to pity. The stronger man
is right. Be steeled against all signs of compassion."
Power is everything, people are nothing, and the
weakest go to the wall -- that's the Kennebunkport
Code.
But of course you have to dress up your blood-and-iron
philosophy with the prevailing pieties of the day
if you want to snow the hoi polloi and weasel your
way into power. And Jeb is one of the great whited
sepulchres of our time, a master of the hypocritical
arts, ever eager to hog the nearest camera and blubber
teary platitudes about the "culture of life"
-- even as he feverishly signs death warrants in
an apparent bid to surpass his older brother's record
as the most bloodthirsty executioner in modern U.S.
history. If Marissa were,
say, a nice white woman in a vegetative state whose
case had been taken up by powerful interest groups
and ballyhooed into a national media carnival, then
doubtless Jeb would even now be dabbing his eyes
as he knelt for a photo-op at her bedside.
But because Marissa is "nobody" -- one
of the poor, the powerless, the "insulted and
injured," in Dostoevsky's phrase -- she can
be flushed down the toilet and no one will notice.
For the aim of Bush's legal
maneuvering is clear: He wants to "run out
the clock" on Marissa, litigating the case
quite literally to death, until her family sinks
beneath the overwhelming financial and physical
burden of keeping her alive and her makeshift, overstrained
support system eventually suffers the inevitable
breakdown.
It's a despicable strategy, a wicked strategy,
but entirely in keeping with the Ruling Family's
ethos, which has given the world a terror-spawning
quagmire of murder and atrocity in Iraq -- 10,000
Marissa Amoras, dead, mangled, orphaned, abandoned,
abused, forgotten. And for what? For power. For
money. For the Code. |
Some Youths and Parents
Worry Despite Government's Assurances
In their Ellicott City kitchen, Jeff Amoros's
parents handed their son the Selective Service registration
form that arrived shortly after his 18th birthday.
For them, it evoked dark memories of the Vietnam
era. For Amoros, it meant: "I'm old enough
to die for my country now."
At a Montgomery County Friends meeting house,
peace activist J.E. McNeil explained to an audience
how to convince draft boards that they are conscientious
objectors. "Let me tell you why I think there's
going to be a draft," she said.
Rarely in the more than 30 years since the draft
was abolished has the Selective Service triggered
such angst. Two years into
the Iraq war, concern that the draft will be reinstated
to supplement an overextended military persists
-- no matter how often, or emphatically, President
Bush and members of Congress say it won't.
In this atmosphere of suspicion, the
Selective Service System, the Rosslyn-based
agency that conscripted 1.8 million Americans during
the Vietnam War and 10 million in World War II,
quietly pursues its delicate
dual mission: keeping the draft machinery ready,
without sparking fear that it is coming back.
"We're told not to do a particular thing
but to be prepared to do it," said Dan Amon,
a spokesman for the Selective Service, which last
year registered about 15.6 million young men between
the draft-eligible ages of 18 and 25. "We just
continue to carry out our mission as mandated by
Congress."
These days, the agency spends a lot of time allaying
fears and dispelling rumors. Go to the Selective
Service Web site, and the first thing you see is
an explanation of how Congress voted 402 to 2 against
a bill to make military service mandatory.
A Washington public relations firm, Widmeyer Communications,
hired by the agency to offer strategic advice, noted
last year that "virtually
any move taken by Selective Service is seen in many
quarters as clear evidence that a draft is imminent."
"There is so much misinformation out there,"
said Richard Flahavan, associate director of Selective
Service for public and intergovernmental affairs.
"Most folks, if you pulled them off the street,
would believe we could turn on the draft in the
dark of night and consult no one." [...] |
Baghdad, - The
Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi - al-Qaeda's
leader in Iraq - died on Friday and his body is
in Fallujah's cemetary, an Iraqi Sunni sheikh, Ammar
Abdel Rahim Nasir, has told the Saudi on-line newspaper
Al-Medina. He claims that gunfights which broke
out in Fallujah in the last few days involved militants
trying to protect the insurgency leader's tomb from
a group of American soldiers patrolling the area.
During a telephone conversation from the city of
Fallujah with the Saudi newspaper, Nasir said al-Zarqawi
was taken there after being injured in the city
of Ramadi around three weeks ago, and may have been
treated by two doctors who had worked with his aides
in Baghdad. He said the two doctors had stopped
a serious haemorrhage in al-Zarqawi's intestines,
but that after his condition worsened last week,
the militant died on Friday.
Nasir adds that in his will the insurgent leader
left the order that no funeral should be held for
him and the right to announce his death should be
left to the al-Qaeda leadership in Afghanistan and
Osama bin Laden.
The Al-Medina newspaper reports that it also called
the headmaster of a school in Fallujah, who preferred
to remain anonymous, but confirmed that many people
in the city were aware of the fact that al-Zarqawi
had recently been taken to the city.
Sheikh Nasir's claims appear to correspond with
reports several weeks ago that al-Zarqawi had been
injured and taken to Ramadi hospital for emergency
treatment, and with messages on the Internet talking
of two Arab doctors accompanying him. Al-Zarqawi
was reported to have been seen at the hospital on
April 27. The hospital's director told an Iraq-based
newspaper that US troops later surrounded and raided
the entire building, searching for the Jordanian
militant.
Only two days ago, an audio message attributed
to al-Zarqawi was posted on the Internet, in which
he assured his followers that he had only been lightly
injured. Following the message, the US defence secretary
Donald Rumsfeld warned countries neighbouring Iraq
not to give any medical assistance to al-Zarqawi.
"Our current theory is that he is in Iraq,"
he said. "Were a neighbouring country to take
him in and provide medical assistance or haven for
him, they obviously would be associating themselves
with a major linkage in the al-Qaeda network, and
a person who has a great deal of blood on his hands,"
Rumsfeld continued. "And that's something that
people would want to take note of."
|
Last year, Kevin
Sites filmed a marine shooting an apparently unarmed
insurgent in Falluja. He tells Dan Glaister the
truth of what he saw and how what followed changed
his life
'This was a fucking mess, man." Kevin Sites
peers at the monitor in the bright Californian sunlight,
trying to make out the images on the screen. But
Sites doesn't really have to look. This is his film,
his moment; the images on the screen ones that have
come to define his life.
