Spurred by paranoia and aided by the USA Patriot Act, the Bush Administration has compiled dossiers on more than 10,000 Americans it considers political enemies and uses those files to wage war on those who disagree with its policies.

The “enemies list” dates back to Bush’s days as governor of Texas and can be accessed by senior administration officials in an instant for use in campaigns to discredit those who speak out against administration policies or acts of the President.

The computerized files include intimate personal details on members of Congress; high-ranking local, state and federal officials; prominent media figures and ordinary citizens who may, at one time or another, have spoken out against the President or Administration.

Capitol Hill Blue has spoken with a number of current and former administration officials who acknowledge existence of the enemies list only under a guarantee of confidentiality. Those who have seen the list say it is far more extensive than Richard Nixon’s famous “enemies list” of Watergate fame or Bill Clinton’s dossiers on political enemies.

“How is that you think Karl (Rove) and Scooter (Libby) were able to disseminate so much information on Joe Wilson and his wife,” says one White House aide. “They didn’t have that information by accident. They had it because they have files on those who might hurt them.”

White House insiders tell disturbing tales of invasion of privacy, abuse of government power and use of expanded authority under the USA Patriot Act to dig into the personal lives of anyone the administration deems an enemy of the state.

Those on the list include former Ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife, former covert CIA operative Valarie Plame, along with filmmaker and administration critic Michael Moore, Senators like California’s Barbara Boxer, media figures like liberal writer Joe Conason and left-wing bloggers like Markos Moulitsas Zúniga (the Daily Kos) and Ana Marie Cox (Wonkette).

“If you want to know who’s sleeping with whom, who drinks too much or has a fondness for nose candy, this is the place to find it,” says another White House aide. “Karl (Rove) operates under the rule that if you fuck with us, we’ll fuck you over.”

Rove started the list while Bush served as governor of Texas, compiling information on various political enemies in the state and leaking damaging information on opponents to friends in the press. The list grew during Bush’s first run for President in 2000 but the names multiplied rapidly after the terrorist attacks of 2001 and passage of the USA Patriot Act. Using the powers under the act, Rove expanded the list to more than 10,000 names, utilizing the FBI’s “national security letters” to gather private and intimate details on American citizens. [...]

“Those letters helped us build files quickly on those we needed to know more about,” says a former White House aide.

The database of political enemies of the Bush administration is not maintained on White House computers and is located on a privately-owned computer offsite, but can be accessed remotely by a select list of senior aides, including Rove. The offsite location allowed the database to escape detection by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald during his investigation of the Valerie Plame leak. The database is funded by private donations from Bush political backers and does not appear on the White House budget or Federal Election Commission campaign reports.

Bush is not the first President to use the FBI to keep track of his enemies. Richard M. Nixon used FBI files to try and discredit his opponents, including Daniel Ellsberg, the Department of Defense employee who leaked the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times. Bill Clinton used the FBI to compile dossiers on critics like Conservative Congressman Bob Barr and legal gadfly Larry Klayman of Judicial Watch.

But worried White House insiders say the intelligence gathered by the Bush administration is far larger, more extensive and potentially more damaging than the excesses of previous occupants of the White House. Even worse, it dovetails into a pattern of spying on Americans that has become commonplace since Bush took office.

“We’re talking about Big Brother at its most extreme,” says one White House staffer. “We know things about people that their spouses don’t know and, if it becomes politically expedient, we will make sure the rest of the world knows.”

The White House press office did not respond to a request for an interview on this story and did not return phone calls seeking comment.

This September, the government added new charges in a new indictment. And this October, Judge Gerald Lee denied Abu Ali's motions to suppress, as evidence, what the government alleges are confessions to several serious terrorism crimes. (He also denied Abu Ali's related motion to dismiss the charges in light of the way the evidence was procured.) Now, the trial has begun.

In this column, I will explore some troubling aspects of the indictment and the interrogation that gave rise to it.

Why the Charges Against Abu Ali Are Shaky

Abu Ali is charged with plotting to bring al Qaeda members into the U.S. by means of Mexico, to commit aircraft piracy, and to kill President Bush through the use of suicide bombers and snipers. Abu Ali faces possible life imprisonment on these very serious charges. But whether there ever was such a conspiracy is doubtful.

Consider, first, that all of Abu Ali's alleged co-conspirators are unnamed. Some, it seems, have been convicted in connection with other Alexandria "terrorism" cases (including the Paintball cases) as well. Their "cooperation" with prosecutors could lead to reductions in their long sentences.

Consider, too, that typically, a conspiracy charge requires not just talk, but an "overt act." And here, the only acts the government alleges are purchases of a cell phone and a laptop.

So this case is really about talk. Yet much of the government's evidence regarding what Abu Ali allegedly talked about, comes from his interrogation by his Saudi captors and FBI agents, in a Saudi prison--interrogation that was not only unconstitutional, but highly unreliable.

Can Evidence Coerced by Saudi Interrogators Be Used in a U.S. Court?

Abu Ali was interrogated by the Saudis without any of the safeguards that Americans are afforded in U.S. court. He did not have the right to an attorney. He was not informed of his Miranda rights. And he was not protected against coercive self-incrimination.

Yet now, American prosecutors will be using Abu Ali's unconstitutionally-procured statements against him in an American court. How did this happen?

To aid the judge in deciding whether to allow the statements to be admitted, defense attorneys questioned Abu Ali's Saudi interrogators--with the help of Arabic translators -- by live audio and satellite feed from Saudi Arabia to the federal courthouse in Alexandria, Virginia. Supposedly for "security reasons," the Saudi officials were allowed to testify under pseudonyms. (Prosecutors and defense attorneys were also present in Saudi Arabia as well as in Alexandria).

What the Saudi Interrogators Claimed: No Torture, Voluntary Confessions

The Saudis said it was their idea--not the United States' -- to initially detain Abu Ali in June 2003, as a part of their investigations into the May 2003 bombing of a residential compound in Riyadh.

But shortly after the Saudis arrested Abu Ali, they said, Alexandria prosecutors "ordered" them to ask Abu Ali some questions. This admission puts the lie to any claim that this was not, in effect, a joint U.S.-Saudi scheme of imprisonment and interrogation

Had Abu Ali's interrogation taken place in the U.S., it would have been plainly unconstitutional. Kept in solitary confinement (allegedly for his own protection), Abu Ali was repeatedly interrogated from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. (according to his captors, because it was too hot during the day, and not to deprive him of sleep), a commonly used coercive interrogation tactic. He was also often shackled and chained during questioning. At some point, Abu Ali was ordered to put his "confessions" into writing and read them aloud while being videotaped.

The Saudis denied use of any torture.

What the FBI Agents Claimed: No Attempt to Circumvent Miranda Protections

The FBI agents who traveled to Saudi Arabia also testified. They explained that they had watched from behind a one-way mirror while Saudis conducted interrogations. They eventually participated in their own interrogations, with and without their Saudi counterparts. Emails from FBI agents to Alexandria prosecutors assured them that the Saudis would do whatever the US told them to do.

This is further evidence that the Saudis and Americans were engaged in a joint enterprise to detain and interrogate Abu Ali.

With U.S. prosecutors calling the shots, and doing some of the interrogating, why weren't Abu Ali's constitutional rights honored? The FBI agents testified that Miranda was not applicable, nor was Abu Ali provided a lawyer, because Abu Ali was not a U.S. criminal suspect. Rather, they say, they were just talking to Abu Ali to gather intelligence.

But that crucial assertion, too, utterly lacks credibility. Of course the FBI came to Saudi Arabia to investigate charging Abu Ali with a crime--which was exactly what they later did. If it were purely for intelligence purposes, wouldn't they have sent interrogators from the CIA or the Department of Defense?

What the Doctors Testified: Evidence of Beatings and Trauma

Abu Ali's attorneys introduced the testimony of physicians who believed that scars on Abu Ali's back were evidence of beatings. Prosecution experts said these scars were either self-inflicted, or acne scars. But what we know of Saudi interrogation practices makes the defense experts' testimony far more compelling.

Defense psychological experts said that Abu Ali was suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome, brought on by his imprisonment and interrogation. Prosecution psychologists said he was well-adjusted, and any maladjustment symptoms were feigned. Again, the defense's experts were more credible: Who among us would not be traumatized by being interrogated for months in a Saudi prison?

Judge Lee's Opinion Wrongly Finds That No Laws or Rights Were Violated

In light of the evidence presented, how could Judge Lee let this case go forward?

He defended his reasoning in a 113-page decision. But his logic comes down to taking the FBI's word for the proposition that the interrogation was designed to obtain intelligence, and was not part of a criminal investigation--and thus that Abu Ali did not enjoy the rights of a criminal suspect.

By adopting the government's implausible spin on the facts, Judge Lee concluded that Abu Ali had no rights at all.

It is not clear at what point Abu Ali, in fact, became a suspect, but we do know Abu Ali's indictment was suspiciously and closely related to developments in the habeas corpus case filed by Abu Ali's parents in federal court in the District Columbia, before Judge John Bates.

So, if we take the government's word for it (as Judge Lee did), Abu Ali never was a suspect. But, he suddenly became a defendant when it appeared that Judge Bates was having some problems with the government's position that Abu Ali--then in Saudi Arabia--was so dangerous he could not be returned to the U.S.

Judge Lee Rewards the Government's Unconstitutional Tactics

Judge Lee excluded no evidence, rewarding the government for its decision to interrogate an American in a Saudi prison using Saudi tactics. He repeatedly concluded that the methods and tactics used against Abu Ali did not "shock the conscience," the Supreme Court's standard for excluding confessions on the ground that they were not voluntarily given. [...]

Judge Lee also ruled that Abu Ali had no speedy trial right because at no time was he under arrest by the United States; rather, he was simply an intelligence target. Judge Lee found no credence in the defense position that the Saudis were acting as agents of the U.S. in order to circumvent U.S. constitutional rights.

But he should have: The government's own emails boasting of the Saudis' doing what they were told; the questions fed to the Saudis by the FBI; the joint and U.S.-only interrogations in Saudi prisons; and the well-known U.S.-Saudi alliance, are all evidence that the Saudis acted as U.S. agents--though also on their own behalf as well. [...]

The Practice Of Unconstitutional U.S. Interrogations In Foreign Prisons Must End

Dana Priest, writing for the Washington Post last week, confirmed what Amnesty International and others had thought for some time: The CIA is running a chain of prisons outside the United States. Its captives are alleged terrorists. Rights--whether under the Geneva Conventions or the U.S. Constitution--are ignored.

The Post article describes prison cells consisting of underground tunnels, hidden not just from the light of day, but from the prying eyes of the U.S. Congress and the American taxpayers who foot the bill. Government sources admit that the prisoners are subject to intense interrogation. Some have been imprisoned for years.

As odious as these imprisonments and interrogations are, like it or not, the CIA's ability to operate outside the constraints of law has a long history in this country. This is not the case with federal criminal justice system, whose accountability makes it the best in the world.

Abu Ali's shocking treatment is the first that tests the notion that Americans can be imprisoned abroad by their government, interrogated by foreign and domestic law enforcement, and be denied all rights as coercive confessions are obtained to be used against them in a U.S. court. (The value of Abu Ali's confessions cannot be underestimated, given that at least some of the unnamed co-conspirators are thought to be convicted terrorists themselves.)

Abu Ali, if convicted, won't find much sympathy on appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit or the U.S. Supreme Court. Justice John Roberts and, if confirmed, a Justice Samuel Alito, are strong proponents of virtual unbridled executive and prosecutorial powers, especially in the "war" on terrorism.

Abu Ali's case may be the beginning of the end of differences between the U.S. criminal justice system and those of repressive, undemocratic regimes like Saudi Arabia, its partner in this case. In terms of criminal cases, the Bill of Rights is being tested like never before in Judge Lee's courtroom. So far, the cherished rights are on the losing side. [...]

The only consolation--if there is any at all--is that at least the government was forced to bring Abu Ali to the U.S. so that we can see what it is doing to one of its citizens. In the future, Americans may be sitting in one of those underground interrogation cells in a CIA prison. We won't know their names, and they won't be heard from again.

Elaine Cassel practices law in Virginia and the District of Columbia and teaches law and psychology. She doesn't like being lied to. Her new book The War on Civil Liberties: How Bush and Ashcroft Have Dismantled the Bill of Rights, is published by Lawrence Hill. She can be reached at: ecassel1@cox.net

Graham measure, which comes at a time the US government's treatment of imprisoned terrorist suspects is under fire from US lawmakers, would deny Guantanamo prisoners the right to legal recourse if it becomes law.

It would nullify a July 28, 2004, Supreme Court ruling that allowed US courts to hear appeals from foreign detainees held as enemy combatants at Guantanamo, most of whom -- there are some 600 from 42 countries -- have been held without charge and access to court.

Before the vote, Graham said that while he was against the mistreatment of prisoners in US jails, his measure was crucial in the US fight against international terrorism.

"If we don't rein in prisoner abuse, we're going to lose the war, but if we don't rein in legal abuse by prisoners, we're going undermine our ability to protect ourselves," the Senator for South Carolina told his colleagues.

"Do not give the terrorists, the enemy combatants, the people who blow up folks at weddings, who fly airplanes into the twin towers, the ability to sue our own troops all over the country for any and everything," he added.

"Hundreds of hideous petitions will be clogging the US courts," added Republican Senator for Arizona Jon Kyl in support of Graham's measure.

Comment: Talk about missing the point entirely...

Opposers to the amendment included Judiciary Committee chairman Arlen Specter, who felt Graham's proposal was the wrong response to the legal imbroglio surrounding the US government's classification of detained foreign terrorist suspects as enemy combatants

"I am not prepared at this time to support legislation that calls for the removal of habeas corpus," the Republican from Pennsylvania said of the right of a detainee to go to court.

American Civil Liberties Union member Christopher Anders linked the issues of prisoner abuse and legal recourse saying that, under Graham's measure, detainees "would have no access to the courts to seek protection against government-funded torture, abuse or due process violations.

"If the Graham amendment is adopted, it will be nearly impossible to enforce Senator (John) McCain's amendment barring torture and abuse," Andres added, referring to the Republican senator's measure, also included in the military budget bill, banning torture and cruel and inhumane treatment in US prisons.

Vice President Dick Cheney and other top officials in
President George W. Bush's Republican administration have been trying to defeat the McCain measure, arguing that US interrogators must be granted flexibility when questioning terrorist suspects.

Bush has pledged to veto the entire defense spending bill if it contains McCain's amendment. McCain, whose measure garnered 90 votes in the Senate, has so far refused to back down.

These new traffic systems can monitor several hundred thousand cellphones at once. The phones need only be turned on, not in use. And sophisticated software now makes it possible to discern whether a signal is coming from, say, a moving car or a pedestrian.

State officials say the systems will monitor large clusters of phones, not individual phones, and the benefits could be substantial.

Comment: Yeah, right. "The US does not use torture" either...

By providing a constantly updated picture of traffic flow across thousands of miles of highways, they argue, cellphone tracking can help transportation agencies spot congestion and divert drivers by issuing alerts by radio or on electronic road signs.

Next month, Maryland, with the help of the University of Baltimore, plans to begin tests for a cellular tracking system in the Baltimore area. Virginia also plans to test a system around the Norfolk beltway. Similar technology is already in use outside the United States, including in London, Antwerp, Belgium, and Tel Aviv.

