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©Pierre-Paul Feyte

Democracy in the Balance by Bill Moyers August 2004 I trace my spiritual lineage back to a radical Baptist in England named Thomas Helwys who believed that God, and not the King, was Lord of conscience. In 1612 Roman Catholics were the embattled target of the Crown and Thomas Helwys, the Baptist, came to their defense with the first tract in English demanding full religious liberty. Here's what he said: "Our Lord the King has no more power over their [Catholic] consciences than ours, and that is none at all. …For men's religion is betwixt God and themselves; the King shall not answer it; neither may the King be judge betwixt God and man. Let them be heretics, Turks, Jews, or whatever. It appertains not to the earthly power to punish them in the least measure." The king was the good King James I - yes, that King James, as in the King James Bible. Challenges to his authority did not cause his head to rest easily on his pillow, so James had Thomas Helwys thrown into prison, where he died. Thomas Helwys was not the first or last dissenter to pay the supreme price for conscience. While we are not called upon in America today to make a similar sacrifice, we are in need of his generous vision of religious freedom. We are heading into a new religious landscape. For most of our history our religious discourse was dominated by white male Protestants of a culturally conservative European heritage, people like me. Dissenting voices of America, alternative visions of faith, race, and gender, rarely reached the mainstream. It's different now. Immigration has added more than 30 million people to our population since the late 1960s. The American gene pool is mutating into one in which people like me will be a minority within half a century. America is being re-created right before our eyes. The world keeps moving to America, bringing new stories from the four corners of the globe. Gerard Bruns calls it a "contest of narratives" competing to shape a new American drama. The old story had a paradox at its core. In no small part because of Baptists like Thomas Helwys and other "freethinkers," the men who framed our Constitution believed in religious tolerance in a secular republic. The state was not to choose sides among competing claims of faith. So they embodied freedom of religion in the First Amendment. Another person's belief, said Thomas Jefferson, "neither picks my pocket not breaks my bones." It was a noble sentiment often breached in practice. The Indians who lived here first had more than their pockets picked; the Africans brought here forcibly against their will had more than their bones broken. Even when most Americans claimed a Protestant heritage and practically everyone looked alike, we often failed the tolerance test; Catholics, Jews, and Mormons had to struggle to resist being absorbed without distinction into the giant mix-master of American assimilation. So our troubled past with tolerance requires us to ask how, in this new era when we are looking even less and less alike, are we to avoid the intolerance, the chauvinism, the fanaticism, the bitter fruits that mark the long history of world religions when they jostle each other in busy, crowded streets? It is no rhetorical question. My friend Elaine Pagels, the noted scholar of religion, says "There's practically no religion I know of that sees other people in a way that affirms the other's choice." You only have to glance at the daily news to see how passions are stirred by claims of exclusive loyalty to one's own kin, one's own clan, one's own country, and one's own church. These ties that bind are vital to our communities and our lives, but they can also be twisted into a noose. Religion has a healing side, but it also has a killing side. In the opening chapter of Genesis - the founding document of three great faiths - the first murder rises from a religious act. You know the story: Adam and Eve become the first parents to discover what it means to raise Cain. God plays favorites and chooses Abel's offering over Cain. Cain is so jealous he strikes out at his brother and kills him. Sibling rivalry for God's favor leads to violence and ends in death. Once this pattern is established, it's played out in the story of Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau, Joseph and his brothers, and down through the centuries in generation after generation of conflict between Muslims and Jews, Jews and Christians, Christians and Muslims, so that the red thread of religiously spilled blood runs directly from East of Eden to Bosnia, Beirut, Belfast, and Baghdad. In our time alone the litany is horrendous. I keep a file marked "Holy War." It bulges with stories of Shias and Sunnis in fratricidal conflict. Of teenage girls in Algeria shot in the face for not wearing a veil. Of professors whose throats are cut for teaching male and female students in the same classroom. Of the fanatical Jewish doctor with a machine gun mowing down 30 praying Muslims in a mosque. Of Muslim suicide bombers bent on the obliteration of Jews. Of the young Orthodox Jew who assassinated Yitzhak Rabin and then announced to the world that "Everything I did, I did for the glory of God." Of Hindus and Muslims slaughtering each other in India, of Christians and Muslims perpetuating gruesome vengeance on each another in Nigeria. Meanwhile, groups calling themselves the Christian Identity Movement and the Christian Patriot League arm themselves, and Christians intoxicated with the delusional doctrine of two 19th-century preachers not only await the rapture but believe they have an obligation to get involved politically to hasten the divine scenario for the Apocalypse that will bring an end to the world. Sadly, Christians, too, can invoke God for the purpose of waging religious war. "Onward Christian Soldiers" is back in vogue and the 2lst century version of the Crusades has taken on aspects of the righteous ferocity that marked its predecessors. "To be furious in religion," said the Quaker William Penn, "is to be furiously irreligious." THIS IS A TIME of testing - for people of faith and for people who believe in democracy. How do we nurture the healing side of religion over the killing side? How do we protect the soul of democracy against the contagion of a triumphalist theology in the service of an imperial state? At stake is America's role in the world. At stake is the very character of the American Experiment - whether "we, the people" is the political incarnation of a spiritual truth - one nation, indivisible - or a stupendous fraud. There are two Americas today. You could see this division in a little-noticed action this spring in the House of Representatives. Republicans in the House approved new tax credits for the children of families earning as much as $309,000 a year - families that already enjoy significant benefits from earlier tax cuts - while doing next to nothing for those at the low end of the income scale. This, said The Washington Post in an editorial called "Leave No Rich Child Behind," is "bad social policy, bad tax policy, and bad fiscal policy. You'd think they'd be embarrassed but they're not." Nothing seems to embarrass the political class in Washington today. Not the fact that more children are growing up in poverty in America than in any other industrial nation; not the fact that millions of workers are actually making less money today in real dollars than they did 20 years ago; not the fact that working people are putting in longer and longer hours just to stay in place; not the fact that while we have the most advanced medical care in the world, nearly 44 million Americans - eight out of 10 of them in working families - are uninsured and cannot get the basic care they need. Nor is the political class embarrassed by the fact that the gap between rich and poor is greater than it's been in 50 years - the worst inequality among all Western nations. They don't seem to have noticed that we have been experiencing a shift in poverty. For years it was said that single jobless mothers are down there at the bottom. For years it was said that work, education, and marriage is how they move up the economic ladder. But poverty is showing up where we didn't expect it - among families that include two parents, a worker, and a head of the household with more than a high school education. These are the newly poor. These are the people our political and business class expects to climb out of poverty on an escalator moving downward. For years now a small fraction of American households have been garnering an extreme concentration of wealth and income while large corporations and financial institutions have obtained unprecedented levels of economic and political power over daily life. In 1960, the gap in terms of wealth between the top 20 percent and the bottom 20 percent was 30-fold. Four decades later it is more than 75-fold. Such concentrations of wealth would be far less of an issue if the rest of society was benefiting proportionately and equality was growing. That's not the case. As an organization called The Commonwealth Foundation Center for the Renewal of American Democracy sets forth in well-documented research, working families and the poor "are losing ground under economic pressures that deeply affect household stability, family dynamics, social mobility, political participation, and civic life." And household economics "is not the only area where inequality is growing in America." We are also losing the historic balance between wealth and commonwealth. The report goes on to describe "a fanatical drive to dismantle the political institutions, the legal and statutory canons, and the intellectual and cultural frameworks that have shaped public responsibility for social harms arising from the excesses of private power." That drive is succeeding, with drastic consequences for an equitable access to and control of public resources, the lifeblood of any democracy. From land, water, and other natural resources to media and the broadcast and digital spectrums, to scientific discovery and medical breakthroughs, and even to politics itself, a broad range of the American commons is undergoing a powerful shift in the direction of private control. And what is driving this shift? Contrary to what you learned in civics class in high school, it is not the so-called "democratic debate." That is merely a cynical charade behind which the real business goes on - the none-too-scrupulous business of getting and keeping power so that you can divide up the spoils. If you want to know what's changing America, follow the money. Veteran Washington reporter Elizabeth Drew says "the greatest change in Washington over the past 25 years - in its culture, in the way it does business and the ever-burgeoning amount of business transactions that go on here - has been in the preoccupation with money." Jeffrey Birnbaum, who covered Washington for nearly 20 years for the Wall Street Journal, put it even more strongly: "[Campaign cash] has flooded over the gunwales of the ship of state and threatens to sink the entire vessel. Political donations determine the course and speed of many government actions that deeply affect our daily lives." It is widely accepted in Washington today that there is nothing wrong with a democracy dominated by the people with money. But of course there is. Money has democracy in a stranglehold and is suffocating it. During his brief campaign in 2000, before he was ambushed by the dirty tricks of the Religious Right in South Carolina and big money from George W. Bush's wealthy elites, John McCain said elections today are nothing less than an "influence peddling scheme in which both parties compete to stay in office by selling the country to the highest bidder." THAT'S THE SHAME of politics today. The consequences: "When powerful interests shower Washington with millions in campaign contributions, they often get what they want. But it is ordinary citizens and firms that pay the price, and most of them never see it coming," according to Time magazine. Time concludes that America now has "government for the