Kevin Sites is the journalist who captured the
moment when a young US army marine shot an equally
young insurgent inside a mosque in Falluja in November
last year. Sites' video, broadcast around the world,
caused a storm. For some it showed an American soldier
executing an insurgent, proof of the brutality of
war, of the US army and of its soldiers. For others,
it highlighted the perils faced by US troops, from
booby-trapped insurgents taking cover in mosques
to the threat of an embedded liberal media.
For Sites, it posed other questions: of how to
reconcile the need for truth and honesty with the
sense of responsibility to the troops around him,
of how to honour his duty to minimise harm through
his reporting.
Assailed by all sides, Sites wrote a memorable
explanation of his actions in releasing the video
on his blog, kevinsites.net, "Dispatches from
a life in conflict". Titled "To Devil
Dogs of the 3.1", the text, in turn, was reprinted
by media around the world, including this newspaper.
Sites, it seemed, had inadvertently become the conduit
for debate about the war. Earlier this month, a
military tribunal ruled that the corporal involved
in the incident should not face charges.
On Sites' laptop, the 12-minute video he shot in
the dust of Falluja plays out its story. Working
as an embedded "sojo" - a solo journalist
- employed by NBC to cover the offensive in Falluja,
Sites arrives outside a mosque with a squad of six
marines. Shooting has been heard from inside the
mosque, even though the site had been cleared the
day before. Another squad enters the building from
the rear. Three shots ring out, and a marine emerges
to say that they have found five insurgents and
have shot them. "Were they armed?" asks
the lieutenant with Sites's squad. The marine shrugs
and wanders off.
Sites enters the mosque. His camera pans around
a small room, settling on two bodies lying together,
one wearing a red kaffiyeh on his head. Blood bubbles
from the man's nose. Off-screen a voice says, "He's
fucking faking he's dead. He's faking he's fucking
dead." Sites' camera slowly pans across the
room until it stops at the image of a marine, his
body made bulky by equipment, standing before two
figures lying on the floor. The camera's movement
is matched by the barrel of the marine's M-16 being
raised. As the camera stops moving, so does the
gun. A shot rings out. One of the figures is thrown
back. The marine fires a second shot and abruptly
turns and walks away. The camera pauses for a moment
on the figure lying on the ground. In an almost
balletic movement, the figure's leg drops gracefully
to the floor. The camera, echoing the stillness
of the scene, slowly moves back to the dying man
with the bleeding nose. The video ends a few moments
later.
Six months later and Sites is still reeling from
the effects of the video he shot that day. Tanned
and muscled, he exudes the genial, unreserved charm
that can seem almost de rigueur in southern California.
Dressed in black T-shirt and jeans, black hair swept
back, the 42-year-old talks quickly and confidently
about his experiences. He is clear now, he says,
about his actions and what happened in Falluja.
But underlying his resolve, there is a sense of
anxiety. Did he favour one side over the other?
Did he become a pawn for the anti-war movement?
Was he swayed by his allegiance to the troops he
was embedded with? In trying to present every side
of the story, did he lose sight of the story?
Sites, who had been to Iraq many times, and was
even held captive by Saddam's Fedayeen outside Tikrit,
was embedded with the US marines for three weeks
prior to the onset of the offensive against Falluja.
"I would sleep in the dirt," he says.
"I would do whatever they did, and they liked
that. We ended up developing this incredible relationship.
To the point where people started to criticise me
on my blog that I was becoming too sympathetic.
I was taking pictures of them holding up pictures
of their kids. My whole idea was to humanise them."
When his employer, the NBC network, tried to replace
him with a more traditionally telegenic frontman,
the marines came to Sites' rescue, saying that it
was Sites or nobody. So Sites, with his video camera,
went to Falluja and the mosque and one of the biggest
stories of the war.
"I knew what I had right away," Sites
says. "I called the top bosses at the network,
the three news officials that are responsible for
foreign news. Got them out of bed. I said I've got
something that is potentially bigger than Abu Ghraib.
I need you to know that I have it. For the first
time I watched the videotape on playback as I talked
to them and I remember my words, I go, 'Fuck, I
have it.'"
But even though he knew what he had, and he had
made sure that his superiors in the US knew of its
existence, he didn't immediately know what to do
with it. His journalistic instincts were tempered
by his comradeship with those around him.
"I wasn't thinking clearly as a journalist,"
he says. "I was still feeling part of a unit,
part of some people who have just been embroiled
in some serious conflict. I was heartsick because
I just knew that this wasn't good for anybody, not
for the guy who got shot, not for that marine, not
for me. I've seen plenty of people get killed. I've
never seen anybody get killed like that. I'd never
seen what looked like an execution point blank.
I hoped at that moment that it had been anybody
else other than me shooting that video tape."
NBC waited 48 hours before broadcasting Sites'
report from the mosque. Instead of broadcasting
a story about a marine shooting an apparently unarmed
insurgent inside a mosque, NBC and Sites constructed
a story about the dangers marines faced in fighting
an enemy that used mosques as cover and was not
afraid to booby-trap bodies.
"We backed into it," says Sites, with
considerable disbelief. "We didn't get to the
shooting until a third into the story." He
mimics a pompous TV announcer's voice: "'There
was a terrifying new technique being used by insurgents:
booby-trapping bodies blah blah blah.' We highlighted
all the mitigating circumstances to set this up.
We made it seem that there was no question that
this guy was probably justified."
But, as Sites knew at the time, some of the mitigating
circumstances did not apply. The marine who shot
the insurgent had himself been shot in the face
the day before, a fact reported in Sites' original
story. What he did not say was that the shooting
was probably an accident, by US forces. Similarly,
although marines were aware of the dangers of booby
traps in general, the only specific instance of
a booby-trapped body in Falluja came at the same
time as the mosque shooting.
"If he felt so strongly that this guy was
a threat," says Sites, "he knew there
were two other guys by me still alive; he never
checked them after he shot him, he just spun on
his heels. I don't know what was on his mind: the
fog of war does strange things to people."
Sites also points out that as the marine left,
a fifth Iraqi inside the mosque, who had been hiding
under a blanket, popped his head up. The marine
ignored him too.