"The potential is incredible," said Phil Tarnoff, director of the Center for Advanced Transportation Technology at the University of Maryland. He said the monitoring technology could possibly help reduce congestion in some areas by 50 percent.

But he, and other people involved in the emerging technology, said there were critical hurdles. Chief among them, Tarnoff said, is getting the cellular carriers to collect and share the cellphone data.

The carriers already collect an enormous amount of data so that they can, for example, tell whether a cellphone user is roaming out of their network. But separating the data to show the speed at which cellphones are being passed from one cell site to another is still a challenge. To get the data, the monitoring companies have to reach agreements with cellular carriers. But whether they can be profitable or make it worth the while of Tarnoff, director of the Center for Advanced Transportation Technology at the University of Maryland. [...]

Privacy advocates say traffic monitoring could mark the beginning of governments using cellphones to track individuals' movements. Even if the tracking is done anonymously and in clusters, they say, it could allow state and federal officials to track where people are headed en masse in order, for instance, to know where protesters are gathering.

"This enables the government to have a much easier time of knowing what private people are up to without any sort of process or consent," said Lee Tien, senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an electronic privacy advocacy group.

Companies offering the technology include ITIS Holdings of Britain and IntelliOne Technologies and AirSage, both based in Atlanta. AirSage signed a deal in July to provide such technology to the Georgia Department of Transportation, which plans to begin using it in early 2006. All three companies say they have neither the ability nor interest in tracking individuals. [...]

A confidential memo circulating among senior Republican leaders suggests that a new attack by terrorists on U.S. soil could reverse the sagging fortunes of President George W. Bush as well as the GOP and "restore his image as a leader of the American people."

The closely-guarded memo lays out a list of scenarios to bring the Republican party back from the political brink, including a devastating attack by terrorists that could “validate” the President’s war on terror and allow Bush to “unite the country” in a “time of national shock and sorrow.”

The memo says such a reversal in the President's fortunes could keep the party from losing control of Congress in the 2006 midterm elections.

GOP insiders who have seen the memo admit it’s a risky strategy and point out that such scenarios are “blue sky thinking” that often occurs in political planning sessions.

“The President’s popularity was at an all-time high following the 9/11 attacks,” admits one aide. “Americans band together at a time of crisis.”

Other Republicans, however, worry that such a scenario carries high risk, pointing out that an attack might suggest the President has not done enough to protect the country.

“We also have to face the fact that many Americans no longer trust the President,” says a longtime GOP strategist. “That makes it harder for him to become a rallying point.”

The memo outlines other scenarios, including:

--Capture of Osama bin Laden (or proof that he is dead);

--A drastic turnaround in the economy;

--A "successful resolution" of the Iraq war.

GOP memos no longer talk of “victory” in Iraq but use the term “successful resolution.”

“A successful resolution would be us getting out intact and civil war not breaking out until after the midterm elections,” says one insider.

The memo circulates as Tuesday’s disastrous election defeats have left an already dysfunctional White House in chaos, West Wing insiders say, with shouting matches commonplace and the blame game escalating into open warfare.

“This place is like a high-school football locker room after the team lost the big game,” grumbles one Bush administration aide. “Everybody’s pissed and pointing the finger at blame at everybody else.”

Republican gubernatorial losses in Virginia and New Jersey deepened rifts between the Bush administration and Republicans who find the President radioactive. Arguments over whether or not the President should make a last-minute appearance in Virginia to try and help the sagging campaign fortunes of GOP candidate Jerry Kilgore raged until the minute Bush arrived at the rally in Richmond Monday night.

“Cooler heads tried to prevail,” one aide says. “Most knew an appearance by the President would hurt Kilgore rather than help him but (Karl) Rove rammed it through, convincing Bush that he had enough popularity left to make a difference.”

Bush didn’t have any popularity left. Overnight tracking polls showed Kilgore dropped three percentage points after the President’s appearance and Democrat Tim Kaine won on Tuesday.

Conservative Pennsylvania Republican Senator Rick Santorum told radio talk show host Don Imus Wednesday that he does not want the President's help and will stay away from a Bush rally in his state on Friday.

The losses in Virginia and New Jersey, coupled with a resounding defeat of ballot initiatives backed by GOP governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in California have set off alarm klaxons throughout the demoralized Republican party. Pollsters privately tell GOP leaders that unless they stop the slide they could easily lose control of the House in the 2006 midterm elections and may lose the Senate as well.

“In 30 years of sampling public opinion, I’ve never seen such a freefall in public support,” admits one GOP pollster.

Democratic pollster Geoffrey Garin says the usual tricks tried by Republicans no longer work.

"None of their old tricks worked," he says.

Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.) admits the GOP is a party mired in its rural base in a country that's becoming less and less rural.

"You play to your rural base, you pay a price," he says. "Our issues blew up in our face."

As Republican political strategists scramble to find a message – any message – that will ring true with voters, GOP leaders in Congress admit privately that control of their party by right-wing extremists makes their recovery all but impossible.

“We’ve made our bed with these people,” admits an aide to House Speaker Denny Hastert. “Now it’s the morning after and the hangover hurts like hell.”

Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald will soon conclude his investigation into whether President Bush’s deputy chief of staff Karl Rove gave false statements to a grand jury investigating the leak of a covert CIA agent, attorneys close to the case say.

According to lawyers familiar with the case, Fitzgerald is trying to convince the grand jury that Rove made false statements during the three times he testified under oath and misleading statements to Justice Department and FBI investigators when he was first interviewed about his role in the leak in October 2003.

The attorneys told RAW STORY that Fitzgerald has called Rove’s former personal assistant, Susan B. Ralston -- who was also a special assistant to President Bush -- to testify before the grand jury for a third time, perhaps as early as Monday. She is not said to be in legal jeopardy.

Fitzgerald spokesman Randall Samborn would neither confirm nor deny that Ralston would appear before the grand jury. Ralston’s attorney could not be reached for comment.

Ralston previously worked as a personal secretary to Jack Abramoff, the Republican power lobbyist being investigated for allegations of defrauding Indian tribes who was recently indicted on conspiracy and wire fraud charges. While working with Abramoff, Ralston arranged fundraisers and events at Washington MCI Center skyboxes for members of Congress. Ralston communicated with Rove on Abramoff’s behalf on tribal affairs, though she is not accused of wrongdoing.

Fitzgerald wants to question Ralston again about several telephone calls Rove allegedly made to a few reporters, including syndicated columnist Robert Novak, lawyers close to the investigation say. Novak first disclosed the identity of undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson in his July 14, 2003 column.

Furthermore, the attorneys said that Fitzgerald wants Ralston to clarify some of her previous testimony regarding statements she made about a phone call Rove had with Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper.

Ralston testified that Cooper’s name was not noted in the call logs from Rove’s office, those familiar with the case say.

Ralston told the grand jury that Cooper’s call to Rove was transferred to Rove’s office by the White House switchboard. She testified that the call was not logged by Rove’s office because Cooper had not called Rove’s office directly.

Sources say that Fitzgerald has obtained documentary evidence proving that scenario does not jibe with other unrelated calls to Rove’s office that were also transferred to his office by the switchboard but were logged.

RAW STORY called the White House today, trying to ascertain whether calls were logged. The White House switchboard operator would not transfer this reporter to Rove’s office and instead transferred the call to the White House comment line. A spokesman for the White House office of media affairs did not return a call seeking comment.

Ralston, 38, testified in the leak case twice this past summer. The Phillipine News, which first reported that Ralston would be called back to testify and is keeping tabs on Ralston because of her Philippine heritage and her previously high profile role in the administration, noted that Rove aide Israel Hernandez was asked similar questions.

Hernandez, 35, testified before the grand jury in August. He was tapped by Bush to be Assistant Secretary of Commerce, and was formerly a close aide to Rove.

As Rove’s senior adviser, Ralston screened Rove’s calls. Her additional testimony may help Fitzgerald prove that there were inconsistencies in Rove’s account of his role in the leak and assess why he withheld a crucial fact from the prosecutor: that Rove had spoken with Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper as well as Novak about Plame and confirmed that she was an undercover CIA agent.

Despite the emergence of new information in the case, there remains a chance that Rove will not be charged. In that event, Fitzgerald is not expected to discuss any aspect of his probe into Rove because he may be called to testify as a prosecution witness against Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney. Libby was indicted two weeks ago on five counts of lying to investigators, perjury and obstruction of justice related to his role in the leak. The sources said that the situation surrounding Rove remains fluid and changes with each passing day.

In recent days, Fitzgerald seems to have come to the conclusion that Rove may still be misleading the prosecution, the attorneys said. They would not elaborate.

During previous interviews, Rove said he first learned Plame's name from reporters and only after her named was published did he discuss Plame with other reporters. But Rove changed his story when he testified before the grand jury for a fourth time in September.

Robert Luskin, Rove’s lawyer, continues to maintain that his client has not intentionally withheld facts from the prosecutor or the grand jury but has simply forgotten about his conversations with the reporters, the attorneys said.

Luskin could not be reached for comment.

John Byrne contributed reporting for this story.

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified the number of times Rove had testified to the grand jury. He testified four times, not three.

House Government Reform Committee Chairman Tom Davis (R-Va.) yesterday threatened to subpoena three members of the Bush Cabinet and White House counsel Harriet Miers if they do not comply with document requests issued by his select committee on Hurricane Katrina response.

During a committee hearing yesterday, Davis decried the failure of White House officials to release e-mails and other communication records related to the hurricane and its aftermath. Davis set a hard deadline of Nov. 18 for all federal agencies to comply with his requests.

“If documents aren’t produced by that date, I’m ready to proceed with subpoenas,” Davis said.

Davis chairs the special committee investigating the emergency response to Hurricane Katrina and the resulting flooding of New Orleans. The committee’s creation was a topic of intense partisan wrangling earlier this fall, when three Gulf Coast Democrats agreed to participate despite a party boycott urged by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.).

The Democratic participants, Reps. William Jefferson (La.), Charlie Melancon (La.) and Gene Taylor (Miss.), still technically do not serve on the committee. But Davis set the Nov. 18 date in response to an inquiry by Melancon, who noted the looming February expiration of the committee’s investigation.

“These are not burdensome requests,” Melancon told Davis, who said that the administration has begun to hand over initial batches of documents but that more progress must be made.

Melancon also placed copies of the individual draft subpoenas mentioning Cabinet members by name in the committee’s record. Most recently, the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks also was forced to subpoena Bush administration documents.

In addition to the White House, Davis’s investigative committee has asked for documents from the secretaries of defense, homeland security and health and human services and from Miers.

Davis said each of these agencies had been increasingly cooperative since a similar subject was raised during a hearing last week but conceded that not all of the requests have been met.

“This is progress, but as you note, it’s not enough,” Davis said yesterday in response to Melancon’s request. “We’re missing some of the prioritized documents we requested on September 30th, and the clock is ticking.”

Some of the communications released so far have been embarrassing for the administration officials involved in the federal response to the hurricane and resulting floods. In particular, Mike Brown, the former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), was criticized for his banter to co-workers in the wake of the disaster.

Davis’s committee has heard testimony from Brown and Marty Bahamonde, the only FEMA official in New Orleans when Katrina made landfall. Lawmakers were frustrated by overt discrepancies between Brown and Bahamonde’s accounts of the federal response, suggesting to some that Brown might be called back to the committee or investigated for possible perjury.

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, chaired by Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), has been holding its own hearings on Katrina response after an impasse among Senate leaders blocked progress on setting up a bicameral Katrina committee.

The draft subpoenas produced by Melancon call for all documents “received, prepared or sent” before Aug. 23 related to a emergency-response procedures in the case of a hurricane striking the Gulf Coast, as well as all documents transmitted between Aug. 23 and Sept. 15 relating to Hurricane Katrina itself.

Members of the select committee have scrutinized the months and years before Katrina for signs of lax disaster preparation in the Department of Homeland Security, in particular the simulation exercise dubbed “Hurricane Pam” that predicted devastation in the case of a Category 5 hurricane striking New Orleans.

Bush, facing political turmoil at home over the Iraq war, soaring gasoline prices and a CIA leak probe, leaves on Monday for a week-long trip to Japan, South Korea, China and Mongolia.

White House National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley said Bush would try to advance cooperation on top priorities but did not expect to come home with specific agreements.

Struggling to contain a U.S. trade deficit with China that is running at an annual rate approaching $200 billion, Bush wants Chinese President Hu Jintao to liberalize China's currency system and let the yuan rise in value.

U.S. politicians and business lobby groups complain it has been kept at too low a level, harming U.S. manufacturers.

Comment: Isn't it interesting how the major problems with the US economy are not only misrepresented as no big deal, but also always blamed on someone else?

Hadley said China has done little to adjust the yuan currency since an initial adjustment was announced in July, and that Bush will urge Beijing to take additional steps toward a market-based currency. [...]

Bush will also urge China to take steps to protect intellectual property rights. Federal authorities estimate the counterfeiting of American-made products like movies, books and computer programs costs U.S. businesses as much as $250 billion a year and thousands of jobs.

At the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Busan, South Korea, on November 18 and 19, Bush will seek to advance international cooperation on controlling avian flu and North Korea's nuclear weapons program. [...]

With a new round of talks currently under way about North Korea's nuclear program, Bush will try to maintain unity among the governments party to the negotiations -- the United States, Japan, South Korea, Russia and China -- while not trying to launch any new initiatives.

"While it will be a topic of discussion, you shouldn't expect any major new initiatives out of that," Hadley said.

In talks with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi in Kyoto, Bush will urge Koizumi to "use his strong electoral mandate to continue his efforts to promote economic reform," Hadley said.

The third largest U.S. airline reported a net loss of $646 million a year earlier.

The loss in the most recent period included a $607 million charge for reorganization items, including the cancellation of 40 aircraft leases as well as the write-off of debt issuance costs and discounts.

Excluding one-time items, Delta posted a loss of $438 million, narrower than the $592 million figure a year earlier.

Delta, which sought bankruptcy protection in September under pressure from energy costs, low cost rivals and a high debt load, said its operating revenues rose 8.1 percent to $4.21 billion.

The Atlanta-based airline said that as of September 30, it had $2.6 billion in cash and cash equivalents on hand, of which $1.4 billion was unrestricted.

Mohammed al-Mihana, of the Public Authority for Agriculture and Fisheries, said further tests on samples from the birds showed that the migrating flamingo found on a Kuwait beach had the H5N1 strain, while a second, imported bird had the milder H5N2 variant.

He said the imported bird, quarantined at the airport, was a falcon, not a peacock as reported Thursday.

Scientists in Hong Kong say they may have helped explain why the H5N1 bird flu virus kills so many healthy young adults -- it apparently causes a "storm" of immune system chemicals that overwhelms the patient.
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The H5N1 virus caused proteins known as cytokines to rush to infected lung tissue -- evidence of a so-called cytokine storm, an immune system overreaction that can be fatal.

The study, published in the online medical journal Respiratory Research, might suggest that if H5N1 does cause a pandemic, it could disproportionately affect the young and healthy as compared with seasonal flu, which kills many elderly people but few young adults.

It also raises questions about how effective drugs will be in controlling such a pandemic, experts said.

