|
"You get America out of Iraq and
Israel out of Palestine and you'll stop the terrorism."
- Cindy Sheehan
|
P I C T U R E
O F T H E D A Y
Cindy
Sheehan with Jesse Jackson in Washington D.C. on September
24, 2005
© Alexander Davidis 2005
For more photos, see Alexander's other photos:
The Anti-War March in Washington D.C.
PORT ARTHUR, Texas - Nearly
four days after Hurricane Rita hit, many of the
storm's sweltering victims along the Texas Gulf
Coast were still waiting for electricity, gasoline,
water and other relief Tuesday, prompting one top
emergency official to complain that people are "living
like cavemen."
In the hard-hit refinery towns of Port Arthur
and Beaumont, crews struggled to cross debris-clogged
streets to deliver generators and water to people
stranded by Rita. They
predicted it could be a month before power is
restored, and said water and sewer systems could
not function until more generators arrived.
Red tape was also blamed for the delays.
Port Arthur Mayor Oscar
Ortiz, whose own home was destroyed by fire after
the hurricane, said "we've had 101 promises" for
aid, "but it's all bureaucracy." He
and other officials gathered at a hotel-turned-command
center, where a dirty American flag found among
hurricane debris was hung on the wall.
John Owens, emergency management
coordinator and deputy police chief in the town
of 57,000, said pleas for state and federal relief
were met with requests for paperwork.
"We have been living like cavemen, sleeping
in cars, doing bodily functions outside," he
said.
Temperatures climbed into the upper 90s, and officials
worried that swarms of mosquitoes might spread
disease.
The White House on Tuesday said President Bush
had extended complete federal funding for debris
removal and other government assistance through
Oct. 27.
In Beaumont, state officials briefed Bush and
Texas Gov. Rick Perry on relief efforts. Perry
later visited Port Arthur, where local officials
said it could be up to three to five days before
people could return and three to five weeks before
power is restored.
"There's always going to be those discombobulations,
but the fact is, everyone is doing everything possible
to restore power back to this area," Perry
said.
About 476,000 people remained without electricity
in Texas, in addition to around 285,000 in Louisiana.
About 15,000 out-of-state utility workers were
being brought to the region to help restore power.
Residents of some hard-hit towns were allowed
to check on their homes but were not allowed to
stay because of a lack of generators and ice.
About 2,000 Port Arthur residents who stayed through
the storm were advised to find other places to
live until utilities are restored. Ortiz said it
could be two weeks before people are allowed back
into Port Arthur.
After seeing a swarm of ravenous mosquitoes around
his storm-battered home in Vidor, Harry Smith and
his family decided to leave. They hitchhiked 10
miles to an emergency staging area and got on a
bus to San Antonio.
"It can't be any worse than here," said
Smith, 49, a pipefitter. "This is the worst
storm I've seen in the 46 years I've lived here."
In Louisiana, Calcasieu Parish Police Jury President
Hal McMillin said residents who come back would
be without air conditioning, and risk insect bites
and the mosquito-borne West Nile virus. A mandatory
evacuation remained in effect for 10 southwestern
Louisiana parishes.
"There's a good chance we could have an outbreak
or something," McMillin said.
There were some signs of hope. In
a Port Arthur neighborhood not far from a grocery
store that reeked of rotten food, three Federal
Emergency Management Agency semitrailers delivered
ice, ready-to-eat meals and water.
"Without these trucks here, I don't think
we would have made it," said Lee Smith, 50.
In Orange, people converged in cars and trucks
outside a shopping strip for water, food and ice
supplied by the private disaster
group the Compassion Alliance.
"I know it's going to take some time, but
we really appreciate this," Dorothy Landry,
66, said after waiting in the line. "I can't
thank them enough." |
Hurricane Rita has caused
more damage to oil rigs than any other storm
in history and will force companies
to delay drilling for oil in the US and as
far away as the Middle East, initial damage
assessments show.
Oil prices eased on Wednesday over concerns
that demand for crude would be hit by the continued
shutdown of refineries. US crude fell 27 cents
to $64.80 a barrel by 06:44 GMT after losing
75 cents on Tuesday.
ODS-Petrodata, which provides market intelligence
to the offshore oil and natural gas industry, said
it expected a shortage of rigs in the US Gulf this
year.
"Based on what we have right now, it appears
that drilling contractors and rig owners took a
big hit from Rita," said Tom Marsh of ODS-Petrodata. "The
path Katrina took was through the mature areas
of the US Gulf where there are mainly oil [production]
platforms. Rita came to the west where there is
a lot of [exploratory] rig activity."
Ken Sill of Credit Suisse First
Boston said: "Early reports indicate numerous
rigs are missing, destroyed or have suffered serious
damage and several companies have yet to report.
Rita may set an all-time record."
The US Coast Guard said nine semisubmersible
rigs had broken free from their moorings and were
adrift.
This damage could not have come at a worse time
for oil companies and consumers. US crude futures
on Monday fell 37 cents to $65.45 a barrel in midday
trading in New York as refineries that were evacuated
before the onset of Rita returned to operation.
Earlier in the day, Ali Naimi, Saudi Arabia's
oil minister, said the market had not taken up
the 2m barrels a day of spare capacity the Organisation
of the Petroleum Exporting Countries offered last
week. Speaking in Johannesburg, he blamed high
oil prices on a lack of industry infrastructure,
including rigs and refineries, rather than oil
reserves. Rigs, which are movable and are used
for exploration and development, were in short
supply before hurricanes Katrina and Rita blew
through the US Gulf in late August and September.
High oil prices and the
desperate search for new oil supplies needed
to meet rampant demand from the US and China
have made rigs difficult to find and expensive
to hire. Rigs cost $90m-$550m to construct,
depending on how sophisticated the structure
and how deep the water in which it will drill.
A rig ordered today is unlikely to be ready before
2008 or 2009, analysts said.
As a sign of just how precious
rigs are becoming to the market, Anadarko, the
biggest US independent oil company, this week set
a record by committing to a rig six years in advance;
commitments in the past were made months ahead
of time rather than years.
Initial reports from companies are ominous. Global
Santa Fe reported it could not find two of its
rigs. Rowan Companies reported four rigs damaged,
with two having moved, one losing its "legs" and
the fourth presumed sunk. Noble has four rigs adrift,
with two run aground - one into a ChevronTexaco
platform. |
NEW YORK - At his daily briefing
at the White House today, Press Secretary Scott
McClellan went a few steps further than his boss
in advocating energy saving steps that government
workers and, by extension, all Americans should
take. Whether the public interprets this as the
onset of a Jimmy Carter-like "malaise" remains
to be seen.
After asserting that, actually, the White House has
been advocating conservation since 2001, such as
turning up the thermostat in summer, McClellan said
Bush aides have been "looking at additional
ways that we can conserve energy. We'll also be sending
out notices to staff about -- reminding them to turn
off lights and printers and copiers and computers
when they leave the office. We'll continue to move
forward on more e-government, paperless systems that
would reduce the use of faxes and copiers and printers
and things of that nature, encouraging all government
vehicles to try to consume less.
"That would include by people sharing rides
in government vehicles, not letting cars idle, which
wastes gas. We'll be sending out notices to staff
to promote mass transit options, as well, letting
them know about Metro stops and encouraging ride
sharing, telling them where pick-up and drop-off
points are at the White House, or reminding them
of that, and just scrutinizing staff travel even
more, so that people can videoconference where they
can versus actually traveling, and things of that
nature.
"And other areas -- the President did want everybody
to look at the motorcade, too, to see what could
be scaled back there, as well. So I think today we
probably have a couple less vans than we normally
would."
Alarmed, a reporter asked, "Press vans? The
press vans will be there?"
"I think probably --
I think there is usually like four press vans," McClellan
replied. "I think we're trying to do it in two
or three -- staff and the guest van is combined.
I think we can -- all steps that people can take
will help, and that's why we look at all these measures."
Reporters also wondered whether the president would
be willing to cut back on energy-costly trips on
Air Force One.
Back 2001, Vice President Dick
Cheney said, "Conservation may be a sign of
personal virtue, but it cannot be the basis of a
sound energy policy."
That same year, Ari Fleischer, then the Bush press
secretary, called reducing American energy consumption "a
big no." He said Bush "believes that
it's an American way of life." |
WASHINGTON - A combative
Michael Brown blamed the Louisiana governor, the
New Orleans mayor and even the Bush White House
that appointed him for the dismal response to Hurricane
Katrina in a fiery appearance Tuesday before Congress.
In response, lawmakers alternately lambasted and
mocked the former FEMA director.
House members' scorching treatment of Brown,
in a hearing stretching nearly 6 1/2 hours, underscored
how he has become an emblem of the deaths, lingering
floods and stranded survivors after the Aug.
29 storm. Brown resigned Sept. 12 after being
relieved of his onsite command of the Federal
Emergency Management Agency's response effort
three days earlier.
"I'm happy you left," said Rep. Christopher
Shay, R-Conn. "Because that kind of, you know,
look in the lights like a deer tells me that you
weren't capable to do the job."
"You get an F-minus in my book," said
Rep. Gene Taylor, D-Miss.
At several points, Brown turned red in the face
and slapped the table in front of him.
"So I guess you want me to be the superhero,
to step in there and take everyone out of New Orleans," Brown
said.
"What I wanted you to do is do your job and
coordinate," Shays retorted.
Well aware of President Bush's
sunken poll ratings, legislators of both parties
tried to distance themselves from the federal preparations
for Katrina and the storm's aftermath that together
claimed the lives of more than 1,000 people in
Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.
|
Freudian
Slip: actual Sky News tagline in
aftermath of hurricane Rita. |
Brown acknowledged making mistakes during the
storm and subsequent flooding that devastated the
Gulf Coast. But he accused New Orleans Mayor Ray
Nagin and Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco, both
Democrats, of fostering chaos and failing to order
a mandatory evacuation more than a day before Katrina
hit.
"My biggest mistake was not recognizing by
Saturday that Louisiana was dysfunctional," Brown
told a special panel set up by House Republican
leaders to investigate the catastrophe. Most
Democrats, seeking an independent investigation,
stayed away to protest what they called an unfair
probe of the Republican administration by GOP lawmakers.
"I very strongly personally regret that I
was unable to persuade Governor Blanco and Mayor
Nagin to sit down, get over their differences and
work together," Brown said. "I just couldn't
pull that off."
Brown also said he warned Bush,
White House chief of staff Andrew Card and deputy
chief of staff Joe Hagin that "this is going
to be a bad one" in e-mails and phone conversations
leading up to the storm. Under pointed questioning,
he said some needs outlined to the White House,
Pentagon and Homeland Security Department were
not answered in "the timeline that we requested."
Blanco vehemently denied that she waited until
the eve of the storm to order an evacuation of
New Orleans. She said her order came on the morning
of Aug. 27 - two days before the storm - resulting
in 1.3 million people evacuating the city.