few at the expense of the many." That's why so many people are turned off by politics. It's why we can't put things right. And it's wrong. Hear the great Justice Learned Hand on this: "If we are to keep our democracy, there must be one commandment: ‘Thou shalt not ration justice.'" He got it right: The rich have the right to buy more homes than anyone else. They have the right to buy more cars, more clothes, or more vacations than anyone else. But they don't have the right to buy more democracy than anyone else. I know: This sounds very much like a call for class war. But the class war was declared a generation ago, in a powerful polemic by a wealthy right-winger, William Simon, who was soon to be Secretary of the Treasury. By the end of the '70s, corporate America had begun a stealthy assault on the rest of our society and the principles of our democracy. Looking backward, it all seems so clear that we wonder how we could have ignored the warning signs at the time. What has been happening to the middle and working classes is not the result of Adam Smith's invisible hand but the direct consequence of corporate activism, intellectual collusion, the rise of a religious orthodoxy that has made an idol of wealth and power, and a host of political decisions favoring the powerful monied interests who were determined to get back the privileges they had lost with the Depression and the New Deal. They set out to trash the social contract; to cut workforces and their wages; to scour the globe in search of cheap labor; and to shred the social safety net that was supposed to protect people from hardships beyond their control. Business Week put it bluntly: "Some people will obviously have to do with less….It will be a bitter pill for many Americans to swallow the idea of doing with less so that big business can have more." To create the intellectual framework for this revolution in public policy, they funded conservative think tanks - the Heritage Foundation, the Hoover Institution, and the American Enterprise Institute - that churned out study after study advocating their agenda. To put political muscle behind these ideas, they created a formidable political machine. Thomas Edsall of The Washington Post, one of the few journalists to cover the issues of class, wrote: "During the 1970s, business refined its ability to act as a class, submerging competitive instincts in favor of joint, cooperative action in the legislative area." Big business political action committees flooded the political arena with a deluge of dollars. And they built alliances with the Religious Right - Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority and Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition - who happily contrived a cultural war as a smokescreen to hide the economic plunder of the very people who were enlisted as foot soldiers in the war. And they won. Warren Buffett, one of the richest men in America and the savviest investor of them all, put it this way: "If there was a class war, my class won." Well, there was, Mr. Buffett, and as a recent headline in The Washington Post proclaimed: ‘Business Wins With Bush." Look at the spoils of victory: Over the past three years, they've pushed through $2 trillion dollars in tax cuts. More than half of the benefits are going to the wealthiest 1 percent. You could call it trickle-down economics, except that the only thing that trickled down was a sea of red ink in our state and local governments, forcing them to cut services and raise taxes on middle class working America. Now the Congressional Budget Office forecasts deficits totaling $2.75 trillion over the next 10 years. These deficits have been part of their strategy. The late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan tried to warn us, when he predicted that President Reagan's real strategy was to force the government to cut domestic social programs by fostering federal deficits of historic dimensions. President Reagan's own budget director, David Stockman, admitted as much. Now the leading right-wing political strategist, Grover Norquist, says the goal is to "starve the beast" - with trillions of dollars in deficits resulting from trillions of dollars in tax cuts, until the U.S. government is so anemic and anorexic it can be drowned in the bathtub. Take note: The corporate conservatives and their allies in the political and Religious Right are achieving a vast transformation of American life that only they understand because they are its advocates, its architects, and its beneficiaries. In creating the greatest economic inequality in the advanced world, they have saddled our nation, our states, and our cities and counties with structural deficits that will last until our children's children are ready for retirement; and they are systematically stripping government of all its functions except rewarding the rich and waging war. And, yes, they are proud of what they have done to our economy and our society. If instead of producing a news magazine I was writing for Saturday Night Live, I couldn't have made up the things that this crew in Washington have been saying. The president's chief economic adviser says shipping technical and professional jobs overseas is good for the economy. The president's Council of Economic Advisers reports that hamburger chefs in fast food restaurants can be considered manufacturing workers. The president's labor secretary says it doesn't matter if job growth has stalled because "the stock market is the ultimate arbiter." And the president's Federal Reserve chair says that the tax cuts may force cutbacks in Social Security - but hey, we should make the tax cuts permanent anyway. You just can't make this stuff up. You have to hear it to believe it. This may be the first class war in history where the victims will die laughing. But what they are doing to middle class and working Americans and the poor - and to the workings of American democracy - is no laughing matter. It calls for righteous indignation and action. Otherwise our democracy will degenerate into a shell of itself in which the privileged and the powerful sustain their own way of life at the expense of others and the United States becomes another Latin America with a small crust of the rich at the top governing a nation of serfs. OVER THE PAST few years, as the poor got poorer, the health care crisis worsened, wealth and media became more and more concentrated, and our political system was bought out from under us, prophetic Christianity lost its voice. The Religious Right drowned everyone else out. And they hijacked Jesus. The very Jesus who stood in Nazareth and proclaimed, "The Lord has anointed me to preach the good news to the poor." The very Jesus who told 5,000 hungry people that all of you will be fed, not just some of you. The very Jesus who challenged the religious orthodoxy of the day by feeding the hungry on the Sabbath, who offered kindness to the prostitute and hospitality to the outcast, who raised the status of women and treated even the tax collector like a child of God. The very Jesus who drove the money changers from the temple. This Jesus has been hijacked and turned into a guardian of privilege instead of a champion of the dispossessed. Hijacked, he was made over into a militarist, hedonist, and lobbyist, sent prowling the halls of Congress in Guccis, seeking tax breaks and loopholes for the powerful, costly new weapon systems that don't work, and punitive public policies. Let's get Jesus back. The Jesus who inspired a Methodist ship-caulker named Edward Rogers to crusade across New England for an eight-hour work day. Let's get back the Jesus who caused Frances William to rise up against the sweatshop. The Jesus who called a young priest named John Ryan to champion child labor laws, unemployment insurance, a minimum wage, and decent housing for the poor - 10 years before the New Deal. The Jesus in whose name Dorothy Day challenged the church to march alongside auto workers in Michigan, fishermen and textile workers in Massachusetts, brewery workers in New York, and marble cutters in Vermont. The Jesus who led Martin Luther King to Memphis to join sanitation workers in their struggle for a decent wage. That Jesus has been scourged by his own followers, dragged through the streets by pious crowds, and crucified on a cross of privilege. Mel Gibson missed that. He missed the resurrection - the spiritual awakening that followed the death of Jesus. He missed Pentecost. Our times cry out for a new politics of justice. This is no partisan issue. It doesn't matter if you're a liberal or a conservative, Jesus is both and neither. It doesn't matter if you're a Democrat or Republican, Jesus is both and neither. We need a faith that takes on the corruption of both parties. We need a faith that challenges complacency of all power. If you're a Democrat, shake them up. If you're a Republican, shame them. Jesus drove the money changers from the temple. We must drive them from the temples of democracy. Let's get Jesus back. But let's do it in love. I know it can sound banal and facile to say this. The word "love" gets thrown around too casually these days. And brute reality can mock the whole idea of loving one another. We're still living in the shadow of Dachau and Buchenwald. The smoke still rises above Kosovo and Rwanda, Chechnya and East Timor. The walls of Abu Ghraib still shriek of pain. What has love done? Where is there any real milk of human kindness? But the love I mean is the love described by Reinhold Niebuhr in his book of essays Justice and Mercy, where he writes: "When we talk about love we have to become mature or we will become sentimental. Basically love means...being responsible, responsibility to our family, toward our civilization, and now by the pressures of history, toward the universe of humankind." What I'm talking about will be hard, devoid of sentiment and practical as nails. But love is action, not sentiment. When the church was young and fair, and people passed by her doors, they did not comment on the difference or the doctrines. Those stern and taciturn pagans said of the Christians: "How they love one another!" It started that way soon after the death of Jesus. His disciple Peter said to the first churches, "Above all things, have unfailing love toward one another." I looked in my old Greek concordance the other day. That word "unfailing" would be more accurately rendered "intense." Glenn Tinder reminds us that none are good but all are sacred. I want to think this is what the founders meant when they included the not-so-self-evident assertion that "all men are created equal." Truly life is not fair and it is never equal. But I believe the founders were speaking a powerful spiritual truth that is the heart of our hope for this country. They saw America as a great promise - and it is. But America is a broken promise, and we are called to do what we can to fix it - to get America back on the track. St. Augustine shows us how: "One loving soul sets another on fire." But to move beyond sentimentality, what begins in love must lead on to justice. We are called to the fight of our lives. Bill Moyers, host of PBS' Now with Bill Moyers, has received more than 30 Emmy Awards for excellence in broadcast journalism. Moyers was senior news analyst for the CBS Evening News and Special Assistant to President Lyndon B. Johnson. He holds a Master of Divinity degree from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. This article is adapted from Moyers' keynote address at Call to Renewal's Pentecost 2004 conference this May in Washington, D.C. Comment: "When we talk about love we have to become mature or we will become sentimental. Basically love means...being responsible, responsibility to our family, toward our civilization, and now by the pressures of history, toward the universe of humankind." America is a broken promise, and we are called to do what we can to fix it - to get America back on the track. St. Augustine shows us how: "One loving soul sets another on fire." But to move beyond sentimentality, what begins in love must lead on to justice. We are called to the fight of our lives.