The reaction to the video was immediate. Sites
began to get 500 "hate mails" a day, including
a dozen or so death threats. Every day. The networks
outdid themselves: Rupert Murdoch's Fox News, with
cheerleaders such as Oliver North and Bill O'Reilly,
took it upon itself to attack Sites, while his employer,
NBC, tried to have its scoop while denying any responsibility,
choosing to describe Sites as a "freelance
cameraman".
So Sites wrote his open letter to the marines,
explaining what he had filmed and why he had decided
to broadcast it.
"If the truth is known then people will be
able to make the responsible decisions that they
need to make in a democracy," he says. "And
if you're burying it you're not trusting them with
that responsibility, you're saying that democracy
doesn't work. And to me that was a betrayal of everything
I'd spent my whole adult life doing, as well as
a betrayal of those very principles of democracy
that those soldiers and those marines believe that
they're fighting for."
With the appearance of his letter to the Devil
Dogs, the hate mail eased off. Sites returned to
the US and decided to take a holiday. He went scuba
diving in south-east Asia, eventually ending up
in Cambodia. He even sent his video camera home,
vowing to take a rest from journalism. Then the
tsunami hit and Sites was back at work, blogging
and filming.
The experience, he says, helped him gain a fresh
perspective on the events that had buffeted him
in Iraq. He was persuaded again of the usefulness
of the media in informing and involving the public.
He was also inspired again to use his talents to
make a difference.
Does he think that he will always be identified
with the video? "In a way that's going to be
my burden to bear," he says. "I've seen
a lot of death, especially in the last five years.
And I have to live with those consequences. They
come out, I have nightmares, and I've experienced
a lot of personal attrition in my life, failed relationships.
But you want your life to have purpose, and you
want it to have meaning."
The decision to broadcast the video, he says, "was
the hardest decision I'd made in my life. I know
passionately now that it was the right thing to
do, that I couldn't have lived with myself if I
had buried that tape."
|
Two Israeli soldiers
have come forward to describe how they took part
in what they say was an officially ordered "revenge"
operation to kill Palestinian police officers
among them several unarmed men.
In graphic testimony, one soldier has confessed
that he "really enjoyed" a chase in which
he shot an unarmed Palestinian in the head who was
trying to escape during a series of reprisal raids
ordered the day after the killing of six Israeli
soldiers in an ambush by militant gunmen three years
ago.
In what may be the first inside account of such
an operation, the soldiers from two reconnaissance
units say they were among troops ordered by their
commanders to "liquidate" the police officers
at a series of Palestinian West Bank checkpoints
even though they were given no evidence they had
been involved in the killing of the Israelis.
The raids were among a series of ground and air
attacks which, in all, killed 15 Palestinians
12 of them policemen in and around Nablus and
Ramallah 24 hours after the six Israeli soldiers
were killed at a military post in the village of
Ein Arik, west of Ramallah, at the height of the
intifada.
One soldier, who took part in the attack on a Palestinian
post at Deir es Sudan said they had lain in wait
after finding the position empty when they arrived
in the middle of the night.
"The idea was simply to kill them all. Whenever
they arrived, we would kill them, regardless whether
[they were]armed or not. If they were Palestinian
policemen, they were to be shot. The order was given
and our six opened fire."
The soldier, from the Yael Reconnaissance Troop,
said that their [naval] squad commander had told
them: "We are going to kill six Palestinian
policemen somewhere, revenging our six they took
down". He added: "On my question 'what
did they do?' the answer was there was a suspicion
that the terrorist who killed our six came through
that [Palestinian] checkpoint. Suspicion, but no
concrete evidence. But I was told: 'it doesn't matter;
they took six of ours, and we are going to take
six of theirs.'"
The soldier said that, after hitting and wounding
two of the Palestinians as they tried to run away,
the soldiers continued to fire, as one ran into
a corrugated metal shed and another into a cemetery.
After they sprayed the shed with bullets, a gas
cylinder in it caught fire. "We had a killed
policeman, another one in this burning inferno,
and a third one, escaping. We ran after him into
a graveyard ... stood on the surrounding wall and
shot at him. We killed him too."
The soldier said that no fire had been returned
by the Palestinians and added: "Later we understood,
that not one of them ... was armed." He added
that he had inspected the "completely smashed"
body of the man in the graveyard after shooting
at it to "confirm the kill" and that it
was of "a guy in his mid-50s or 60s, very old."
The accounts were originally given to the "Breaking
the Silence" group of young former soldiers
which is critical of methods used by the army in
the occupied territories.
One of the group's spokesmen, Avichai Sharon, a
former member of the crack Golani Brigade, claimed
the operations on 20 February 2002 were ordered
"from high" including the Ministry
of Defence and added: "In my eyes, this
is a very harsh example of crossing the moral and
human boundaries."
He said it indicated that
"we are not a defence force any more but a
tribe which avenges in blood. As an Israeli,
I fear this."
He said the soldiers, whose testimony appears in
today's Maariv, had not been named "for legal
reasons".
Describing another attack on the same day at the
Beit Ha Mitbachayim checkpoint on the eastern edge
of Nablus in which fire was returned by Palestinian
police the other soldier, from the Tzanchanim
Paratroop Reconnaissance Unit, said that the order
to shoot at Palestinians had given by the unit commander
and the brigade commander, a Brigadier Cochavi,
had been present at the time.
He said the policemen were ones who normally would
have been warned by Israeli liaison officers about
any military operations due to take place in their
area.
The Israeli Defence Forces said last night that
checkpoints attacked on the day in question had
included ones where Palestinian police had "actively
assisted ... terrorists" by facilitating their
passage. The IDF had been instructed by the "political
echelon" to change its mode of operation. It
had been decided that the IDF would "hunt down
all those involved in terror" including members
of the Palestinian security apparatus until the
PA prevented such attacks. As Israel released 400
Palestinian prisoners yesterday, Dov Weisglass,
senior aide to Ariel Sharon, indicated the dismantlement
of illegal settlement outposts a demand by
the US would have to wait until after Gaza
disengagement.
|
The
revered anchor of Israel's Channel One news programme
for more than three decades has caused controversy
by making a personalised documentary in which he
concludes that Jewish settlements are endangering
the country and that the occupation of Palestinian
land is a crime.