"Such falsehoods and misleading statements,
made under oath before Congress, are shocking," Blanco
said in a statement.
In New Orleans, Nagin said that "it's too
early to get into name-blame and all that stuff" but
that "a FEMA director in Washington trying
to deflect attention is unbelievable to me."
White House spokesman Scott McClellan urged Congress
to undertake "a thorough investigation of
what went wrong and what went right and look at
lessons learned."
Brown, who remains on FEMA's payroll for two more
weeks before he leaves his annual $148,000 post,
rejected accusations that he was inexperienced
for the job he held for more than two years during
which he oversaw 150 presidentially declared disasters.
Before joining FEMA in 2001, he was an attorney,
held local government posts and headed the International
Arabian Horse Association.
"I know what I'm doing, and I think I do
a pretty darn good job of it," he said.
He said FEMA coordinates and manages disaster
relief, but the emergency first response is the
job of state and local authorities. Brown also
said the agency was stretched too thin to respond
to a catastrophe of Katrina's size. "We were
prepared but overwhelmed is the best way I can
put it," he said.
Brown described FEMA as a politically
powerless arm of Homeland Security, which he said
had siphoned more than $77 million from his agency
over the past three years. Additionally, he said
Homeland Security cut FEMA budget requests - including
one for hurricane preparedness - before they were
ever presented to Congress.
Rep. Harold Rogers, R-Ky., who oversees House
spending on homeland security operations, said
Congress has approved spending levels for FEMA
and other preparedness programs far above requests.
In Miami, Homeland Security Secretary Michael
Chertoff told reporters that Brown "speaks
for himself and he's entitled to his point of view,
and I don't have anything to add."
Brown's defiant demeanor Tuesday mirrored his
comments after being dismissed from overseeing
the Katrina response, when he accused the news
media of making him a scapegoat and blamed local
officials for the uncoordinated response.
He had been "just tired and misspoke" when
a television interviewer appeared to be the first
to tell him that there were desperate residents
at the New Orleans Convention Center, and testified
he had already learned the day before that people
were flocking there.
No longer needing to maintain a cordial relationship
with Congress, Brown didn't hesitate to punch back
at lawmakers who questioned whether the government
would learn from mistakes before the next disaster
strikes.
"I know what death and destruction is and
I know how much people suffer," Brown told
Taylor. "And it breaks my heart. I pray for
these people every night. So don't lecture me about
knowing what disaster is like."
Yet Brown struck a conciliatory tone with Rep.
Kay Granger, R-Texas, who chastised him for not
seeking fiscal or oversight help from Congress
before the storm.
"I don't know how you can sleep at night," Granger
said. "You lost the battle."
Brown, his voice dropping slightly,
responded: "I probably should have just resigned
my post earlier and gone public with some of these
things because I have a great admiration for the
men and women of FEMA and what they do, and they
don't deserve what they've been getting." |
NEW ORLEANS - Police Superintendent
Eddie Compass stepped down from his post four weeks
after Hurricane Katrina destroyed the city where
he grew up and spent 26 years policing, saying
he knew in his heart it was time to walk away.
His resignation follows the storm's turbulent
aftermath, during which looters ransacked stores,
evacuees pleaded for help, rescue workers came
under fire and nearly 250 police officers left
their posts.
"Every man in a leadership position must
know when it's time to hand over the reins," he
said at a news conference Tuesday. "I'll be
going on in another direction that God has for
me."
Compass, 47, gave no reason for
leaving, saying only that he would be transitioning
out of the job over the next six weeks. Neither
he nor Mayor Ray Nagin would say whether Compass
had been pressured to leave his job.
Nagin, who appointed Compass chief in 2002, said
it was a sad day for the city of New Orleans but
that the departing chief "leaves the department
in pretty good shape and with a significant amount
of leadership."
On the streets of the Algiers neighborhood, the
first in Orleans Parish to be open to residents,
some said Compass' resignation was a loss for the
city.
"He was stretched beyond the limits of human
endurance," said Ruth Marciante, pausing outside
a Winn-Dixie supermarket. "Under the circumstances
I think he did a superhuman job. I wish the next
guy who takes that job a lot of luck."
But another Algiers resident, Donald De Bois Blanc,
said he had complained to police about looting
in the hurricane's aftermath, and gotten only shrugs
in return.
"I don't think Compass did a terribly good
job," he said. "The department was inept."
Lt. David Benelli, president of the union for
rank-and-file New Orleans officers, said he was
shocked by Compass' resignation.
"We've been through a horrendous time," Benelli
said. "We've watched the city we love be destroyed.
That is pressure you can't believe."
Benelli would not criticize Compass.
"You can talk about lack of organization
but we have been through two hurricanes. There
was no communications, problems everywhere," he
said. "I think the fact that we did not lose
control of the city is a testament to his leadership."
As the city slipped into anarchy during the first
few days after Katrina, the 1,700-member police
department suffered a crisis. Many officers deserted
their posts, and some were accused of joining in
the looting that broke out. Two officers Compass
described as friends committed suicide.
Gunfire and other lawlessness broke out around
the city. Rescue workers reported being shot at.
Compass publicly repeated allegations that people
were being beaten and babies raped at the convention
center, where thousands of evacuees had taken shelter. The
allegations have since proved largely unsubstantiated.
Earlier in the day Tuesday, the department confirmed
that about 250 police officers - roughly 15 percent
of the force - could face discipline for leaving
their posts without permission during Katrina and
its aftermath.
Even before Katrina hit, Compass had his hands
full with an understaffed police department and
a skyrocketing murder rate. Before Katrina, New
Orleans had 3.14 officers per 1,000 residents -
less than half the ratio in Washington, D.C.
The mayor has named Assistant Superintendent Warren
Riley as acting superintendent.
On Tuesday, the state Health Department reported
that Katrina's death toll in Louisiana stood at
885, up from 841 on Friday.
It also was the second day of the official reopening
of New Orleans, which had been pushed back last
week when Hurricane Rita threatened. Nagin welcomed
residents back to the Algiers neighborhood on Monday
but imposed a curfew and warned of limited services.
Nagin also invited business owners in the central
business district, the French Quarter and the Uptown
section to inspect their property and clean up.
But he gave no timetable for reopening those parts
of the city to residents. |
WASHINGTON - Peace mom Cindy
Sheehan didn't change her opposition to the war
in Iraq after meeting Tuesday with one of its supporters,
Sen. John McCain, a Vietnam veteran whom she called "a
warmonger."
Sheehan thanked McCain for meeting with her,
but she came away disappointed.
"He tried to tell us what
George Bush would have said," Sheehan, who
protested at the president's Texas home over the
summer, told reporters. "I don't believe he
believes what he was telling me."
McCain, R-Ariz., also seemed disappointed in the
meeting, which he said had been misrepresented
as including some of his constituents. Only one
person in her small delegation has ties to the
state, and that person no longer lives there.
The two exchanged views about the war, and McCain
described the conversation as "a rehash" of
opinions already well known. He
said he might not have met with Sheehan had he
known none of his constituents was in the group.
Although McCain has criticized the handling of
the Iraq war, he has supported President Bush's
call to stop terrorism abroad before it reaches
the U.S. Sheehan, whose son, Casey, died in Iraq
last year, has energized the anti-war movement
with her call for troops to be brought home.
"He is a warmonger, and I'm
not," Sheehan said after meeting with McCain. "I
believe this war is not keeping America safer."
"She's entitled to her opinion," McCain
said. "We just have fundamental disagreements."
Sheehan's conference with McCain was one of several
scheduled this week as part of her campaign to
persuade members of Congress to explain the reasons
for the war. She spoke before a massive anti-war
rally Saturday on the National Mall and was arrested
Monday demonstrating in front of the White House.
Sheehan and McCain had met once
before, shortly after the funeral of her son. Sheehan
said Tuesday that McCain told her then that her
son's death was "like his buddies in Vietnam" and
that he feared their deaths were "for nothing." McCain,
however, denied he made such a statement.
Later, Sheehan cut short her
appearance at the University of Maryland, leaving
a rally after about 10 minutes.
Karen Pomer, a spokeswoman for Sheehan, said, "She's
exhausted and she's not feeling well,
but she intends to meet her obligations." |
MIAMI BEACH, Fla. - New York
City police were led to a possible al-Qaida
associate last month after a search of a federal
terror database during a routine traffic search,
National Intelligence Director John D. Negroponte
said Tuesday.
In a speech at the annual conference of the
International Association of Chiefs of Police,
Negroponte offered the incident as an example
of increasing cooperation between local law enforcement
and federal agencies.
Negroponte spoke of success he said local law
enforcement officials have had in working with
the FBI-run Terrorist Screening Center, the government's
new central database for terror suspects.
According to Negroponte, the New York City Police
Department called the center last month because
a routine search on a parking violation alerted
officers that the individual might be a terrorist
suspect.
"Sure enough, TSC database searches identified
the subject as an alleged alien smuggler possibly associated
with al-Qaida," Negroponte said. "Identifying
terrorists who wish to do us harm, intercepting
them when necessary and preventing attacks before
they occur is a tall order, but it is the right
order."
Negroponte said it was important for agencies
from around the world to work together and share
information. However, there are still issues that
need to be addressed, including privacy and civil
liberties.
The screening center was
created in September 2003 by a presidential directive. It
combines about a dozen databases from nine agencies
that any government official - from a Customs
agent at an airport to a state trooper watching
for speeders - can consult to check the name
of someone who has been screened or stopped.
Earlier this year, Inspector General
Glenn A. Fine said in an audit that the database
was missing some names that should be in it and
had inaccurate information about others.
Donna Bucella, the center's director, has said
the problems have been corrected. |
WASHINGTON - Asset bubbles
fueled by "market exuberance" invariably
burst and policy-makers cannot safely pierce them,
Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said on
Tuesday in what some economists took as a warning
to bond market and housing speculators.
In a speech in which he once
again defended the Fed's decision not to deflate
the late-1990s stock market bubble, Greenspan
said a successful monetary policy can be a victim
of its own success -- by reducing economic volatility
that in turn fosters greater risk-taking.
He warned that protracted bouts of big risk-taking
by investors are always followed by asset-price
declines, and he said maintaining the U.S. economy's
flexibility was essential to helping it weather
the inevitable blows.
"History cautions that extended periods of
low concern about credit risk have invariably been
followed by reversal, with an attendant fall in
the prices of risky assets," he told an economics
conference in Chicago via satellite.
"Because it is difficult to suppress growing
market exuberance when the economic environment
is perceived as more
stable, a highly flexible system needs to be in
place to rebalance an economy in which psychology
and asset prices could change rapidly," he
said.
Prices for both U.S. stocks and
government bonds rose a bit after his remarks as
traders showed relief he had not signaled higher-than-expected
interest rates ahead.
The Fed chief, who steps down at the end of January
after more than 18 years, said the U.S. economy's
ability in recent decades to weather a series of
shocks -- including the latest run-up in energy
prices -- offered evidence of its increased flexibility.