How War Criminals Stole Christmas: A Vietnam Vet's Appraisal of Bush By CHARLIE EHLEN 26 Dec 2005 It is 24 December and I have just finished reading the articles by Alexander Cockburn and Saul Landau. The news just gets worse by the hour. I am old enough to remember when the news just got worse by the day. Thanks be to W, our "glorious leader". All I got for Xmas was this torture pact and illegal wiretaps. Thanks be to "other priorities" Cheney. For my birthday I got denials of secret prisons and denials that "we" torture and kidnap people. Thanks be to Condi the disconnected. Our troops still do without proper equipment. Thanks be to "we fight the war we have with what we got" Rummie. The list of "gifts" just goes on and on. Mr. Cockburn asks in his article "who will defend the Constitution". Well, I volunteer by god! I remember back in 1968, we swore an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States upon joining the Marines. OK, I admit, joining the Marines in April 1968 was NOT the smartest move a young man in America could make. I never made any claim to being very smart. I am just an ordinary working class guy. Always was, always will be. I do remember being quite proud on completing boot camp and having the honor of being able to call myself a Marine. I remember getting many lectures in boot camp on Military law (UCMJ) Uniform Code of Military Justice. We also had lectures on the Code of Conduct. Now, were just regular enlistees, not officer material. The reason I bring this up, Ollie North. (Still can't even write that name without nearly throwing up.) Using Ollie as an example, officers in the Marines must NOT have been given those lectures. I remember being told that we must disobey any and all unlawful orders. Regardless of who gave the unlawful order, we were to disobey it. Ollie used the Nazi defense that he "was just following the orders of the president". Not good enough Ollie. That is a crime by UCMJ standards. That pales compared to the evil being done in the name of America today. Our vice president wants to be able to torture people. Ms. Rice claims we don't do torture. Georgie W himself says we don't torture. OK, water board Cheney. We just might find out who attended those energy meetings. Bet he'd even tell us where his "undisclosed" location is. What hypocrisy! This from a draft dodger who had "other priorities" during Viet Nam. Well, Dick, so did I and every one of my buddies, in all the military during Viet Nam. We called it staying alive to be able to come home standing up instead of in a body bag! Guess old Dickie's priorities counted for more. But by god he is sure willing to let our young people go half way around the world to be killed. Lowlife bastard. I have read that not one member of this criminal administration ever wore a uniform. W playing at service in the National Guard does not count. The Guard is an honorable outfit and they are very useful and needed. His service may have counted if he actually served out his contract. Not much of a pilot when you get grounded for failing to appear to take your physical. The Democrats. What can I say? So few of them are willing to defend our Constitution. I am quite sure that they swear to uphold it. W swore to uphold the Constitution, twice! He must think that shredding the document is the same as upholding it. Sounds about right; "We had to destroy the Constitution in order to save it." In America today such a statement from W would hardly be noticed by CNN, Faux News(?) or any other media outlet. Some say the media is turning on W. Maybe, but not enough. The mainstream media still seem to me to pamper him. Fear must be the main force driving them. Fear that they might have to really pay for the airwaves they occupy. That is a novel idea; the FCC would actually charge real money for the use of OUR airwaves. No, too damn radical. Can't have that, best leave it as is. Back to the donkey gang. Where the hell are they? Other than Rep. Lynn Woolsey (sp) and John Murtha, Cynthia McKinney(sp) and a very few others, they seem to be nowhere. W is self-destructing before our eyes and the donkey gang just sits on their hands. Never kick a guy when he is down must be what they are thinking. Well, I learned fighting in the Marines. When the other guy is down, kick him; he is now closer to your foot! Fight to win. The Democants suffer from the same disease as the Republocrats, too much corporate money. Who will defend OUR Constitution? I volunteer to do so. This old (58) former Marine swore an oath to defend it once. I believed it was worth defending long before I joined the Marines. It is worth defending even more so now. We must defend the Constitution or we will be left with our miserable jail cells at Gitmo, Afghanistan, Poland, Rumania, or some other hellhole. We need to reclaim OUR government. We need to restore a true government of the people, by the people, and for the people. We must not sit back and watch this wonderful experiment called America to be taken over by the dark forces in power today. W claims to be a Christian. Christ is called the Prince of Peace. How does W square his actions with that? He doesn't, his god is bigger, stronger, and more violent. How can any decent church let him inside its doors? How can any real Christian person look upon W with anything other than contempt or pity? I am not a member/follower of any religion. I learned some religion as a child and still hold to some of the tenants of some of them. The message of Christ is one that seems to apply to any person, regardless of their religion. It is a message of peace and good will toward others. I cannot think any religion would be against that message. Maybe with the message of Christ, Buddha, Mohammed, and other religious leaders and pacifists we can stand up to defend OUR Constitution. We can try to end wars. General Smedley Butler said the only reasons to fight a war are to defend our homes and to defend the Bill of Rights. All other war is a racket. He was right then and is right today. I see our young people being killed and maimed in Afghanistan and Iraq and I damn near cry. Can't cry actual tears, so I get highly pissed off. They should not be in harms way, not today, never should have been there in the first place. I support our troops by wanting them back home where they belong. They are not defending America by being in Iraq or Afghanistan any more than we were defending America by being in Viet Nam all those years ago. They are cannon fodder for big business and the fat cat defense contractors. Bring them home now! Charlie Ehlen lives in Glenmora, Louisiana. He can be reached at: cehlen@netzero.com

Executive Uber Alles: The Usurpers of Our Freedoms By LAWRENCE R. VELVEL At stake in the so-called war on terror is longer just treatment of detainees, but the freedom of Americans. Bush and company have very wrongly used the commander-in-chief power as a lever to make the President far, far too powerful, powerful far beyond anything intended by the framers, who created a government in which the legislature was to be the more powerful branch. John Yoo has despicably abetted this process by writing intellectually corrupt legal opinions, which were to be used to shield officials high and low against the possibility of criminal prosecutions even though their acts plainly are criminal. The legal opinions, moreover, were classified, were all kept secret, in major part because Congress and the public would never stand for what is being done if they were to learn about it by reading the opinions Congress has been ineffective and cowardly. Bush has committed the impeachable felony of conspiracy to commit torture, but the media and the politicians refuse to discuss this. He should, however, be impeached for this felony. The New York Times has apparently withheld information about various important subjects, and one wonders what those subjects might be. Samuel Alito should be asked very specific, pointed questions about the extent of Presidential power. In accordance with first amendment values, there should be reporters' privilege when confidential sources alert them to evildoing by government, but not when confidential sources try to use reporters to further evildoing by government. Bush's claims of power all come down to a single overarching principle, articulated for him in legal terms by John Yoo, and articulated in political speech by Bush himself. That overarching principle is that the President is all powerful whenever he asserts a claim that what he authorizes or does is for the purpose of fighting a war. John Yoo said that such all-surpassing power comes from the commander-in-chief clause and cannot be limited by Congress. Of course, Yoo shamelessly distorts the commander-in-chief power, which was intended simply to put a civilian in charge of the military lest a general seek to take over the country and become dictator, and was not intended to make the President a dictator, was not intended to give him the dictatorial power that the framers were guarding against in a general. Never has this been put more eloquently than in a passage in a concurring opinion written in the Korean War's Steel Seizure Case by that most eloquent of all Supreme Court Justices, Robert Jackson: His command power is not such an absolute as might be implied from that office in a militaristic system but is subject to limitations consistent with a constitutional Republic whose law and policy-making branch is a representative Congress. The purpose of lodging dual titles in one man was to insure that the civilian would control the military, not to enable the military to subordinate the presidential office. No penance would ever expiate the sin against free government of holding that a President can escape control of executive powers by law through assuming his military role. Bush, of course, doesn't write, and most likely doesn't even read, legal opinions, whether from Supreme Court Justices or Department of Justice lawyers. (Opinions are more than one page long.) Bush merely says, echoing Yoo, that because he is commander-in-chief he can do whatever he claims is necessary to protect Americans. He also says that Congress' authorization of the use of force allows him to engage in warrantless electronic surveillance. Of no concern to Push is the fact that legislators say they never even thought about warrantless electronic eavesdropping when considering an authorization of force (they were, after all, focused on military action, not surveillance); that people who apparently have read the Congressional history find no mention of surveillance, that there is a specific law against what he is doing. Ich bin der Staat, after all. Attorney General Gonzalez, in Bush's defense, says that a few Justices of the Supreme Court -- not all -- said in the Guantanamo case that the authorization of force means we can imprison enemy fighters. Therefore, concludes Gonzalez, the authorization also means we can wiretap citizens without a warrant. It does not seem to occur to this mental giant of an Attorney General that in every war one takes and holds prisoners, so that an authorization of force must mean you can do this. But why the authority to take enemy prisoners -- an incident of every war -- means you can also wiretap American citizens without a warrant, and why it means this even in the face of a contrary statute, simply escapes one who is not a hack henchman for Bush. On the other hand, L'Etat, c'est moi, so what a statute of Congress says is irrelevant. The statements of people like Bush, Gonzalez and Cheney, and the so-called legal opinions of John Yoo, are not to be taken seriously from the intellectual standpoint. Indeed, one wonders if they are even seriously meant, since they are too stupid, too frivolous, to be intellectually serious. The true, underlying intended function of these claims, and particularly of the legal memos, is really something quite different. The intended function is to provide a shield for Bush and company, down to the lowest CIA operative, NSA operative, or grunt, if someone were ever to think about putting them in the criminal dock for what they have done. The possible defendant, be he Bush on down to a grunt, could point to the legal opinions of John Yoo (and his one time boss, now Federal judge Jay Bybee) and say, "I cannot be fairly accused of a crime. There were legal opinions from high Department of Justice officials -- opinions on torture, on surveillance [and possibly on God knows what else that we don't even know about yet] that said what I was doing was legal." It was, indeed, CIA personnel's desire for protection -- dare one say cover -- that led to the torture opinions. Gonzalez recently pointed out that Bush had documents from lawyers all over Washington (as I believe Gonzalez put the matter) saying that what Bush was doing was lawful. Some NSA officials were very worried about the legality of the warrantless surveillance. Some of the NSA people were -- and still are -- so worried about its legality that they apparently wouldn't participate in it and/or blew the whistle to The New York Times despite John Yoo's classified memos claiming legality. Once the story about the warrantless surveillance broke, Bush, Gonzalez & Co. came up with some other claims that in effect hold that the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which banned warrantless electronic surveillance, must be considered ­ in Ron Zeigler's deathless word -- inoperative. There has been, it is said, a lot of technology changes since 1978. And a two minute phone call between terrorists can lead to hundreds or thousands of deaths. But FISA allows the government to engage in immediate warrantless electronic surveillance as long as it thereafter seeks a warrant within 72 hours. All the new technology and two minute phone calls in the world can't be quick enough to escape electronic surveillance once the latter has been applied immediately, without a warrant, with the only requirement being that the government then seek a warrant within 72 hours after starting the surveillance. The claims about the need for speed are just so much smoke. One cannot, after all, be more immediate than immediate, and the government is authorized by FISA to be immediate. Nor need there be fear of lack of cooperation from the secretly operating Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, from which warrants need be sought. The court can and does act very quickly -- once a judge held a hearing in his living room at 3 a.m. on applications for a warrant -- and last year, it is reported, the court received 1754 applications for warrants and denied not a single one. From 1995-2004 the court received over 10,600 applications for warrants and from 1978 onward it has received nearly 19,000, and in this entire period it has turned down only four of the nearly 19,000 (all four in 2003, apparently). So, if there is to be a fear here, it is not that the court will be uncooperative, it is that the court is usually a rubber stamp. (Indeed, the head of the court is the pro-establishment Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly). The only administration claim that makes even the slightest intellectual sense is one that amounts to saying that the FISA procedure was ignored because the government wanted to conduct surveillance that could not meet even the obviously minimal standards