On today's Signs page, along with other essential news items and analysis, we present a series of current articles that present a very clear picture of the true nature of the United States and just how far it has fallen from the position of "greatest nation on earth", if indeed it was ever worthy of that title.

We urge readers to consider sending the articles and commentaries on today's page to anyone you know that still maintains a spark of awareness that goes beyond the daily 9 to 5. At this stage, there really is no reasonable excuse for all rational and intelligent people not to see the massive contradiction between what the Bush government claims it is doing and what it is REALLY doing.

The fact is, this world, and our place in it have NEVER been what we believed them to be. Now, more than any other time in our recent history, there exists the opportunity for human beings to wake up from our collective millennia-long sleepwalk and begin to understand what this world is all about and where it is headed.

To do so, however, takes a level of self-control and maturity that is lacking in many, yet the rewards of taking this step will surely not be slight. Indeed, we cannot even imagine what might result if even a tiny percentage of human beings were to 'change the script', so to speak. The reason we cannot imagine the result of such an event is simply because it has never happened before.

So who wants to contribute to making history today?

The CIA has been holding and interrogating al Qaeda captives at a secret facility in Eastern Europe, part of a covert prison system established after the September 11, 2001, attacks, The Washington Post reported on Wednesday.

The Soviet-era compound is part of a network that has included sites in eight countries, including Thailand and Afghanistan, the newspaper reported, citing U.S. and foreign officials familiar with the arrangement.

The newspaper said the existence and locations of the facilities are known only to a handful of officials in the United States and, usually, only to the president and a few top intelligence officers in each host country.

The CIA has not acknowledged the existence of a secret prison network, the Post said. A CIA spokesman did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

The prisons are referred to as "black sites" in classified U.S. documents and virtually nothing is known about who the detainees are, how they are interrogated or about decisions on how long they will be held, the report said. [...]

The secret detention system was conceived shortly after the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington, when the working assumption was that another strike was imminent, the report said.

WASHINGTON -- Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says the government was right to keep United Nations human rights investigators from meeting with detainees at Guantanamo Bay.

Last week, the Pentagon invited three U.N. experts to visit the detention facilities in Cuba, but the experts turned down the invitation. One said it made "no sense" to go to Guantanamo "without talking to the detainees."

Rumsfeld also told reporters Tuesday at the Pentagon that a hunger strike by some of the detainees is meant to "capture press attention." Seven of the protesters are being force-fed in a hospital.

Many of the nearly 500 prisoners at Guantanamo Bay have been held for more than three and a half years without being charged or having access to lawyers.

The Bush administration is embroiled in a sharp internal debate over whether a new set of Defense Department standards for handling terror suspects should adopt language from the Geneva Conventions prohibiting "cruel," "humiliating" and "degrading" treatment, administration officials say.

Advocates of that approach, who include some Defense and State Department officials and senior military lawyers, contend that moving the military's detention policies closer to international law would prevent further abuses and build support overseas for the fight against Islamic extremists, officials said.

Their opponents, who include aides to Vice President Dick Cheney and some senior Pentagon officials, have argued strongly that the proposed language is vague, would tie the government's hands in combating terrorists and still would not satisfy America's critics, officials said.

Comment: Let's look at the Bush's gang's arguments: "The proposed language is vague". Well, it's hard to see how it could be made any more clear. The point is that torture in any form should not be allowed, and prisoners in the war on terror should be covered by the Geneva Conventions. Any other policy is a violation of international law. There's nothing vague about that.

"The proposed language... would tie the government's hands in combating terrorists". Those who are pushing the new standard are not saying to stop prosecuting terrorists; they are simply requesting that it be done in a way that adheres to international law. Obviously, the Bush administration wants full authority to do as it pleases, no matter the costs to the American people.

"The proposed language... still would not satisfy America's critics". Here we find the most insidious of the three arguments. First of all, the "critics" - an emotional charged word in of itself - do not have a problem with the US as a whole. Instead, they have a problem with the Bush administration's disdain for international law and promotion of torture. To steer the argument into the realm of criticising America as a whole is manipulation, plain and simple.