"That greater tendency toward self-correction
has made the cyclical stability of the economy
less dependent on the actions of macroeconomic
policymakers, whose responses often have come too
late or have been misguided," he said."
"It is important to remember
that most adjustment of a market imbalance is well
under way before the imbalance becomes widely identified
as a problem," Greenspan added.
The comments reminded observers of Greenspan's
now famous warning to stock market investors in
a 1996 speech not to get caught up in "irrational
exuberance."
EXHAUSTING THE BOOM
Some economists have criticized Greenspan for
failing to stem the stocks bubble in the 1990s.
He also faces criticism for an ultra-low interest
rate policy in recent years that some argue has
fueled speculation in housing.
As he has in the past, Greenspan defended the
Fed's decision to wait for the "eventual exhaustion
of the forces of boom" in the 1990s, saying
acting aggressively to deflate the stock market
could have led to a "significant recession."
"Whether that judgment continues
to hold up through time has yet to be determined," he
said.
He raised the prospect the economy's greater flexibility
in recent years could mean a better economic performance.
"If we have attained a degree of flexibility
that can mitigate most significant shocks -- a
proposition as yet not fully tested -- the
performance of the economy will be improved and
the job of macroeconomic policy-makers will be
made much simpler," he said.
Some analysts said the speech appeared in part
a "victory lap," but one in which Greenspan
seemed concerned about the potential for market
stress once he leaves office.
"As outgoing Fed chairman, he's clearly concerned
about the asset cycle and the prospect the low
concern on credit risk is going to be associated
with a decline in asset prices down the track," said
Alan Ruskin, research director at 4Cast Inc.
Greenspan did not refer specifically to the low
risk premiums evident in the U.S. bond market --
a topic he and other Fed officials have addressed
in recent speeches.
Those low risk premiums have kept long-term interest
rates down, helping underpin swift housing price
gains.
In a speech on Monday, Greenspan
restated his view that "froth" was evident
in some local housing markets, but said it was
not yet clear if those speculative conditions would
reach across the nation as a whole.
On Tuesday, he said "fostering an environment
of maximum competition" was the best way to
ensure economic flexibility.
In that regard, he said it was important to ward
off misguided efforts to try to protect jobs through
trade protectionism and other competition-inhibiting
policies.
"Protectionism in all its guises, both domestic
and international, does not contribute to the welfare
of American workers," Greenspan said. "At
best, it is a short-term fix at a cost of lower
standards of living for the nation as a whole." |
HAVANA - The intensified
U.S. "economic war" on Cuba has meant
more fines for Americans visiting the Communist-run
island and foreign firms doing business there,
a Cuban government report said on Tuesday.
Sanctions adopted by the Bush administration
since June 2005 to speed change in Cuba by denying
it funds included a ban on the purchase of Cuban
cigars and rum by U.S. citizens, even
in third countries, the report to the
United Nations said.
Pleasure craft owners leaving U.S ports for Cuban
waters face fines of up to $25,000 or five years
in jail, it said.
"The blockade on Cuba
is an act of economic war," the report
said. Washington has enforced a trade embargo
against Cuba since 1962, seeking to undermine
the left-wing government of Fidel Castro, in
power since a 1959 revolution.
Critics of the embargo say it has failed to bring
change to Cuba and allows Castro to blame Cuba's
economic woes on the United States. American farmers
succeeded in amending it in 2000 to allow food
sales, now averaging $400 million a year.
The U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign
Assets Control, which enforces the sanctions, fined
307 U.S. citizens in the first quarter of 2005,
compared to 316 in all of 2004, for unauthorized
travel to Cuba, the report said.
The number of U.S. tourists who
visited Cuba dropped 40 percent last year to 51,027
from 85,809 in 2003, it said.
More dramatic was the drop in the number of Cuban
residents of the United States who returned to
visit, which fell 50 percent from 115,050 in 2003
to 57,145 last year.
Measures taken by the Bush administration to squeeze
Cuba's economy included limiting trips to the island
by Cuban Americans to once every three years. Cubans
living in the United States are a vital source
of cash remittances for relatives enduring economic
hardship in their homeland.
HASTEN TRANSITION
The tightened restrictions were recommended by
the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba appointed
by President George W. Bush to explore ways to
hasten a democratic transition. They included naming
a Cuba Transition Coordinator at the State Department.
"We are not waiting for Fidel
to die. We are going to keep up the pressure," a
U.S. State Department official said.
"Our policy is based on
the fact that everything in Cuba is set up to vacuum
up dollars. This is money going into the pocket
of the regime," the official said.
Havana said Washington fined 77 foreign companies
or subsidiaries of U.S. firms in 2004 for violating
the sanctions. Others were dissuaded from doing
business with Cuba, including shipping companies
and deep-sea oil drilling firms.
The U.S. action that had the most repercussion
in 2004 was a $100 million fine the Federal Reserve
imposed on the Swiss bank UBS for illegally transferring
new dollar bills to Cuba and three other nations
subject to U.S. sanctions -- Libya, Iran and Yugoslavia.
This made it very difficult for
Cuba to deposit its dollars abroad and refresh
U.S. notes in circulation, forcing Havana to end
the use of its enemy's currency as legal tender.
The Swedish airline Novair stopped leasing an
Airbus 330 for flights from Europe to Cuba due
to the embargo, the report said.
U.S. sanctions have cost Cuba
$82 billion in damages over four decades, according
to Cuban estimates.
Cuban officials say their one-party state, which
has survived through the administrations of 10
U.S. presidents, is not about to go under.
"With or without the blockade, the Cuban
revolution has a sure future,' Deputy Foreign Minister
Bruno Rodriguez said. |
WASHINGTON - President Bush,
close to nominating a successor to retiring Justice
Sandra Day O'Connor, has narrowed his list to a
handful of candidates that outside advisers say
includes federal judges and two people who have
never banged a gavel - corporate attorney Larry
Thompson and White House counsel Harriet Miers.
White House press secretary Scott McClellan
said Tuesday that Bush had pledged to consult
with senators about his selection and said, "I
think we were essentially wrapping that process
up as early as today."
He declined to say if the president had interviewed
any candidates and wouldn't speculate about Bush's
favorites, but legal analysts monitoring the selection
process say others often mentioned are federal
appellate judges Alice Batchelder, J. Michael Luttig,
Edith Jones, J. Harvie Wilkinson, Priscilla Owen,
Samuel Alito, Karen Williams and Michael McConnell.
Also said to be on the list are Maura Corrigan,
a judge on the Michigan Supreme Court, and Attorney
General Alberto Gonzales.
Bush is expected to announce
his nominee quickly after Thursday's anticipated
confirmation and swearing in of John Roberts as
chief justice.
Bush on Monday hinted he might choose a woman
or minority member. But some outside advisers were
intrigued by another part of Bush's reply. The
president said he had interviewed and considered
people from "all walks of life."
That raised speculation that Bush was actively
considering people who were not on the bench -
such as Miers, a Texas lawyer and the president's
former personal attorney, and Thompson, a counsel
at PepsiCo, who was the federal government's highest
ranking black law enforcement official when he
was deputy attorney general during Bush's first
term.
"It could be someone outside of the legal
judicial field like a Larry Thompson, or it could
be a senator," said Jay Sekulow, chief counsel
for the American Center for Law and Justice, a
public interest legal group founded by religious
broadcaster Pat Robertson.
Sekulow said he's heard Miers' name mentioned "fairly
significantly" during the past two days. She
doesn't have judicial experience, but she's a "well-respected
lawyer - someone the president trusts."
"I think Harriet could certainly be in the
mix," he said.
Two other judicial activists, including one with
contacts at the White House, said they too had
heard Miers' name mentioned, but agreed with Sekulow,
who cautioned: "I don't think anybody has
that crystal ball but the president."
Miers is leading the White House
effort to help Bush choose nominees to the Supreme
Court so naming her would follow a move Bush made
in 2000 when he tapped the man leading his search
committee for a running mate - Dick Cheney.
"Given the Cheney precedent and the president's
well-known loyalty to his aides, it's certainly
possible the president could turn to Harriet," said
Brad Berenson, a lawyer who formerly worked in
the counsel's office of the Bush White House.
"She's a very able lawyer who is the person
currently charged with carrying forward the president's
search for judicial conservatives, so she certainly
understands what the president looks for in his
nominees. I suspect she'd be confirmed quite easily."
All eight of the sitting justices were judges
first, although Justice Clarence Thomas had only
been an appeals court judge a year. The late Chief
Justice William H. Rehnquist never served as a
lower court judge.
Elliot Mincberg, counsel with the liberal People
for the American Way, said if Bush chooses someone
without a judicial record, the White House should
be prepared for the nominee to be peppered with
questions.
"Choosing somebody who is not a judge would
put that much more of a premium on straight answers
to questions because there would be that much less
for senators and the public to go on when looking
at such a nominee's judicial philosophy," Mincberg
said. |
Washington
- General Richard Myers warned Tuesday that a US
defeat in Iraq would invite another September 11
attack and called for national resolve as he prepared
to step down as chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff
after four tumultuous years.
At his last press conference as the top US
military officer, Myers said extremists were
using terrorism to try to break US will and drive
American forces from Iraq.
"As a nation, our best weapons are patience
and resolve or, in one word, our 'will'," he
said. "We simply cannot afford to lose the
will to finish the job at hand."
Myers, who steps down Friday as chairman, spoke
following a weekend of anti-war protests in Washington
and polls showing growing public disenchantment
with a war that has claimed the lives of more than
1,900 US servicemembers.
"I think we will be victorious and we'll
help with victory in Iraq, but Iraq's going to
be perhaps a longer-term issue," he acknowledged.
"It's an insurgency that has to be dealt
with probably over a longer period of time in which
the political and economic instruments of power
are going to play a major, major role," he
said.
He warned against withdrawing US forces before
the Iraqi government and security forces are capable
of handling the insurgency.
If US forces were withdrawn
prematurely and al-Qaeda dominated Iraq, he said, "then
in my view we would have lost, and the next 9/11
would be right around the corner, absolutely." [...]
Myers' four year tenure as President George W.
Bush's top military adviser has spanned two wars
-- in Afghanistan and Iraq -- and a bloody insurgency
whose ferocity and tenacity took the US military
by surprise.
He leaves a military that
also is mired in controversy over abuses of prisoners
and the indefinite detentions of hundreds of
war-on-terror captives without Geneva Convention
protections. [...]
As chairman, Myers has been a key link between
US civilian and military leaders.
How influential he has been or what might change
with his departure remains unclear, however. As
Rumsfeld's self-effacing sidekick at Pentagon news
conferences, he has rarely hinted at disagreements
with his boss.
Some critics have faulted him for not showing
greater independence, but aides say his style has
been to argue his differences in private.
He was vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs when
hijackers flew airliners into the World Trade Center
and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, killing
more than 3,000 people.
Less than a month later, he was in the top slot
as US-led forces retaliated, toppling Afghanistan's
Taliban regime with a swift and innovative campaign
that combined US air power with Afghan insurgents
on the ground.