"We have to see if it is true and if we can do anything about it," cautioned Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who was not involved in the research.

But if the experiment does accurately show what happens in people, it may mean patients with H5N1 infections will need drugs that depress the immune response in addition to antivirals, Fauci said.

The H5N1 flu has swept through flocks of poultry but has so far infected only 124 people in four countries and killed 64 since it re-emerged in 2003.

It does not easily infect people, but when it does, it kills about half of them.

"The reasons for this unusual severity of human disease have remained unclear," Michael Chan and Malik Peiris of the University of Hong Kong and colleagues wrote in their report.

They took samples of H5N1 from a patient who died of the infection in a 1997 outbreak, from two patients infected in Vietnam in 2004, and a sample of a Hong Kong patient with ordinary H1N1 seasonal flu.

They used the virus to infect lung tissue samples taken from other, non-flu patients.

CHEMICAL STORM

The H5N1 viruses brought in a storm of cytokines -- the immune system's inflammatory chemicals -- including IP-10, interferon beta, RANTES and interleukin-6. The H1N1 virus caused a much smaller effect.

And the later, Vietnamese strains caused a bigger cascade than the 1997 H5N1 strain.

This could be because of continued mutations, the researchers said. "The H5N1 viruses have continued to reassort, acquiring different internal genes from other influenza viruses of avian origin," the researchers wrote.

The study, published on the Internet at http://respiratory-research.com/, may explain the severe respiratory distress suffered by H5N1 patients, who often say they struggle to breathe.

Michael Osterholm, an infectious disease expert at the University of Minnesota who has been advising the U.S. government on the risks of a flu pandemic, said the study supports predictions that any possible H5N1 pandemic would be especially severe.

It means being young and healthy could actually work against people who become infected.

"Anyone could experience this very severe, life-threatening illness," Osterholm said in a telephone interview.

"This is looking more and more like an H1N1 1918."

The worst recorded influenza epidemic was in 1918, when an H1N1 strain swept the globe in a few months, killing anywhere between 20 million and 100 million people, depending on the estimate. In comparison, a pandemic in 1957 killed 2 million and one caused by an H3N2 virus in 1968 killed 1 million.

"In 1918, even among the very young and the very old, there was a ten-fold increase in deaths," Osterholm said. "There was a 1,000-fold increase in young adults."

Fauci said researchers are now testing various drugs that may affect the immune system to see if they would help patients better survive H5N1.

Lockheed Martin is developing a warning system to detect nuclear-armed SCUD missiles that could potentially be launched from small ships off the U.S. coast.

"They don't need intercontinental ballistic missile to attack us. An enemy could put a SCUD on a tramp steamer and launch it off the coast," said David Kier, Vice-President of Lockheed Martin's Protection Division.

Because of that non-theoretical threat Lockheed Martin has been investing its own money to develop a system called Passive Coherent Locator (PCL) that could detect such a ship-launched missile and feed accurate tracking information into the existing national missile defense command-and-control system for a response, the Night Watch Information Service reported.

The PCL system involves a network of sensors that could be operational from Washington to Boston within two years of government funding and along the entire U.S. coastline some years later.

Some 75 percent of the total U.S. population of 290 million people and 75 percent of its military bases are within 200 miles of the coast. The number of potential launch platforms is immense, with 130,000 registered merchant ships in 195 countries, NWIS said.

Thousands of SCUDs and other inexpensive short-range ballistic missiles have been dispersed, sold worldwide with some in countries where terrorist groups operate openly.

Iran test-launched a tactical ballistic missile from a ship last year and the threat has become much worse with the rapid proliferation of cruise missiles. China has already supplied many to Iran.

Some 70 countries already possess an estimated 75,000 anti-ship cruise missiles and many of them could be easily converted to land-attack weapons. At least 10 nations already have land-attack cruise missiles and their number is increasing, NWIS said.

A report by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments stated, "While the Defense Department has numerous programs to address threats to forward-deployed ground and naval forces, it has devoted much less attention to cruise missile threats to the homeland.

"Even the relatively large Seersucker (Russian-built anti-ship cruise missile) can be hidden and launched from a standard 12-meter shipping container," the CSBA report said. "The balance between cruise missiles and defenses currently favor the offense."

During congressional testimony early this year, Air Force Lt. Gen. Henry "Trey" Obering, director of the Missile Defense Agency, said he was "concerned about" the potential for a ship-launched missile attack on the United States.

"There is a difference of opinion in terms of whether that constitutes a real threat, but that's something I'm personally concerned about. So we're working on it."

More recently, Obering told reporters: "We launched a SCUD off an ocean-going platform ... It was very easy to do."

Cruise-missile defense, however, is not part of MDA's responsibility. That responsibility is shared by the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization and the Joint Theater Air and Missile Organization, NWIS said.

Lockheed Martin's PCL has received some assistance in system verification from the government, including defense agencies and NASA, Kier said.

"Politicians hide themselves away.
They only started the war.
Why should they go out to fight?
They leave that role to the poor, yeah.

"Time will tell on their power minds,
making war just for fun.
Treating people just like pawns in chess,
wait till their judgment day comes, yeah."
- Black Sabbath, "War Pigs" (1970)

It seems like only yesterday U.S. deaths in Iraq had reached the grim milestone of 2,000. Now they're already up to 2,055, reminding us all that the only ones really paying for this dishonest war are young GIs, with their lives and limbs.

The White House and its shameless surrogates continue to try to squelch criticism over the soaring body count by saying it dishonors and demoralizes the troops on the ground over there. In other words, if you don't support the war, you don't support the troops.

Excuse me, but who doesn't support the troops? The war pigs need to take a long hard look in the mirror.

Let's not forget it was the secretary of defense who told them to stop whining about missing Humvee armor, and then minimized their brutal roadside deaths by comparing them to random U.S. highway traffic fatalities on the Sean Hannity radio show last year.

For that matter, Donald Rumsfeld's deputy couldn't even remember how many of their soldiers had been killed in action.

Asked about the toll at a House hearing last year, during the deadliest month at that time for American troops, Paul Wolfowitz sat there with his face flapping. "It's approximately 500 … I can get the exact numbers," he stammered. He was off by nearly 250 soldiers – 250 brave Americans who left behind grieving mothers, fathers, wives, children – for what?

But Wolfowitz no doubt was thinking of other "metrics," as he's fond of saying, such as how many more pawns he'd need to make the Middle East safe for Israel. Never mind that the bastards who attacked this country are still on the loose.

Rumsfeld is so out of touch with fallen soldiers, he used a machine to sign his name to letters of condolence to the families of the first 1,000 service members who died in Iraq. He stopped only after he was caught.

Certainly their commander-in-chief is less callous, right? Fat chance. After sending troops into a shooting gallery with bull's-eyes on their backs, he egged on their killers from the safety of the White House with the cry, "Bring 'em on." He no doubt said the same thing about the VC while knocking back bourbons in Alabama.

We've already taken more casualties than in the first three years of Nam. In fact, just by wounding more than 15,000 of our soldiers, the Iraqi insurgents have taken out a full Army division.

And these aren't flesh wounds. These soldiers have had arms and legs ripped from joints, eyeballs blown from sockets, and skulls crushed in, permanently damaging gray matter. These wounded won't be going back for another tour. They face a lifetime of painful rehab and depression.

For what? To capture Osama bin Laden? No. To keep WMD out of his hands? No. To protect America? No. To liberate Iraq? No. The only thing that's been liberated is Islamic fundamentalism from under the thumb of secular Saddam Hussein. The new Iraqi constitution contains all the provisions necessary for an Islamic state, including Article 2: "No law that contradicts the established provisions of Islam may be established." Praise Allah.

And the insurgency is not going to die with this election, or any election, so long as we're over there. Listen to near-amputee Terry Rodgers tell it:

"There's always gonna be insurgents trying to blow us up. There's just too many of 'em that are willing to do it. You're never gonna catch all of 'em. And it seems like they have unlimited amounts of ammunition. So I don't think it's ever gonna end."

Rodgers, who was maimed by a roadside bomb while on patrol with the Army, is so mad at Bush for "getting people killed and mutilated for no reason" that he's refused to see him in the few times the president has visited Walter Reed Hospital. And Bush hadn't even tried to visit amputees, or attend funerals, before his reelection campaign.

But he had plenty of time to attend a black-tie dinner in Washington to joke about getting people killed and mutilated for no reason. "Nope, no WMDs there," he quipped to then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice on a slide showing him looking under White House furniture. Ha, ha.

Last year, an equally glib Bush was spotted taking in a baseball game with Rice just after wires reported several female marines were killed in an Iraq ambush that shocked the nation. That didn't seem to faze either of them. Cameras caught Bush and his gal pal Condi yucking it up in a VIP box. It's apparently all one big game to them.

The last lie of Iraq has been exposed – that Bush and the neocons care about the troops they sent needlessly into harm's way in Iraq. This is the ultimate betrayal.

Now, more than 160,000 are deployed there as sitting ducks, and an increasing number will be picked off, as the insurgents perfect their methods and their attacks grow bolder and deadlier.

And when the death toll tops 3,000, it will mark a most tragic irony in U.S. history. Three thousand brave American soldiers died avenging the murder of 3,000 of their fellow Americans – all on the wrong front, thanks to the war pigs who sent them there.

The foundation stone of a new Arafat museum complex has been laid at his old base in the West Bank town of Ramallah, 12 months after his death aged 75.

The ceremony, attended by top officials from Palestinian factions and a handful of foreign diplomats, was led by Mr Arafat's successor, Mahmoud Abbas.

Thousands of people are expected to attend a rally in his honour later.

Mr Abbas is among top Palestinian officials expected to address large crowds during the meeting after Friday prayers.

Loyal followers

Several thousand people joined a rally organised by the ruling Fatah party on Thursday night at which leaders of all the major factions sat beneath a large portrait of the former leader.

"We will remain loyal to the path of Yasser Arafat," said top Fatah official Abdullah Franji, pledging to carry on the struggle for a Palestinian state.

The party, founded by Mr Arafat in 1965, has organised another rally in Gaza City on Saturday.

Speculation over the cause of Arafat's death in a French military hospital in Paris continues among Palestinians.

A Palestinian ministerial inquiry proved inconclusive but said his death was not caused by germs, cancer, poisoning or Aids. His wife, Suha, refused to allow an autopsy.

The BBC's Alan Johnston in Jerusalem says that a year after Mr Arafat's death, arguments continue over his legacy.

While supporters say he put the Palestinian cause at the centre of the world's attention, critics argue that he failed to start laying proper foundations for a future Palestinian state.

Where Mr Arafat was charismatic, a populist and a political wheeler-dealer, our correspondent says, Mr Abbas is a grey and rather grandfatherly figure with no love of political cut-and-thrust.

Although he has tried to draw militant groups into a lasting ceasefire, Mr Abbas has never succeeded in really asserting himself, our correspondent says, and his party Fatah is in disarray and under challenge from the militant group Hamas.

There is a sense of drift and Palestinians worry about the deteriorating economy. At the same time, they feel no closer to establishing a viable state of their own, our correspondent concludes.

Mr Peretz's unexpected victory over the octogenarian former prime minister and current deputy to Mr Sharon heralds what could be a shift in the tectonic plates of Israeli politics, which Mr Sharon has dominated since the beginning of the century.

Mr Peretz, who in a typically vigorous speech yesterday claimed the mantle of the late Yitzhak Rabin in signalling his desire for early and substantive peace negotiations with the Palestinian leadership, made clear throughout his leadership campaign his intention to pull the party out of the coalition.

The immediate result of a move which he showed every sign yesterday of sticking to will be that a general election will now take place by the end of the first quarter of next year rather than in November 2006 as planned.

Mr Sharon has relied on Labour under Mr Peres - whose astoundingly long political career dates back to his work as an aide to Israel's founding prime minister, David Ben Gurion - to keep his government afloat in place of the hard-right wing of his own Likud party, which has broken decisively with the Prime Minister over the withdrawal of settlements and military forces from Gaza in August.

While most analysts are dismissive of Mr Peretz's chances of winning a general election, particularly against Mr Sharon, the latter's telephone call of congratulations to Mr Peretz yesterday cannot disguise the fact that the Prime Minister, popular in the country but beleaguered in his party, faces a formidable set of unexpected and unwelcome problems. The two men are to meet on Sunday.

There is continuing speculation that Mr Sharon may break altogether with the Likud rebels, led by the former finance minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who wants to replace him as the party's leader, and form a new party of the "centre" to contest the elections.

But while the polls suggest that Mr Sharon would have an excellent chance of forming the biggest single party in an electoral contest with a right-wing Likud party led by Mr Netanyahu and a Peretz-led Labour Party, the new political landscape appears to deprive him of the numerically significant coalition partner he would need to form a viable government after such an election.

While Mr Peretz's approach to economic policy, which in British political terms would probably be described as "old Labour", will face considerable opposition inside as well as outside his own party, his forthright call yesterday for a return to the peace process may signal a more significant shift in the terms of Israeli political debate.

Speaking at a commemoration event near the Jerusalem grave of the former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was assassinated 10 years ago this month, Mr Peretz declared: "We will not rest until we reach a permanent agreement [with the Palestinians] that would secure a safe future for our children and that would provide us with renewed hope to live in a region where people lead a life of co-operation and not, God forbid, where blood is shed."

Mr Peretz, who is the chairman of the trade union federation Histadrut, added: "I came today to make a vow to Rabin, once again, that I intend to do everything I can to continue his way, I intend to do everything I can so that [Rabin's] assassin would know he failed to murder peace."

Mr Peretz, who was excoriated by the secular Shinui party leader, Tommy Lapid, as a "social demagogue" who would now lead an "anti-reform party", was apparently helped by a low turnout in which he was delivered 42.35 per cent of the votes, compared with 39.96 per cent for Mr Peres.

The outgoing leader was conspicuous in not offering immediate congratulations to his successful opponent. But Mr Peretz appealed to him in his victory speech to work "by his side" adding: "Don't leave us alone, Shimon. If not for me, then do it for the party's sake; if not for the party, then do it for the country."

Al-Qaeda Says It Carried Out Jordan Hotel Bombings

Nov. 10 (Bloomberg) -- The Iraqi offshoot of al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for three hotel bombings yesterday that killed at least 56 people in Amman in Jordan's worst violence since 1970.

Jordanian authorities arrested several people and seized a number of vehicles in connection with the attacks, Jordan's official state news agency, Petra, said on its Web site, citing an unidentified security official. Neither the number of those detained nor their identities were provided.

At least 93 people were injured in the blasts and one man died today of his injuries in a hospital in Amman, Petra said. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born leader of Iraq's al-Qaeda cell, said in a statement posted on the Internet that his followers carried out the attacks, Petra reported without providing further details.

The Radisson SAS hotel, the Hyatt Amman and the Days Inn hotels had been ``turned by the dictator of Jordan into a garden for the enemies of our religion, the Jews and the Crusaders,'' Agence France-Presse quoted the statement as saying.

King Hussein of Jordan in September 1970 moved to quash an attempt by Palestinian organizations to overthrow his monarchy. The ensuing battles in what was called ``Black September'' left hundreds dead or hurt.

Aqaba Attack

The last militant strike in the country was an Aug. 19 rocket attack targeting U.S. warships in the Red Sea port of Aqaba that was claimed by al-Qaeda-linked groups. A Jordanian soldier died of wounds sustained in that assault.