The debate has delayed the publication of a second major Pentagon directive on interrogations, along with a new Army interrogations manual that was largely completed months ago, military officials said. It also underscores a broader struggle among senior officials over whether to scale back detention policies that have drawn strong opposition even from close American allies. [...]

"It goes back to the question of how you want to fight the war on terror," said a senior administration official who has advocated changes but, like others, would discuss the internal deliberations only on the condition of anonymity. "We think you do that most successfully by creating alliances." [...]

Comment: The Bush gang does not want alliances - it wants lapdogs like Blair, Howard, and Berlusconi.

The behind-the-scenes debate over the Pentagon directive comes more than three years after President Bush decided that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to the fight against terrorism. It mirrors a public battle between the Bush administration and Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, who is pressing a separate legislative effort to ban the "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment" of any detainee in United States custody.

After a 90-to-9 vote in the Senate last month in favor of Mr. McCain's amendment to a $445 billion defense spending bill, the White House moved to exempt clandestine C.I.A. activities from the provision. A House-Senate conference committee is expected to consider the issue this week. [...]

Mr. Cheney and some of his aides have spearheaded the administration's opposition to Senator McCain's amendment; they were also quick to oppose a draft of the detention directive, which began to circulate in the Pentagon in mid-September, officials said.

A central player in the fight over the directive is David S. Addington, who was the vice president's counsel until he was named on Monday to succeed I. Lewis Libby Jr. as Mr. Cheney's chief of staff. According to several officials, Mr. Addington verbally assailed a Pentagon aide who was called to brief him and Mr. Libby on the draft, objecting to its use of language drawn from Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions.

"He left bruised and bloody," one Defense Department official said of the Pentagon aide, Matthew C. Waxman, Mr. Rumsfeld's chief adviser on detainee issues. "He tried to champion Article 3, and Addington just ate him for lunch." [...]

WASHINGTON - The US Senate held a rare secret session to discuss a scandal that led to the resignation of a top White House aide last week and now-discredited intelligence used to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

The two-hour secret session came at the demand of opposition Democrats, who said the closed-door debate was necessary to allow a full discussion on alleged manipulation of prewar intelligence by President George W. Bush's administration.

Democrats used a rare parliamentary maneuver to force lawmakers to discuss the issue on the Senate floor -- a move that infuriated majority Republicans. [...]

Frist said the move to invoke the rarely used "Rule 21" allowing for secret debate on the Senate floor was "unprecedented" in recent history, and accused Democrats of hijacking the US legislature.

Democrats however said the session was necessary because the Senate's Intelligence Committee had failed to examine the national security implications of a CIA leak scandal, which led last week to the resignation of Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. [...]

After Democrats threatened to use the parliamentary manuever repeatedly this week to force debate on the intelligence question, Republicans relented and said they would create a bipartisan, six-member task force that will issue a report by November 14 on how best to complete the investigation. [...]

"Americans deserve a searching and comprehensive investigation about how the Bush administration brought this country to war," said Reid. [...]

WASHINGTON - Breaking with the White House and fellow conservatives, Republican Sen. Trent Lott and the head of the Cato Institute questioned on Tuesday whether top White House adviser Karl Rove, who remains in legal jeopardy in a CIA-leak probe, should keep his policy-making job.

Rove was not indicted on Friday along with Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis Libby. But lawyers involved in the case said Rove, President George W. Bush's top political adviser and deputy chief of staff, remains under investigation and may still be charged by prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. [...]

Lott of Mississippi and William Niskanen of the libertarian Cato Institute both echoed Democratic calls for a White House shake-up.

"He (Rove) has been very successful, very effective in the political arena. The question is, should he be the deputy chief of staff for policy under the current circumstances?" Lott told MSNBC's "Hardball." [...]