Within two years, US-led forces
had invaded Iraq on what turned out to be unfounded
suspicions it had weapons of mass destruction.
Myers will be replaced on October 1 as chairman
by Marine General Peter Pace, currently the vice
chairman of the Joint Chiefs. |
The second-in-command of al-Qaeda
in Iraq is dead. U.S. forces confirmed on Tuesday
that Abdullah Abu Azzam was shot during a raid in
Baghdad.
Abu Azzam was a top aide to al-Qaeda leader Abu
Musab al-Zarqawi, and was believed to have commanded
day-to-day operations in Iraq. Abu Azzam had claimed
responsibility for killing a number of Iraqi officials,
including the governor of the city of Mosul. The
U.S. military had a $50,000 US bounty on his head.
Lt. Col. Steve Boylan, a U.S. military spokesman,
said U.S. and Iraqi forces, acting on a tip, raided
a high-rise apartment building in Baghdad where
Abu Azzam was located early Sunday.
"They went in to capture him, he did not
surrender and he was killed in the raid," said
Boylan.
It is not known whether Azzam was alone at the
time of the raid.
The military had listed Abu Azzam among the 29
most-wanted supporters of insurgent groups in Iraq.
He was known as the "amir" or "prince" of
Anbar, the Western province that has been the heartland
of Iraq's Sunni Arab-led insurgency.
"This shows that we are actively going after
the network. We've taken down the number two in
the network and that is going to have an impact," said
Boylan. "And whoever replaces him as number
two, we will go after him as well."
Zarqawi's group had recently declared "all-out
war" on Iraq's Shia majority, in a bid to
provoke unrest leading up to the constitutional
vote on Oct. 15.
Washington has a $15 million US bounty on Zarqawi,
who is believed to be hiding out in western Iraq. |
DUBAI, Sept.
27 (Xinhuanet) -- An internet
statement denied on Tuesday reports that the right-hand
man of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the most wanted militant
in Iraq, has been killed by US forces.
The statement,
posted in a web site usually used by al-Qaida
in Iraq,
said it could not confirm whether Abu Azzam has
been shot dead by Iraqi and US forces in the
Iraqi capital Baghdad.
Azzam, a financier and religious
aide to Zarqawi, was killed in a joint US-Iraqi
raid on his hideout in an apartment building on
Monday, the US military said Tuesday.
The authenticity of the statement
could not be verified.
Al-Qaida in Iraq, which is linked
to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terror network, is
one of the most feared militant groups in the country
and claims responsibility for many of the deadliest
attacks in Iraq.
Zarqawi, a Jordanian-born militant,
has a 25-million-dollar bounty on his head by US
authorities. |
The US and Iraqi governments
have vastly overstated the number of foreign fighters
in Iraq, and most of them don't come from Saudi Arabia,
according to a
new report from the Washington-based Center for
Strategic International Studies (CSIS). According
to a piece in The Guardian, this
means the US and Iraq "feed
the myth" that foreign fighters are the
backbone of the insurgency. While the foreign fighters
may stoke the insurgency flames, they make up only
about 4 to 10 percent of the estimated 30,000 insurgents.
The CSIS study also disputes media reports that
Saudis are the largest group of foreign fighters.
CSIS says "Algerians are the largest group
(20 percent), followed by Syrians (18 percent),
Yemenis (17 percent), Sudanese (15 percent), Egyptians
(13 percent), Saudis (12 percent) and those from
other states (5 percent)." CSIS gathered the
information for its study from intelligence sources
in the Gulf region.
The CSIS report says: "The vast
majority of Saudi militants who have entered Iraq
were not terrorist sympathizers before the war;
and were radicalized almost exclusively by the
coalition invasion."
The average age of the Saudis was 17-25 and they were
generally middle-class with jobs, though they usually had
connections with the most prominent conservative tribes. "Most
of the Saudi militants were motivated by revulsion at the
idea of an Arab land being occupied by a non-Arab country.
These feelings are intensified by the images of the occupation
they see on television and the Internet ... the catalyst
most often cited [in interrogations] is Abu Ghraib, though
images from Guantánamo Bay also feed into the pathology.
The report also gives notes that the Saudi government
for spending nearly $1.2 billion over the past
two years, and deploying 35,000 troops, in an effort
to secure its border with Iraq. The major problem
remains the border with Syria, which lacks the
resources of the Saudis to create a similar barrier
on its border.
The Associated Press reports
that CSIS believes most of the insurgents are not "Saddam
Hussein loyalists" but members of Sunni
Arab Iraqi tribes. They do not want to see
Mr. Hussein return to power, but they are "wary
of a Shiite-led government."
The Los Angeles Times reports
that a greater concern is that 'skills' foreign
fighters are learning in Iraq are being exported to
their home countries. This is a particular
concern for Europe, since early this year US intelligence
reported that "Abu Musab Zarqawi, whose network
is believed to extend far beyond Iraq, had dispatched
teams of battle-hardened operatives to European
capitals."
Iraq has become a superheated, real-world
academy for lessons about weapons, urban combat
and terrorist trade craft, said Thomas Sanderson
of [CSIS].
Extremists in Iraq are "exposed to international
networks from around the world," said Sanderson,
who has been briefed by German security agencies. "They
are returning with bomb-making skills, perhaps
stolen explosives, vastly increased knowledge.
If they are succeeding in a hostile environment,
avoiding ... US Special Forces, then to go back
to Europe, my God, it's kid's play."
Meanwhile, The Boston Globe reports
that President Bush, in a speech Thursday that was "clearly
designed to dampen the potential impact of the antiwar
rally" this weekend in Washington, said his
top military commanders in Iraq have told him that
they are
making progress against the insurgents and "in
establishing a politically viable state."
Newly trained Iraqi forces are taking the lead in
many security operations, the president said, including a recent
offensive in the insurgent stronghold of Tal Afar along the
Syrian border – a key transit point for foreign fighters
and supplies.
"Iraqi forces are showing the vital difference they
can make," Bush said. '"They are now in control
of more parts of Iraq than at any time in the past two years.
Significant areas of Baghdad and Mosul, once violent and
volatile, are now more stable because Iraqi forces are helping
to keep the peace."
The president's speech, however, was followed by
comments made Thursday by Saudi Arabia's foreign
minister. Prince Saud al-Faisal said the US ignored
warnings the Saudi government gave it about occupying
Iraq. Prince Faisal also said he fears US policies
in Iraq will lead to the country breaking up into
Kurdish, Sunni, and Shiite parts. He also said that
Saudi Arabia is not ready to send an ambassador to
Baghdad, because he would become a target for the
insurgents. "I doubt he would last a day," Faisal
said.
Finally, The Guardian reports
that "ambitions for Iraq are being drastically
scaled down in private" by British and US
officials. The main goal has now become avoiding
the image of failure. The paper quotes sources
in the British Foreign Office as saying that hopes
to turn Iraq into a model of democracy for the
Middle East had been put aside. "We will settle
for leaving behind an Iraqi democracy that is creaking
along," the source said. |
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) - Israeli
aircraft unleashed a barrage of missiles early Wednesday
and fired artillery into the Gaza Strip for the first
time, pushing forward with an offensive, despite
a pledge by Islamic militants to halt their recent
rocket attacks against Israel.
Renewed fighting that entered its fifth day Wednesday
has compounded Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's
political problems. The violence had been expected
to harm Sharon's chances in a vote Monday in
the governing Likud party, where hardliners hoped
to punish him for the Gaza withdrawal.
Sharon's narrowly won that challenge but an adviser
said Tuesday he still may bolt the party if it
refuses to support his political program.
The Israeli air strikes early Wednesday knocked
out power throughout nearly all of Gaza City. The
army said it targeted three buildings used for "terror
activity" by the Fatah party, as well as two
smaller armed groups. Palestinian security officials
said there were no injuries.
Israeli Defence Minister Shaul
Mofaz said the army would attack Palestinian militants
relentlessly to force them to stop firing rockets
at Israeli towns.
The fifth straight day of air strikes came hours
after Islamic Jihad militants declared a halt to
their recent rocket attacks Tuesday and armed Palestinian
groups pledged to honour a tattered ceasefire,
seeking to end the Israeli offensive.
Tensions were further inflamed when Hamas militants
released a video showing a bound and blindfolded
Israeli businessman whom they kidnapped and later
killed. The kidnapping appeared to signal a new
tactic in the militants' fight against Israel.
Israel launched its offensive early Saturday in
response to rocket fire from Gaza. It has carried
out numerous air strikes in Gaza and arrested hundreds
of Palestinians on the West Bank of the Jordan
River, saying the operation will continue until
the rocket attacks stop.
Israeli security officials welcomed the ceasefire
declaration but said they wanted to see concrete
results before halting the offensive. As the militants
were meeting, a rocket landed in the southern Israeli
town Sderot, causing no damage or injuries, the
army said. No one claimed responsibility for the
attack.
Late Tuesday, the army fired live artillery shells
into northern Gaza for the first time in what it
said was a response to Palestinian rocket attacks.
The shells landed in an open area that the army
said was used to fire rockets. No casualties were
reported.
Israel had previously refrained from retaliating
against Palestinian attacks with artillery because
it is more imprecise than missiles and could cause
many casualties in densely populated Gaza.
The new violence started after a blast Friday
at a Hamas rally in Gaza's Jebaliya refugee camp
killed 21 people, including a seven-year-old boy
who died of his wounds Tuesday.
Hamas said Israeli aircraft had fired missiles
into the crowd, which Israel denied. The Palestinian
Authority has said the blast was caused when Hamas
militants mishandled explosives.
In the vote Monday, widely seen as a referendum
on Sharon's leadership and the Gaza withdrawal,
the prime minister prevailed with a slim margin.
His allies had said if he lost, he might leave
Likud, call early elections and run as head of
a new centrist party.
Sharon's political adviser, Lior Horev, said Tuesday
that Sharon might still bolt the divided party
if it refuses to back his major policies.
"Either the party stands behind him, or he
has to choose a different way in order to push
forward his agenda," Horev said.
Sharon's main rival, Benjamin Netanyahu, said
the fight was not over and insisted he would prevail
in party primaries next year. |
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Two
Palestinian rockets fired from the Gaza Strip landed
near Israeli border towns on Tuesday, causing no
damage or casualties, Israel media said.
The reported launches against
Sderot and Kibbutz Erez came despite a pledge
by the main Palestinian militant group Hamas
to halt rocket salvoes that had prompted Israeli
air strikes in Gaza and massive arrest raids
in the occupied West Bank.
Another faction, Islamic Jihad, also said on Tuesday
that it and other groups had recommitted to "calm" in
Gaza, from which Israel withdrew this month after
38 years of occupation. |
It is a moot point whether
the Palestinian uprising is over. A new phase of
conflict is already taking shape in the Middle
East. Fighting still centres on the Gaza Strip
following Israel's withdrawal from the territory
after 38 years of occupation, but both sides concur
that the West Bank is more likely to be the bigger
battleground in years to come.