"Since 1967, we have been brutal conquerors,
occupiers, suppressing another people," Haim
Yavin, who was a founder of Channel One and once
its chief editor, says in the programme.
Even before the five-part series opened last night,
settler leaders were calling for the 72-year-old,
known as "Mr Television", to be sacked,
because they said he was no longer objective.
The documentary would be sensitive in Israel at
any time, but particularly now in the weeks before
the government plans to remove thousands of Jewish
settlers from the Gaza Strip and a small part of
the West Bank.
Channel One turned down the documentary and it
is being shown on a rival channel that recently
lost its licence and is about to go off air.
The series is a the result of Yavin's visits during
more than two years to the West Bank and Gaza Strip,
carrying a small camera to film ordinary people
- some of the 400,000 Jewish settlers, Palestinian
residents and Israeli soldiers - in the territories.
"My intention was to get the personal feelings
of the settlers, of the Palestinians," Yavin
told the Guardian yesterday. "It has strengthened
my former opinion that we have to come to terms
with the Palestinians; they are not all terrorists.
"Some of my friends on the left hate the settlers.
I don't hate them, I appreciate them. I even like
them, but I say in the documentary that I think
they are wrong and they are endangering us."
The experience has left Yavin more pessimistic
about the prospects for peace. "I think the
majority of Palestinians and the majority of Israelis
want peace and they're willing to divide the country,"
he said. "But there's such mistrust. Hamas
terrorism did such damage to both peoples that I
don't think it can be repaired."
He not only questions the settlements and the occupation,
but the commitment of successive governments, including
Ariel Sharon's, to curbing Israel's hunger for land
and the expansion of its colonies.
"This merrymaking will never be stopped,"
he said. "I regard this as a Greek tragedy.
I don't see any solution."
Settler leaders have reacted furiously to the series,
saying it will "divide Israeli society".
The head of the settler council, Benzi Lieberman,
has called for Yavin to be removed as Channel One's
news anchor.
"Even if his opinions and the manner in which
he presents them may be considered legitimate, his
continued serving in the objective newscaster's
position constitutes a blow to media ethics and
professional integrity," he said.
Among those filmed by Mr Yavin is an Israeli soldier
in Hebron who wonders how his compatriots can remain
silent in the face of the "horrors" the
army commits, and the settlers who ask him why he's
not shooting Palestinian children.
Some settlers tell Yavin that the Palestinians
must be given a deadline to leave the occupied territories
or be forced out. "Otherwise we should just
bomb and kill them," says one woman.
· Jerusalem city council has issued orders
to demolish the homes of hundreds of Palestinians
in an area that Israeli settlers want to be turned
into a Jewish neighbourhood.
The council, which has initially ordered 88 buildings
to be razed, says it intends to make the Silwan
area, just outside the Old City walls, a national
park. Palestinian officials say that the real intent
is to clear the area for settlers.
|
NEW YORK (AP) - Syria test-fired
three Scud missiles last Friday, including one that
broke up over Turkish territory and showered missile
parts onto Turkish farmers, the New York Times newspaper
quoted Israeli military officials saying.
These were the first such Syrian missile tests
since 2001, the paper's website quoted the Israelis
saying, and are part of a Syrian missile-development
project using North Korean technology and designed,
the Israelis contend, to deliver air-burst chemical
weapons.
The missiles included one older Scud B, with a
range of about 300 kilometres, and two Scud D's
with a range of about 700 kilometres, the Times'
sites said late Thursday, quoting Israeli officials.
Little was especially startling about the tests,
Israeli officials said, except the embarrassment
to Turkey - a member of NATO - and the timing, during
the Lebanese elections, the Times said.
The Israeli military officials quoted by the Times
said they interpreted the launchings as a gesture
of defiance to the United States and the United
Nations by Syrian President Bashar Assad, who has
been pushed to remove Syrian troops from Lebanon
since the assassination of the anti-Syrian politician,
Rafik Hariri.
The Times said Israeli officials, who are familiar
with the intelligence but asked their names or departments
not be identified, decided to publicize the tests
in part because they were puzzled by U.S. silence
about them and because Israel sees them as part
of a troubling pattern of behaviour by Assad. [...] |
Days
after the election, a feisty Lebanese journalist
is murdered. Why?
Journalists dread the moments they have to write
the obituary of a person they know, but when it's
a colleague and a close friend the effort becomes
a penance. This morning, Samir Kassir, whom I interviewed
about a year ago for Reason, was killed by a bomb
placed in or under his car. Samir was many good
things to his many friends, but he was also, undeniably,
the media figure who contributed the most to denouncing
the hegemony over Lebanon of the Syrian and Lebanese
intelligence services.
Who killed Samir? Perhaps this comment from a municipal
worker at the site of the explosion pointed in a
general direction: "The army doesn't forgive
its critics." However, it would be more accurate
to say that Samir had enemies throughout the security
and intelligence apparatus, largely because he was
so effectively insolent in denouncing their hold
on Lebanese political life. Several years ago, the
head of the General Security Directorate, Jamil
al-Sayyed, once the most powerful man in Lebanon
after the Syrian officer tasked to manage the country,
had his men tail and harass Samir for weeks because
he had written an article critical of Sayyed. At
the time, a number of politicians had asked Samir
to ride with them as a means of expressing their
solidarity. This included former Prime Minister
Rafik Hariri, though, as Samir later told me, the
only ones who pulled out guns and threatened to
shoot Sayyed's goons were the bodyguards of Druze
leader Walid Jumblatt.
What was the message in the killing? There were
many. It was, first, a settling of scores for past
affronts; it was a warning to the opposition (Samir
was a leading figure in the Democratic Left movement,
one of the parties that had demanded a Syrian pullout
from Lebanon); it was also a warning to the press
to shut up; and it was an affirmation that no one
should envisage profound change in the security
services, or contemplate removing the person sitting
atop the security edifice, Lebanese President Emile
Lahoud. Indeed, both Jumblatt and the son of Rafik
Hariri, Saadeddine, have made it clear that among
their first priorities after Lebanon's parliamentary
elections end in late June will be to remove the
president. Hariri in particular believes that the
security services, working on behalf of Syria, were
deeply involved in the assassination of his father.