The attacks on the Amman hotels yesterday were carried out by people wearing explosive belts and, in one instance, involved a car that exploded at a security barrier, Jordan's Deputy Prime Minister Marwan Muasher told Cable News Network late yesterday.

Casualty figures show the dead included 15 Jordanians, five Iraqi nationals, three Chinese, a Saudi, a Palestinian and an Indonesian, while the bodies of 30 people have yet to be identified, according to AFP.

Four senior Palestinian officials died in the explosions, Palestinian officials who requested anonymity said. They were: Major General Bashir Nafeh, chief of military intelligence in the West Bank, Colonel Abed Allun, a senior member of the Preventive Security forces, Jihad Fatouh, the commercial attaché at the Palestinian Embassy in Cairo, and Mosab Khorma, deputy Chairman of Cairo-Amman Bank in the Palestinian territories.

UN Workers

Amman has become a staging base for aid operations in Iraq, which borders Jordan, a U.S. ally. About 750 United Nations workers are based in the city representing agencies such as the World Food Program and the UN Children's Fund, or UNICEF.

The attacks ``prove that the terrorism which rages in Iraq has also become a real threat to other countries, including those which have closed their eyes on what is going on in our country,'' AFP quoted Jawad al-Maliki, deputy leader of Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari's Dawa party, as saying. ``What has happened in Jordan is a warning not only to Jordan but to all of our Arab brothers who must take our warnings seriously.''

Jordan's stock exchange and banks were closed today as the country's central bank ordered a day off, according to Petra. Jordan's land borders, closed after the bombings, were opened today amid ``stepped up security measures,'' Petra said.

``The fact that these are hotels that are frequented by Westerners and that Jordan has been involved in Iraq, training Iraqi security forces, says this is an al-Qaeda attack,'' Steve Cook, a Middle East analyst for the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, said yesterday. ``It has all the hallmarks of al- Qaeda's global struggle against the West and attempts to cow Arab countries that might be involved in Iraq.''

`Misled' Group

Jordan's King Abdullah II said a ``misled and misleading group'' was behind the attacks and his country's efforts to combat terrorism wouldn't be deterred by the bombings, Petra reported on its Web site.

The deadliest attack was at the Radisson, where a person wearing an explosives belt set off his bomb at a wedding reception, Major Bashir Daaja, head of media at Jordan's Public Security Department, said in a statement distributed by Petra.

A vehicle exploded outside the Days Inn after it tried to cross a security barrier, Muasher told CNN.

A number of Israelis staying at the Radisson were evacuated before the bombing by Jordanian security forces and escorted back to Israel due to ``a specific security alert,'' Haaretz reported on its Web site, without saying were it obtained the information. The Israeli foreign minister said that no Israeli tourists are known to have been injured in the blasts, it said.

Bush Reaction

U.S. President George W. Bush offered ``every possible form of cooperation in investigating these attacks and assisting in efforts to bring these terrorists to justice,'' White House spokesman Scott McClellan said in a statement released in Washington late yesterday.

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, who is traveling in the region, issued statements condemning the attacks. Annan, who was planning to visit the Jordanian capital today, dropped that stop from his trip, spokeswoman Marie Okabe said.

In meetings with Saudi Arabian and Egyptian authorities, ``the Secretary General stressed the need for member states to adopt a comprehensive convention against terrorism as soon as possible,'' according to a UN statement issued late yesterday in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

The Hyatt explosion took place in the hotel's lobby, according to a statement issued by Chicago-based Hyatt Corp. The company said it had not yet been able to confirm how many of its guests were killed or hurt.

Guests Evacuated

Minneapolis-based Radisson Hotels & Resorts and Parsippany, New Jersey-based Days Inn Worldwide both issued statements late yesterday saying they are trying to confirm details and that guests have been evacuated.

``We understand now from our conversations with the local hotel management that four guests were injured, three seriously,'' Rich Roberts, a Days Inn spokesman, said in an interview. ``We have been told that no employees were hurt.''

The 260-room Radisson hotel in Amman describes its Royal Hall as ``the largest and most prestigious ballroom in Jordan'' for banquets and weddings, according to its Web site. The room can accommodate up to 2,000 guests.

The 316-room Grand Hyatt has restaurants serving Italian and Thai-Vietnamese cuisine and a lounge that features a fireplace and jazz music, according to descriptions and pictures on its Web site. Amman's Days Inn Hotel is a 10-story facility.

Al-Zarqawi, who has a $25 million U.S. bounty on his head, was condemned to death by Jordan in absentia in April for the 2002 murder of a U.S. diplomat in Amman. He had been freed from a Jordanian prison under a general amnesty by King Abdullah in 1999.

AMMAN, Jordan — Suicide bombers carried out nearly simultaneous attacks on three Western chain hotels here Wednesday night, killing at least 57 people, wounding more than 100 and emphatically ending Jordan's status as an oasis of relative calm in the Middle East.

The blasts struck the Grand Hyatt, Radisson SAS and Days Inn in the Jordanian capital just before 9 p.m., sending clouds of black smoke billowing into the sky and leaving some of the bloodied victims lying on plush-carpeted floors.

At the Radisson, an assailant detonated an explosives belt in the midst of a wedding party in a crowded banquet hall, resulting in extensive casualties, officials said. At the Days Inn, a car bomber was unable to breach the security perimeter outside the hotel before detonating his explosives, Deputy Prime Minister Marwan Muasher told reporters.

Emergency workers rushing to the scenes used bellman's carts to carry the wounded out of the hotels. The flood of victims overwhelmed local hospitals.

A surgeon at Istiqlal Hospital reported "bodies coming left and right." Sixteen corpses were placed in a single room and dozens of the injured were in danger of dying overnight, the surgeon said.

No group claimed immediate responsibility for the bombings, but Western intelligence officials said the multiple, tightly coordinated suicide attacks focusing on relatively soft targets bore the hallmark of the Al Qaeda network. Muasher, in an interview on CNN, said that although it was too early to tell for sure, he believed Al Qaeda-affiliated Jordanian-born militant Abu Musab Zarqawi was "obviously the prime suspect."

Early reports indicated that the majority of the victims Wednesday were Jordanian civilians. The injured included Moustapha Akkad, the internationally famed Syrian-born film director of "The Message" and "Lion of the Desert." Akkad's 30-year-old daughter, Reem, died in one of the blasts.

Madison Conoley, a spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Amman, said no American citizens were known to have been injured. Associated Press reported that an American at the Hyatt, speaking with a Southern drawl, had said, "My friends are dead." The blast shattered the entrance to the five-star hotel.

Reuters quoted a French U.N. official as saying, "I was eating with friends in the restaurant next to the bar when I saw a huge ball of fire shoot up to the ceiling and then everything went black."

The U.S. Embassy was advising Americans in Amman to take what the spokesman called "common sense" precautions such as "avoiding large crowds and keeping a low profile."

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that Israelis staying at the Radisson on Wednesday had been evacuated before the attacks and escorted back home "apparently due to a specific security threat."

Amos N. Guiora, a former senior Israeli counter-terrorism official, said in a phone interview with The Times that sources in Israel had also told him about the pre-attack evacuations.

"It means there was excellent intelligence that this thing was going to happen," said Guiora, a former leader of the Israel Defense Forces who now heads the Institute for Global Security Law and Policy at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. "The question that needs to be answered is why weren't the Jordanians working at the hotel similarly removed?"

Jordanian security forces were placed on high alert, deploying throughout the capital around hotels, embassies and malls. The Jordanian government sealed off the borders and announced that all government and public offices would be closed in mourning today.

Jordan's King Abdullah II condemned the attacks, calling them criminal acts committed by "a misled and misleading group."

In Washington, President Bush said the bombings "again demonstrated the terrible cruelty of the terrorists and the great toll they take on civilized society." Bush, in a statement, pledged full support and assistance for the Jordanian government, which he called "a key ally in the war on terror."

Jordan has long enjoyed a reputation as a safe zone sandwiched between its violent, unstable neighbors — Israel and the Palestinian territories to the west and Iraq to the east. Nestled amid the tumult, Jordan looks at first like a sleepy strip of desert and rugged mountains, tourist-friendly and eager to get along politically with other Arab countries as well as the West.

As suicide attacks took place routinely in Israel, large-scale bombings rocked hotels in Egypt and an insurgency raged in Iraq after the U.S.-led invasion of 2003, Jordan largely escaped the region's violence.

At the same time, the type of attack that occurred Wednesday had long been seen by Amman as a possibility.

"We've always been concerned about it," said Taher Masri, a former Jordanian prime minister. "We've known the terrorists have been targeting Jordan for a long time."

"Whaaaassssuuuuuuup?!"

Remember that phrase? Still trying desperately to forget it? Good luck. It's one of the most pervasive pieces of pop language in recent memory. What you might not know, however, is that before it was an advertisement for beer, it was a short film by a young black copywriter in Chicago. The film catalogued the soon-to-be ubiquitous phrase's popularity among filmmaker/copywriter Charles Stone III and his friends for 16 years; Budweiser saw the potential for an advertising hit, bought it, and the rest is pop history.

Oh, and it's actually spelled "Whaazzzaahhhh?!," in case anyone is keeping track.

Stories like this are the subject of Leslie Savan's new book, Slam Dunks and No-Brainers: Language in Your Life, the Media, Business, Politics, and, Like, Whatever. Savan, a former advertising columnist for many years at the Village Voice, is taking on the rugged world of the social application of language. She has produced a work that slides past the sensitivity most people hold to the way they speak and goes for the jugular of exposing pop language for what it is.

Well, what is it, exactly? Savan tackles that question in an excerpt from the book's introduction that AlterNet has published, and it's a question whose answer evolves and changes, depending on who's asking it and when. Savan proposes that this examination is not a strict, finger-wagging criticism of the way we speak, but an exposé of the effects of mass marketing and mass media on the way our brains process and regurgitate information.

Writing about language is a challenge when considering the fact that the subject matter is the essential tool in the explanation. Savan's personal preferences for language are strong themes throughout the book, but nonetheless she succeeds in breaking down complex issues: the Orwellian, "regular guy" vocabulary of the Bush administration, the appropriation and stereotyping of African American dialects and slang, the effects of the digital age on the way we speak, and more.

Savan doesn't pretend to be an expert in any of these areas; she cites numerous sociolinguists and scholars for the research that she bases her theories on. Rather than being an academic exercise or prescriptive diatribe, Slam Dunks and No Brainers is the beginning of a discussion that shows how pop affects our ability to process information, and how we relate to one another in the Age of Inundation.

AlterNet had a chance to speak with Savan about the book in late October 2005.

Where does pop language come from? The media?

Part of what pop language is, is words and phrases that have a glamour or cachet... they're clichés with cachet, you might say. [laughing] It comes from everyday, "regular" people. It doesn't come down to us from media, from advertising agencies and sit-coms. But, once the sit-coms and the ad agencies pick up on how catchy it is, they distribute it and use it more as punchlines. Many of the phrases like "I don't think so" are used as the punchline of an ad.

For example, "no brainer -- " there are whole ads that would spin on the use of the words "no brainer." Dozens of ads and movie trailers, particularly, have turned on "Yessss!" Some of the movie trailer producers would tell me that they were so thankful when there was a "Yessss!" in the movie, because they knew they could produce their whole ad on that "Yessss!" They explained that it very consciously says, "Yes, I'll go see this movie." It makes you one of audience, it builds up the excitement and sort of generalizes without saying what the movie is, what the context is, what the characters are.

Once the media and marketing pick up on the language and then send it back to us "regular people," we pick it up and feel new cachet, new glamour. It connects us to the millions of other people that are saying it, too. Here we get into another aspect of the definition, which is that you are "the crowd" speaking when you speak this language. You seem to have them in the background, on your side, helping you to make the point and winning the moment. [...]

You talked about a commercial on Brian Lehrer's show -- the Sprint commercial that has an upper-class white executive talking about getting a particular Sprint phone, and talking about "sticking it to The Man." And his subordinate says, "Uh, sir, you are The Man." The executive nods and says, "I know..."

That commercial was so interesting because commercials, for decades now have been using this "Outsider" appeal, this "stick it to the Man" appeal. Which, of course, has been a crock all along. But this commercial was acknowledging that it was a crock, and that was its selling point. It was adding one more meta-level where we can identify with Sprint because they know that they have used this kind of appeal.

They're winking at themselves and us at the same time.

They're winking with both eyes. [laughing] The point is that you can't get outside of that box anymore, you can't think outside of that box of buying something to stick it to the Man who's selling it to you. And that is of course a pop phrase itself -- think outside the box. The more we talk this way and think this way, and perform this way, the more we are stuck inside that box.

How do you think people can break out of it?

[...] So, if we can stop racing for a moment, and sit back and listen to ourselves and listen what is being spoken to us, and what it's saying, then we can become a little bit more aware. This is what I really want the book to be about. I'm not saying that this language is bad, but we need to be aware of it. Much of pop language is great -- much of it, for example, cuts through Orwellian bullshit in the realm of politics. Much of it can do that -- we are fighting fire with fire, and we need it.

The use of "slam dunk" by George Tenet was interesting.

A lot of people knew that George Tenet, the former CIA director, said that finding WMD would be a "slam dunk." The build-up as to how he came to say that is even more intriguing, though. This all comes from Bob Woodward's book, Plan of Attack. George Tenet's deputy made a detailed presentation in the Oval Office with George Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice and chief of staff, Andrew Card. He convinced them that they could convince the American public that there were indeed WMD in Iraq and that they would find them. Apparently -- it's not entirely clear from the book -- the CIA wasn't trying to prove to Bush and company that there were WMDs, but that they could make a case to the American public that there were.

It was a marketing meeting.

It was totally a marketing meeting. And in fact, Bob Woodard says in his book, it was a "flop marketing-wise." It was detailed, it had satellite photos of trucks moving around, numbers, projections, little bits of conversation, but nothing that was very persuasive. And then George Bush himself, according to Woodward, said, "Is this the best you've got? I don't think that this is something that Joe Public would understand." And then George Tenet, who had been quiet up until that point, jumped up off the couch, made his arms and hands go into sort of a dunking-the-basketball gesture (he's a big basketball fan) and said "Don't worry, it's a slam-dunk case." Bush said, "Are you sure about that?" And Tenet said, "Definitely, it's a slam dunk."

According to Woodward, Bush later told him that if it had just listened to the deputy's presentation, it wouldn't have sold anybody on the idea. But once George Tenet said that, they definitely felt better about it. And the people in that room, their mood shifted from doubt to confidence. In a way, George Tenet was speaking in terms that Joe President would understand. [laughing] [...]

Deanna Zandt is a contributing editor at AlterNet.

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. -- Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson warned residents of a rural Pennsylvania town Thursday that disaster may strike there because they "voted God out of your city" by ousting school board members who favored teaching intelligent design.

All eight Dover, Pa., school board members up for re-election were defeated Tuesday after trying to introduce "intelligent design" - the belief that the universe is so complex that it must have been created by a higher power - as an alternative to the theory of evolution.

"I'd like to say to the good citizens of Dover: If there is a disaster in your area, don't turn to God. You just rejected him from your city," Robertson said on the Christian Broadcasting Network's "700 Club."