Of all the scribbled sentences that have converged to create the Valerie Plame affair, the most remarkable, in literary terms, may belong to Scooter Libby, Dick Cheney’s recently deposed chief of staff. “Out West, where you vacation, the aspens will already be turning. They turn in clusters, because their roots connect them. Come back to work—and life,” he wrote in a jailhouse note to Judith Miller. Meant as a waiver of confidentiality, the letter touched off the sort of fevered exegesis more often associated with readings of “The Waste Land” than of legal correspondence. For even more difficult prose, however, one must revisit an earlier work. “The Apprentice”—Libby’s 1996 entry in the long and distinguished annals of the right-wing dirty novel—tells the tale of Setsuo, a courageous virgin innkeeper who finds himself on the brink of love and war.

Like his predecessors, Libby does not shy from the scatological. The narrative makes generous mention of lice, snot, drunkenness, bad breath, torture, urine, “turds,” armpits, arm hair, neck hair, pubic hair, pus, boils, and blood (regular and menstrual). One passage goes, “At length he walked around to the deer’s head and, reaching into his pants, struggled for a moment and then pulled out his penis. He began to piss in the snow just in front of the deer’s nostrils.”

Homoeroticism and incest also figure as themes. The main female character, Yukiko, draws hair on the “mound” of a little girl. The brothers of a dead samurai have sex with his daughter. Many things glisten (mouths, hair, evergreens), quiver (a “pink underlip,” arm muscles, legs), and are sniffed (floorboards, sheets, fingers). The cast includes a dwarf, and an “assistant headman” who comes to restore order after a crime at the inn. (Might this character be autobiographical? And, if so, would that have made Libby the assistant headman or the assistant headman’s assistant?)

When it comes to depicting scenes of romance, however, Libby can evoke a sort of musty sweetness; while one critic deemed “The Apprentice” “reminiscent of Rembrandt,” certain passages can better be described as reminiscent of Penthouse Forum. There is, for example, Yukiko’s seduction of the inexperienced apprentice:

He could feel her heart beneath his hands. He moved his hands slowly lower still and she arched her back to help him and her lower leg came against his. He held her breasts in his hands. Oddly, he thought, the lower one might be larger. . . . One of her breasts now hung loosely in his hand near his face and he knew not how best to touch her.

Other sex scenes are less conventional. Where his Republican predecessors can seem embarrassingly awkward—the written equivalent of trying to cop a feel while pinning on a corsage—Libby is unabashed:

At age ten the madam put the child in a cage with a bear trained to couple with young girls so the girls would be frigid and not fall in love with their patrons. They fed her through the bars and aroused the bear with a stick when it seemed to lose interest. [...]

AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - A judge presiding over the money laundering and conspiracy case involving U.S. Republican Rep. Tom DeLay, one of America's most powerful politicians, was ordered to step aside on Tuesday after DeLay's attorneys said the judge was too staunchly Democrat to give a fair trial.

State District Judge Bob Perkins will be replaced by another judge to be named by a regional administrator without input from either side in the politically charged case.

Visiting Judge C.W. Duncan granted a defense motion to recuse Perkins without explanation after a hearing in which DeLay's lawyer Dick DeGuerin complained that Perkins had given money to candidates and organizations, especially liberal activist group MoveOn.org, opposed to DeLay and could not be impartial. [...]

Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle, who has led the investigation against DeLay, argued that Perkins should be allowed to stay on the case and disagreed that the case is political.

"This is not a political case. This is a criminal case in which Mr DeLay stands charged with a felony," he said.

"There is no basis, no precedent for recusal based on a judge's political contributions," said Earle, who is a Democrat.

DeLay is accused of laundering $190,000 in corporate campaign contributions gathered by his Texans for a Republican Majority political action committee through the Republican National Committee to candidates for the state legislature in Texas in 2002.

Texas law forbids the use of corporate funds in political campaigns.

His efforts contributed to Republicans taking control of the Texas Legislature for the first time since the Reconstruction era after the U.S. Civil War, and then remapping congressional districts to increase the number of Republicans in the U.S. House.

Earle said the several thousand dollars Perkins had given Democrats over the years was "paltry" in comparison to how much money DeLay has raised and in some cases, used in "intimidating judges with whom he disagreed."