I first met Samir more than a decade ago in the
offices of Al-Nahar, Lebanon's leading daily newspaper.
He was young, stylish, arrogant, and sanguine, irresistibly
so, and he had the brilliance to pull all that off.
He was also someone, I steadily learned, who had
the patience to listen. That came with the territory
of teaching at St. Joseph's University, where he
always had time for students and a willingness to
take them seriously. His behavior also confirmed
that under that brashness was a hefty reservoir
of modesty.
In the mid-1990s, Samir was asked to edit a French-language
magazine titled L'Orient-Express. It was a monthly
supplement to the sleepy French-language newspaper
in Beirut, but it retained editorial independence.
Almost immediately, the magazine became one of the
most stimulating political-cultural publications
in town, as Samir became axle to dozens of eager
spokes; most of the contributors were not quite
sure they could write until they fell into Samir's
overpowering mill. He would berate, provoke, and
motivate; and I still remember with delight how,
with deadlines already past, he would calmly edit
a piece, munch on a sandwich, carry on a conversation
with three people, and pull on a cigarette.
In the end the magazine suffered because of its
success. Advertisers saw a profitable product, so
they tried to transform it into a society rag. When
Samir refused to be pushed around, they withheld
advertising as punishment, and the publication slowly
died. The quality of the content also set off alarm
bells in the offices of the editors of the daily
paper, who knew it only highlighted the mediocrity
of their own endeavors. They asked their owner to
pull the plug on the magazine, and he reluctantly
obliged. At around that time I saw Samir driving
a flashy new car, a dark blue Audi: It was to infuriate
his detractors, he told me with a smirk.
Samir will best be remembered for his weekly column
in the Friday edition of Al-Nahar. One of the first
at the site of his murder was Jubran Tueni, the
paper's publisher who was recently elected a parliamentarian
from Beirut. He radiated disbelief, though he and
Samir had had their political differences. It was
Jubran's father, the distinguished Ghassan Tueni,
who had hired Samir and who, like him, had a mind
in effervescent counterpoint. There was something
paternal in the relationship, and it was with pride
that Ghassan seemed to survey how gamely Samir chipped
away at the cheap masonry of the Syrian order. There
was also in Ghassan and Samir a common sympathy
for the Arab world and its aspirations and follies
- the attention of two Greek Orthodox Christians
who regarded their minority's isolation from the
surrounding region as absurd.
The last article Samir wrote was about a country
for which he had a passion, Syria. His enthusiasm
was not for the despotism of the Assad regime or
the contemptible kleptocracy its has presided over;
it was for the Syrian people and the opposition;
for those countless men and women thrown into the
dungeons of the Baath Party during the past decades
- all of them victims of exceedingly stupid men.
His column (which Syrians could only read in samizdat,
Al-Nahar being denied entry into Syria) lamented
the fate of a group of civil society activists from
the Jamal Atasi forum, and their imprisonment for
having dared allow the reading in their discussion
group of a letter sent by the leader of the Syrian
Muslim Brotherhood. Amid general outrage, several
of those arrested were released earlier this week.
Samir surely had a small part in that the minor
victory.
Nor could Samir quite forgive how the Syrians had
once tried to swallow the Palestinian cause, to
transform it into a branch of their foreign policy.
The lingering thread throughout his work was the
Palestinians and the tragedy of their recent history.
It was revealing how when Sayyed tightened the screws,
he accused Samir of being Palestinian, confiscating
his passport to allegedly investigate whether his
claims to Lebanese citizenship were valid. It was
a profoundly vulgar effort, both for implying that
one was somehow tainted by being Palestinian and
for ignoring that the Kassirs were originally Beirutis
who had emigrated to Palestine, before returning.
Throughout Beirut today there is a single regret:
that Samir's foes should have gotten him even as
the fetid system they spent years setting up slowly
collapses. In response to a piece I had published
by Samir last year, the newspaper for which I work
received a telephone call. "Why are you publishing
Samir Kassir?" the person on the line demanded,
in lieu of a direct threat. Well, here's the answer:
Because Samir Kassir had balls in a country that
under Syrian rule spawned cowards and sycophants;
he had ideas and openness in a system that rewarded
mediocrity and intolerance; and he had the compelling
scornfulness for imposed authority that so irritated
his murderers - and that we will continue to relish
when this cowardly confederacy is kicked into a
shallow grave.
|
Israel’s police have
uncovered a group of at least 20 neo-Nazis who immigrated
to Israel from the Former Soviet Union under the
Law of Return.
Police are not certain how to proceed due to the
lack of legal basis for prosecuting Israelis espousing
anti-Semitic ideology.
The neo-Nazi group was discovered following the
arrest of a 20-year-old IDF soldier on drug charges.
That resulted in the discovery of neo-Nazi material
in his home and a swastika tattooed on his arm.
During the investigation of the arrested neo-Nazi
and his mother, who also professed hatred for Jews
and Israel, other members of the group were revealed.
Police detective Haim Fadlon told the Maariv newspaper
that the suspects are believed to have met each
other in anti-Semitic chat rooms on the Internet.
They have held meeting and performed ceremonies
with swastika banners and other Nazi paraphernalia
as well.
"We cannot disclose details of the inquiry,
but it's chilling," Fadlon said. "It appears
these are people living in this country who are
talking among themselves about extermination of
the Jews."
Under the current 'Law of Return,' anybody with
a Jewish grandparent can immigrate to Israel and
receive citizenship and benefits. Immigrant groups
representing Jews from the former Soviet Union have
long called for reform in the law due to immigrants
moving to Israel for financial reasons, bringing
their enmity for Jews and Israel along with them.
Interior Minister Ofir Pines-Paz has asked Attorney
General Menachem Mazuz to interpret the law regarding
new immigrants and citizenship to examine the legal
procedure under which a new immigrant’s status
can be revoked. |
MOSCOW (AP) - Russian Defense
Minister Sergei Ivanov on Thursday threatened retaliatory
steps if any country deploys weapons in space, Russian
news agencies.