of a FISA court that rejected none of 1,754 applications for warrants last year and only 4 of nearly 19,000 since 1978. But this claim simply leads to the heart of the problem: it simply leads to the fact that, as has been said here before, it is now no longer the fates of our enemies that is involved, but rather the rights and freedom of Americans themselves. For we are faced with an Executive, whose charge is led by the dumb Bush and the truly evil Cheney, that says it can do whatever it wants in the name of allegedly safeguarding America, and that whatever it does for this claimed purpose is therefore ipso facto legal regardless of whether it is in violation of statutory law, in violation of longstanding custom and precedent, or in violation of any reasonable conception of humanity. If the President says it's necessary to torture people to safeguard America, and even to murder some of them as part of the interrogation process in order to safeguard the country, then this is legal. If he says it's necessary to secretly kidnap people, apparently by the thousands, and secretly fly them off to other countries where they will be tortured, all as part of a process that is sanitized by calling it "rendition," then this is legal. If he says, it is necessary to engage in permanently warrantless wiretaps, then this is legal. And so on. Why, then, would it not be legal, if the President says it must be done to safeguard America, to pick up Americans off the street and beat the crap out of them (or worse) in prison in order to obtain information? Why wouldn't it be legal, if the President says it must be done to safeguard our country, to wiretap two or three million people, or to break into their homes in order to steal their papers, computers, etc. in order to obtain information (like Nixon's henchmen broke into the office of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist for this very purpose)? Thus it is that today we find that our country has been doing things, many of them discussed above, that would have once seemed inconceivable, even in the darkest days of the Civil War or World War II. Because of the orders and opinions of Bush and his henchmen we have tortured and killed prisoners, kidnapped thousands (apparently) of people as part of the process that is sanitized by calling it "rendition," have sent kidnapped people to other countries to be tortured, have run secret prisons in foreign countries, have secretly held various "high value" prisoners in compounds located God knows where, have conducted warrantless electronic surveillance on Americans, on false premises have started a war that has killed over 2,000 Americans and many, many thousands of Iraqis, and have done God knows what else that has not yet been disclosed. It is little wonder given all this, and given claims that the President can do whatever he wants, that one believes it is democracy and freedom that have become at stake. It was, I think, Germaine Greer who said a few decades ago that a person's views are a cluster, that if a guy on an airplane told her what he thinks about one thing, she could almost surely tell you what he thinks about a lot of things. She was, of course, dead right. And the cluster of views held by Bush, Cheney, et. al., are really pretty rotten, as made plain by the roster of once inconceivable things we have now done. We did all these things because those guys claimed them essential and ordered them done. People who variously are and collectively include, a former drunk, a serial failure in business, a drunken flunk-out from Yale when less than two percent of Yalies flunked out, a draft dodger, a combat avoider, guys who have spent their lives getting ahead by pull, connections and family influence rather than brains and talent (which they don't have), and guys who are just plain mean, nasty bastards are at the helm, and ardently believe in doing the terrible things we have done. Are we supposed to not fear the possibility that there could already be more horrible stuff which we don't even know about yet, or that in future more such stuff could be done? Are we supposed to not worry about this? The New York Times admitted earlier this year that the paper had changed articles in response to concerns expressed in advance by the CIA and other government agencies. Since the paper would not disclose what articles these were, or what changes had been made, I wrote here that "For all we know, the excluded facts or details could be ones of enormous importance for the public to know. The possibilities will not bear mention; the mind reels at some of them." As indeed the mind should have. For now we know one of the stories that was not only changed, but was killed for a year: the story about the warrantless electronic disclosure authorized by Bush (and, as he himself has said, reauthorized by him 30 times). When it finally broke the story a few weeks ago, The Times said, in its lengthy article, that the government had asked it not to print the story, and it therefore had in fact delayed it for a year to do "additional reporting" (and then had omitted certain unknown details). Imagine that: The Times, at the behest of the government, sat on this nation-shaking story for over a year without disclosing it. Does this not remind you of The Times' failure, at government request, to print what it knew in the early 1960s about the impending Bay of Pigs invasion, the invasion which therefore went ahead because it had not been publicly disclosed and which proved to be a perfect storm of disaster? No doubt The Times felt it was acting patriotically in both cases, but we know that its failure to perform its First Amendment duty led to disaster at the Bay of Pigs. And it is not unfair to suspect that bending its knee to the government for one year with regard to illegal surveillance will also prove a horrible mistake, just as its failure to question the government's reasons for going to war in Iraq was a horrible mistake. The Times did not disclose why it bent the knee for one year on the electronic eavesdropping story, and there has been but little notice or discussion of the matter in the media. When a newspaper, let alone the country's leading newspaper, sits on a story like this for a year, instead of telling the public what it has every right to know and a deep interest in knowing because the nature of our governing system is involved and our freedoms are involved, when the nation's paper of record sits on a story like this for a year, its conduct and the reasons for its conduct demand explanation and analysis. There is one other matter that has been brought up here before and is vitally related to The Times story. That is the question of the reporter's privilege of confidentiality. It appears that one of the big reasons that The Times was able to learn about and report on the warrantless eavesdropping is that at least a dozen people in government agencies, including the NSA, were so worried about the legality and propriety of the eavesdropping that they were willing to talk to The Times on condition of being granted anonymity. King George, however, has ordered an investigation. He wants to find out who these people were and clap them in irons because they revealed his illegal conduct. It is possible that one way he might try to learn their identities is by subpoenaing the reporters in an effort to force them to reveal their sources or to confirm or deny various pieces of information. If this were to happen, The Times should fight him to the death, for freedom of the press to perform its first amendment duty of revealing governmental misconduct to the people -- the very duty mentioned by Justice Black in The Pentagon Papers Case -- would be deeply involved, as derivatively would be the safeguarding of the freedom of citizens themselves. It has been said before here that, in terms of the purposes of the first amendment, prominent among which is the revelation of governmental misconduct so that it can be stopped, there is a vast difference between governmental insiders revealing such misconduct to the press on an anonymous, confidential basis in the hope that it may thereby be stopped, as occurred in the electronic surveillance case, and government insiders using the press, on an anonymous, confidential basis, in order to further governmental misconduct, as Libby, Rove and Cheney have done on the Valerie Plame case. If we want to carry out the first amendment purpose of stopping governmental misconduct, there should be a privilege of confidentiality in the first case but not the second. One suspects that the Times, as it should, will fight the government to the death if its reporters are subpoenaed in the warrantless surveillance case. For about a couple of months now, the paper's news columns (like some other media too) have regularly given the reasons why sources who revealed particular matters did so only on condition of anonymity. It is regularly said in news stories that sources required anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about a matter, or because a matter was classified, etc. This likely is being done partly as a result of the heat that has recently been put on the media for its prior vast overuse of anonymous sources without ever mentioning the fact, let alone the reason for it. But doubtless it is also being done to build a record, a public record, of all the information that the paper (like other media) could bring to the public only by granting anonymity to sources who otherwise would not talk. One builds a record for a reason. Here the reason almost surely is to have a conveniently available public record of the importance of confidentiality in bringing important information to people should there be legal proceedings seeking to force reporters to reveal sources' identities or confidential information or documents, or should it prove necessary to seek state or federal legislation protecting the confidentiality of sources. So, as said, the Times (and other media too) seems to be preparing to fight if necessary, and one say more power to them in the warrantless surveillance matter, where our freedoms are at stake. This brings me to the subject of Congress. The institutional and individual rot in Congress has now been put on display in the electronic surveillance area. Here Congress was supposed to exercise oversight over the executive branch. The way this "oversight" was "exercised" was that a small number of legislators at the head of relevant committees would go to the White House, where Cheney and company would rapidly go through subjects that are claimed to be technical and complex. The legislators could bring no staff and were not allowed even to take notes -- how could any self respecting human being accept a condition under which he or she is told, has it imposed on him/her, is ordered , that he/she is not permitted to take notes on a serious and difficult subject but is expected nonetheless to learn and exercise oversight over it. In addition to being allowed no staff and no notes, legislators say they were unable to discuss what they learned with anybody , lest they violate rules of classification and secrecy. When one of them, Jay Rockefeller, wished to register concerns in writing, he could not even have a secretary type the letter lest the secretary see what he was saying, and instead he had to send a handwritten letter. (And when one NSA official privately mentioned his concerns to a Congressional official, nothing ensued because "'People just looked the other way because they didn't want to know what was going on.'") How can grown men and women act so cravenly. It has been said here many times that there should be impeachment because Bush and Cheney are plainly committing the felony of conspiracy to commit torture, which is punishable by up to life imprisonment and, being a felony, is an impeachable high crime or misdemeanor. No conservative has ever written or emailed to deny that they are violating the anti-torture statute, but thus far neither Congress nor the media have wanted to discuss this. Now Bush and Cheney are committing the felony of unlawful electronic surveillance in violation of the FISA, which is a felony punishable by up to five years in prison and is likewise an impeachable high crime and misdemeanor. (Senator Boxer says that she heard John Dean say that Bush's recent admission about the surveillance is the first time that he, Dean, had ever heard a President admit to an impeachable offense.) So now we know that Bush is guilty of at least two impeachable crimes. And many people think -- not implausibly -- that the distortions if not outright lies by which Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et. al., took us into war are themselves impeachable as political (albeit not legal) high crimes and misdemeanors. Investigations are being discussed and censure is being mentioned. These actions may be, almost surely would be, politically easier than impeachment, but nothing can really substitute for it as a vehicle for stopping gross usurpations of power and ungodly distortions of the constitutional plan envisioned by the founders whom Bush and his fellow right wingers love to (falsely) cite. The confirmation of Samuel Alito should also be affected, although, like impeachment, this probably won't happen even though it should happen. By rights, as it were, Alito's confirmation hearings should be put off until after full hearings are held, perhaps by the Senate Judiciary Committee, into the question of the gross usurpations of power by the Executive. Otherwise, at least if one assumes Congress might impeach and convict Bush/Cheney, or at minimum will issue a formal censure of them, we are likely to get yet another Supreme Court Justice nominated by an unsurper to carry out his views, including views of presidential power. (If memory serves, the Republicans stopped Abe Fortas from gaining a higher judicial position when Lyndon Johnson, who nominated him, had become thoroughly discredited, and one is hard pressed to understand any principled reason why the situation should be different now.) But, assuming as one does that Alito's nomination hearings will go forward as scheduled, it is more important than ever for Senators on the Judiciary Committee to ask him sharp, short, penetrating questions about his views of Presidential power, questions of the type Senator Specter had submitted to Harriet Miers. It is similarly important that Senators demand full, candid answers to those questions, rather than letting Alito get away with the humbug they let John Roberts get away with, and that Senators reject Alito if his answers indicate that he would or might support, and would not necessarily vigorously oppose, the kind of constitutional distortions, the kind of overweening, freedom-destroying executive supremacy, sought by the usurper of power who nominated him. We cannot remain a free country with the Bush/Cheney view of the Executive uber alles -- a view at the opposite pole from the framers' desire for a government where, precisely to avoid tyranny, the legislature is supreme as between the two political branches, and the Senate should not confirm to the Supreme Court a man who will not pledge to oppose this usurpation, this destruction of the constitutional plan. Lawrence R. Velvel is the Dean of Massachusetts School of Law. He can be reached at velvel@mslaw.edu.