Earle also accused DeLay, through partisan zeal, of fomenting divisions within U.S. society that could lead to Americans becoming like "Shi'ites, Sunnis and Kurds" in deeply divided Iraq.

"We may be Republicans or Democrats, but we are all Americans and we believe in equal justice under the law," he said.

DeLay, sitting beside his wife, Christine, smiled broadly at Earle's comments.

Congress has always had its share of extremists. But the DeLay era is the first time the fringe has ever been in charge.

A decade ago, I paid a call on Tom DeLay in his ornate office in the Capitol. I had heard a rumor about him that I figured could not possibly be true. The rumor was that after the GOP took control of the House that year, DeLay had begun keeping a little black book with the names of Washington lobbyists who wanted to come see him. If the lobbyists were not Republicans and contributors to his power base, they didn't get into "the people's House." DeLay not only confirmed the story, he showed me the book. His time was limited, DeLay explained with a genial smile. Why should he open his door to people who were not on the team?

Thus began what historians will regard as the single most corrupt decade in the long and colorful history of the House of Representatives. Come on, you say. How about all those years when congressmen accepted cash in the House chamber and then staggered onto the floor drunk? Yes, special interests have bought off members of Congress at least since Daniel Webster took his seat while on the payroll of a bank. And yes, Congress over the years has seen dozens of sex scandals and dozens of members brought low by financial improprieties. But never before has the leadership of the House been hijacked by a small band of extremists bent on building a ruthless shakedown machine, lining the pockets of their richest constituents and rolling back popular protections for ordinary people. These folks borrow like banana republics and spend like Tip O'Neill on speed.

I have no idea if DeLay has technically broken the law. What interests me is how this moderate, evenly divided nation came to be ruled on at least one side of Capitol Hill by a zealot.

This is a man who calls the Environmental Protection Agency "the Gestapo of government" and favors repealing the Clean Air Act because "it's never been proven that air toxins are hazardous to people"; who insists repeatedly that judges on the other side of issues "need to be intimidated" and rejects the idea of a separation of church and state; who claims there are no parents trying to raise families on the minimum wage—that "fortunately, such families do not exist" (at least Newt Gingrich was intrigued by the challenges of poverty); who once said: "A woman can't take care of the family. It takes a man to provide structure." I could go on all day. Congress has always had its share of extremists. But the DeLay era is the first time the fringe has ever been in charge.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. terrorism experts Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon have reached a stark conclusion about the war on terrorism: the United States is losing.

Despite an early victory over the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan, the two former Clinton administration officials say President George W. Bush's policies have created a new haven for terrorism in Iraq that escalates the potential for Islamic violence against Europe and the United States.

America's badly damaged image in the Muslim world could take more than a generation to set right. And Bush's mounting political woes at home have undermined the chance for any bold U.S. initiatives to address the grim social realities that feed Islamic radicalism, they say.

"It's been fairly disastrous," said Benjamin, who worked as a director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council from 1994 to 1999. [...]

Benjamin and Simon's criticism of the Bush administration in Iraq follows a path similar to those of other critics, including former U.S. national security adviser Brent Scowcroft and former White House counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke.

"We may be attacked by terrorists who receive their training in Iraq, or attacked by terrorists who were inspired, organized and trained by people who were in Iraq," said Simon, a Rand Corp. analyst who teaches at Georgetown University.

DUBAI - Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said he opposed military action against neighbouring Syria but lacked the power to prevent US troops from using his country as a launchpad if it chose to do so.

"I categorically refuse the use of Iraqi soil to launch a military strike against Syria or any other Arab country," Talabani told the London-based Arabic daily Asharq Al-Awsat in an interview published Tuesday.

"But at the end of the day my ability to confront the US military is limited and I cannot impose on them my will."

Talabani spoke before the UN Security Council unanimously approved a resolution Monday demanding full Syrian cooperation with a UN inquiry into the assassination in Beirut in February of five-time Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had stern words for Syria in her speech to the council accusing it of supporting terrorism, interfering in the affairs of neighbouring countries and having a "destabilising behaviour in the Middle East."