"Russia's position on this question has not
changed for decades: We are categorically against
the militarization of space," Ivanov said,
according to the Interfax news agency.
"If some state begins
to realize such plans, then we doubtless will take
adequate retaliatory measures," ITAR-Tass
quoted him as saying at the Baikonur cosmodrome
in Kazakhstan.
The U.S. administration currently is reviewing
the U.S. space policy doctrine. Last month, White
House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters that
the policy review was not considering the weaponization
of space. But he said new threats to U.S. satellites
have emerged in the years since the U.S. space doctrine
was last reviewed in 1996, and those satellites
must be protected.
In 2002, after the United States withdrew from
the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, China and
Russia submitted a proposal for a new international
treaty to ban weapons in outer space.
But the United States has said it sees no need
for any new space arms control agreements. It is
party to the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which prohibits
stationing weapons of mass destruction in space. |
OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada
is "very worried" by a U.S. proposal that
its airlines provide passenger lists for planes
flying through American airspace rather than actually
landing in the United States, Transport Minister
Jean Lapierre said on Wednesday.
Lapierre said the proposal could have "a
major effect" on Canadian sovereignty since
flights between Canadian cities are often routed
over U.S. territory to save fuel.
Of the 160,000 Canadian flights that enter U.S.
airspace every year, around 120,000 are traveling
domestically.
After the Sept. 11 suicide attacks, U.S. authorities
drew up a watch list -- or no-fly list -- of suspected
terrorists who were barred from boarding a flight
to the United States.
Lapierre said Washington was now considering whether
to expand the system and demand passenger lists
for Canadian aircraft that merely intended to fly
through U.S. airspace.
"I'm very worried about it ... right now
we're in discussion with the Americans," he
told reporters.
"We don't think it's a good idea that Canadians
traveling from one (Canadian) city to another would
have to be checked (against) the American no-fly
list."
The issue reflects fears among some Canadians
that the country's sovereignty could be harmed by
the U.S. administration's crackdown on terrorism.
Last year the province of British Columbia imposed
controls on private data firms to prevent them from
sharing information about Canadians with U.S. authorities.
The left-leaning New Democratic Party, which is
keeping the minority Liberal government in power,
said the passenger list proposal was unacceptable.
"This is certainly a step toward the kind
of deeper integration between our two countries
that I think a lot of Canadians are concerned about,"
said party leader Jack Layton.
Lapierre said the new proposal was prompted by
the case of a KLM Royal Dutch Airlines flight from
Amsterdam to Mexico that was barred from flying
over American airspace in April because two passengers
were found to be on the no-fly list. [...] |
SYDNEY : A suspicious package
was found Friday in Australia's parliament in Canberra
and taken for testing, two days after the Indonesian
embassy was sealed off when a similar packet was
discovered, officials said.
A loading dock in the bowels of parliament house
was closed off because of concerns over suspicious
powder from a package, a parliamentary spokesman
said.
Police and fire brigade were on the scene, he said,
although the parliament building has not been evacuated.
"Police have responded and have secured the
package for testing," a police spokeswoman
told AFP.
The incident came two days after nearly 50 staff
at the Indonesian embassy in Canberra were placed
in isolation after white powder spilled from an
envelope addressed to Ambassador Imron Cotan. [...] |
KHARTOUM : Five people were
killed and almost 30 others injured as a private
Sudanese plane crashed on take-off from Khartoum,
airport authorities said.
"The plane aborted its take-off and crashed
at the end of the runway," an airport official
said.
"It had 34 people on board, of whom five died
on the spot and the other 29 were injured, some
of them seriously."
The plane, belonging to the private firm Marsland
which runs a domestic service, was due to fly from
the capital to El-Obeid in central Sudan and on
to El-Fasher in the troubled western region of Darfur.
|
A Canadian is believed to
be among the victims of a plane crash in Costa Rica.
At least two people died and three others are
missing after the plane carrying a group of skydivers
crashed into the Pacific Ocean on Tuesday afternoon.
One man, William Slater, 34, who was aboard the
plane, was rescued and is in hospital in San Jose.
Slater told authorities that he and two other
people jumped from the plane when it encountered
severe turbulence. He spent many hours in the water
and was not rescued until Wednesday. [...] |
MIAMI : A seven-year-old boy
beat his seven-month-old sister to death with a
board, Tampa police said, and Florida authorities
are trying to figure out how to charge him.
On May 22, the boy, whose identity was not revealed,
was in Tampa visiting his father, who was outside
with his girlfriend when the boy ran out to tell
them that the baby was bleeding, authorities said
on Wednesday. The parents of the baby, Jayza Laney
Simms, entered the house and saw she was bleeding
from the nose and not breathing.
The boy denied having touched the baby until he
was confronted with the results of the autopsy.
"He then admitted
that he kicked, punched and hit his seven-month-old
(half) sister in the head with a two-by-four,"
a piece of construction lumber two by four inches
(five by 10 centimeters), said Tampa police spokeswoman
Laura McElroy.
She said that the boy was apparently jealous of
the sister, who would not stop crying.
"The veteran detectives
that worked in this case said they had never seen
a child -- who's only seven -- who has shown so
much violence and shown so little remorse for hurting
his little sister," she said.
Prosecutors are looking at how they can try him,
McElroy said. The boy is in his mother's custody,
she said.
Last week, a 17-year-old boy was charged as an
adult in Palm Beach, Florida for allegedly raping
an eight-year-old girl and burying her alive in
a garbage dump. |
Detectives were continuing
to question three children today over the attempted
murder of a five-year-old boy who was found
with horrific ligature-type marks around his neck.
Anthony Hinchliffe is believed to have been taken
from his mother’s back garden and led to a
nearby wood, where he suffered neck injuries and
bruising to his body.
Detectives – who are treating the incident
as attempted murder – have refused to confirm
reports that the youngster sustained his injuries
through being hanged.
Two girls and a boy – aged between 11 and
12 – were continuing to be questioned over
the incident at Dewsbury police station today. Two
boys, who had also been arrested, were released
without charge last night.
The incident bears chilling similarities to the
1993 murder of Merseyside toddler James Bulger,
who was led away by two 10-year-old boys while waiting
for his mother outside a shop.