A truce in February largely cooled the uprising
that erupted on Sept. 28, 2000, and the calm helped
smooth Israel's pullout from the Gaza Strip --
a move that Washington hopes will serve to revive
peacemaking. However, fighting in recent days has
added to pessimism over ending decades of Israeli-Palestinian
conflict in a land beset
by war pretty much since history was written down.
Israel pursued an air offensive in Gaza on Wednesday
in response to rocket fire from the territory. It
also had the aim, as Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz
put it, of teaching the new "rules of the
game". For Israel, that means at least
the same tacit agreement as with Hizbollah guerrillas
on a northern border that has been generally quiet
since Israel left southern Lebanon in 2000. If
they fire, they expect fierce air retaliation.
Meanwhile, the Gaza pullout has made it harder
for that territory's militants to launch deadly
attacks on Israelis by removing from range the
8,500 Jewish settlers and the thousands of soldiers
guarding them. Rocket fire into border towns from
Gaza terrifies Israelis, but rarely kills.
TURN TO WEST BANK
Quite apart from the military considerations,
there is a very real desire among Gaza residents
for a spell of quiet that could allow them to end
internal disorder and make the territory a real
testing ground for statehood. Hamas said it would
end rocket fire from Gaza after Israel began its
offensive and some other groups have followed suit.
The Palestinian militants' argument is that the
first five years of conflict drove Israel out of
Gaza settlements. Next steps are the West Bank
-- where Israel continues expanding Jewish settlements
-- and East Jerusalem, areas also occupied by Israel
since the 1967 war which Palestinians hope to have
for a state. The official
aim of Hamas is to go beyond that and destroy Israel
completely. Militants reject disarmament, which
Palestinians were meant to start under a "road
map" peace plan and Israel sets as a condition
for statehood talks. President Mahmoud Abbas shows
no sign of disarming them by force, as Israel wants.
"Gaza is the first liberation, then comes
the West Bank, then every inch of Palestinian land," stressed
top Hamas official Khaled Meshaal as Israel evacuated
Gaza settlers.
Israel believes it has had a taste of what may
be to come. Sasson Nuriel, an Israeli abducted
between his home and the West Bank settlement where
he worked, sat blindfolded in front of a green
Hamas flag in a video released on Tuesday that
recalled those of Iraqi insurgents. Nuriel was
killed and his body found on Monday.
"The film indicates that Hamas intends to
continue with the kidnappings, but also that the
main terror activity is moving from the Gaza Strip
to the West Bank," said Amos Harel in the
Haaretz newspaper. Yuval Diskin, head of Israel's
Shin Bet security service, has said Israel
is also worried about technology for makeshift
missiles moving to the West Bank and within range
of major Israeli cities.
WEST BANK TOUGHER
However, waging war from the West Bank, where
Israel has arrested hundreds of suspected militants
in recent days, is tougher than from Gaza. The
army has far more control and access in the West
Bank, where cities are divided by Israeli roads
and settlements. There is
also more than a grain of truth in the old quip
that the Shin Bet, which runs networks of Palestinian
informers, is the territory's biggest employer.
Militants acknowledge that Israel's West Bank
barrier, condemned by Palestinians as a land grab
for looping into occupied land, has made it harder
to get suicide bombers -- their most effective
weapon -- into the Jewish state. Tunnelling through
the West Bank's rocky ground into well-guarded
hilltop settlements is much more difficult than
mining the sandy terrain of the Gaza Strip.
"It is not as easy to attack these settlements," said
Nasser Abu Aziz of al-Aqsa Brigades in Nablus,
clutching a cushion at a hideout as he explains
how he hopes fighting will end so he can go back
to his day job in Palestinian security forces. "If
we have to fight, then I would concentrate on trying
to find ways to get bombers in," he said.
Roads leading past the barrier to isolated West
Bank settlements have been obvious gaps for militants
to try to penetrate. Another potential soft spot
is East Jerusalem, which Palestinians want for
their eventual capital and Israel has annexed in
a move recognised only by itself. Palestinians
in East Jerusalem are able to move freely in Israel
but, while some have been involved in helping attacks
during the uprising, they have not played a leading
role. Israeli security services now believe militants
are targeting residents for recruitment as a way
of getting a foothold on the other side of the
barrier. In the meantime, barrier sections being
built in Jerusalem split Palestinian communities
and cut them off from services while Israel expands
its Jewish settlements there and emphasises it
will never give up the eastern part of the city. "That
will be an explosive mix," said a recent report
by the International Crisis Group think tank. |
"Melbourne University Publishing should
drop this whole disgusting project. If they proceed,
I urge the Australian Jewish community, and particularly The
Australian Jewish News, to treat it with
dignified silence. That is our best response.
If, God forbid, it is published, don't give them
a dollar. Don't buy the book."
Federal Labor MP Michael Danby, Australian Jewish
News, August 25 2005
I'm currently writing a book on the Israel/Palestine
conflict with Melbourne University Publishing
(MUP) and it's due to be released in May 2006.
After sending my articles on the subject to various
publications around the world, I was already
used to Jews and non-Jews writing and calling
with abuse and outright hatred. After my recent
column on the Gaza withdrawal, a Sydney doctor
emailed me and asked: "How well do you think
you would be doing with a name like yours if
Adolf would have won?" and "As far
as your book goes, I might just take a page out
of Hitler's book on that one."
"The degree of abuse and outright threats
now being directed at anyone - academic, analyst,
reporter - who dares to criticise Israel (or dares
to tell the truth about the Palestinian uprising)
is fast reaching McCarthyite proportions",
wrote Robert Fisk in December 2000. "The attempt
to force the media to obey Israel's rules is now
international". The situation has only worsened
since 9/11.
In late August, Jewish Federal Labor MP Michael
Danby wrote a letter to the Australian Jewish
News (AJN) and demanded MUP "should drop
this whole disgusting project." He claimed
that MUP head, Louise Adler, had made comments
about Israel and himself that were plainly false.
He wanted to "absolutely disassociate himself" from
the book because it would be little more than a "propaganda
tract" and "an attack on the mainstream
Australian Jewish community."
The exact reason and timing behind his attack
remains unclear though after Danby's refusal to
answer some innocuous questions of mine in late
2004 his right, to be sure he
seemed to be flagging his disapproval of even debating
issues related to the Middle East question. This
was true to form. He had slammed me in the past
and has a long history of attempting to stop open
debate on Israel-related matters.
Leaving aside the irony of a Jewish parliamentarian
calling for the censorship of a book that didn't
yet exist, it's worth remembering Danby is the
member for Melbourne Ports, the electorate with
the greatest numbers of Jews in Australia [Malcolm
Turnbull's Wentworth is not far behind.] He sees
his role as defender of the Israeli cause and he
articulates what he believes his constituents want
to hear.
Online magazine Crikey picked up the story and
asked whether it was appropriate for an MP to call
for a boycott of an unpublished book. A few days
later, Danby responded to Crikey, denied he had
called for censorship and labeled my views on Israel "disgusting." He
cautioned MUP - at a time when Israel was "making
a painful withdrawal from Gazaand when the prospects
for peace are improving" against
publishing books that he thought inappropriate
for the times. It begged the question: did Danby
truly believe that publishing companies should
only produce work that accepted the status quo
on issues, rather than challenging or maybe demolishing
them?
The intentions of my book are ambitious. I believe
that the Israel/Palestine conflict is the defining
foreign affairs issue of our time and yet remains
woefully misunderstood. Danby and numerous pro-Israel
supporters are clearly confronted by me posing
questions about Australia's pro-Israel media, the
Howard government's relationship with Israel and
America, the role of the pro-Israel lobby, America's
relationship with the Jewish state, my experiences
in the Middle East, including through the Palestinian
occupied territories and Jewish and Arab voices
of dissent. I am a Jew who doesn't believe in the
concept of a Jewish state, but then, I also don't
believe in the idea of an Islamic or Christian
entity either. There is surely room for a non-Zionist
Jew to write about the true cost of Zionism both
on Israel and the Diaspora.
A week after Danby's boycott call, the AJN was
filled with letters, including one from Louise
Adler. "I am dismayed that a fellow publisher
such as the AJN gives space for proposals to boycott
ideas", she wrote. "Danby's proposal
is inimical to the central Jewish values of tolerance
and open debate." Larry Stillman wrote that
he fully understood the Danby agenda: "I suspect
the book will be central of the predominance of
conservative views in the Jewish community about
the current state of Israel, Danby included."
The Melbourne Age entered the debate
soon after, chastised Danby for denying he had
called for my book to be banned and discovered
yet more evidence of the MP's history of "venting
sight unseen." "In the Jewish publication, The
Review, he says of David Hare's Stuff
Happens, 'I havn't seen the play, nor will
I', then cans it based on a review he read." The
leading broadsheet also compared the controversy
to Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz's failed
attempt to ban Norman Finkelstein's Beyond Chutzpah.
By the following week, the AJN was filled with
coverage. A large news story featured another Danby
justification for his attack. "If I didn't
tell people about it [Loewenstein's book] beforehand,
knowing what his views are, would I be representing
the people I represent?" he said. The paper's
editorial entered the fray. Although critical of
Danby's censorship call, the AJN "unequivocally
rejects Loewenstein's view of a Jewish state as
'fundamentally undemocratic and colonialist idea
from a bygone era'", the public should wait
for the book's release "before we decide to
consign it to the garbage heap of literature." The
letters pages were filled with both supportive
and critical contributions, including from Danby
himself. My ideas "stink" and he was
simply "doing what I was elected to do: speak
up for the people I represent." He again disingenuously
denied having called for censorship.
A few days later, I received an unexpected call
from well-known Jewish comedian Austen Tayshus.
He demanded to know why I was writing my book,
suggested Israel was a poor, defenceless Middle
Eastern state threatened with annihilation, compared
me to a German Jew who collaborated with the Nazis
during the Second World War and asked why I had
the right to air the community's "dirty laundry." I
explained that he was clearly so insecure in his
position that he felt the need to call and abuse
me. I soon ended the call.
A few minutes after posting an entry on my blog
about the initial call, I received another one
from him. He said he would keep on calling me because
I was an "ignoramus" and an "asshole." He
suggested we have a public debate, which I declined.
He suggested Palestinian Hanan Ashrawi as a moderator
(after telling me earlier that she was a "terrorist.")
The point of debating a man like this was negligible,
for the simple fact that he didn't want to debate
me - "a sad and lonely man", in his words
- nor actually discuss the issues. He wanted to
shout and rant. It may have made him feel good
about himself. He clearly needed it.
I told the Green Left Weekly the real fear behind
Danby's attack:
"These sort of people don't want discussion,
because discussion is threatening. Discussion
means that more people are aware, or might
become aware, of what actually does go on over
there: What does occupation mean, what does
it mean that Palestinians often have to wait
hours at checkpoints in searing sun, what does
it mean that women often have to give birth
at checkpoints and often die? They don't want
people to know that, for obvious reasons, because
it's shameful. And they know if more people
find out that kind of stuff, their view about
Israel and the relationship between Australia
and Israel could change."