Eight families had sued the district, claiming the policy violates the constitutional separation of church and state. The federal trial concluded days before Tuesday's election, but no ruling has been issued.

Later Thursday, Robertson issued a statement saying he was simply trying to point out that "our spiritual actions have consequences."

"God is tolerant and loving, but we can't keep sticking our finger in his eye forever," Robertson said. "If they have future problems in Dover, I recommend they call on Charles Darwin. Maybe he can help them."

Robertson made headlines this summer when he called on his daily show for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

In October 2003, he suggested that the State Department be blown up with a nuclear device. He has also said that feminism encourages women to "kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians."

President Jacques Chirac made a public appeal Thursday, asking parents to take responsibility for the actions of their children and keep them home at night.

Half of the 2,000 people arrested over the past 15 nights have been minors, including the 200 people arrested overnight Thursday.

Some police officers were hurt in the Lyons area in the latest night of chaos.

Groups from 160 suburban communities are planning to rally near the Eiffel Tower Friday to appeal for peace after the traditional Armistice Day ceremonies.

"We have to bring back calm in this area and to stop violence between the police and the young," one organizer told CBC News.

Police were bracing for trouble at the central Paris demonstration, with a total of 2,200 officers scheduled to work in case more riots broke out.

The violence broke out just over two weeks ago, after two teenagers were electrocuted in Clichy-sous-Bois, a suburb heavily populated by African and Arab immigrants.

Their friends said they were hiding from a police search when they died in a power station, but police have denied they were chasing the two youths.

Earlier this week, government officials declared a state of emergency and invoked a 50-year-old law allowing local officials to impose curfews to crack down on rioters.

The treaty, known as the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, was finalised in May 2003 and came into force earlier this year, the UN said on Tuesday.

The parties who have ratified it are scheduled to meet for the first time in Geneva in February.

The treaty requires countries that ratify it to restrict tobacco advertising and sponsorship, put tougher health warnings on cigarettes and limit the use of language like "low-tar" and "light".

They also are meant to enact price and tax hikes, create controls on second hand smoke and sales of cigarettes to youngsters, as well as clamp down on smuggling.

UN associate spokesman Farhan Haq said 106 countries ratified the treaty by Tuesday's deadline for participation at the February meeting expected.

Corporate Accountability International, a Boston-based organisation which campaigns against dangerous corporate actions around the world, said countries covering over 70% of the world's population have ratified the treaty.

Signatories

They include Australia, Brazil, Britain, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Japan, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and Turkey.

"The progress is a true testimony to the growing global commitment to protect people's lives over big tobacco's profits," Corporate Accountability International's Campaigns Director Patti Lynn said in a statement.

The organisation criticised President George Bush's administration, which signed the treaty on 10 May 2004, for failing to submit it to the Senate for ratification.

The accord aims to reduce substantially the number of deaths from tobacco-related illnesses - such as cancer and heart disease - which the World Health Organisation estimates kill one smoker every 6.5 seconds.

There are an estimated 1.2 billion smokers in the world.

The physics of 9/11 — including how fast and symmetrically one of the World Trade Center buildings fell — prove that official explanations of the collapses are wrong, says a Brigham Young University physics professor.

In fact, it's likely that there were "pre-positioned explosives" in all three buildings at ground zero, says Steven E. Jones.

In a paper posted online Tuesday and accepted for peer-reviewed publication next year, Jones adds his voice to those of previous skeptics, including the authors of the Web site www.wtc7.net, whose research Jones quotes. Jones' article can be found at www.physics.byu.edu/research/energy/htm7.html.

Jones, who conducts research in fusion and solar energy at BYU, is calling for an independent, international scientific investigation "guided not by politicized notions and constraints but rather by observations and calculations.

"It is quite plausible that explosives were pre-planted in all three buildings and set off after the two plane crashes — which were actually a diversion tactic," he writes. "Muslims are (probably) not to blame for bringing down the WTC buildings after all," Jones writes.

As for speculation about who might have planted the explosives, Jones said, "I don't usually go there. There's no point in doing that until we do the scientific investigation."

Previous investigations, including those of FEMA, the 9/11 Commission and NIST (the National Institutes of Standards and Technology), ignore the physics and chemistry of what happened on Sept. 11, 2001, to the Twin Towers and the 47-story building known as WTC 7, he says. The official explanation — that fires caused structural damage that caused the buildings to collapse — can't be backed up by either testing or history, he says.

Jones acknowledges that there have been "junk science" conspiracy theories about what happened on 9/11, but "the explosive demolition hypothesis better satisfies tests of repeatability and parsimony and therefore is not 'junk science.' "

In a 9,000-word article that Jones says will be published in the book "The Hidden History of 9/11," by Elsevier, Jones offers these arguments:

• The three buildings collapsed nearly symmetrically, falling down into their footprints, a phenomenon associated with "controlled demolition" — and even then it's very difficult, he says. "Why would terrorists undertake straight-down collapses of WTC-7 and the Towers when 'toppling over' falls would require much less work and would do much more damage in downtown Manhattan?" Jones asks. "And where would they obtain the necessary skills and access to the buildings for a symmetrical implosion anyway? The 'symmetry data' emphasized here, along with other data, provide strong evidence for an 'inside' job."

• No steel-frame building, before or after the WTC buildings, has ever collapsed due to fire. But explosives can effectively sever steel columns, he says.

• WTC 7, which was not hit by hijacked planes, collapsed in 6.6 seconds, just .6 of a second longer than it would take an object dropped from the roof to hit the ground. "Where is the delay that must be expected due to conservation of momentum, one of the foundational laws of physics?" he asks. "That is, as upper-falling floors strike lower floors — and intact steel support columns — the fall must be significantly impeded by the impacted mass. . . . How do the upper floors fall so quickly, then, and still conserve momentum in the collapsing buildings?" The paradox, he says, "is easily resolved by the explosive demolition hypothesis, whereby explosives quickly removed lower-floor material, including steel support columns, and allow near free-fall-speed collapses." These observations were not analyzed by FEMA, NIST nor the 9/11 Commission, he says.

• With non-explosive-caused collapse there would typically be a piling up of shattering concrete. But most of the material in the towers was converted to flour-like powder while the buildings were falling, he says. "How can we understand this strange behavior, without explosives? Remarkable, amazing — and demanding scrutiny since the U.S. government-funded reports failed to analyze this phenomenon."

• Horizontal puffs of smoke, known as squibs, were observed proceeding up the side the building, a phenomenon common when pre-positioned explosives are used to demolish buildings, he says.

• Steel supports were "partly evaporated," but it would require temperatures near 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit to evaporate steel — and neither office materials nor diesel fuel can generate temperatures that hot. Fires caused by jet fuel from the hijacked planes lasted at most a few minutes, and office material fires would burn out within about 20 minutes in any given location, he says.

• Molten metal found in the debris of the World Trade Center may have been the result of a high-temperature reaction of a commonly used explosive such as thermite, he says. Buildings not felled by explosives "have insufficient directed energy to result in melting of large quantities of metal," Jones says.

• Multiple loud explosions in rapid sequence were reported by numerous observers in and near the towers, and these explosions occurred far below the region where the planes struck, he says.

Jones says he became interested in the physics of the WTC collapse after attending a talk last spring given by a woman who had had a near-death experience. The woman mentioned in passing that "if you think the World Trade Center buildings came down just due to fire, you have a lot of surprises ahead of you," Jones remembers, at which point "everyone around me started applauding."

Following several months of study, he presented his findings at a talk at BYU in September.

Jones says he would like the government to release 6,899 photographs and 6,977 segments of video footage for "independent scrutiny." He would also like to analyze a small sample of the molten metal found at Ground Zero.

In quantum physics, nothing is as it seems. As physicists continue to study the universe they continually run into new questions that shake how humans understand the universe's intricate mechanics.

UC Berkeley physics professor, Raphael Bousso, is trying to break down the mysteries of the universe with a concept called the holographic principle. Physicists stumbled on the idea while studying black holes. It is a concept, which ultimately questions whether the third dimension exists.

"There's a real conflict between the way that we're thinking about the world right now, which is a very local way where everything happens independently in different regions of space and the way that we're going to have to think about it," said Bousso in an interview.

Bousso presented the ideas at a seminar last weekend called "Latest Theories About the Universe and Its Governing Laws: Theoretical Physics Made Easy for the Public" at the Lawrence Hall of Science to an audience of about 100.

The holographic principle uses the optical concept of holograms to try to visually explain the complex idea. Holograms are most often used on credit cards and are images that look three dimensional, but they exist on a two dimensional surface.

"You have to keep in mind that we're just using that name as a sort of metaphor for something that we're specifying quite precisely when we're talking about how much information there is relative to certain areas," he said.

A computer chip is a good way to visualize the principle. The chip has information stored on it in the form of data, but this isn't the information Bousso is talking about. Information in the holographic principle means the entire collection of matter the chip is made of.

"One way of quantifying the complexity of matter is to ask how many different states can it be in? How many things can you wiggle in? How many different ways?" Bousso said.

It would seem logical that if you doubled the size of the chip, then you could store twice as much information on the chip.

"What we've found is that it appears that gravity conspires against that when you really try to store a lot of information in a special region, then once you double that region you can't store twice as much anymore," Bousso said.

In other words, if you have a bunch of grapes in the fridge and have all the information including water content, temperature and anything else, you should be able to create an exact replica of the grapes.

Physicists have found the information content doesn't hinge on volume, but rather on surface area. An information increase can only happen on a two-dimensional surface and information density cannot increase by volume, a three-dimensional measurement.

"The total amount of information that you can store in the world grows only like the surface area of the region that you're considering," he said.

The discovery ultimately says the concept shows the third dimension could be an illusion because complex calculations can't prove it exists. The recognition is a step of progress, but Bousso doesn't know where it will ultimately lead.

"It may be a major step, it may just be one piece in a very big puzzle, but I think it's definitely progress towards that goal," he said.

Although there is practical way to use these principles right now, Bousso said he and fellow physicists are driven to understand nature at the most fundamental level.

Albert Einstein didn't have any practical applications for his theory of relativity when he first discovered it, but now the concept is woven into today's technology with things like global positioning systems, he said.

"It happens to be true that sooner or later these types of progress have not just had practical applications, but they really underlie almost everything that we can do technologically today," Bousso said.

Ultimately, the physicist wants to find the origins and the implications of the holographic principle.

He said the principle has given insight into physics concepts that scientists have understood for years.

"It gives us a preview of some of the unifications and the explanatory power that the quantum gravity we're seeking is going to have," Bousso said.

IT COULD go rip, it could go crunch. Or, according to the latest theory on how our universe will end, it could be swallowed by a giant wormhole.

In a scenario dubbed the "big trip", so-called phantom energy trickling into a wormhole will cause it to swell up so much that it eventually engulfs the entire universe, says cosmologist Pedro Gonzalez-Diaz at the Institute of Mathematics and Fundamental Physics in Madrid, Spain.

Phantom energy is a form of the dark energy that could be responsible for the puzzling accelerated expansion of the universe. Its defining property is that its energy density increases with time. "Phantom energy is precisely the form of energy one needs to create a wormhole," says Diaz. "Wormholes, therefore, would actually be expected components of the space-time foam if dark energy is actually phantom energy. It is natural to study both at the same time."

Wormholes are theoretical structures connecting two regions of space, or even two parallel universes. In Diaz's scenario, phantom energy enters the wormhole through one end, making it grow. Eventually, the wormhole will grow so large and so quickly that the whole universe will be swallowed by it (Physics Letters B, www.arxiv.org/astro-ph/0510771).

"The paper deals with a remarkable combination," says Christian Armendariz-Picon at Syracuse University, New York. "However, wormholes have two entries. What happens at the second one?"

In an article in the Nov. 1 issue of The Journal of Clinical Investigation, the Rochester scientists describe a new mechanism by which brain cells can be damaged during chronic neurodegenerative diseases. When inflammation occurs in the brain, nerve impulses that are passed between cells during routine activities like learning and memory can become toxic. Instead of triggering the formation of memories, these impulses can inflict injury on neurons and disrupt neurologic function.

Understanding this mechanism could provide a new path for drugs to treat the diseases. Working in collaboration with researchers at the University of California at San Diego, the Rochester scientists propose a strategy of chemical preconditioning to induce adaptations in nerve cells that would enable the cells to better withstand toxic attacks, prevent injury, and preserve function.

"Preconditioning would allow the nervous system to experience stress and become more resistant to future encounters with stress and the damage it can trigger," said Harris A. Gelbard, M.D., professor of Neurology at the University of Rochester Medical Center and the research project's principal investigator.

A long-standing villain in neurodegenerative disease has been glutamate, an amino acid that normally acts as a neurotransmitter. Excess glutamate, however, can overly excite neurons, causing damage and death -- a process called excitotoxicity. Some drugs developed for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease, for example, are designed to lower the production of glutamate or block its transmission to reduce excitotoxic injury.

"But just blocking glutamate doesn't seem to work efficiently in neurodegenerative diseases with inflammation," said Gelbard. "We reconsidered how excitotoxicity actually damages the nervous system in a functional way."

The scientists focused on dendrites, the crooked branches of neurons that carry impulses toward the body of the nerve cell, and synapses, the places where impulses pass from neuron to neuron. Injury to dendrites -- characterized by swelling or beading, loss of dendrite spines, and reduction in size -- is seen in HIV-1-associated dementia and Alzheimer's.

In laboratory studies, brain cells and slices were exposed to platelet-activating factor, or PAF, a compound that promotes inflammation and plays many roles in the brain. It can be produced by neurons and takes part in the working of synapses, including activity associated with learning and remembering. It also is produced by immune cells during inflammation. The amount of PAF in the brain increases dramatically in HIV-1-associated dementia and other neurodegenerative diseases.

"We found that disease makes dendrites more vulnerable to excitotoxicity," said Matthew J. Bellizzi, a researcher and student in the M.D./Ph.D. program at the Medical Center and corresponding author of the journal article. "We also found that damage to the dendrites may not require abnormal glutamate exposure."

The lab studies showed that elevated levels of PAF promoted beading on dendrites and injury to synapses following bursts of synaptic activity similar to those thought to be involved in learning and memory.

"This mechanism does not just apply to HIV," Gelbard said. "It applies to Alzheimer's, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's and any neurodegenerative diseases that have synaptic dysfunction with inflammation, which is virtually all of them."

In lab studies, brain cells were treated with diazoxide, a drug investigated for use in ischemic heart disease and strokes. Pretreatment before exposure to PAF prevented dendritic beading and preserved synaptic functions, the studies showed.

"Stressing the cells with small amounts could trigger protective genes and induce adaptations that will make the dendrites more able to withstand insults," Bellizzi said.

Diazoxide is not the only drug that would work, and others might be better, the researchers said. Memantine, a drug that blocks glutamate receptors, is used in the treatment of Alzheimer's. Chemical preconditioning could represent an alternate or complementary strategy.

"Preconditioning to protect the synapse is likely to be more important in the early and middle phases of neurodegenerative diseases than simply preserving the cell body," Gelbard said.

"A missing piece of the puzzle has always focused on pin-pointing when Gigantopithecus existed," explains Rink.

"This is a primate that co-existed with humans at a time when humans were undergoing a major evolutionary change. Guangxi province in southern China, where the Gigantopithecus fossils were found, is the same region where some believe the modern human race originated."