Anthony was found in a distraught state by his
22-year-old cousin Tracey Jones and a member of
the public yesterday in a wooded area close to the
Earlsheaton Medical Centre in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire.
As well as the ligature marks,
there was bruising on his body.
Four local children – two girls aged 11
and 12 and two boys aged 11 and 12 - were arrested
on suspicion of attempted murder. [...] |
NEW YORK - A biotech
brain trust is starting a new company that hopes
to make a leap for genetic engineering that is comparable
to moving from an old mainframe computer to a smaller,
faster PC.
The new firm, Codon Devices, is aiming to perfect
a new technology that would allow scientists to
edit sequences of DNA with never-before-seen ease.
The leap might be akin to going from having to correct
articles with Wite-Out to editing them onscreen
with a word processor. The goal is to move from
having to merely tweak the proteins that are used
as biotech drugs to being able to design them, even
taking material from multiple organisms and using
them to create new, functional genes.
"I think if we pull it off, it changes everything
to do with our interaction with the living world,"
says Drew Endy, a young MIT professor who is one
of the company's co-founders. "We'll see if
it works."
In recent years, scientists have sequenced the
genetic code of a wide array of organisms, ranging
from mice, humans and fish to common bacterial pathogens
and plants like rice and corn. That creates a giant
library of genetic material that could bring a bonanza
of new industrial enzymes, new biotech crops and,
eventually, new cures. But scientists can't just
mix and match genes. They are bound by the time-consuming
techniques that first allowed researchers to manipulate
genes 30 years ago, leading to the founding of such
biotech firms as Genentech, Amgen and Biogen Idec.
As it stands, most biologists spend half their
time or more manipulating DNA, taking it from one
cell to another, from one organism to the next,
cleaving one piece laboriously to another, making
only small tweaks. But Codon's
founders are working on new techniques to make it
possible to synthesize DNA much more easily, even
connecting bits taken from different species. Jay
Keasling, a professor at U.C. Berkeley and a Codon
co-founder, has already received a $42.6 million
grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation,
through the non-profit organization OneWorld Health,
to use the technology to work on developing an antimalaria
medicine.
"The difference between science and engineering
is the difference between discovery and design,"
says Noubar Afayan, a principal at Flagship Ventures
and the chairman of Codon Devices. Flagship is the
founding investor in the tiny Cambridge, Mass.-based
company, and it took the lead on Codon's series-A
round of venture financing. Other investors include
Alloy Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
and Vinod Khosla, who co-founded Sun Microsystems.
Mike Hunkapillar of Alloy Ventures, who led Applied
Biosystems when the company's DNA sequencing machines
were being used to fuel the gene-mapping craze,
will sit on the company's board of directors.
The potential is that engineers
could eventually edit together sequences of DNA
instead of relying on what nature has given.
"We're at the beginning of this new field
of biological engineering where you can start to
put together a lot of different parts and get a
new function," says Samir Kaul, a principal
at Flagship Ventures who is serving as Codon's chief
executive. For some, that could lead to uneasiness--the
same techniques could allow scientists in biotech
to make even bigger leaps than they have before.
Whereas cells and plants have been modified in small
ways, larger alterations might be possible.
Yet Codon Devices is likely to have more pressing
matters to face--such as turning its new technology
into practical tools for biologists. George Church,
a Harvard professor who will chair the company's
scientific advisory board, just published a landmark
paper in Nature on the synthetic DNA. But it's going
to take more than big-time journal publications
to change the biotech industry, not to mention the
world.
|
BUSSELTON, Australia
- Dozens of volunteers in wetsuits and woolly hats
braved chilly seas Thursday to push scores of false
killer whales that had beached themselves on Australia's
western coast back out to sea.
One of the dolphin-sized mammals died, but rescuers
refloated 74 others.
Two groups of the marine mammals ran aground on separate
beaches at Busselton, 225 kilometres south of the
Western Australia state capital of Perth.
Volunteers responding to the state government's call
for help pushed one group of about 15 whales back
into the ocean and were holding them in shallow waters
while the animals regained their strength.
The rest of the whales were herded back into the
water a short time later, said Greg Mair of Western
Australia's Department of Conservation and Land Management.
Whales have stranded themselves in the area before,
and scientists are at a loss to explain why.
Volunteer Deidre Beckwith said she was shocked at
the scene when she arrived at the beach.
The whales "are very heavy, and they keep moving
against us. They are confused,'' Beckwith told the
Australian Associated Press. "It was extraordinary
to see it, but it is nice to be able to help them.
We just hope they survive.''
One five-metre-long whale died before it could be
pushed to sea.
False killer whales, or pseudorca crassidens, have
a history of beaching on the Australian west coast.
In 1986, 114 beached near Augusta, south of Busselton.
Of those, 96 were returned to sea and the remainder
died.
In April, a pod of 19 pilot whales were stranded
on a beach near Busselton for more than a day before
most of them were coaxed back to sea. Six died. |
The theme of the person awaking
from a deep sleep or coma to find a world utterly
changed is a popular one in science fiction. From
John Wyndham's book The Day of The Triffids through
The Omega Man to the recent film 28 Days Later,
the trope of the man arising from his hospital bed
to find that nothing is as it was has become well-worn.
That's fine - as long as it remains just a story.
But if - when - a flu pandemic comes, and millions
of people die around the world over a period of
months, the reality will be one of two alternatives.
It's either going to be like those films, with videoconferencing
suddenly all the rage, local farm produce making
a big profit, empty supermarket shelves (you have
to ship the oil, and distribute the fuel, but can
the Armed Forces really do all that?), tumbleweed
blowing in the streets, a medieval attitude to anyone
not from "around here".
Or else governments will impose a police state
that will make all the ID cards and airport checks
look like a tea party. You'd not be allowed to move
anywhere without showing off a vaccination certificate.
(Sure, you'd get those on the black market, and
they'd cost more than £300, but would you
really want them? If you're not vaccinated would
you really want to travel among people who might
be carriers?) Or it might be both at once.
One more thing. You might well be one of those
millions who die in such a pandemic. If you travel
to work on public transport; if colleagues in your
company travel by air to Asia; if you're travelling
abroad through a busy airport. You'll probably touch
someone or share air with someone who's infected.