The Iraqi government and its US backers have long accused Syria of not doing enough to prevent the flow of men and materiel across its borders to insurgents fighting US-backed troops in Iraq.

On Monday, US warplanes struck what commanders described as a house sheltering an "Al-Qaeda cell leader" near the border town of Al-Qaim, in the latest in a string of operations against suspected foreign fighters in the region.

But medics in the town and Arabic media reports spoke of 35-plus civilian deaths in the air strike.

CAMP ARIFJAN, Kuwait (Reuters) - A U.S. military probe recommended on Tuesday that a sergeant charged with murdering two colleagues in Iraq face a possible death sentence at a court martial for the first such crime since the 2003 invasion.

Martinez was charged with the premeditated murder of company commander Captain Phillip Esposito and Lieutenant Louis Allen in a blast in Iraq on June 7. All three served in the headquarters company of the 42nd Infantry Division, a reserve unit drawn from the New York Army National Guard. [...]

In April, U.S. Sergeant Hasan Akbar was convicted of murdering two officers by rolling grenades into their tents in Kuwait on the eve of the invasion that toppled Saddam. Akbar has since been sentenced to death, the first U.S. soldier convicted of murdering a colleague in war since Vietnam.

This immoral invasion and occupation of Iraq has cost the world so much.

George and his reckless war of choice have cost the American taxpayers billions of dollars that could be better spent at home. Judging from Katrina, Iraq has cost our country much of its security. It has cost the US any good standing we enjoyed in the world community. It cost America the post 9/11 good will from almost the entire world. We Americans are the laughing stock of the world community. Not only is our callous and careless leadership disdained, but we the people are scorned because we "re"-elected George for a 2nd term and not only that, we are allowing him to continue to mis-lead our country into ruin.

The price many of us are paying is so much costlier than the mere monetary expense or loss of reputation. Over 2000 American families have paid the price of our dear loved ones to the insanity. Over 15,000 of our young people are wounded with many, many of those being amputees. The Veterans Administration estimates that over ¼ of our children will come home with Post-traumatic Stress Disorder. I believe that number is higher, because I know of many cases where the military refuses to allow soldiers to seek treatment for PTSD. Many of them are sent back to battle if they even dare suggest they may be suffering from PTSD. Even if they are not wounded emotionally or physically, or killed, our soldiers will not come home entirely whole.

I was standing in front of the White House the other day when the indictments against Scooter were handed down. I was helping to hold a banner that said: Support our Troops: Bring Them Home Now.

When we received word of the indictments, many of us protestors outside the White House were cheering with happiness and relief. At last, someone could be held accountable for the lies that led our country into a disastrous invasion of Iraq. But I wasn't cheering. I put down my end of the banner and sat down on the curb and cried.

Scooter is just a lap dog for Cheney. He and this administration don't do anything unless the dirty deed is analyzed and planned for maximum damage to the offending party and minimum harm to Bush and Co. The criminals in power meant to hurt Joe Wilson and his family because Joe had the temerity and the audacity to call them liars: and to do it with such intelligence and alacrity was too much for the crooks to bear. If this crooked administration let Joe Wilson get away with telling the truth and calling them liars, then who would be next? Colin Powell? Judith Miller? The main stream media? (It could happen).

I cried because there are people in this world who have lied about smaller things and have been punished more harshly. I cried because there was a shill of the right near me holding a sign that read "Put Cindy in Abu Ghraib" when there are war criminals and immoral war profiteers running amok in our country. I cried because George, Dick, Condi, Colin, Alberto, Donald, Scooter, Paul, Karl, Judith, O'Reilly, Hannity, Limbaugh, etc., lied about the reasons for invading Iraq and because of their lies, my son, who rarely told anything but the truth, is dead.

The liars and lies that led the US to invade Iraq are legion and well documented. (Once, just for giggles, I put George Bush/Lies in a Google search and 272,000 references came up). The lies to maintain the occupation are the same. The liars are now starting to beat the war drum for invading Syria. [...]