Why Bush decided to bypass court in ordering wiretaps: Panel of judges modified his requests Stewart M. Powell Hearst Newspapers Sunday, December 25, 2005 Washington -- Government records show that the Bush administration was encountering unprecedented second-guessing by the secret federal surveillance court when President Bush decided to bypass the panel and order surveillance of U.S.-based terror suspects without the court's approval. A review of Justice Department reports to Congress shows that the 26-year-old Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court modified more wiretap requests from the Bush administration than the four previous presidential administrations combined. The court's repeated intervention in Bush administration wiretap requests may explain why the president decided to bypass the court nearly four years ago to begin secret National Security Agency spying on hundreds and possibly thousands of Americans and foreigners inside the United States, according to James Bamford, an authority on the security agency that intercepts telephone calls, e-mails, faxes and Internet communications. "They wanted to expand the number of people they were eavesdropping on, and they didn't think they could get the warrants they needed from the court to monitor those people," said Bamford, author of "Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency" and "The Puzzle Palace: Inside America's Most Secret Intelligence Organization." "The FISA court has shown its displeasure by tinkering with these applications by the Bush administration." The 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act adopted by Congress in the wake of President Richard Nixon's misuse of intelligence agencies before his Watergate resignation sets a high standard for court-approved wiretaps on Americans and resident aliens inside the United States. To win a court-approved wiretap, the government must show "probable cause" that the target of the surveillance is a member of a foreign terrorist organization or foreign power and is engaged in activities that "may" involve a violation of criminal law. No 'probable cause' Faced with that standard, Bamford said the Bush administration had difficulty obtaining FISA court-approved wiretaps on dozens of people within the United States who were communicating with targeted al Qaeda suspects inside the United States. "The court wouldn't find enough 'probable cause' to give the Bush administration wiretap warrants on everybody that talks to or e-mails the terror suspect that they were trying to target," Bamford said. The 11-judge court that authorizes FISA wiretaps has approved at least 18,740 applications for electronic surveillance or physical searches from five presidential administrations since 1979. The judges modified only two search warrant orders out of the 13,102 applications that were approved over the first 22 years of the court's operation. In 20 of the first 21 annual reports on the court's activities up to 1999, the Justice Department told Congress that "no orders were entered (by the FISA court) which modified or denied the requested authority" submitted by the government. But since 2001, the judges have modified 179 of the 5,645 requests for court-ordered surveillance by the Bush administration. A total of 173 of those court-ordered "substantive modifications" took place in 2003 and 2004, the most recent years for which public records are available. Warrant requests rejected The judges also rejected or deferred at least six requests for warrants during those two years -- the first outright rejection of a wiretap request in the court's history. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said last week that Bush authorized surveillance of overseas communications by U.S.-based terror suspects because the FISA court's approval process was too cumbersome. But Gonzales did not mention any difficulties obtaining FISA court approval for wiretaps sought by the administration or the secret court's increasing tendency to modify Bush administration requests for wiretaps. "FISA is very important in the war on terror, but it doesn't provide the speed and the agility that we need in all circumstances to deal with this new kind of threat," Gonzales said. The Bush administration, responding to concerns expressed by some judges on the 11-judge panel, agreed last week to provide the judges a classified briefing on the domestic spying program. U.S. District Judge Malcolm Howard, a member of the 11-judge panel, told CNN that the Bush administration agreed to brief the judges after U.S. District Judge James Robertson resigned from the FISA panel, apparently to protest Bush's spying program. Bamford, 59, a Vietnam-era Navy veteran, likens the Bush administration's domestic surveillance without court approval to Nixon-era abuses of intelligence agencies. The National Security Agency and previous eavesdropping agencies collected duplicates of all international telegrams to and from the United States for decades during the Cold War under a program code-named "Shamrock" before the program ended in the 1970s. A program known as "Minaret" tracked 75,000 Americans whose activities had drawn government interest between 1952 and 1974, including participation in the anti-war movement during the Vietnam War. "NSA prides itself on learning the lessons of the 1970s and obeying the legal restrictions imposed by FISA," Bamford said. "Now it looks like we're going back to the bad old days again."

Warrantless Wiretapping By EDWARD LAZARUS Findlaw.com 22 Dec 2005 Why It Seriously Imperils the Separation of Powers, And Continues the Executive's Sapping of Power From Congress and the Courts. The Constitution's separation of powers was the nation's primary defense against tyranny. Not so long ago, the debate over the constitutional doctrine of separation of powers in this country was a matter of fine distinctions. In 1989, for instance, some worried that Congress' decision to have the executive put a few members of the judicial branch on the U.S. Sentencing Commission raised a separation of powers issue. These executive-appointed judges, after all, would arguably act as legislators - in that the Commission drafts the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines, for Congress' approval. The Supreme Court, in Mistretta v. United States, approved the arrangement despite the separation-of-powers objection. But critics still worried. Yale Law Professor Stephen Carter eloquently explained why: Although permitting a few judicial officers to accept executive appointment to a non-judicial commission might not look too ominous, the Constitution's separation of powers was the nation's primary defense against tyranny. And tyranny, Carter concluded in an oft-quoted line, does not overwhelm a nation in an instant. No, he wrote, "tyranny creeps." Lately, though, tyranny runs like a cheetah. How quaint concerns such as those of Mistretta's critics seem after the events of the last few years. How quaint they seem, especially, after last's week revelation that President Bush has spent the last four years authorizing and re-authorizing the warrantless wiretapping of domestically originating phone calls made by American citizens, even though Congress appears to have made such wiretapping a criminal offense when it passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in the 1970s. How a Bloated Executive Has Sapped Power From Congress and The Federal Courts Over the past four years, the executive has repeatedly tried to make sure the federal courts and the legislative branch have no oversight at all as to whom it detains, on what ground, for how long, and under what conditions -- including conditions of extreme torture such as waterboarding. The Bush Administration took power from the courts by spuriously arguing that Guantanamo detainees had no access to the Great Writ of habeas corpus - a contention that the Supreme Court handily rejected, but that kept the issue tied up in litigation for years. It would have been more honest for the Administration to suspend habeas corpus for these prisoners, and accept the brunt of public criticism for doing so.

Are You Being Tracked? By Devanie Angel Sacramento News & Review December 27, 2005. Big business thinks Radio Frequency Identification tags are great. Privacy-rights advocates fear the tiny chips will invite corporations and the government into our personal lives. It looks fairly innocuous, a metal-and-plastic square with wires coiled up like an angular snail, a lot like the anti-theft tag you'd find if you pried apart a book you'd just bought at a chain store. But it's a Radio Frequency Identification tag, RFID for short, and each one has a tiny antenna that can broadcast information about the product, or person, to which it is attached. To the industry that makes and markets RFID, it's simply the next logical step from bar codes: providing a cheap, easy way to keep products on the shelves, consumers happy and companies making money. But to many privacy-rights advocates, RFID tags could be the forerunner to nightmare scenarios in which RFID technology is the Trojan horse that brings Big Brother into your home, snooping through your medicine cabinets, fridge and underwear drawer to find out what you do, buy and believe, and, ultimately, what you are. This small tag has, so far, largely flown under the radar of consumers and the mainstream press. But in early October, privacy-rights advocates Katherine Albrecht and Liz McIntyre published a book, "Spychips: How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track Your Every Move with RFID," that has RFID proponents on the defensive. The book holds up plenty of evidence to back up the fears of people who otherwise might be written off as tinfoil-hat-wearing conspiracy theorists: IBM taking out a patent for a "person-tracking unit" that uses RFID tags to identify individuals, their movements and purchases in stores. Procter & Gamble and Wal-Mart collaborating on a test that put cameras on a store shelf in Oklahoma and watched customers pluck lipsticks off an RFID-enabled shelf. A Sutter County grade school's experimental program requiring students to wear RFID-enabled badges to track their on-campus movements, thanks to supplies donated by the InCom Corp. based 50 miles northwest of Sacramento. And the federal government plans to put RFID tags in passports, prescription medications and perhaps driver's licenses and postage stamps. One day, the "Spychips" authors fear, the tiny tags could be on everything from candy bars to dollar bills, compromising both privacy and personal security. "I think the industry is waiting until they've done adequate PR to where the public will really embrace it," Albrecht said. "They want to get the infrastructure in place [and] find ways to integrate this technology in a way that is not going to scare people. They envision these things in our homes and our refrigerators and in the doorway of our kids' bedrooms." In the weeks after "Spychips"' release, RFID supporters retaliated with rebuttals calling the book at best a futuristic fairy tale and at worst a delusional pack of lies by fringe alarmists. As much as the RFID industry (which researchers say will be a $4.2 billion-a-year business by 2011) might want to ignore the book and its authors, it can't afford to do so. One RFID company has even bought space on Google, eBay and Amazon so when consumers search for "Spychips," a link to a 24-page rebuttal pops up. "We felt we had a responsibility to educate consumers," said Nicholas Chavez, president of RFID Ltd., who co-authored the rebuttal released November 4. "They may get first blanch at the consumers through the book," he said. "There's a big fear out there that people will go read 'Spychips' and then go out and tell 10 people." "Spychips," he said, casts RFID in "this sinister, Orwellian light" and presupposes applications that aren't within the current capabilities of the technology. RFID was first envisioned in the 1940s, combining the existing disciplines of radio broadcast technology and radar to communicate via reflected power, according to a history by AIM Global, the Association for Automatic Identification and Mobility. It wasn't until the late 1970s that technical capabilities caught up with the vision and RFID began to be applied commercially. While "active" RFID tags send out radio signals, the more typical "passive" tags lie dormant until picked up by devices called readers, which can be positioned anywhere from a couple of inches to several feet away. The reader transmits the information to a database, where it can be stored. There's some debate over actual vs. intended read range, and Albrecht says she has registered results from as far as 15 feet away, but "you don't need these massive read ranges," Albrecht said, if RFID readers are placed in strategic locations, such as freeway onramps, grocery-store aisles, floors or doorways of homes. While some chips are smaller than a grain of sand, the ones currently in use on shipping crates