During this controversy, I received many supportive
emails and even financial donations to my website.
Mannie De Saxe challenged Danby to put his words
into action:
"If Danby feels so passionate about Israel,
and it is obvious that he does, why doesn't
he take his supporters, all those vocal Zionists
who, together with that publication which should
be called the Israeli Zionist Times but
is otherwise known as the Australian Jewish
News, and move to Israel where Ariel Sharon
has said that he needs all the Jews in the
Diaspora to come and live to reduce anti-Semitism
around the world."
I was extremely lucky that my publisher backed
me 100% during this period. Many a publisher, I
suspect, would have been scared to receive such
vitriol months before the book's release. I received
some ugly comments on my blog "you're
the nazi Anthony you fucking mental midget. Whose
side are you on anyway? THINK about it toolhead" but
I remember what John Pilger told me recently; the
more they attack you, the more you're having an
effect and doing something right.
The difficulty in even raising questions related
to Israel proves that serious debate is ever-more
essential. The world is slowing waking up to the
true reality in Israel and Palestine and Australians
are joining the chorus of disapproval.
Antony Loewenstein is a Sydney-based
freelance journalist and author. He can be reached
at antloew@gmail.com.
He blogs at http://antonyloewenstein.blogspot.com/ |
SECURITY is to be tightened
in France after allegations that a group of nine
suspected Islamic militants arrested on Monday
had been plotting a terrorist attack on a high-profile
target in Paris.
The seven men and two women, who had been under
observation by anti-terrorist investigators for
two years, are suspected of planning an attack
on the Metro, a Paris airport or the headquarters
of the DST, the French domestic intelligence
agency.
It is not clear if police were acting on intelligence
of an imminent threat to national security when
they carried out the arrests, but the interior
minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, warned yesterday that
the risk of a terrorist attack was currently "at
a very high level".
Mr Sarkozy used the news of the arrests to unveil
a new anti-terror plan in which he pledged to increase
the number of CCTV cameras on the streets, in airports,
at train stations and near shops and banks.
Mobile phone operators and internet café owners
will have to keep records of all users and calls
under the proposed new law.
Mr Sarkozy said: "Terrorists are using the
internet in an extraordinary way. We will target
internet cafés because we realise terrorists
are going to these cafés because they have
guaranteed anonymity there."
The internet and phone-record measures will have
a three-year time limit and will need parliamentary
approval to stay in force after 2008.
Under the proposed law, the authorities will be
able to step up passport controls in cross-border
trains and to photograph vehicle number plates
and passengers at motorway toll stations. Mr Sarkozy
said the aim was to boost intelligence-gathering
resources considerably, "to listen to everything
and, if possible, know everything".
The minister also revealed that about ten French
citizens "are in Iraq, ready to become kamikazes" and
that others were at religious schools in Pakistan.
Networks suspected of sending French militants
to Iraq are being investigated. Among the militants
to have left France is one aged only 14, Mr Sarkozy
said.
Monday's arrests were made in
the Eure and Yvelines regions outside Paris. Police
believe the suspects are linked to the Salafist
Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), Algeria's
largest outlawed rebel movement, which is aligned
to al-Qaeda. It is said to have contacted al-Qaeda's
leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, in July about
carrying out attacks in France.
According to reports in the French media, DST
agents launched the raids after receiving a confidential
note from the Algerian authorities summarising
the questioning of a suspect arrested in Algiers
this month. The suspect, known only as "MB",
was an alleged group member who indicated that
attacks were being planned in France. His wife
was said to be among the nine arrested. |
The foreign secretary, Jack
Straw, today said military action against Iran
was "inconceivable".
Mr Straw said he hoped diplomacy could still
end the international stand-off over the country's
nuclear programme.
Western governments fear Iran is trying to build
atomic bombs, and the US president, George Bush,
has said all options for dealing with the issue
are on the table.
However, Mr Straw told the BBC's Today programme: "The
truth is, as Condoleezza Rice has said, military
action in respect of the Iran dossier is not on
anybody's agenda.
"All United States presidents always say
all options are open. But it is not on the table,
it is not on the agenda. I happen to think that
it is inconceivable." [...]
Mr Straw also addressed the threat of terrorism,
and said it was "impossible" to say whether
the war in Iraq had made Britain more of a target
for terrorists.
"I don't know is the answer ... and I don't
think any of us know," he said. "It is
impossible to answer that. But this international
terrorism, al-Qaida based terrorism, goes back
at least a dozen years." |
09/27/05 "ICH" --
-- Where do American religious leaders stand on
torture? Their deafening silence evokes memories
of the unconscionable behavior of German church
leaders in the 1930s and early 1940s.
Despite the hate whipped up by administration
propagandists against those it brands "terrorists," most
Americans agree that torture should not be
permitted. Few seem aware, though, that although
President George W. Bush says he is against torture,
he has openly declared that our military and
other interrogators may engage in torture "consistent
with military necessity."
For far too long, we have been acting like "obedient
Germans." Shall we continue to avert our eyes – even
as our mainstream media begin to expose the "routine" torture
conducted by U.S. forces in Iraq, Afghanistan,
and Guantanamo?
Senate Armed Forces Committee Chairman John Warner
took a strong rhetorical stand against torture
early last year after seeing the photos from Abu
Ghraib. Then he succumbed to strong political pressure
to postpone Senate hearings on the subject until
after the November 2004 election. Those of us who
live in Virginia might probe our consciences on
this. Shall we citizens of the once-proud Old Dominion
simply acquiesce while Sen. Warner shirks his constitutional
duty?
We have come a long way since Virginia patriot
Patrick Henry loudly insisted that the rack and
the screw were barbaric practices that must be
left behind in the Old World, or we are "lost
and undone." Can Americans from other
states consult their own consciences with respect
to what justice may require of them in denouncing
torture as passionately as the patriots who founded
our nation?
On Sept. 24, The New York Times ran a detailed
report regarding the kinds of "routine" torture
that U.S. servicemen and women have been ordered
to carry out. This week's Time also has an article on
the use of torture by U.S. forces in Iraq, Afghanistan,
and Guantanamo.
Those two articles are based on a new report from
Human Rights Watch, a report that relies heavily
on the testimony of a West Point graduate, an Army
captain who has had the courage to speak out. A
Pentagon spokesman has dismissed the report as "another
predictable report by an organization trying to
advance an agenda through the use of distortion
and errors of fact." Judge for yourselves;
the report can be found here.
Grim but required reading. [...]
I asked a Muslim friend
recently what the Koran says about torture. After
consulting an imam, she reported that the Koran
does not address the subject because the Koran
deals only "with human behavior." Do
not we of the Judeo-Christian tradition also
reject torture as inhuman and never morally permissible? [...] |
The fatal September 23 shooting
of Puerto Rican nationalist leader Filiberto Ojeda
Rios represents an act of state terror and cold-blooded
murder by the US government. It is one more proof
that in the name of a “global war on terrorism,” Washington
has arrogated to itself the right to conduct political
assassinations and act as judge, jury and executioner
against opponents of US policies and interests.
Aged 72, Ojeda Rios was the leader of the Boricua
Popular Army, also known as the Macheteros, a group
that advocated independence for Puerto Rico. He was
wanted on charges that he had participated in the
planning of a 1983 Wells Fargo armored car robbery
in Hartford, Connecticut, in which $7.1 million was
taken. A fugitive for 15 years since fleeing house
arrest in 1990, he was sentenced in absentia to 55
years in jail.
Ojeda Rios was alone with his wife in their home
in the rural southwestern Puerto Rican municipality
of Hormigueros, near the city of Mayagüez, when
scores of FBI agents stormed his property, unleashing
a rain of bullets. According to reports, at least
100 armed agents were involved, backed by helicopters
and a squad of military sharpshooters brought to
the island from Virginia.
The nationalist leader was struck by a single bullet
from a sharpshooter’s high-powered rifle. While
he suffered no wound to any vital organ, he was left
to bleed to death on the floor of his home as FBI
agents refused to allow Puerto Rican authorities
and emergency medical teams anywhere near the house,
maintaining a militarized perimeter for 24 hours.
Later, an FBI spokesman claimed that the agents who
had surrounded the house and shot Ojeda Rios feared
that the house could be wired with explosives and
were waiting for reinforcements to fly in from the
US.
Testimony from his wife and a neighbor, as well as
the results of an autopsy, exposed as lies the FBI’s
version of events. US authorities had claimed that
federal agents had come to arrest Ojeda Rios, opening
fire only after he had fired on them.
In a press conference Monday, however, the nationalist
leader’s wife, Elma Beatriz Rosado Barbosa,
testified, “On Friday, September 23, in the
afternoon hours, our house was surrounded. Armed
men penetrated our property and took our house by
assault, hitting it in a brutal and terrible manner,
firing with heavy weapons against the front wall
of our residence.”
Hector Reyes, whose house is approximately 300 feet
from that of Ojeda Rios, confirmed this account,
saying that the US assault team began firing on the
house as soon as the helicopters arrived on the scene. “The
first shots were very powerful, not from a little
revolver like they say he had,” said Reyes.
[...]
An autopsy performed at the San Juan Institute
of Forensic Sciences confirmed the sadistic character
of the FBI’s assassination of Ojeda Rios.
It showed that he suffered a single bullet wound
entering beneath his collarbone and exiting his
back.
“He did not die instantaneously,” said
Doctor Hector Pesquera, who participated in the
autopsy. “What I saw as a doctor was that
they let him bleed to death.... In my opinion,
there was enough time, a considerable time in
which he was wounded and he did not receive the
aid that could have saved his life.”
Puerto Rico’s Justice Secretary, Roberto
Sanchez Ramos, concurred with this assessment,
stating, “The information we have is that
if Mr. Ojeda had received immediate medical attention
after being shot, he would have survived.”
Ojeda Rios had been the subject of a similar
FBI raid involving helicopters and scores of
agents in 1985, when he was arrested in connection
with the Wells Fargo robbery. He was subsequently
jailed and tried for attempted murder for shooting
and wounding one of the FBI agents during the
arrest. A federal jury in San Juan, however,
found him not guilty, its members accepting his
argument that he had acted in self-defense against
the government’s aggression.
The FBI and other US authorities never forgave
nor forgot this humiliation. Now they have taken
advantage of changed political conditions in
the US—characterized by the “global
war on terrorism” and the USA Patriot Act—to
murder him. Clearly, if the agency had wanted
to arrest a 72-year-old man, accompanied only
by his wife, they could have taken him alive.
The assassination of Ojeda is a case of Washington
deploying a death squad on what it claims as
its own territory. This brutal killing serves
as a warning of the methods the US government
is prepared to use to suppress political opposition
within the US itself. |
09/27/05 "ICH" --
-- While the media’s been dazzling us with
wag-the-dog wars in Iraq and Jennifer, J-Lo and
Jacko non-news here at home, a far more important
battle has been taking place right under our collective
national nose.