The premise of Terry Gilliam's Twelve Monkeys will
become reality.
You may think this is overblown. But discussion
of the possibility of a flu pandemic has fallen
out of the news. And as the security consultant
Bruce Schneier says: "One of the things I routinely
tell people is that if it's in the news, don't worry
about it. By definition, 'news' means that it hardly
ever happens. If a risk is in the news, then it's
probably not worth worrying about. When something
is no longer reported - automobile deaths, domestic
violence - when it's so common that it's not news,
then you should start worrying." [...] |
Port Blair, June
3: Fresh eruptions were noticed this morning at the
volcano in Barren Island, India's only live volcano
135 km from here.
Coast Guard Dornier aircraft on regular sorties to
the island reported a plume of thick smoke, fresh
lava and steam coming out from the crater.
Coast Guard DIG S P S Basra told newspersons that
the volcano had shown activity after being dormant
for three consecutive days due to incessant monsoon
rains.
"It is spewing out lava and stones again since
7.30 this morning", Basra said.
The Coast Guard was carrying out inspection sorties
since this morning, he added.
The volcano had erupted on May 28 after remaining
dormant for 10 years. (Agencies) |
TOKYO (AP) - A
moderately strong earthquake shook southern Japan
early Friday. There were no immediate reports of
damage or injuries.
The magnitude-4.8 earthquake was strong enough
to measure as high as 5 on the 7-level Japanese
seismic intensity scale - a better indicator of
how strongly a quake is felt on the ground - according
to Japan's Meteorological Agency.
"There have been a series of magnitude-5 level
earthquakes in this area in the past,'' Kyodo News
quoted Meteorological Agency official Masahiro Yamamoto
reporters at an early morning news conference following
the temblor.
"We would like to keep a careful watch (on
the situation),'' he said.
The quake, which struck at 4:16 a.m. (1915 GMT
Thursday) was centered about 10 kilometers (6.2
miles) underground near the Amakusaashikita region
of Kumamoto prefecture, about 900 kilometers (570
miles) southwest of Tokyo.
|
An earthquake
measuring 5.6 on the Richter scale shook the Indonesian
island of Nias on Friday, but there were no immediate
reports of casualties or property damage, a meteorologist
said.
The offshore quake hit at 7:41 am (1241 GMT), with
the epicenter 62 kilometers (20.5 miles) west of
the main town of Gunung Sitoli, at a depth of 33
kilometres, said Yono of the Jakarta meteorology
office.
On March 28, an 8.7-magnitude earthquake killed
more than 900 people on Nias off the southwest coast
of Sumatra.
Indonesia sits on the so-called Pacific Rim of
Fire, where the meeting of continental plates causes
high volcanic and seismic activity.
A 9.3-magnitude quake along the same fault-line
as Thursday's tremor triggered last year's Indian
Ocean tsunami disaster which left more than 217,000
people dead or missing.
|
Another temblor
shook the needle at the University of Memphis Earthquake
Resource Center. The nearly 4-point-zero magnitude
quake was recorded just after 6:30 Thursday morning.
Almost everyone we talked with felt or heard the
earthquake. All of them said they won't forget it
anytime soon. We traveled north to Dyersburg, where
hours after the quake, residents were rattled. No
visible sign of an earthquake in Dyersburg. Talk
of the earthquake was hot. Andrea Pope said, "Felt
like a semi that had come that close to my house."
Dave Keedy said, 'If you've ever been around a place
that had a sonic boom, that's what it sounded like.
It was two times. Boom, Boom. The first louder than
the second. There was no shaking or anything like
that." But mother earth's movement shook five
year old Treavor Jones. Now his father worries the
big one's on the way. Danny Jones said, "It
concerns you. It's always in the back of my mind,
cause they keep predicting that sometime in the
near future we're going to have the next big one.
But you just go on and live your life." That's
the attitude of most residents. They
just hope the big one is years away.
|
Molecular
milestone
Canadian nanotechology team designs tiny switch to
greatly increase speeds of computers |
PETER CALAMAI
SCIENCE REPORTER |
Canadian researchers have
created simple but robust computing components barely
thicker than a single molecule, a necessary
first step to building computers millions of times
faster than today's most powerful PCs.
The spectacular advance, reported today in Nature
magazine, also offers the prospect of computerized
sensors navigating bloodstreams to diagnose health
problems and anti-terrorism devices capable of detecting
as little as a single molecule of a toxic substance.
Avik Ghosh, a computing expert, predicted such
sensor applications would hit the marketplace within
a decade, while demand for molecular computers would
take longer to develop.
"This is a tour de force in terms of chemistry,"
said Ghosh, a computing researcher at Indiana's
Purdue University.
A research team from the National Institute for
Nanotechnology and the University of Alberta in
Edmonton used a single molecule of styrene, the
stuff in disposable cups, to drastically shrink
the on-off transistor switch — the basic building
block of computer processors.
The styrene molecule replaced the much larger
conducting paths currently etched into silicon wafers.
Lead nanotechnologist Robert Wolkow said the process
initially would allow switches to be "100 to
1,000 times smaller.
"So that means the switches can be placed
much closer together and will work a lot faster
because the current doesn't have as far to travel.
At least 100 times faster to start with," said
Wolkow.
The prototype "nanoswitch" is less than
one nanometre thick, meaning that 10,000 would fit
in the width of a human hair. [...] |
Manitoba was under tornado
and flood watches on Thursday after a day of exceptionally
heavy rain and eyewitness reports of two tornadoes
touching down in the province's southwestern corner
Wednesday night.
Heavy rains have been pummelling the same region
of the province, giving some communities more rainfall
in a single day than they usually see in half a
year.
"This is very, very unusual," said provincial
flood forecaster Alf Warkentin. "This kind
of storm is going to be, according to our statistics,
a 100-year event kind of thing."
A band of heavy rain stretching from the upper
third of North Dakota to Manitoba's Riding Mountain
National Park dropped between 150 and 175 millimetres
of rain. Some isolated regions have reported receiving
as much as 300 millimetres of rain.
The weather office in Melita reported 33 millimetres
of rain in just one hour Wednesday. A trailer park
in the community was flooded, as were many farmers'
fields. [...] |
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