are the size of a credit card. It's a technology that ultimately will win over consumers through convenience and savings, said Gail Tom, a California State University, Sacramento, professor who teaches marketing courses and has written two books on consumer behavior. And yet, she acknowledged, "if you went up to the average person on the street, they would not know what RFID is." The "Spychips" book, she said, "alerts people to at least think about it." "Whenever you have new technology, there are concerns, and it's good to have concerns [due to] just the possibility that there could be Draconian and negative things. You would hope the good outweighs the bad," she said. "When UPC codes came out, it was somewhat controversial, too," Tom said, remembering worries that unscrupulous retailers would switch prices on unsuspecting customers. "Using the analogy of the bar code is a good one, because it tracks the product, it doesn't track you," she said. "Marketers are not interested in individuals. They're interested in segments and clumps of people." A lot of the technology's success depends on how the RFID industry plays it, and Tom agreed it's now somewhat on the defensive. "It may not have occurred to marketers that they needed to publicize this, because they may not have seen a lot of the privacy issues." Underwear tags and smart shopping carts The RFID industry's adversaries are smart, passionate and media-savvy. With each new development, the authors of "Spychips" fire off an e-mail press release touting their successes or assailing their critics, turning industry leaders' own words against them. They've organized pickets at Wal-Marts, along with boycotts of companies such as Gillette and European retail store Tesco. (In 2003, that store collaborated to package RFID tags with Mach3 razor blades and surreptitiously snap photos of customers taking them from the shelf, and later at the cash register, in a test designed in part to identify potential shoplifters.) The clothing company Benetton canceled its plans to put RFID in underwear and other products after Albrecht launched an "I'd rather go naked" campaign. Their message is resonating with anti-government Libertarians, conservative Christians and staunch American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) types. But that's not all. "It doesn't have a demographic," Albrecht said of "Spychips." "Everyone's got a reason not to be spied on." Try to get biographical information out of Katherine Albrecht, and you'll get some unintended insight into what she's all about. She started taking college courses at age 15 but won't say where she grew up. Along with a master's in instructional technology from Harvard (she's working on her doctorate there), she has a bachelor's degree in international marketing but won't say from where. She's married and has kids but won't say how many. Her family lives somewhere in the state of New Hampshire. She'll eat a loss before handing over her driver's license to reverse an overcharge at Kmart. She also refuses to use credit or ATM cards, only paying cash. Fittingly, she likes to wear mirrored sunglasses. "I think I've always been kind of a rebel," Albrecht said. "The ultimate irony is that by being the person who is so openly advocating for privacy, I've become a public figure." Disturbed by the concept of supermarket loyalty cards, which she feels blackmail shoppers into turning over personal data in exchange for lower prices, Albrecht decided to study the practice for her master's thesis. In 1999, she founded CASPIAN, Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion And Numbering. So, it wasn't a reach when, a couple of years later, Albrecht heard about "smart" shopping carts that use RFID to track shoppers throughout a store. She researched and wrote an article for the Denver University Law Review and began attending RFID trade shows in the United States and Europe, where she heard the multiple, often conflicting messages companies were sending to clients, consumers and the general and trade presses. Also in 1999, corporations and academia were collaborating to create the Auto-ID Center on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) campus. The nonprofit research project was founded and funded by Procter & Gamble, Gillette and the Uniform Code Council, which manages the bar code. "It was just down the street from Harvard, where I was working on my doctorate," Albrecht said. In the spring of 2002, she signed up as a member of the media to attend a meeting at the Auto-ID Center, which was in the midst of its successful quest to get $300,000 each from companies that wanted to be sponsoring partners. "I was a fly on the wall taking notes in the back." By then, years into her anti-loyalty-card crusade, Albrecht was a confirmed skeptic and wasn't surprised that big business would want to gather personal information on and track customers, or that it would hope to fly under consumers' radar until RFID was embedded in society and it was too late to do anything about it. "What surprised and horrified me in 2002 was that they actually had a technology to do this." And no one seemed to be talking about privacy issues. "I came home that day so sickened and so reeling that I sat down with my husband and said, 'I feel like I have the weight of the world on my shoulders because I know what's coming.' "This is going to fundamentally change everything." At another board meeting at MIT, Albrecht found herself sharing an elevator with the then-executive director of the Auto-ID Center, Kevin Ashton. Ashton, who was not available for comment and now works for a company that makes RFID readers, has told interviewers that item-level RFID tagging will become common between 2007 and 2010, with RFID common in the home between 2010 and 2020. He also envisions an "Internet of Things" that will link every item sold, from a can of Pepsi to an Armani dress shirt, to its own Web page, tracking it from manufacturer to warehouse to transport and beyond, until the tag is presumably killed by the consumer. "He gets it. He sees the hugeness of this," Albrecht said of the man she considers her arch nemesis. "He embraces this future; I'm horrified." To track or to serve? In October 2003, the Auto-ID Center dissolved, and EPCGlobal took its place as a nonprofit entity standardizing what's referred to as Electronic Product Code. Unlike a bar code, which can reveal only the type of product you purchased, an EPC is a unique identifier that attaches a serial number to tell a reader exactly which item you have. On the corporate level, Wal-Mart has been leading the push toward RFID in a retail setting. This year, the company began requiring the 100 top suppliers to its Texas stores to put RFID tags on their shipping pallets and cases of products at an estimated cost of millions of dollars a year. "We are also on target to have the next top 200 suppliers live in January 2006," said Christi Gallagher, a media-relations representative for Wal-Mart. "We don't anticipate each item in the store being tagged for 10 to 15 years," she added. "Wal-Mart is not looking at RFID technology to track customers, but rather to serve them by enhancing its supply-chain process." The industry envisions "smart shelves," which would alert stores when inventory is low, so they could restock or reorder, decreasing frustration and increasing sales. RFID also has anti-theft applications and could help expedite returns, product recalls and warranties. Theoretically, the stores would pass savings on to customers. In November 2003, the Chicago Sun-Times reported on a trial by Procter & Gamble and Wal-Mart in which shoppers in a Broken Arrow, Okla., store were viewed remotely from Procter & Gamble headquarters as they took packages of Max Factor Lipfinity lipstick off a shelf. The boxes contained small RFID chips, and readers were embedded in the shelf liner. Although representatives from both companies initially denied such a study ever took place, Wal-Mart now says it was anything but secret. "There were signs present saying a test was being conducted," Gallagher said. Gallagher said Albrecht "may not fully understand the technology" and that, "because of our size, we are often the target of criticism by these special-interest groups with their own very narrow agendas, which typically do not reflect the philosophies of the majority of our customers." The Department of Defense has ordered suppliers to affix RFID tags to shipping crates. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has called for RFID tags on pharmaceuticals' shipping containers, which it says would reduce counterfeiting and theft, and the companies that manufacture OxyContin and Viagra are already on board. The U.S. State Department announced in May that it was backing off on RFID-enabled passports after privacy-rights advocates pointed out that, lacking encryption, the tags could be read remotely by anyone, including terrorists who could stand in airports with handheld RFID readers, separating out Americans and allowing precision-level targeting. The scheduled rollout had been last summer. Already, San Francisco Bay Area motorists use FasTrak to quickly traverse bridges and other toll areas, with an RFID-enabled device automatically debiting their accounts. A Mobil gas station Speedpass uses the same technology, as do VeriChips implanted in pets in case they get lost. More recently, appliance makers have developed microwave ovens and washing machines that can scan bar codes and, eventually, read RFID tags on products to determine how and how long to cook or wash a product. The food industry could tag and track meat and other products, making recalls much simpler. If you have a keyless remote for your car, you are carrying around an RFID tag. And for convenience's sake, the possibilities are exciting: Load up your shopping cart, wheel it through an RFID-enabled bay that will instantly scan the items, store loyalty card and payment card, and check out in seconds. Privacy rights meet the spy chip Simson Garfinkel, Ph.D., has seen all sides of the issue and says it's not a Utopia-vs.-Armageddon scenario. An author and instructor at Harvard, he is an expert in computer security and studies information policy and terrorism. "The public is largely not participating in this debate, and unfortunately the decisions are being made right now," he said. For example, he said, MasterCard and Visa claim they have deployed 1.5 million RFID-enabled cards with no customer complaints. "The fact is these people don't even know that they're carrying the cards," Garfinkel said. Garfinkel is a member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and a signer of the nonprofit's Position Statement on the Use of RFID in Consumer Products. The statement, which also is endorsed by CASPIAN, the ACLU and various consumer and privacy organizations, calls for a voluntary moratorium on item-level tagging and also seeks to preserve consumers' right to disable tags, avoid being tracked without consent and preserve anonymity. Spurred in part by the Sutter County student-tagging controversy, the EFF and ACLU drafted a bill for the California Legislature that became Senate Bill 768, and Senator Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto, agreed to carry it. The bill currently is parked on the Assembly floor, to be resurrected for discussion in January. It calls for a three-year moratorium on the use of RFID technology on driver's licenses, library cards, student-body cards, Medi-Cal cards and other "mass distribution" documents. It also would set fines for "intentional remote reading" of someone's personal information without his or her knowledge and would require personal information on RFID tags to be encrypted. "It's hardly a household word," Lee Tien, staff attorney for EFF, said of RFID. "But those people who are aware of it have fairly predictable reactions. [And] the more people know about it, they more concerned they are." In October 2003, a survey commissioned by the National Retail Federation found that while 43 percent of those who had heard of RFID viewed it favorably, almost 70 percent of consumers were "extremely concerned" that data collected via RFID could be used by a third party, that it would make them the target of advertisers or that they themselves could be tracked through their purchases. "Should the industry fail to educate consumers about RFID, that role will default to consumer-advocacy groups," warned consulting firm CapGemini. The Sacramento-based California NOW (National Organization for Women) has signed on as an official supporter of S.B. 768 and is joining the ACLU, the Commission on the Status of Women and the California Partnership to End Domestic Violence in lobbying the Legislature in favor of the bill. "California NOW's primary concern about the use of RFIDs is the threat to women and their children's safety," said Jodi Hicks, California NOW's legislative director. "Women and their children who are fleeing domestic violence need to be protected by having their