In what amounts to a silent coup, an unholy alliance
of corporate power brokers and conservative Republicans
have spent the last five years attempting to hi-jack
democracy and move the seat of governance from Pennsylvania
Avenue to K Street.
But you won’t read about this coup, you won’t
see it played out on the evening news, and you won’t
hear about it on talk radio. Why? Because the mainstream
media are major combatants.
At the center of this takeover is the K Street Project – an
attempt to purge industry’s lobbyists of any
and all Democrats, and to make sure that "...even
the secretaries..." are "conservative Republican
activists."
They’ve just about succeeded.
Over the past five years the relationship between
government and industry has been transformed. Now,
an assortment of K street Corporate shills write
legislation, develop tax proposals, and formulate
foreign policy, sometimes in their industry’s
self-interest, sometimes at the behest of a few right
wing ideologues in Congress or the Administration.
This complicated dance between corporate and political
power gets played out daily along K street, and a
variety of devil’s deals that would’ve
made our forefathers weep has become routine business.
The grease that lubricates this new model of government
is greed; the fuel that feeds it is money. Lots of
it. And overwhelmingly, the hard-line, right-wing
conservative branch of the Republican Party are both
its architect, and its beneficiary.
Thus, those that crow the loudest about patriotism,
the flag, and moral values, do the most to subvert
the political foundations and ethical precepts that
shaped this nation. [...]
One result of this collision was that in 2004, Mr.
Bush’s tax reforms gave the average millionaire
a $123,595 cut, but cut the middle 20% of income
earners by just $647.
The K Street Consortium also explains why all of
that $647 and more got eaten up by increased medical,
energy, and educational costs.
Take the Prescription Drug Plan passed in 2003. As
many as 3000 lobbyists spending hundreds of millions
($116 million in 2003 alone) worked diligently to
pass this Porker. The payoff for industry, according
to a study by Sager and Socolar of Boston University,
is that as much as 61% of Medicare’s costs
will be pure profit for the Drug companies, an increase
of as much as $139 billion (that’s billion
with a b).
Why?
Because the lobbyists from PhRMA – one of the
most powerful K Street Players – made sure
that the US was actually prohibited from using its
buying power to negotiate for lower cost drugs under
the new prescription drug plan. Net cost to tax payers?
$720 billion over ten years.
Or take the Energy Legislation: $66 billion dollars
worth of pork, the majority of it going to the fossil
fuel industry at a time when oil companies are earning
record profits. This piece of K Street legislative
pornography scarcely addresses demand, so the oil
industry gets billions, and Americans get guaranteed
high prices.
But if the imperative for the K Street consortium
is to simultaneously shrink government and provide
corporate Pork, how do the Republicans propose paying
for it?
Easy. First, cut programs that benefit people, to
help fund the pork. As Jonathon Weisman reported
in the Washington Post, over the next several months,
Republicans will try to cut Medicaid growth by $10
billion, trim $7 billion from the Student Loan program,
sell out ANWR for $2.4 billion in oil revenue; cut
the food stamp program by $600 million, among other
cuts.
Of course, no matter how much you screw the people,
you can’t afford to give rich people massive
tax cuts while you give trillions to industry. So,
the second part of their strategy is to simply pass
on the inevitable bill to our children. If the K
Street Consortium implements their policy agenda,
in ten years, every child born in the US will "inherit" $36,000
of additional debt.
And that was before Katrina burst through levees
weakened by budget cuts; before New Orleans and the
gulf coast spun into a national purgatory as a crony-ladened
FEMA bumbled around for five days.
Since Bush and his K Street cronies refuse to delay
their tax cut for the rich, we’ll have to cut
more programs and shovel more debt onto our children
and grandchildren to cover Katrina’s and Rita’s
$200 billion plus price tag.
So much for Republican fiscal conservatism.
Ironically, the K Street Consortium not only hurts
the average American, it hurts American industry.
For example, when GM spends more than $1000 per vehicle
on health care for their US workers, but Toyota spends
next to nothing for theirs in Canada or Japan because
they have universal health care, it’s hard
for GM to compete, and it’s hard for the US
to retain or generate manufacturing jobs. The same
is true of cuts to education. The US worker is falling
behind the rest of the developed world’s labor
force in terms of skills so we’re losing one
of our primary competitive advantages. And testing
required under No Child Left Behind is all well and
good, but when the testing reveals problems, the
Bush Administration has not been willing to pay for
improvements.
Republicans accuse Democrats of being "tax and
spend liberals." The reality is, Democrats do
tax a little more, but they spend less, and Americans
get more for their money.
Republicans tax less but spend much more and the
borrowed largesse goes to corporations and the likes
of Ken Lay and Paris Hilton, while the debt gets
passed on to future generations. [...] |
TASHKENT, Uzbekistan - A
senior State Department official said Tuesday the
president of Uzbekistan made it clear that American
forces must leave their air base in the Central
Asian country, and the U.S. intends to do so "without
further discussion."
The demand came as relations
soured following U.S. criticism of Uzbekistan's
crackdown on anti-government protesters in May
in the eastern city of Andijan.
"The Uzbek government made it clear that
we need to leave the base, and we intend to leave
it without further discussion," Assistant
Secretary of State Daniel Fried told reporters
after meeting with President Islam Karimov.
In July, the Uzbek government invoked a provision
of the basing agreement with the United States
that requires all American forces to leave within
six months.
"We respect the deadline," Fried said,
referring to the 180-day provision for leaving
that Uzbekistan invoked July 29, according to a
State Department official in Washington.
The former Soviet republic hosted
the U.S. troops for operations in Afghanistan in
the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
U.S. officials did not immediately provide the
number of U.S. troops at the Uzbek base.
The United States intends to pay a nearly $23
million bill to Uzbekistan for use of the base
for almost four years.
Fried said the sum "is not a price for the
right to have a base, it is a payment for material
services provided by the Uzbek side."
"The United States and Uzbekistan have had
a very difficult period in relations complicated
by grave concerns regarding the human rights situation
and events in Andijan," Fried said.
He dismissed as "ludicrous
and non-credible" the allegations made by
defendants in the ongoing trial of 15 men suspected
of involvement in the May 13 Andijan revolt that
the U.S. Embassy in Tashkent provided money to
those who plotted the rebellion.
"We are not to be accused of an intention
to establish an Islamic caliphate in Uzbekistan," Fried
said, referring to the Uzbek authorities' claim
that the defendants had planned to establish an
Islamic state.
Uzbek authorities hope the carefully choreographed
trial will refute accusations that government troops
fired on a crowd of protesters in Andijan, killing
hundreds, and support its contention that extremist
Islamic groups from abroad encouraged the protest.
Human rights groups allege that the confessions
were coerced through torture.
"I made it clear we support civil society
and NGOs around the world," Fried said, commenting
on the recent shutdown of two American aid groups
in Uzbekistan. "I regret NGOs are under pressure
from the Uzbek government."
The uprising in Andijan began when militants seized
a prison and freed 23 businessmen who were on trial
for alleged Islamic extremism. The attackers also
seized a local administration building and took
hostages, as thousands of demonstrators gathered
in an adjacent square to press economic and social
grievances.
Human rights groups and refugees who fled to Kyrgyzstan
claimed that the revolt led to a brutal government
crackdown that killed more than 700 people, mostly
civilians shot while trying to flee. The government
said 187 people died, mostly militants.
Karimov, a hard-line autocrat, has ruled Uzbekistan
since the Soviet era. |
Indonesian legislators have
cleared the way for a controversial fuel price
hike this weekend, voting to cut back government
subsidies despite growing public anger over the
move.
Lawmakers voted more than three-to-one late
Tuesday to slash the subsidies as President Susilo
Bambang Yudhoyono's government tries to grapple
with a budget shortfall.
With oil prices soaring
globally, the subsidies were increasingly costly
for the government. But there have been
a number of sporadic protests across the country
over the fuel price hike, due to take effect
on Saturday.
The hike, the second this year, has sparked long
lines and shortages at gas stations across the
archipelago nation. It also helped push the rupiah
lower in Wednesday morning trading.
Emir Moeis, chairman of the House of Representatives
budget commission, told AFP that lawmakers voted
273-83 to restrict fuel subsidies to 89.2 trillion
rupiah (8.7 billion dollars). Thirty-one legislators
abstained.
"Frankly speaking, the figure of 89.2 trillion
rupiah is still too large for Indonesia. The government
could use the money for public infrastructure developments," Moeis
said.
The planned increase has led to widespread but
small-scale demonstrations by students and transport
drivers.
Although the move is unpopular, particularly among
the poor who rely on public transport and kerosene
for cooking, many analysts say a cut in subsidies
is an economic necessity.
High global oil prices have dealt
government finances a double blow.
The government has snapped up
dollars to buy more expensive fuel, putting the
rupiah under pressure while also having to support
increased subsidies to keep domestic fuel prices
artificially low.
Limiting the fuel subsidy spending to 89.2 trillion
rupiah for 2005 will keep the budget deficit at
0.9 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), analysts
say.
The government has prepared a compensation program
to ease the burden on the poor. Almost 16 million
households will receive 300,000 rupiah (29.13 dollars)
in compensation over a three-month period, officials
have said.
Premium, the most commonly used automotive fuel
here, currently sells at an official price of 2,400
rupiah per litre but local media reported that
roadside sellers outside Jakarta were selling it
at about three times that.
Widodo, the coordinating minister for political
and security affairs, told journalists Tuesday
the reported fuel shortages should be carefully
studied to see "whether they are really caused
by a high demand or because of hoarding."
Lingering uncertainty about the planned fuel price
rise helped drive the rupiah lower in early trading,
dealers said.
Bank Mandiri currency analyst Doddy Arifianto
said a fall was expected given the strength of
the dollar against major currencies including the
yen.
"I would also say that there is also concern
about fuel prices because the government has yet
to decide the scale of the increase," he said.
An increase above 50 percent could trigger social
unrest, he said.
At 9:30 am (0230 GMT) the rupiah was at 10,295/10,305
to the dollar, compared with Tuesday's level of
10,270/10,280. |
HANOI - Flash floods spawned
by Typhoon Damrey killed at least four people in
Thailand on Wednesday and hard-hit Vietnam reported
22 swept away in similar torrents in its northern
mountains.
The deaths took the known toll to at least 41
in Damrey's rampage across the main Philippine
island of Luzon, the southern Chinese island
of Hainan -- where the economic damage was estimated
at $1.2 billion -- Vietnam, Laos and northern
Thailand.
Despite waning after hitting land in Vietnam on
Tuesday, Damrey -- Khmer for elephant -- was still
pounding wide areas with heavy rain and a Thai
official said water spilling from a breached dam
threatened the northern city of Chiang Mai.