We who have made the "ultimate sacrifice" know the true cost of war.[...]

When are we going to stand up as a country and yell a collective: "bull-shit?!!" I have been screaming this until my voice is getting hoarse and people are getting sick of hearing it.

How much and how many more are we going to allow the serial liars to rob from us?

I say not one more.

Israeli occupation forces have detained more than 20 Palestinians in an overnight raid across the West Bank.

Aljazeera's correspondent reports that Israeli troops, backed by 50 military vehicles, raided Jenin and detained Palestinians who they say are on Israel's "most-wanted" list. [...]

ONE of America's top spy agencies faked key intelligence used to justify its intervention in the Vietnam War, it has been revealed.

But the revelation was kept secret by the National Security Agency, partly because of fears that it would boost criticism of the intelligence services over the war in Iraq.

According to material uncovered by the NSA's own historian, Robert Hanyok, middle-ranking officers altered material relating to the Gulf of Tonkin incident. [...]

The Labor Department's inspector general strongly criticized department officials yesterday for "serious breakdowns" in procedures involving an agreement promising Wal-Mart Stores 15 days' notice before labor investigators would inspect its stores for child labor violations.

The report by the inspector general faulted department officials for making "significant concessions" to Wal-Mart, the nation's largest retailer, without obtaining anything in return. The report also criticized department officials for letting Wal-Mart lawyers write substantial parts of the settlement and for leaving the department's own legal division out of the settlement process.

The report said that in granting Wal-Mart the 15-day notice, the Wage and Hour Division violated its own handbook. It added that agreeing to let Wal-Mart jointly develop news releases about the settlement with the department violated Labor Department policies.

In mid October, Australian Prime Minister John Howard attempted to push through shoot-to-kill "anti-terror" laws. The provision was leaked ahead of its presentation to the Australian Parliament and led to protests from opposition MPs:

"[Law Council of Australia president John] North said the government was not conducting proper consultation over the proposed laws, which he said threatened basic Australian freedoms.

"The government is acting with indecent haste to bring in these laws," he told public radio.

The laws are due to be introduced to parliament on October 31 and the government has given a Senate inquiry only one sitting day to scrutinise their contents.

Howard described the release of the draft laws as irresponsible and said they were being implemented as soon as possible because they were vital for national security.

"We can't have any undue delay," he told reporters."

This naturally presented Howard with a problem, but not an insurmountable one. These days, when you want to pass draconian laws that push your country closer towards police state status but find that you are meeting with opposition from "bleeding heart liberals", you simply invent a terror threat to shut them up.

Australia says has intelligence on terror threat

Wed Nov 2, 2005 By James Grubel

CANBERRA (Reuters) - Australia has received specific information about a possible "terrorist threat" to the country, Prime Minister John Howard said on Wednesday, but Australia's medium security alert remained unchanged.

A staunch U.S. ally with troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, Australia has never suffered a major peacetime attack on home soil. The country has been on medium security alert since shortly after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

"The government has received specific intelligence from police information this week which gives cause for serious concern about a potential terrorist threat," Howard told reporters in Canberra.

"I don't want to over-alarm people. I have said for a long time the possibility of an attack is there," he said.

Howard refused to give any details about the nature or location of the threat, but said the government would rush through changes to anti-terror laws to enable police to respond. [...]

LONDON - Amnesty International has told British lawmakers preparing to debate Prime Minister Tony Blair's draft anti-terror laws that the measures are "ill-conceived and dangerous," a newspaper reported.

In a submission to members of parliament, the London-based human rights group denounces the proposals to increase police powers of detention and make a new offense of the glorification of terrorism, the Independent newspaper said.

Amnesty called them "ill-conceived and dangerous", amounting to an attack on "the independence of the judiciary and the rule of law," according to the daily.

The group launched its attack as the Blair government braced itself for heavy opposition to the Terrorism Bill when it is debated in the House of Commons starting Wednesday.

The bill has already been condemned by senior judges, lawyers and civil liberties groups. [...]