whereabouts concealed from their abuser. RFIDs are the dream tool of an abuser or stalker, and we must do what we can to keep that technology out of the hands of those criminals." For Chavez, of RFID integrator RFID Ltd., it's a battle for consumers' trust. "You can't take it personally," he said, but "I do take offense to the fact that they're influencing consumers' opinions of anyone and everyone in the RFID industry as being secretive or Machiavellian in their efforts." He wants Albrecht and McIntyre to agree to join his company's advisory board, participate in public debates and train to become "certified" in RFID. "If they wish to be credible in talking about RFID technology, they need to be certified." Chavez tempers his criticism, acknowledging that others in the industry have directed "very well-publicized slurs" at the Spychips authors. Privacy advocates raise important concerns, he said. "I'm all for labeling, and the consumers should have the option to kill the tag at the point of sale." Most in the industry believe in some form of a code of ethics but ultimately want to police themselves. RFID trade association AIM Global, which also published a rebuttal to "Spychips," calls the book a "great read" for "conspiracy buffs" and says it includes "a lot of conjecture, old news, unfounded assumptions, and a hodgepodge misrepresentation of the various types of RFID--even as the book admits the technology's limitations." Mark Roberti, founder and editor of the RFID Journal, said RFID is a wonderful technology that is getting a bad rap by a vocal minority. "You can't see it--that's what creeps people out. "The fact is, everywhere RFID has been introduced, people love it." Roberti has written hundreds of articles about RFID and its applications, editorialized against the Spychips book and said its authors "consistently overstate the truth." "They don't understand the fundamentals of business," Roberti said of the idea that collected data could become common knowledge. "Businesses never share information about their customers. The company is always going to do what will make it money." That's only the beginning of the "misguided" and "pathetic" ideas that Roberti said pervade "Spychips." "The book is so stupid in the fact that it does not relate technology to reality. ... Wal-Mart cannot change the laws of physics." "They're struggling to read tags on cases traveling through a dock door 10 feet wide at 5 miles an hour," Roberti said, and it's easy to disable or "jam" tags. Read ranges are only a few inches in most cases, and it will be years before RFID tags are cheap enough--5 cents, the industry hopes--to place on individual products. And nowhere in the book, Roberti says, is there an example of a specific person whose privacy has been invaded. "Every time you go into a store, video cameras are assuming you're guilty. Why is RFID suddenly the problem?" said Roberti, who is against tracking people by name and is disturbed that U.S. privacy laws are not as advanced as those in Europe. Still, he said, "these are not evil people out to screw all these consumers. These are good people who want to sell products." "In my view, RFID gives the consumer all the power," he said. "Wal-Mart has no power. We choose to shop there. ... Vote with your wallet. If you don't want someone to put an RFID tag in a product, don't buy that product." Albrecht, who authored a rebuttal to Roberti's rebuttal, said he misrepresents what "Spychips" is all about. It's not about how corporations and the government have invaded people's privacy. It's about how they plan to invade their privacy in the future. "Part of what the book does is show industry vision," she said. "Before 1910, when electrical outlets were invented, if you had said, 'There will be a way to tap into a worldwide power grid, and [devices] will be every 10 feet in your house,' people would say, 'You're nuts,'" she said. It's largely the "what if" thought progression that has RFID proponents so mad about "Spychips." What if the "smart" medicine cabinet developed by Accenture didn't just warn people, by matching face-recognition software to FDA-mandated RFID tags on medicine bottles, that they were about to take the wrong medicine, but broadcast that information to their family members, doctor or the government? What if the government or insurance companies start using information gathered by RFID to deny people health coverage? What if the same refrigerator that lets you know when you're out of cheese also radios the information to marketers, who in turn bombard you with unwanted advertisements? What if police decide to use the passes carried by toll-bridge users to determine via RFID readers that a driver had gotten from Point A to Point B too quickly and issue speeding tickets? What if you have your RFID-enabled passport in your pocket when you go to an anti-war rally, and government agents remotely scan it and put you in a database? "That's the more dangerous, insidious side of RFID," said the EFF's Tien of the possibility of surreptitious government use of RFID. "The private sector and the government work hand in hand in many areas of surveillance. ... It's all one big blob a person has to worry about." "Some people say, 'I don't care if people find out I wear size 8 Levi's jeans,'" Tien said. But what about more sensitive and personal possessions, such as a pregnancy home-test kit, or meds for bipolar disorder or HIV? "There are a lot of issues about your preferences and your beliefs," Tien said. "It's the same debate as the Patriot Act. Some people will say they have nothing to hide, and the government could find the same things out another way." Tom, the CSUS professor, said that at the end of the day, most consumers don't really care how a technology works; they just think "it's neat that it works." If they don't like a technology, or how it's being applied, "the power is still in the hands of the consumer. The consumer still has the power at the very end to rip off the tag." "I don't see industry in general using RFID tags in a stealth manner," Tom said. Garfinkel said it would be a shame if RFID were dismissed completely because the industry is "incompetent" at addressing privacy concerns. He embraces many uses of the technology and especially sees ways it could be used to help blind people. "The industry is acting very poorly." RFID manufacturers contradict themselves, he says, when they talk about how powerful their tags are and then tell consumers not to worry about them being read covertly, or from a distance beyond the recommended read range. "Lots of times, things we think are not possible under the laws of physics actually are possible because it's an engineering problem, not a physics problem." What it comes down to is whether you trust the government and big business to keep your privacy and other best interests at heart, he said. "I think it's a mistake to simply assume that business would never do anything secret," Garfinkel said. "The government is already following people around. I could easily see us being in a world where this is pervasively deployed. A lot of personal info could be leaked." Albrecht said CASPIAN's intent has never been to ban RFID, she said, but rather to make companies tell consumers when tags or readers are being used so they can make informed choices. If consumers wait and hope for the best, it may be too late, said Tien, of the EFF. "Privacy violations are not like a lot of other kinds of violations. You don't see them right away," he said, drawing a comparison with identity theft. "There's really no reason to wait until a disaster happens until you deal with it. You can do something now rather than wait for a crisis."

Student's Tall Tale Revealed Confesses fabricating US surveillance story By Jonathan Saltzman The Boston Globe Saturday 24 December 2005 It rocketed across the Internet a week ago, a startling newspaper report that agents from the US Department of Homeland Security had visited a student at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth at his New Bedford home simply because he had tried to borrow Mao Tse-Tung's "Little Red Book" for a history seminar on totalitarian goverments. The story, first reported in last Saturday's New Bedford Standard-Times, was picked up by other news organizations, prompted diatribes on left-wing and right-wing blogs, and even turned up in an op-ed piece written by Senator Edward M. Kennedy in the Globe. But yesterday, the student confessed that he had made it up after being confronted by the professor who had repeated the story to a Standard-Times reporter. The professor, Brian Glyn Williams, said he went to his former student's house and asked about inconsistencies in his story. The 22-year-old student admitted it was a hoax, Williams said. "I made it up," the professor recalled him saying. "I'm sorry. . . . I'm so relieved that it's over." The student was not identified in any reports. The Globe interviewed him Thursday but decided not to write a story about his assertion, because of doubts about its veracity. The student could not be reached yesterday. Williams said the student gave no explanation. But Williams, who praised the student as hard-working and likeable, said he was shaken by the deception. "I feel as if I was lied to, and I have no idea why," said Williams, an associate professor of Islamic history. He said the possibility the government was scrutinizing books borrowed by his students "disturbed me tremendously." The story stems from an incident in the fall in a history seminar on totalitarianism and fascism taught by a colleague of Williams, Robert Pontbriand. The student, who was in the seminar, told Pontbriand he had requested an unabridged copy of "Quotations From Chairman Mao Tse-Tung" through the UMass interlibrary loan system for a research paper. Days later, he told Pontbriand, he was stunned to get a visit by Homeland Security agents who told him the book was on a "watch list" and asked why he wanted it. Pontbriand was appalled. "A university is a place for the open inquiry for the truth," he said. The story quickly made its way around the history department, and it might have stayed on campus if The New York Times had not broken a story about President Bush's approval of a controversial domestic spying program. After that story, a Standard-Times reporter called Williams, who has traveled to Afghanistan for research, to ask whether he was concerned about government surveillance, Williams said. As an afterthought, Williams said, he told the reporter about the alleged visit by the Homeland Security agents, and that became the lead of the Dec. 17 Standard-Times story. John Hoey, spokesman for UMass-Dartmouth, said the university did not expect to take any action against the student. "This was a conversation that took place between a student and his faculty members," Hoey said. Dan Rosenfeld, managing editor of the newspaper, declined to comment yesterday, saying that the paper considered it a "competitive newspaper story." The university issued a statement Monday defending academic freedom, but said it had had no visits from Homeland Security agents and no record of any student seeking the Mao book through an interlibrary loan. The student later told the professors he had requested the book at UMass-Amherst. But officials there said UMass-Dartmouth students cannot use their ID cards at the Amherst library and that all interlibrary requests are made by the libraries, not students. A Homeland Security spokeswoman in Washington said she had no record of any interview of a UMass-Dartmouth student and pointed out that the department does not have its own agents. An FBI spokeswoman in Boston also expressed doubt. That didn't stop it from buzzing around the Internet and even being picked up by Kennedy, who cited it as the latest example of the Bush administration's intrusion on civil liberties. "Incredibly, we are now in an era where reading a controversial book may be evidence of a link to terrorist," he wrote in an op-ed piece in Thursday's Globe. Laura Capps, a Kennedy spokeswoman, said last night that the senator cited "public reports" in his opinion piece. Even if the assertion was a hoax, she said, it did not detract from Kennedy's broader point that the Bush administration has gone too far in engaging in surveillance. Comment: We are living in times when the thought that Homeland Security would visit a student for requesting a copy of The Little Red Book is now accepted as a possibility. We know that the representatives of the pathocratic state can have access to library records, to sales information, to any and every scrape of information stored away in a computer somewhere that is cataloging our daily movements from cash machine to supermarket to bookstore. University professors have been interrogated over their reading material. While the right-wingnuts will run with the fact that this story is a hoax, singing the lullaby that all will be well at home if only more freedoms are curtailed, the dark cloud over the US is very real.