"Heavy rain broke the reservoir and the water
will flow into Chiang Mai today. Right now, the
city is throwing up walls of sand bags," said
Prasert Indee, a senior official in the area.
Vietnam, where five people are known to have been
killed, issued flood warnings after Damrey's 130
kph (80 mph) winds and 5-meter (16-foot) sea surges
shattered sections of the network of sea dykes
protecting a key rice growing area.
State television said soldiers had been sent to
the mountainous northern province of Yen Bai to
look for the 22 people swept away.
The area in Vietnam most likely to suffer floods
was the province of Ninh Binh, 90 km (55 miles)
south of Hanoi, the government's Committee for
Flood and Storm Prevention said.
The lashing rains Damrey brought were swelling
rivers very quickly and it ordered five other northern
provinces to reinforce dykes yet further.
The rains also struck Laos, where the government
said it had no immediate reports of major damage.
"We've had heavy rain all night and we are
monitoring the flooding situation closely, but
there is nothing major so far. Just some roofing
gone," Lao government spokesman Yong Chanhthalansy
said.
POWER, PHONES CUT
Vietnam's dyke system, built to withstand strong
gales and protect rice fields in the north, buckled
under the power of winds and sea surges.
Sections crumpled in four provinces, power supplies
and telecommunications were hit and thousands of
homes swamped, state media said.
The government said at least 180,000 hectares
(445,000 acres) of rice in seven provinces were
damaged.
But the typhoon did not hit the Central Highlands
coffee belt further to the south and had no impact
on crude oil output as Vietnam's offshore rigs
are well to the south.
The government said in a statement read out on
national television on Tuesday it was rushing emergency
food and supplies to devastated areas to which
330,000 people evacuees returned only to find homes
and rice fields under water.
Nguyen Thi Nguyet, general secretary of the Vietnam
Food Association, said the government was expected
to take food relief from national reserves and
would have no impact on exports.
"Rice from the region's warehouses can be
used to meet the food demand," she told Reuters. "Besides,
the region is also harvesting a crop with higher
yields this year."
The northern region incorporating the Red River
Delta is Vietnam's second-largest rice growing
area after the Mekong Delta in the south.
It produces about 36 percent of Vietnam's rice,
which is used mainly for domestic consumption,
and shrimp and fish farms in the area also suffered
typhoon damage.
But the disruption to production in flooded areas
will reduce supplies of vegetables and seafood
to regional markets, including Hanoi, home to 3
million people where prices have already started
rising. |
MEXICO CITY - Intense rains
throughout southern Mexico and parts of Central
America have caused rivers to overflow, killing
at least three people and forcing thousands to
flee their homes, officials said Tuesday.
In southern Mexico, local officials declared
a state of emergency in parts of Chiapas state
and some 2,000 people were living in temporary
shelters Tuesday.
On Monday, police officer Francisco Malpica drowned
in a swollen river while trying to help several
residents. In southern Guerrero state, a landslide
buried a wooden home in Acapulco, killing one man.
In neighboring Oaxaca state, more than 1,000 people
were evacuated from their homes and were staying
in shelters.
In El Salvador, heavy rains on Monday flooded
rivers, and one man drowned in the capital's Acelhuate
River.
Two other people were injured when an electric
wire fell on their vehicle. The rains flooded homes
and cars, temporarily trapping some people in their
vehicles. There were electricity outages in parts
of San Salvador.
In Honduras, a landslide on a remote highway left
15,000 people trapped in several coffee-growing
communities. |
The chairman
of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution,
Sir John Lawton, has called climate change deniers
in the US "loonies", and says global
warming is to blame for the increasingly strong
hurricanes being spawned in the Atlantic.
In an interview with The Independent, Lawton
said that global warming is "very likely" the
cause of increasingly intense hurricanes, in
line with computer simulations.
He told the paper: "If
this [the arrival of Hurricane Rita] makes the
climate loonies in the States realise we've got
a problem, some good will come out of a truly
awful situation." [...]
Lawton said that with two such large storms hitting
the Gulf coast in such quick succession, the Bush
administration should re-evaluate its position
on climate change. He said if the "extreme
sceptics" in the US could be persuaded to
change their minds, that would be "a valuable
outcome [of] a horrible mess". [...]
Some climatologists maintain that global warming
is unlikely to have an impact on hurricanes. They
argue that the increase in landfalls we are seeing
now is due to a long term (50-70 years) cycle in
Atlantic ocean temperatures, a phenomenon known
as the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation.
However, Sir John says that it is fair to conclude
that an increasingly warm climate, caused at least
in part by human activity, is also warming the
oceans' surfaces, and increasing the violence of
hurricanes.
"Increasingly it looks like a smoking gun," he
said. |
BEIJING, Sept. 28 (Xinhuanet)
-- China's Ministry of Health (MOH) on Wednesday
launched a contingency plan for enhancing national
readiness against a possible outbreak of pandemic
influenza.
The contingency plan
outlines the structure of national prevention
steering and enforcement
systems, logistics, emergency reaction and supervision.
MOH urged all localities
to draft their own contingency plans in accordance
with the local conditions and make good preparations
for a possible flu pandemic.
Four levels of alert --
red, orange, yellow and blue -- will indicate the
seriousness of a pandemic outbreak.
The most serious level, "red",
will be announced in case of the consistent and
rapid spread of new sub-type flu virus, or if the
World Health Organization (WHO) announces the outbreak
of a flu pandemic.
Health authorities above
the county level must mobilize all medical resources
and set up temporary clinics in case a red alert
is announced, and the MOH must release daily reports
on the surveillance and control of the pandemic
to keep the public well informed, according to
the plan.
The MOH is responsible
for organizing and coordinating epidemic contingency
work and, if needed, raising suggestions for establishing
a national public health contingency headquarters
to the State Council, says the plan.
Meanwhile, health authorities
above the county level should ensure the collection,
registry and delivery of flu virus samples for
testing, and the National Center for Disease Prevention
and Control (CDC) should establish a national system
to manage the surveillance information of influenza
and avian influenza.
China has a weak basis
for public health and medical services. The disease
surveillance network needs improvment and the production
capacity of vaccines and drugs is inadequate, said
the information office of the MOH.
A flu pandemic could arouse
turbulent public pandemonium if the country is
poorly prepared, it noted. |
RELIGIOUS belief can cause
damage to a society, contributing towards high
murder rates, abortion, sexual promiscuity and
suicide, according to research published today.
According to the study, belief
in and worship of God are not only unnecessary
for a healthy society but may actually contribute
to social problems.
The study counters the view of
believers that religion is necessary to provide
the moral and ethical foundations of a healthy
society.
It compares the social peformance of relatively
secular countries, such as Britain, with the US,
where the majority believes in a creator rather
than the theory of evolution. Many conservative
evangelicals in the US consider Darwinism to be
a social evil, believing that it inspires atheism
and amorality.
Many liberal Christians and believers of other
faiths hold that religious belief is socially beneficial,
believing that it helps to lower rates of violent
crime, murder, suicide, sexual promiscuity and
abortion. The benefits of religious belief to a
society have been described as its "spiritual
capital". But the study claims that the devotion
of many in the US may actually contribute to its
ills.
The paper, published in the Journal of Religion
and Society, a US academic journal, reports: "Many
Americans agree that their churchgoing nation is
an exceptional, God-blessed, shining city on the
hill that stands as an impressive example for an
increasingly sceptical world.
"In general, higher rates
of belief in and worship of a creator correlate
with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early
adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy
and abortion in the prosperous democracies.
"The United States is almost
always the most dysfunctional of the developing
democracies, sometimes spectacularly so."
Gregory Paul, the author of the study and a social
scientist, used data from the International Social
Survey Programme, Gallup and other research bodies
to reach his conclusions.
He compared social indicators such as murder rates,
abortion, suicide and teenage pregnancy.
The study concluded that
the US was the world's only prosperous democracy
where murder rates were still high, and that
the least devout nations were the least dysfunctional. Mr
Paul said that rates of gonorrhoea in adolescents
in the US were up to 300 times higher than in
less devout democratic countries. The US also
suffered from "uniquely high" adolescent
and adult syphilis infection rates, and adolescent
abortion rates, the study suggested.
Mr Paul said: "The study shows that England,
despite the social ills it has, is actually performing
a good deal better than the USA in most indicators,
even though it is now a much less religious nation
than America."
He said that the disparity was even greater when
the US was compared with other countries, including France,
Japan and the Scandinavian countries. These
nations had been the most
successful in reducing murder rates, early mortality,
sexually transmitted diseases and abortion, he
added.
Mr Paul delayed releasing the study until now
because of Hurricane Katrina. He said that the
evidence accumulated by a number of different studies
suggested that religion might actually contribute
to social ills. "I suspect that Europeans
are increasingly repelled by the poor societal
performance of the Christian states," he added.
He said that most Western nations would become
more religious only if the theory of evolution
could be overturned and the existence of God scientifically
proven. Likewise, the theory of evolution would
not enjoy majority support in the US unless there
was a marked decline in religious belief, Mr Paul
said.
"The non-religious, proevolution democracies
contradict the dictum that a society cannot enjoy
good conditions unless most citizens ardently believe
in a moral creator.
"The widely held fear that a Godless citizenry
must experience societal disaster is therefore
refuted." |
On the fourth
anniversary of the September 11th attacks, Laura Knight-Jadczyk
announces the availability of her latest book:
In the years since the 9/11 attacks, dozens of books
have sought to explore the truth behind the official
version of events that day - yet to date, none of
these publications has provided a satisfactory answer
as to WHY the attacks occurred and who was ultimately
responsible for carrying them out.
Taking a broad, millennia-long perspective, Laura
Knight-Jadczyk's 9/11:
The Ultimate Truth uncovers the true nature of
the ruling elite on our planet and presents new and
ground-breaking insights into just how the 9/11 attacks
played out.
9/11: The Ultimate
Truth makes a strong case for the idea that September
11, 2001 marked the moment when our planet entered
the final phase of a diabolical plan that has been
many, many years in the making. It is a plan developed
and nurtured by successive generations of ruthless
individuals who relentlessly exploit the negative
aspects of basic human nature to entrap humanity as
a whole in endless wars and suffering in order to
keep us confused and distracted to the reality of
the man behind the curtain.
Drawing on historical and genealogical sources, Knight-Jadczyk
eloquently links the 9/11 event to the modern-day
Israeli-Palestinian conflict. She also cites the clear
evidence that our planet undergoes periodic natural
cataclysms, a cycle that has arguably brought humanity
to the brink of destruction in the present day.
For its no nonsense style in cutting to the core
of the issue and its sheer audacity in refusing to
be swayed or distracted by the morass of disinformation
that has been employed by the Powers that Be to cover
their tracks, 9/11:
The Ultimate Truth can rightly claim to be THE
definitive book on 9/11 - and what that fateful day's
true implications are for the future of mankind.
Published by Red Pill Press
Scheduled for release on October 1,
2005, readers can pre-order the book today at our bookstore. |
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