Research into Gigantopithecus blackii began in 1935, when the Dutch paleontologist G.H. von Koenigswald discovered a yellowish molar among the "dragon bones" for sale in a Hong Kong pharmacy. Traditional Chinese medicine maintains that dragon bones, basically fossil bones and teeth, possess curative powers when the fossils are ground into a fine powder, and ingested.

For nearly 80 years, Gigantopithecus blackii has intrigued scientists, who have pieced together a description using nothing more than a handful of teeth and a set of jawbones.

"The size of these specimens – the crown of the molar, for instance, measures about an inch across – helped us understand the extraordinary size of the primate," says Rink. Sample studies further revealed that Gigantopithecus was an herbivore, feasting mainly on bamboo. Some believe that the primate's voracious appetite for bamboo ultimately placed him at the losing end of the evolutionary scale against his more nimble human competition.

Rink's research was funded by Canada's Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council. [...]

A group of travellers brought farming to Europe about 7,500 years ago. But did their children thrive and hand down the skill? Researchers studying ancient DNA say instead that the idea was stolen by more successful locals, as the farmers failed to leave their mark on Europe's genes.

The finding adds to a debate about Europeans' origins that "has been raging for the past ten years", says Peter Forster, a geneticist at the University of Cambridge. Scientists have turned to archaeology and analyses of modern DNA to try and settle the question, but they come up with contradictory results.

Some say that today's Europeans arose mostly from a population of hunter-gatherers who appeared on the continent up to 40,000 years ago, and who later won a genetic war against incoming farmers.

Others say that the agricultural arrivals, who came west from the fertile lands encompassing modern countries such as Egypt, Turkey and Iran, contributed substantially to the genetic make-up of the continent's population.

Forster and his colleagues weigh in on the side of the hunter-gatherers with their analysis of ancient DNA, reported in Science this week3.

Going, going, gone

The researchers, led by Joachim Burger at Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, extracted DNA from the bone and teeth of farmers buried in archaeological sites scattered throughout modern-day Germany, Hungary and Austria. Pottery and other artefacts identified the sites as farming land.

The investigators sequenced pieces of mitochondrial DNA in part because the genetic material in a corpse disintegrates over time: with thousands of mitochondria crammed into each cell, enough DNA often survives for analysis. Of the 57 individuals tested, 24 yielded usable DNA despite their age.

Six of these ancient farmers, found in three different sites, had a mitochondrial DNA type called N1a. This type is present in only 0.2% of people living in the region today.

This discussion has been raging for the past ten years.

"The farmers were really a pioneer group and didn't leave much of a mark," concludes Forster.

It could be a statistical fluke that the researchers stumbled on a large percentage of people with type N1a in their relatively small sample, admits Forster. But the fact that they came from three different areas adds to the likelihood that N1a really was more common among the farmers than it is today.

The researchers also ran a computer simulation suggesting that N1a type was probably not lost over time by chance.

What's your type?

"The study does not resolve the puzzle, but their interpretation is in line with what a lot of people, including me, have been suggesting for quite some time," says Antonio Torroni, a geneticist from the University of Pavia, Italy.

But Terry Brown, a geneticist from the University of Manchester, UK, calls the conclusions "a little bit tenuous". Brown points out that the study examines events in only one geographic region.

"During the 3,000 years in which agriculture spread into Europe, many different things were happening," says Brown. In some areas, hunter-gatherers probably picked up farming quickly; in others, farmers may have overrun the locals. "I don't think you can generalize," he says.

It is also difficult to explain the observation that N1a is not prevalent today in countries such as Iran, although the data for this are sparse. To facilitate a better analysis of current N1a prevalence and origins, Forster and his colleagues have started a project called Genetic Ancestor, through which members of the public can pay to have their DNA analyzed; the customers get information about their ancestry and the researchers build a genetic database.

Researchers on both sides say the debate could be clarified by data from the bones of the hunter-gatherers. But viable DNA from such bones is in very short supply.

Engineers at the Massachussetts Institute of Technology have published results showing that tinfoil helmets, prized in many circles for an assumed capacity to resist mind control rays from aliens and governments, may actually amplify the controlling signals.

There's only one problem: The humour of the engineers is so deadpan, the findings are likely to be cited ad infinitum in conspiracy and UFO journals.

The abstract for the profusely illustrated study says:

Using a $250,000 network analyser, we find that although on average all helmets attenuate invasive radio frequencies in either directions (either emanating from an outside source, or emanating from the cranium of the subject), certain frequencies are in fact greatly amplified. These amplified frequencies coincide with radio bands reserved for government use according to the Federal Communication Commission (FCC). Statistical evidence suggests the use of helmets may in fact enhance the government's invasive abilities. We theorize that the government may in fact have started the helmet craze for this reason.

The study contains recommendations for the construction of helmets that will work more efficiently as well as detailed results on the examination of three classic helmets, the Classical, the Fez, and the Centurion.

One finding, raising entirely new fields of speculation, is that certain frequencies enhanced by the helmets are in the hands of multi-national corporations.

The researchers did not, however, delve into the critical question of whether one should construct hats with the reflective side of the foil facing in or out.

Britain should drop its moral outrage over sexual relationships between pupils and teachers and accept that an "erotic charge" in the classroom can be an aid to teaching, a Sheffield University academic says.

Pat Sikes, an education lecturer, has written a paper in defence of pupil-teacher affairs, arguing that it is wrong always to cast students as victims when they are often the instigators of genuine relationships and suggesting that about 1,500 pupil-teacher affairs develop every year, the Times Educational Supplement reports today.

Dr Sikes said she had always been curious about relationships that began in the classroom because she had married her history teacher after falling for him at the age of 14. She met her husband, David, in 1970 on her first day at upper school, aged 14, and his first day as a teacher, aged 22. "It wasn't until two years later, on the evening that he left the school to take up a post elsewhere that we declared our feelings for and to each other ... I returned to school, after the summer vacation as [his] girlfriend," she said.

Dr Sikes claims such teacher-pupil affairs were not uncommon at her liberal comprehensive school in Leicestershire, and were not seen as exploitative.

Her paper angered children's charities, which labelled it "bizarre at best". Natasha Finlayson, of ChildLine, said: "For Dr Sikes to praise the 'seductive nature and erotic charge' of good teaching is misguided and bizarre at best.

"The Sexual Offences Act was designed with a welcome emphasis on protecting children and young people, rather than on the rights of the small number of pupils over the age of consent who choose to engage in sexual relationships on equal terms with a teacher."

Phillip Noyes, the NSPCC's director of public policy, added: "Children spend the majority of their day at school and teachers have a unique relationship with their pupils which should never be abused."

Dr Sikes's paper, "Scandalous stories and dangerous liaisons: when female pupils and male teachers fall in love", describes one relationship that began, albeit platonically, when one pupil was just 13, and another where a 17-year-old student had a sexual affair with her 35-year-old study supervisor.

Dr Sikes argues that the change in the law in 2003 which criminalises sexual relationships between pupils and teachers if the pupil is under the age of 18, inevitably labels students as victims, when they can frequently be the instigators of genuine relationships.

Dr Sikes decided to conduct her study after the former chief inspector of schools Chris Woodhead admitted in 1999 that he had had a relationship with a former pupil years earlier. He said such experiences could be "educative", sparking a public outcry. Mr Woodhead denied the affair began while he was still a teacher and a government inquiry decided he had no case to answer.

Dr Sikes says: "Expressions of sexuality provide a major currency and resource in the everyday exchanges of school life ... and nowhere more so, perhaps, than in the seductive nature and 'erotic charge' often characteristic of 'good' teaching which provokes a positive and exciting response." She emphasised that she was "totally opposed to child abuse, paedophilia and exploitative relationships of all kinds" and said her study was based on information volunteered by those pupils who had no regrets about their relationships.

* FROM NOV. 4, 2005: Mysterious signals jamming garage door openers

The embassy categorically denies that it had anything to do with it.

The signal was being transmitted at 390 megahertz, a U.S. military frequency used by the Pentagon's new Land Mobile Radio System. The same frequency is used by garage doors openers, which started to malfunction around the city about almost two weeks ago. A similar problem has popped up around military bases in the States.

The world's biggest garage door manufacturer, the Hamberlain group, took the problem seriously enough to fly design engineer Rob Keller to Ottawa from its Chicago headquarters, with machinery to try to track the signal.

But by the time he got here, the signal was gone.

"Well, as you can see there, we're not picking up anything there, which is the way it's been since I got in last night," said Keller Friday. "But there must be something out there, so I'll keep on it the rest of the day."

Industry Canada also sent its inspectors out with a sophisticated direction finder, says Ontario spectrum manager John Baggio.

"By the time they actually got out there to investigate the source, it had ceased to operate. So it's not possible to direction-find the source unless it's actually active," he said.

And people, such as Judy Dougherty, suddenly found their doors, which had been jamming for 10 days, were working just fine Thursday.

"Finally, [Thursday] night, ta-da, it worked. So there was no logical explanation. We said, 'Well that doesn't make sense.'"

The death of a molecular biologist has fuelled renewed speculation about a "curse" connected to an ancient corpse.

Tom Loy, 63, had analysed DNA found on "Oetzi", the Stone Age hunter whose remains were discovered in 1991.

Dr Loy died in unclear circumstances in Australia two weeks ago, it has been announced, making him the seventh person connected with Oetzi to die.

Colleagues and family of Dr Loy have rejected the notion that he was the victim of a "curse".

It is not known how many people have worked on the Oetzi project - and whether the death rate is statistically high.

The amateur climber who found Oetzi in 1991, Helmut Simon, was killed during an unexpected blizzard in the Alps last year, not far from the original find.

His body was missing for eight days before it was located.

Within hours of Mr Simon's funeral, the head of the mountain rescue team sent to find him died of a heart attack, aged 45 and apparently in good health.

Four other people associated with Oetzi have died, prompting rumours of a "mummy's curse":

* Rainer Henn, 64, a forensic pathologist who handled the body. He was killed in a car crash the following year

* Kurt Fritz, the mountaineer who led Dr Henn to the body. He was killed in an avalanche shortly after Dr Henn died

* Rainer Holz, 47, a filmmaker who made a documentary about removing the body from its block of ice. He died of a brain tumour soon afterwards

* Konrad Spindler, 66, an archaeologist who was a leading expert on the body. He died of complications related to multiple sclerosis.

Scoff

Dr Loy's brother Gareth said the two had never talked about a curse - and that Tom Loy had been in poor health, with a condition that caused his blood to clot.

An inquest into Dr Loy's death was inconclusive, ruling out foul play but unable to determine if he had died of natural causes, an accident, or both, Gareth Loy told The Australian newspaper.

An unnamed colleague of Dr Loy scoffed at the idea of a curse, the newspaper reported: "He didn't believe in the curse. It was just superstition. People die."

They walk in groups, their faces blurred beneath their navy-blue Union caps, guns slung over their shoulders, just as they have every Oct. 13 at exactly 4:24 a.m. for the past six years. Each time, Segal has stared as they march, their brass buttons gleaming in the light of the moon. Tonight will be the last vigil she sits before she leaves for college, and she won't let the chance slip by: She's gathered her courage and chosen two ghosts she's going to approach. They're young and boyish, playfully pushing each other back and forth. Segal's hand clasps the latch. She slides the door open and steps forward into the thick night. They disappear.

"It was like you see in the movies," says Segal. But it was far from the movies - to her, the ghosts were as real as the disappointment she felt at losing her chance to speak to them. Her belief in the supernatural, solidified by her experiences, is something Segal shares with a growing number of teenagers in the U.S. today, according to Lynn Schofield Clark, author of "From Angels to Aliens," a book about teens, the media and the supernatural. For many of these teens, encounters with ghosts, spirits, tingles and the just plain weird are more frightening - and more fascinating - than anything that ever slunk across a movie screen.

"They looked human"

Segal experienced her first taste of the world beyond in sixth grade, when she returned from the Earth Day Festival in Washington, D.C. She had arrived home late and fallen asleep on the couch in her den. Groggily, she woke up and looked at her watch: 4:24 a.m.

Peering through the darkness with unfocused eyes - she wasn't wearing her glasses - Segal froze as her gaze met two tall, thin, pale, white figures "like stretched-out spaghetti people" hovering next to her dining room table. They motioned toward her window with their "spidery hands," displaying large, round palms and unnaturally long fingers. Beyond that, the details were blurry; Segal could see brow ridges, where their eyes should have been, but only the sockets remained. "They looked human, but I couldn't be sure," she says.

Terrified after meeting her first pair of ghosts, Segal sprinted up to her room and hid under her bed. Although the idea of ghosts still spooks her seven years after the incident, it also intrigues her. In addition to witnessing the annual night-time ghost marches, Segal frequently awakes in the middle of the night - always at 4:24 a.m. - to unnatural knockings on her windows and, once, to clothes falling off the hangers in her closet and being pushed aside as if somebody were searching for an outfit. "I was pinching myself to see if it were true," says Segal, still somewhat shaken by the experience.

Senior Marianna Ator experienced similar episodes when she lived in Fort Worth, Texas. When she was two or three years old, she says, her mother heard a loud thunk and rushed into her room only to find her lying on the floor, insisting that somebody had forcefully pushed her out of her bed, even though no one else was in the room. A few years later, her dad slept through his alarm, only to awaken when he felt someone - or something - shaking the bed. Ator was even more unsettled when the dial on her parents' radio alarm, which had always been set to NPR, rotated to a religious station one morning. At first, the family dismissed it and set it back. But two or three weeks later, Ator's parents were roused once more by a religious station - this one "clear across the dial."

Senior Chatise Scott-Webster has also had uninvited supernatural visitors in her house in the form of several small, white bird-like footprints that appeared on her carpet one morning. But the main visitor to the Scott-Webster house was a welcome one: the spirit of her great-grandmother.

"He's just checking up on us"

When Scott-Webster's great-grandmother passed away three years ago at the age of 82, the rims of all of the candles in the Scott-Webster household were coated with a filmy black substance. Scott-Webster's uncle swore that the substance indicated "bad vibes," says Scott-Webster. But once her great-grandmother's furniture, jewelry and other belongings were moved into the home, the black films disappeared, and with them, the tensions in the Scott-Webster household. "It was a good spirit presence," explains Scott-Webster, who has grown to feel more and more connected with her late-great-grandmother over the past three years.

Scott-Webster recounts how once, after a particularly upsetting day, she sat in her living room, surrounded by her great-grandmother's belongings. Suddenly, she started to shiver, but then, feeling a presence in the room, she was overcome with a wave of relief. "[My great-grandmother] had the most gorgeous silver-green-blue eyes," says Scott-Webster, "and I felt as if her eyes were looking at me and I calmed down."

The same feeling of release and peace envelops senior Rita Mitchell whenever she enters her late-great-grandparents' house in Sunbury, Pennsylvania - especially if she's in her great-grandmother's room, where one evening, she says, her great-grandmother spoke to her.

Mitchell was asleep in her great-grandmother's old-fashioned wooden-banister bed when she suddenly awoke with an unexplained compulsion to clean the house. She remembers an unfamiliar, but kind, voice saying to her, "It's not time to get up yet, go back to sleep."