The Amnesty submission states: "Since the war on terror was declared by the US government in 2001, the UK authorities have mounted a sustained attack on human rights, the independence of the judiciary and the rule of law." [...]

CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on Tuesday his government may give its U.S.-made F-16 fighter jets to Cuba or China and replace them with Chinese or Russian aircraft after accusing Washington of blocking purchases of U.S. military parts.

Any exchange of military hardware to those countries would break an agreement with the U.S. government on the transfer of technology without Washington's permission and further strain fraying ties between Venezuela and the United States.

A fierce critic of the Bush administration, Chavez has rattled Washington by strengthening ties with anti-U.S. states like Cuba and promoting his self-described socialist revolution as a counterweight to U.S. regional influence.

"If they don't comply with the contract ... we can do whatever we want with these aircraft, whatever the hell we want. Maybe we'll give 10 planes to Cuba or to China so they can study the technology," Chavez said.

A knife-wielding man slashed at four people in a park near the White House and two were taken to hospital, police said.

"A suspect was arrested by the uniformed division of the Secret Service and handed over to Park Police," US Park Police Lieutenant Phil Beck told AFP.

The suspect is now being held at Anacostia police station in Washington. [...]

He said it had been "quite some time" since such a serious crime had been committed in the park.

PARIS - Gangs of youths in towns around Paris clashed with police and torched cars and trash cans overnight as riots that have plagued one poor, high-immigrant suburb for almost a week spread to other areas near the French capital, police and local authorities said. [...]

Police sources on Wednesday reported some 60 vehicles torched throughout the Seine-Saint-Denis area overnight.

Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy told Europe 1 radio that 34 people were arrested in the latest night of violence, which has gone on unabated despite his vow to crack down with "firmness and justice". [...]

President Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin have come under fire from the opposition Socialist Party for their "inexcusable" silence over the violence, but most anger has been directed at Sarkozy, who has made it clear he intends to be a candidate in 2007 presidential elections on a tough law-and-order platform.

"When an interior minister doesn't hesitate to use insulting terms, branding as 'rabble' communities which have the misfortune to be fragile and wanting to turn water-cannon on them, it is the image of the country that is tarnished," the Socialists said in a statement. [...]

Villepin has moved to take charge of the government's response. His office said he was pushing back his departure for a trip to Canada Wednesday to attend a parliamentary session certain to be dominated by the riots.

On Tuesday, he issued a statement calling for "a return to calm" after meeting the families of the two dead teenagers.

Sarkozy, who had tried to see the angry families but was rejected by them as "very, very incompetent", was also invited to Villepin's office for the talks. [...]

The Big Three US carmakers, General Motors, Ford Motor and DaimlerChrysler, announced huge falls in domestic sales in October after a year of giving heavy subsidies to keep buyers in showrooms.

While Japanese rivals nearly all produced sales rises in the US market, General Motors posted a 23 percent decline from a year ago to 257,623 vehicles. Ford said its October sales were down 26 percent to 199,847. DaimlerChrysler sales were not as bad, but still fell three percent to 183,163 cars and trucks.

"Although a slowdown after the record sales of the last several months was expected, October was a difficult month for us and the industry," said Mark LaNeve, head of GM North America sales. [...]

PARIS - A proposal aimed at stamping out smoking in all public places across France, including bars, restaurants and workplaces, was to be presented in parliament on Wednesday.

But the measure, to be outlined at a seminar on the need for tougher anti-smoking legislation, is still at a pre-bill stage and faces a number of hurdles before it is even debated in the assembly.

Neither the ruling Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) nor the government are expected to back a full ban on smoking in public places, which is opposed both by tobacconists and by the country's main catering federation.

Such a ban would see France join Ireland, Italy, Norway and Malta in banning public smoking. [...]

ONTARIO, N.Y. That rumbling felt in a section of western New York on Halloween night was no trick. It was an earthquake. Dozens of residents of towns just east of Rochester reported feeling their homes shake at around seven o'clock Monday night.

The U-S Geological Survey confirms that a micro earthquake measuring two-point-six occurred in the Wayne County town of Ontario.