Now, whenever Mitchell visits the house in Sunbury, she goes to the bedroom, sits down on the edge of the bed and starts the dialogue again. "I feel like I'm talking to someone there. It's not like talking to a wall or talking to a desk. There's definitely a conversation going," says Mitchell. "Or at least someone listening."

Freshman Dadee Ramos doesn't wonder if there's somebody listening - she knows that her grandfather is watching over her and her family. Twice now, his ghost has come to visit her, she says - although he's never said anything, only smiled. The last time, when she was staying with family in the small town of San Miguel, El Salvador, she knew in advance that he was coming.

The day before, she'd caught sight of a dark butterfly and later learned from her mother that it was an omen that somebody was going to die. The next night, she spotted him in her bedroom mirror. His clothes were all white, like the ones the family had dressed him in for the funeral, but he wore his customary white sombrero, too. She slowly turned around and smiled; he smiled back and then just "floated towards the door," she says.

The ghost disappeared through the wall, leaving Ramos with white dots hovering in front of her eyes - along with the comforting feeling that her grandfather understood her life and was there to help her. Ramos has overcome the fear she felt when she initially encountered her grandfather's ghost; now she's certain that "he's just checking up on us," she says.

Contacting the realm beyond

But Ramos wishes that she could check up on him, too. After watching TV shows in which people "go to the other side" or "cross the line," she says, she decided that she would call in to one. Even though her mother discouraged her, Ramos took the chance and telephoned a show, asking it to contact her grandfather for her. The show said it would try, but couldn't promise anything, says Ramos. Nothing came of the call.

Mitchell has also tried to create a stronger connection with her great-grandmother's spirit. She's become increasingly interested in her family's history, and the last time she visited the house in Sunbury, she used up three rolls of film, taking photographs in all the rooms and close-ups of different objects her great-grandparents had left behind.

Although efforts to reach into the realm beyond are often met with skepticism, Clark emphasizes that the supernatural is becoming more accepted in American culture. She explains that contemporary teens are more open to listening to, experiencing and seeking out supernatural experiences.

Nevertheless, Segal is usually greeted with disbelief when she describes her encounters to others. "All through middle school," she says, "I was the weirdo, the crazy kid who saw dead people." Her father is certain she is on drugs, although her mother and her brother believe her accounts, she says.

But Segal has learned to ignore the antagonism. She is confident in the reality of her experiences. "It's that one thing that I have that a whole bunch of other people don't have," she says.

Although her encounters may distinguish her from the living, they bring her closer to the thin line that runs between what is real and what, in the silence of the night, might just be an illusion.

RIPON -- A longtime Ripon pastor faces charges including embezzlement and forgery for allegedly selling his church, the land it sits on and other property totaling $525,000 and using the money for his own use, such as to buy a new BMW car.

Randall Radic, 52, former pastor at First Congregational Church in Ripon, could serve a maximum of nearly 10 years in state prison if convicted on charges of embezzlement under false pretenses, forgery and forgery of corporate documents as well as an enhancement of committing a white-collar crime that involves more than $500,000, authorities said Wednesday.

"This is something you wouldn't expect from a man of the cloth," San Joaquin County Deputy District Attorney Phil Urie said. "It's disappointing, absolutely."

Radic is next scheduled to appear Nov. 15 in the Manteca branch of San Joaquin County Superior Court. He remains out of custody on his own recognizance.

Radic's Stockton-based attorney, Michael Babitzke, declined to comment.

The board of directors of the church had no knowledge its property had been sold, prosecutors said.

Radic had been the pastor of the church for about 10 years until he resigned last week just before turning himself in to the District Attorney's Office, authorities said. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Ripon police Sgt. Ed Ormonde said authorities began their investigation of the case on Oct. 20, when a church director contacted the department about suspicious activity from a Modesto bank account under First Congregational's name.

Church directors never authorized such an account to be opened, Ormonde said. But about $460,000 had been deposited into the account, Ormonde said. He also said money was being transferred to other accounts or withdrawn.

He said investigators determined Radic used some of that money to buy a new BMW worth about $102,000.

"People in the community saw his fiance'e drive the BMW," Ormonde said.

Investigators learned Radic had sold the main building of the church, the land it was on and another small house on the property to unsuspecting buyers -- a Manteca couple -- for about $525,000, Ormonde said. The couple, who were planning to turn the property into an office building, are not in any trouble and are cooperating with authorities, the sergeant said.

Ormonde said the church will not lose any property. He added police have recovered about $357,000 in cash and seized the BMW.

Millions make pilgrimages every year to Fatima and Lourdes, Medjugorje and Guadalupe. Pope John Paul's dedication to Christ's mother and the focus on the "divine feminine" in the Passion of the Christ and the Da Vinci Code have all brought greater attention to the Virgin Mary.

Devotion to her has increased in all Christian faiths, and Illinois seems to have become a mecca for Mary sightings.

They come from miles to get a glimpse.

"I've always had the faith," said one woman.

Whether it's a weeping icon on the Northwest Side, a faint outline on a brick wall in Hanover Park or an image in a Rogers Park tree trunk, they come because they believe.

“I think people are always looking for a sign of hope. Mary has always been a symbol and sign of that in Christian life," said Father James Presta at ST. Joseph College Seminary.

Many found that hope in an image that appeared on this wall underneath the Kennedy expressway. Thousands came from around the state and across the country. Six months later the image is gone but the pilgrims keep coming.

Alleged apparitions of the Virgin Mary have soared, especially here in Illinois with dozens in just the past two decades.

"I looked up and saw the liquid coming from her eyes," said V. Rev. Philip Koufos at St. Nicholas Albanian Orthodox Church. "We were confused and scared."

When this icon at the St. Nicholas Albanian Orthodox Church apparently started weeping in 1986, word spread quickly. More than 2 million people have reportedly visited the icon.

As pilgrims flock to these alleged apparitions, some church officials are concerned Mary’s message of charity can get lost.

"Some of the trivializing of Mary is sentimental. It leads to an insulated form of Christianity,” said Father Richard Fragomeni with the Catholic Theological Union. "It's an emotion without responsibility."

Why the increase in sightings? And why overwhelmingly to Catholics and not other Christians?

"Catholics and their religious imaginations, their hearts, their faith allows for them to see these things as legitimate experiences of religion. This is not to say that some of them are hallucinatory,” Fragomeni said.

Experts can often come up with easy scientific explanations. The so-called virgin of the underpass was dismissed as a salt stain, and the image on the wall in Hanover Park disappeared when a light was turned off.

The Catholic Church takes apparitions seriously, but moves very slowly. It's only authenticated seven sightings in the past two centuries, and none that's happened in the last 70 years.

"We don't run after any apparition that is there," Fragomeni said.

And there's a reason the church rarely debunks the sightings.

"I think the church wants to pay attention to the true impact of Mary and the emotion of her apparitions can stimulate us to the kind of action that she herself," Fragomeni said.

The church often doesn't get involved because the sightings, authentic or not, frequently inspire the faithful and may be beneficial.

The church is also not going to waste its time on the hallucinatory or downright silly sightings like the Virgin Mary on the grilled cheese sandwich that sold on eBay for almost $30,000.

Why so many sightings here? There are almost 2.5 million Catholics in Cook and Lake counties alone, hundreds of thousands of Orthodox Christians, many from countries where there's great devotion to Mary.

An American pro-family leader has expressed his shock at a federal court ruling that parents have no right to control the education of their children regarding sexuality.

Allan Carlson, the founder of the World Congress of Families, observed that a 9th Circuit Court decision, released earlier this week, essentially argues that "once parents surrender their children to the state education system, the schools can attempt to inculcate attitudes and values which families find abhorrent-- over their strenuous objections."

In the November 2 decision, written by Judge Stephen Reinhardt, the federal appeals court said: "There is no fundamental right of parents to be the exclusive provider of information regarding sexual matters to their children."

The 3-judge panel dismissed a complaint by parents of children in a California school district who were asked to fill out a survey detailing their thoughts about sexuality. Although many parents found the survey intrusive, the court rule that the schools "cannot be expected to accommodate the personal, moral, or religious concerns of every parent."

In objecting to the decision, Allan Carlson argued that the survey was not a neutral scientific instrument. By encouraging students to participate in matter-of-fact discussion of sexual activity, he said, the survey was "meant to elicit certain responses and, in so doing, inculcate a mindset regarding sexuality in general and premarital sex specifically."

Carlson helped to organize the World Congress of Families meeting in Mexico City in 2004, at which delegates endorsed a statement that declared: " Parents possess the primary authority and responsibility to direct the upbringing and education of their children, except in cases of abuse and neglect." Carlson is also the author of The Natural Family: A Manifesto

The 9th Circuit Court has a history of judicial activism. Judge Reinhardt, the author of this week's opinion, also penned a decision three years ago in which he argued that the use of the phrase "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance is an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment ban on federal establishment of religion.

"Our laws are reflection of our culture, and in our culture it's not acceptable to torture small animals," said Alderman Joseph Moore, whose proposed ordinance would affect at least 19 restaurants in Chicago, by one count.

Chicago was once "hog butcher for the world," as the poet Carl Sandburg so famously put it. The vast Union Stock Yards were the setting for Upton Sinclair's muckraking novel "The Jungle," about conditions in turn-of-the-century meatpacking plants.

While that era is long gone, Chicago is still very much a city of carnivores, with its steakhouses and its Chicago-style hot dogs with all the trimmings.

"I never thought this would happen in my lifetime. It feels so politically driven," said Rick Tramonto, the chef and owner of the four-star restaurant Tru. "We're the meatpacking part of the country. We're the Midwest. We're farming states. It's strange to me that this is happening."

A City Council committee approved the ordinance last month, and the full council could vote this month. But Mayor Richard M. Daley has made it clear he does not like the idea of banning certain foods, grumbling, "Pretty soon, you can't drink."

Rich and buttery, foie gras, pronounced fwah-GRAH and French for "fat liver," often is served sliced and pan-seared, frequently with fruit or atop greens or a cut of steak or veal.

To fatten the liver of waterfowl, a tube is inserted into their throats twice a day and partially cooked corn is pumped down the esophagus. Only three foie gras farms — two in New York and one in California — operate in the United States.

"Force-feeding birds to have livers up to 10 times their size is appalling and most citizens are shocked to learn this," said Gene Bauston, president of the animal rights group Farm Sanctuary, which is part of a worldwide movement against foie gras.

But Guillermo Gonzalez, who owns operates Sonoma Foie Gras, a foie gras producer about 80 miles east of San Francisco, contends the process is not abusive.

"The images using a tube to feed is duck is not pretty, but the fact of the matter is the anatomy of ducks and geese are perfectly adaptable," he said.

Several Chicago restaurateurs oppose the ban and say they do not want politicians meddling with a product steeped in tradition. However, Charlie Trotter, Chicago's most famous chef, has stopped serving foie gras at his namesake restaurant. And Bistro Campagne's chef and co-owner Michael Altenberg also dropped the delicacy, after a customer sent him a DVD produced by an animal-rights group.

"This is outright cruelty," Altenberg said. "It's cruelty just for gluttony."

In October, a restaurant that serves foie gras, Cyrano's Bistrot, was vandalized after its owner testified against the proposed ban. A window was smashed and a door was smeared with a blood-red liquid.

California is the only state to vote to ban the force-feeding of birds to produce the gourmet liver product, passing a measure that would end the practice by 2012.
Israel, the world's fourth-largest producer of foie gras, also banned production of the delicacy on the grounds of cruelty.

France has stood firm. About 80 percent of the world's foie gras comes from France. French lawmakers last month unanimously passed an amendment pronouncing foie gras part of France's cultural heritage.

for Barbra-renée Brighenti
"... the wisest and best men are those who are ashamed."
- Edward Dahlberg

When you glance at a distant light in the sky, all you see is a little blur. As you get closer, via telescope or spaceship, more definition comes into focus, and you begin to see more detail. Should your vision approach the object closely enough, what began as a little sparkle in the dark suddenly becomes an incredibly dazzling infinity far beyond our limited mortal comprehension. Just take a close look at the Sun sometime, or perhaps the baby star factory in the sword of Orion, and speculate on whether any of these glorious objects might actually be alive, as Rudolf Steiner once insisted.

Not so coincidentally, the concept of monotheism envelops us in a glare of the same blinding radiance. Nothing is possible beyond God, so many people say. Looking at the light of God from afar, we see only a beautiful, inspiring star. Everyone sees it, regardless of their religious training. As we get more familiar with it, we see the blemishes and corruptions of mortal men pretending to be immortal, but we still don't lose our faith that there is still someone to talk to in situations of dire stress or grief.

However, in our zeal for fusion with the infinite and everlasting, we fail to see the bleeding that is actually caused by adherence to such systems, which are polluted by false claims owing to the existential necessity of producing an antidote to human mortality, claims which of course are empirically false on their face. These false claims are directly related to all the false wars which plague us today.

And the idea is central to comprehending the collective cognitive information gap that exists in our world today, a gap which skews all information in favor of salesmen rather than the gullible consumer who is about to be fleeced. And thus it has always been. Mercury, the god of communication, has always worked for the highest bidder. One person's scam is another's vocation.

Consider the gap between what happened on September 11, 2001 and what the world now accepts as having happened.

When you do that, at least two thought processes occur: You contemplate all the carnage that has been perpetrated in the name of 9/11 since 9/11, and if you look closely enough - Tonkin, Pearl Harbor, Lusitania - you see a profoundly daunting, 200-year panorama of the fierce capitalist beast ravaging the planet and then telling brittle tales of heroism to the licentious toadies back home.

What is the 9/11 gap, exactly?

White-haired theology professor David Ray Griffin, as respectable a man as corrupt American society can currently produce, said the other day at a church in New York City that the controlled demolition of the World Trade Center "can now be proved beyond a reasonable doubt" (which of course was obvious to many of us three years ago).

Yet the official fare of world TV and corporate shill newspapers remains that Arab terrorists did the vile deed. It's the corporate party line, part of the social conditioning that keeps the masses prepped for war and willing to sacrifice their children for the lies of their leaders.

And most of us are lost in that distorted fog of cognitive dissonance, hammered down by Dubya's repetition of "I have to keep repeating the same stuff so we can make the propaganda sink in."

Mass media regards their readers as malleable robotoids, and makes no pretense they are going to change their ways. This, too, directly relates to false claims for false wars, the vicious prevarications of Judith Miller and thousands of other intellectual prostitutes deliberately misleading their listeners into unquestioning support of mass murder on a grand scale.

On one side of the gap are the cynical lies of Dick Cheney and his personal business contacts about Arab hijackers and the CIA/Mossad-sponsored Iraqi resistance. On the other side is the human reality of dead mothers, deformed babies, and a 9/11 story that is totally false, because in fact the highest movers and shakers in the American, British and Israeli governments engineered 9/11 and all those other false flag terror operations around the world

Stuck in the middle, the human species remains trapped - buffeted, fleeced and in many cases murdered - in the psychological penumbra of a consensual reality that simply does not match up with the real emotional reality of our beloved world, the reality you feel when you nurse your child.

We are forced to believe lies, and then asked to make decisions about life and death based upon those lies. Not a productive way to run a planet.

This gray area - this perceptual gap - that keeps human society in the dark - especially those intellectuals who think they actually know what's happening, but don't .... this fundamental distortion of what they say happened against what actually did happen is exactly what is poisoning all of us.

Put more simply, failure to tell the truth results in a lie. And the human race is living a lie, for failing to see what real life is all about. What we agree makes us human is our compassion for other beings less fortunate, and a willingness to lend a hand. Yet poverty makes criminals of us all, and those who exploit sit back and become profitable puppeteers. It's all a lie. Human reality is looking your father in the eye and realizing he will never go where you will go. So why would you participate in the killing of his other sons?

Cindy Sheehan's son died for nothing, he died for a lie. And yet even if you are a so-called antiwar activist, you support that lie by not overthrowing your own criminal government which is solely responsible for so much heartache in the world - and doing so immediately. As long as you don't do that, you are complicit in these crimes, and become the very reason why they are happening.

Because you didn't do anything about it.

Zeus and the Goddess

The Goddess has no name we know not given to her by men. Athena was not the real goddess because she had been created by the mind of man. In Euripides' words, "Athena sprung fully formed from the brain of Zeus." So too the women of today have been masculinized - consumerized - by the warped strictures of men controlling commodities, of which human females are clearly the most valuable. (Study the Tenth Commandment.)

One day as a child, Zeus met the real Goddess and never forgot her. In fact deep in Robert Graves' "Greek Myths" you find Zeus spent the rest of his endless life hopelessly searching for her, never to find her again. Blessed are those who are not that unlucky.

And who learn that the power of the home that shapes us all is not who or what we presumed it to be.

The world runs because of the power of women, the automatic, unceasing, instinctual caring for her brood. It has been the same way throughout evolution, with Mother Nature and Father Sun providing every single ingredient for humans to grow into the wondrous beings that can see to the end of the universe and care for a small child at the same time.

The mother's force is what what carries the world. All that endless work behind the scenes, without pay, without acknowledgment, and all those children sent out into the world wrapped in love. No wonder that most kids can see the real deal automatically; they see it with their hearts, most of which have been recently puffed up when Mom lovingly tucked that scarf snugly into some small collar, or gave the last ounce of rice in the hut to her starving son.

Women have been evicted from the heart of man and turned into commodities, even though men spend their lives insisting they live for their women. How does it come to be, if that is the case, that human females have been wrapped in men's mental razor wire throughout history.

Women have been forced out of the home and into the cutthroat world of men where there is an automatic hazard waiting for them. Like wolves on a ledge over a well-traveled riding trail, there are things in the world that threaten our survival. Mostly they are lies told by people to make money. Society is boobytrapped with self-interest groups which believe everything is justified to further their cause. When this rule is in effect, no rational debate is possible until the corrupt rationales of the self-interest groups are adequately identified.

I guess it's a matter of this. People get away with stuff out in the world that their mothers would never permit them to do as children. How did that come to be, and why do we let the world run this way?

We live in a world today in which the motivational factors of social groups are increasingly irrelevant. Accidents of geography and genetics are being erased by the universal ubiquity of the Internet, and web surfing observers in Zambia are suddenly finding they have a better view of the world than truculent techies in downtown San Francisco.

Ironic that the information explosion caused by the Internet started in America and has greatly expanded the education of the world world, yet the whole world now knows far more about America than Americans do, and the picture isn't pretty. Its senseless fangs are now revealed for all to see.

Do you really know what your country has done, and is doing? Then you're an accomplice.

Why do people do these things? What is it they are afraid of? Would you do what they do? Have you done what they've done?

The rhythm of the stars

The major dichotomy in all religions at all times is our need to believe vs. what to believe in.

This subtle distinction also pertains to the gap between what the big newspapers print as fact and what we know to be true that they refuse to report - like the 38 Israeli investors who profited from 9/11 foreknowledge or the mysterious man who blew himself up recently, very near a large football stadium full of people in Oklahoma, and practically nothing was said in the aboveground media. Such a great silence tends to envelop all recent catastrophic events. The Zionist spin control mechanism is much more pervasive than most people realize (since it starts in first grade and has been put in place in most of the world).

The minute organized religions start inventing fictions to justify their control over the minds of the human population is when humans lose track of their true purpose, which is to evolve, develop, and nurture every single thing they come in contact with. And above all, do no harm.

But the wrathful Father in the musty books has His rules. Where he got them, only God knows. This twisted Jehovah once threatened the legendary David (a character who most definitely does not exist in empirical history) with having all of David's many "wives" raped in front of him because Yahweh didn't like David's attitude.

What the human species has done to its women it has done to its planet - fouled its own nest.

After all, as I have recently learned, love is about surrender, not negotiation.

It's only because men continue to be terrified of their own deaths that they invent all these magical strategies for mortality immunization. And that's all a lie.

Remember Becker. "Man is a frightened animal who must lie in order to live."

Monotheism sits like a black cloud over human intelligence, retarding scientific education with demonstrably false dogma that it waves over the heads of humanity like the heartless hammer it is. See it my way or you will fry in the lake of fire, prattles the preacher.

Soon to follow (in every case) is the not-so-subtle urging, "Kill the infidel, kill the Amalek, kill the heathen .... kill everyone who is not like us." This is your God.

None for me, thanks.

Here's the deal, my fellow humans. Mom doesn't condone this kind of behavior. If you are practicing it, you are lost, no matter how many peripatetic pedigrees your deity claims to possess.

You are lost because you have lost the love of your mother, that kept you alive and thriving all these millennia.

You have lost the love of Mother Earth, because you have not cared for her. In case you were wondering, she doles out the air you breathe, the water you drink, and the life you live.

Why would you pretend to protect her, but then abuse her?

It's because you don't understand.

Why don't you understand?

It's because you've forgotten who you are, and the human race is trapped in an illusion of its own making, crafted out of fear of a darkness it cannot - and most probably will never - comprehend.

But mothers know of cycles; in fact, they are a cycle. With the rhythm of the stars pulsing in their bloodstream like the throbbing veins in a newborn baby's bald head, there is no question about priorities, and certainly none about geopolitical intrigues.

The human species is about to kill itself by failing to recognize its connection to everything else. By dividing humanity into competing segments all trumpeting their own ignorance, it has conquered itself with its own fear.

Your mother would not have permitted this, as you know.

What is your idea of peace and prosperity? A gaggle of happy children works for me.

What is it we seek in our most vulnerable, inmost hearts?

This is my prescription for the future direction the human species should take, voluntarily. Make and plan and follow it.

What is the goal?

To make laughter reign beyond the Sun for as long as the future shall be.

To make Earth and its human tenders a beacon of hope, compassion and friendliness that will become known throughout the universe as a place where justice and fairness are guaranteed to all (not just the rich, like it is now), no matter what star system beings come from.

Is that possible? Well, it's up to you, isn't it?

It's only what a mother wants, right ma?

The closely-guarded memo lays out a list of scenarios to bring the Republican party back from the political brink, including a devastating attack by terrorists that could “validate” the President’s war on terror and allow Bush to “unite the country” in a “time of national shock and sorrow.”

The memo says such a reversal in the President's fortunes could keep the party from losing control of Congress in the 2006 midterm elections.

GOP insiders who have seen the memo admit it’s a risky strategy and point out that such scenarios are “blue sky thinking” that often occurs in political planning sessions.

“The President’s popularity was at an all-time high following the 9/11 attacks,” admits one aide. “Americans band together at a time of crisis.”

Other Republicans, however, worry that such a scenario carries high risk, pointing out that an attack might suggest the President has not done enough to protect the country.

“We also have to face the fact that many Americans no longer trust the President,” says a longtime GOP strategist. “That makes it harder for him to become a rallying point.”

The memo outlines other scenarios, including:

--Capture of Osama bin Laden (or proof that he is dead);

--A drastic turnaround in the economy;

--A "successful resolution" of the Iraq war.

GOP memos no longer talk of “victory” in Iraq but use the term “successful resolution.”

“A successful resolution would be us getting out intact and civil war not breaking out until after the midterm elections,” says one insider.

The memo circulates as Tuesday’s disastrous election defeats have left an already dysfunctional White House in chaos, West Wing insiders say, with shouting matches commonplace and the blame game escalating into open warfare.

“This place is like a high-school football locker room after the team lost the big game,” grumbles one Bush administration aide. “Everybody’s pissed and pointing the finger at blame at everybody else.”

Republican gubernatorial losses in Virginia and New Jersey deepened rifts between the Bush administration and Republicans who find the President radioactive. Arguments over whether or not the President should make a last-minute appearance in Virginia to try and help the sagging campaign fortunes of GOP candidate Jerry Kilgore raged until the minute Bush arrived at the rally in Richmond Monday night.

“Cooler heads tried to prevail,” one aide says. “Most knew an appearance by the President would hurt Kilgore rather than help him but (Karl) Rove rammed it through, convincing Bush that he had enough popularity left to make a difference.”

Bush didn’t have any popularity left. Overnight tracking polls showed Kilgore dropped three percentage points after the President’s appearance and Democrat Tim Kaine won on Tuesday.

Conservative Pennsylvania Republican Senator Rick Santorum told radio talk show host Don Imus Wednesday that he does not want the President's help and will stay away from a Bush rally in his state on Friday.

The losses in Virginia and New Jersey, coupled with a resounding defeat of ballot initiatives backed by GOP governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in California have set off alarm klaxons throughout the demoralized Republican party. Pollsters privately tell GOP leaders that unless they stop the slide they could easily lose control of the House in the 2006 midterm elections and may lose the Senate as well.

“In 30 years of sampling public opinion, I’ve never seen such a freefall in public support,” admits one GOP pollster.

Democratic pollster Geoffrey Garin says the usual tricks tried by Republicans no longer work.

"None of their old tricks worked," he says.

Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.) admits the GOP is a party mired in its rural base in a country that's becoming less and less rural.

"You play to your rural base, you pay a price," he says. "Our issues blew up in our face."

As Republican political strategists scramble to find a message – any message – that will ring true with voters, GOP leaders in Congress admit privately that control of their party by right-wing extremists makes their recovery all but impossible.

“We’ve made our bed with these people,” admits an aide to House Speaker Denny Hastert. “Now it’s the morning after and the hangover hurts like hell.”

----- Original Message -----
From: BA
To: 'Bellringer'
Sent: Tuesday, November 08, 2005 6:23 AM
Subject: Civil unrest - the beginning of the end?

Dear Patrick.

Thank you very much for your thoughtful, incisive and timely articles, they are much appreciated.

Whilst on a recent trip from the UK to Boston, I happened upon a peace march with an address by Cindy Sheehan amongst others. It was encouraging to see so many Americans calling for truth and peace, although concerning that this mixed group of anti-Government campaigners seemed to know nothing of NESARA, let alone any of the other forthcoming events.

Given the recent comments from both yourself and Christ Michael, I can't help thinking that the recent, and continuing events in the UK, France and now, Belgium are a part of the "beginning of the end". The question then becomes, are these cabal-driven games or independent minds searching for the truth and advancing the heavenly agenda? I would be grateful for your comments on these recent events and what more (if anything) we can do that you may not have already commented on, to assist in the process.

Thanks again for your wondrous contribution to the coming events.

BA

(Response)

FROM: Patrick H. Bellringer
TO: BA
DATE: Nov. 10, 2005
SUBJECT: Reply

Dear BA:

Thank you for your letter. The riots in France stem from two basic problems. The first is the Karma accumulated from the many years of segregation and neglect of the Arab-Negro citizens living in high-rise poverty in the northern Paris suburbs. They were invited to come to France after World War II to provide the necessary workers needed for France's booming economy. They were isolated from society from the very beginning,and today, experience high unemployment, low education, high crime and lack of government assistance. They have no real future and rioted in 1968 to try to get attention to solve their problems. Little was accomplished at that time.

Secondly, today, the British MI-6 and Israeli Mossad are capitalizing on the social unrest of these five million Arab-Negro French citizens, as revenge against France for helping the American people in their struggle against the Crown of England and the One World Order. The Khazarian Zionist Bolsheviks (KZB) control the governments of Israel, Britain and the U.S. These Illuminati are pushing hard to establish their One World Order. The Queen, Blair, Bush and Sharon are working together to accomplish this goal.

The Bush Crime Family is presently in control of the U.S. Government. Many U.S. government and military people and citizens do not agree with this evil government and are working hard to bring change, namely NESARA. Patrick Fitzgerald is a key player at the moment in bringing indictments against this corrupt system. By the way, Patrick Fitzgerald is a walk-in of John Patrick Fitzgerald Kennedy, the U.S. president, who in 1963 tried to establish a gold standard money system, end the evil CIA and tell the world of the alien presence. He was assassinated for trying. Now he has returned to complete that mission.

As you will recall, earlier this fall there was a terrorist threat reported in Chicago, USA to the Federal Buildings, but according to the media, nothing came of it. The Truth is that British MI-6 and Israeli Mossad tried to kill Patrick Fitzgerald, the Special Prosecutor for the Valerie Plame case. Fitzgerald had indicted Tony Blair in the case earlier in the summer, but Blair refused to cooperate and ordered Fitzgerald assassinated. The French Intelligence intercepted this action by killing some and arresting others of the attackers.

In retaliation for the Chicago interference by France the MI-6/Israeli Mossad promptly "took out" a France Airbus, as it was landing in France. Because of France's good intent the Forces of Light protected the landing and none of the passengers were killed and only a few had minor injuries.

Then not long ago there was another terrorist threat alert in New York City regarding the subways. Again the media reported it as a false alarm. This was not true. The MI-6/Israeli Mossad/CIA connection tried to bomb the New York subway system to create a national emergency, so G.W. Bush could declare martial law and lock the U.S. down under the New World Order control. Again, the French Intelligence intercepted this terrorist action, killing four and arresting five of the attackers. Since the inception of their nation the American people have been aided by France, at times even against the evil actions of their own U. S. Government, while France and Britain have had animosity between them for centuries, which still continues to this day.

Unrest is occurring in many countries, as karma is being released and the way prepared for establishing governments and societies of right living under the Laws of God and creation. Our world is in ferment, as the energies continue to rise. At some point not far off this process will create all things new. Our task is to hold our own personal world steady with wisdom, compassion and positive energy. By doing so we add our part to the "mass consciousness" of positive energy.

Positive energy is bringing peace and restoring balance again to Earth Shan. This has been a slow process in confronting the Darkness, but all is now moving quickly to close down the Age of Darkness and usher in the Age of Light. It is both an honor and privilege to be a participant in these great changes that are occurring to bring Earth Shan into 5D. Use wisdom and discernment, my brother, as together we hold the fort until victory is declared.

In Love and Light,
Patrick H. Bellringer

A man died and went to heaven. As he stood in front of St. Peter at the Pearly Gates, he saw a huge wall of clocks behind him.

He asked, "What are all those clocks?" St. Peter answered, "Those are Lie-Clocks. Everyone on Earth has a Lie-Clock. Every time you lie the hands on your clock will move."

"Oh," said the man, "whose clock is that?"

"That's Mother Teresa's. The hands have never moved, indicating that she never told a lie."

"Incredible," said the man. "And whose clock is that one?"

St. Peter responded, "That's Abraham Lincoln's clock. The hands have moved twice, telling us that Abe told only two lies in his entire life."

"Where's President Bush's clock?" asked the man.

"Bush's clock is in Jesus' office. He's using it as a ceiling fan."