If emissions of heat-trapping gases continue to accumulate in the atmosphere at the current rate, there may be many centuries of warming and a near-total loss of Arctic tundra, according to a new climate study.

Over all, the world would experience profound transformations, some potentially beneficial but many disruptive, and all at a pace rarely seen in nature, said the authors of the study, being published today in The Journal of Climate.

"The question is no longer whether we will need to address this problem, but when we will need to address the problem," said Kenneth Caldeira, an author of the study and a climate expert at the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology, based at Stanford University.

"We can either address it now, before we severely and irreversibly damage our climate, or we can wait until irreversible damage manifests itself strongly," Dr. Caldeira said. "If all we do is try to adapt, things will get worse and worse." [...]

WASHINGTON - Pluto, that cosmic oddball at the far reaches of our solar system, may have three moons instead of one, scientists announced on Monday.

Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope glimpsed the two new satellites back in May, and were intrigued when the pair of possible moons appeared to move around Pluto over three days in what looked like a nearly circular orbit.

If confirmed by the International Astronomical Union, they will get official names based on classical mythology, joining Pluto's moon Charon, which is named for the ferryman of the dead. Pluto is named for the lord of the underworld. [...]

The newfound putative satellites are likely much smaller than Charon, ranging in size from perhaps 30 miles to 100 miles in diameter. Scientists are still trying to figure this out.

Charon is about 745 miles across, and Pluto is about 1,430 miles across.

The discovery of the two additional satellites means Pluto is the first known object of the Kuiper Belt -- a ring of rocky debris circling outside Neptune's orbit -- with more than one moon, said Hal Weaver, of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. [...]

See if you can spot Jesus and his disciples...

Pilgrims are flocking to the flat of a Romanian family who claim the images of Jesus and two disciples have appeared on their wardrobe.

Valeriu Junie, 66, of Drobeta Turnu Severin, says he first noticed the images about a year ago, just before Christmas.

He said: "It all started one night when I was watching TV and noticed some shadows on our wardrobe.

"I turned on the light and saw the image of Jesus in the middle and those of St Peter and St Paul on the sides.

"I didn't say a word to anyone for a few weeks but then the images started to become clearer everyday. I decided to call the priests and since then lots of people come to my house to see the miracle."

The wardrobe is made from walnut and is nearly 50-years-old. Valeriu's wife, Geta, 72, got it as a dowry on her wedding day from her parents.

Local priest Vasile Nuhaiu said: "I was shocked by what I saw there. There were three shadows on that wardrobe with the face of Jesus Christ in the centre.

"It is a miracle when Saints reveal themselves to us mortals and I crossed myself and started to pray. I told the two old people they should fast and pray to those holy images."

LEWISTON, Maine -- As a cryptozoologist, Loren Coleman rarely gets to play the straight man at meetings with his fellow scientists.

"I had to put up with people saying, 'Oh, you're the one who believes in little green men,'" said Coleman, a writer and academic who investigates Bigfoot and other folkloric monsters.

But at a weekend symposium called Cryptozoology: Out of Time Place Scale at the Bates College Museum of Art here in Maine, Coleman says he feels quite normal.

Maybe that's because he's surrounded by artwork featuring depictions of Bigfoot as a hairy lesbian, subterranean reptilian humanoids and cave people wearing Viking helmets.

Coleman was keynote speaker at an exhibition of artwork inspired by his quest for proof of mythological creatures.

The point of the Bates symposium, said the museum's director, Marc Bessire, "is not to legitimize or de-legitimize cryptozoology, but to find where it intersects with (art and popular culture)."

It's a hot topic at the moment. Though the art exhibit is relatively small, popular culture is currently going cryptozoology crazy.

Coleman noted the television networks' fall prime-time lineup is chockablock with shows such as Lost, Invasion and Surface, all of which have cryptozoological themes running through them. He said in recent weeks he has been busy doing hundreds of TV and radio interviews. [...]

On the fourth anniversary of the September 11th attacks, Laura Knight-Jadczyk announced 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

Order the book today at our bookstore.