NSA, the Agency That Could Be Big Brother By James Bamford The New York Times 25 December 2005 Washington - Deep in a remote, fog-layered hollow near Sugar Grove, W.Va., hidden by fortress-like mountains, sits the country's largest eavesdropping bug. Located in a "radio quiet" zone, the station's large parabolic dishes secretly and silently sweep in millions of private telephone calls and e-mail messages an hour. Run by the ultrasecret National Security Agency, the listening post intercepts all international communications entering the eastern United States. Another NSA listening post, in Yakima,Wash., eavesdrops on the western half of the country. A hundred miles or so north of Sugar Grove, in Washington, the NSA has suddenly taken center stage in a political firestorm. The controversy over whether the president broke the law when he secretly ordered the NSA to bypass a special court and conduct warrantless eavesdropping on American citizens has even provoked some Democrats to call for his impeachment. According to John E. McLaughlin, who as the deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency in the fall of 2001 was among the first briefed on the program, this eavesdropping was the most secret operation in the entire intelligence network, complete with its own code word - which itself is secret. Jokingly referred to as "No Such Agency," the NSA was created in absolute secrecy in 1952 by President Harry S. Truman. Today, it is the largest intelligence agency. It is also the most important, providing far more insight on foreign countries than the CIA and other spy organizations. But the agency is still struggling to adjust to the war on terror, in which its job is not to monitor states, but individuals or small cells hidden all over the world. To accomplish this, the NSA has developed ever more sophisticated technology that mines vast amounts of data. But this technology may be of limited use abroad. And at home, it increases pressure on the agency to bypass civil liberties and skirt formal legal channels of criminal investigation. Originally created to spy on foreign adversaries, the NSA was never supposed to be turned inward. Thirty years ago, Senator Frank Church, the Idaho Democrat who was then chairman of the select committee on intelligence, investigated the agency and came away stunned. "That capability at any time could be turned around on the American people," he said in 1975, "and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn't matter. There would be no place to hide." He added that if a dictator ever took over, the NSA "could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back." At the time, the agency had the ability to listen to only what people said over the telephone or wrote in an occasional telegram; they had no access to private letters. But today, with people expressing their innermost thoughts in e-mail messages, exposing their medical and financial records to the Internet, and chatting constantly on cellphones, the agency virtually has the ability to get inside a person's mind. The NSA's original target had been the Communist bloc. The agency wrapped the Soviet Union and its satellite nations in an electronic cocoon. Anytime an aircraft, ship or military unit moved, the NSA would know. And from 22,300 miles in orbit, satellites with super-thin, football-field-sized antennas eavesdropped on Soviet communications and weapons signals. Today, instead of eavesdropping on an enormous country that was always chattering and never moved, the NSA is trying to find small numbers of individuals who operate in closed cells, seldom communicate electronically (and when they do, use untraceable calling cards or disposable cellphones) and are constantly traveling from country to country. During the cold war, the agency could depend on a constant flow of American-born Russian linguists from the many universities around the country with Soviet studies programs. Now the government is forced to search ethnic communities to find people who can speak Dari, Urdu or Lingala - and also pass a security clearance that frowns on people with relatives in their, or their parents', former countries. According to an interview last year with Gen. Michael V. Hayden, then the NSA's director, intercepting calls during the war on terrorism has become a much more complex endeavor. On Sept. 10, 2001, for example, the NSA intercepted two messages. The first warned, "The match begins tomorrow," and the second said, "Tomorrow is zero hour." But even though they came from suspected al Qaeda locations in Afghanistan, the messages were never translated until after the attack on Sept. 11, and not distributed until Sept. 12. What made the intercepts particularly difficult, General Hayden said, was that they were not "targeted" but intercepted randomly from Afghan pay phones. This makes identification of the caller extremely difficult and slow. "Know how many international calls are made out of Afghanistan on a given day? Thousands." General Hayden said. Still, the NSA doesn't have to go to the courts to use its electronic monitoring to snare al Qaeda members in Afghanistan. For the agency to snoop domestically on American citizens suspected of having terrorist ties, it first must to go to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, or FISA, make a showing of probable cause that the target is linked to a terrorist group, and obtain a warrant. The court rarely turns the government down. Since it was established in 1978, the court has granted about 19,000 warrants; it has only rejected five. And even in those cases the government has the right to appeal to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, which in 27 years has only heard one case. And should the appeals court also reject the warrant request, the government could then appeal immediately to a closed session of the Supreme Court. Before the Sept. 11 attacks, the NSA normally eavesdropped on a small number of American citizens or resident aliens, often a dozen or less, while the FBI, whose low-tech wiretapping was far less intrusive, requested most of the warrants from FISA. Despite the low odds of having a request turned down, President Bush established a secret program in which the NSA would bypass the FISA court and begin eavesdropping without warrant on Americans. This decision seems to have been based on a new concept of monitoring by the agency, a way, according to the administration, to effectively handle all the data and new information. At the time, the buzzword in national security circles was data mining: digging deep into piles of information to come up with some pattern or clue to what might happen next. Rather than monitoring a dozen or so people for months at a time, as had been the practice, the decision was made to begin secretly eavesdropping on hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people for just a few days or a week at a time in order to determine who posed potential threats. Those deemed innocent would quickly be eliminated from the watch list, while those thought suspicious would be submitted to the FISA court for a warrant. In essence, NSA seemed to be on a classic fishing expedition, precisely the type of abuse the FISA court was put in place to stop.At a news conference, President Bush himself seemed to acknowledge this new tactic. "FISA is for long-term monitoring," he said. "There's a difference between detecting so we can prevent, and monitoring." This eavesdropping is not the Bush administration's only attempt to expand the boundaries of what is legally permissible. In 2002, it was revealed that the Pentagon had launched Total Information Awareness, a data mining program led by John Poindexter, a retired rear admiral who had served as national security adviser under Ronald Reagan and helped devise the plan to sell arms to Iran and illegally divert the proceeds to rebels in Nicaragua. Total Information Awareness, known as TIA, was intended to search through vast data bases, promising to "increase the information coverage by an order-of-magnitude." According to a 2002 article in The New York Times, the program "would permit intelligence analysts and law enforcement officials to mount a vast dragnet through electronic transaction data ranging from credit card information to veterinary records, in the United States and internationally, to hunt for terrorists." After press reports, the Pentagon shut it down, and Mr. Poindexter eventually left the government. But according to a 2004 General Accounting Office report, the Bush administration and the Pentagon continued to rely heavily on data-mining techniques. "Our survey of 128 federal departments and agencies on their use of data mining," the report said, "shows that 52 agencies are using or are planning to use data mining. These departments and agencies reported 199 data-mining efforts, of which 68 are planned and 131 are operational." Of these uses, the report continued, "the Department of Defense reported the largest number of efforts." The administration says it needs this technology to effectively combat terrorism. But the effect on privacy has worried a number of politicians. After he was briefed on President Bush's secret operation in 2003, Senator Jay Rockefeller, the Democratic vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, sent a letter to Vice President Dick Cheney. "As I reflected on the meeting today and the future we face," he wrote, "John Poindexter's TIA project sprung to mind, exacerbating my concern regarding the direction the administration is moving with regard to security, technology, and surveillance." Senator Rockefeller sounds a lot like Senator Frank Church. "I don't want to see this country ever go across the bridge," Senator Church said. "I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return." James Bamford is the author of Puzzle Palace and Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency.

Destroying Checks and Balances with the Stroke of a Pen John Conyers, Jr. United States Representative 23 Dec 2005 What I just read should scare every American. In connection with the spying scandal, where without any court review or supervision the President unilaterally spied on Americans, we now have the purported legal justification for his actions. The Justice Department has written (PDF) the Chairs and Ranking Members of the Intelligence Committees with its legal arguments. In a nutshell, the letter argues that the President's Article II authority as Commander in Chief allows him to do whatever he wants. He doesn't need congressional authorization or oversight. He does not need to go to any court. His decisions are unreviewable by the Supreme Court. It is a similar argument used to justify torturing detainees. My assessment of the legal basis for this argument would likely break the rules of discourse on this blog. Suffice it to say, it is not going to fly. To bolster this pathetic Constitutional argument, the Administration also points to the September 11 use of force resolution. But here they are really playing fast and loose with the facts. In a classic heads I win, tails you lose fashion, we learned today from fromer Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle that the Administration asked for this authority and was denied it (the Washington Post has more). Having been denied this authority by Congress, they proclaim they had it anyway. See more from Armando at DailyKos. This appears to be a direct assault on the constitutional prerogatives of both branches of government. The blunt spoken Joe Conason lays out the case in the New York Observer even before the latest disclosures. The bottom line is that this argument postulates that the President can act, do anything -- inside or outside the law, without any limits or oversight whatsoever. If you weren't scared before, you should be now. One postscript: I was honored that the Republican National Committee responded to my staff's report on the Iraq war lies. The response is as follows: "Republican National Committee spokeswoman Ann Marie Hauser said if Conyers 'spent half the time condemning terrorism that he does condemning the President of the United States, he would be a credible voice in the war on terror.'" I was a little disappointed at the half-heartedness of the response. It's like they are just "phoning it in" when it comes to the McCarthy-ism these days. It is also an unintentionally ironic response, given this nugget and others discussed in the staff report.

Bush to face tough questions over Patriot Act, spy orders Edward Epstein SF Chronicle Washington Bureau Saturday, December 24, 2005 Washington -- Congress' five-week extension of controversial Patriot Act provisions coupled with likely congressional hearings into President Bush's order for warrantless eavesdropping on American citizens looks to produce pointed debate early next year. As the federal government is on alert against terrorism, the debate over civil liberties intensified this week when a federal judge resigned from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court in Washington, apparently in protest over the Bush-ordered eavesdropping by the National Security Agency that skirted his court. The court's chief judge has called for briefings next month to see if the snooping went around the law. "It all portends a very rocky start to 2006 for the administration because the concerns are increasingly bipartisan,'' said Bruce Cain, a political scientist who directs the University of California's Washington, D.C., center. Cain said reaction to the agency's disclosures, which includes a plan for hearings early next year in the Republican-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee, shows that the "rally round the flag'' factor that arose after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist strikes is eroding. "This is just all bad stuff'' for the administration, Cain added, just what it doesn't need as Republicans defend their congressional majority in next November's midterm elections. And it could worsen. There are murmurs among some Democrats about calling for impeachment proceedings against Bush, if they conclude he has committed an impeachable offense. Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., for instance, has written four law professors and presidential scholars asking for their opinion on whether Bush broke laws by approving such eavesdropping outside of normal channels. "Unchecked surveillance of American citizens is troubling to both me and many of my constituents. I would appreciate your thoughts on this matter as soon as possible,'' Boxer wrote. Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, who was the lone House member to vote against the September 2001 resolution that Bush cites as authority for the National Security Agency eavesdropping, has introduced a resolution requiring the administration to turn over to Congress the names of all the people who were subjects of the surveillance. "I hope we move forward with investigations,'' Lee said. "It's got to be bipartisan, and there has to be some kind of accountability.'' Stalwart Republican backers of the administration, who are suspicious that the New York Times -- which sat on the snooping story for a year -- finally decided to publish on Dec. 16 as the Senate took a key vote on the Patriot Act extension, say Democrats don't have much to complain about in the new disclosures. The finger-pointing within Congress offers a preview of next year's hearings. As Bush has said repeatedly, eight congressional leaders who included Democrats were briefed in secret on the National Security Agency program that began in 2002. He says the eavesdropping on international calls into or out of the country was legal and helped deter terrorist strikes. The Republicans say the Democrats never objected. "The record is clear. Congressional leaders at a minimum tacitly supported the program," Rep. Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich., said Wednesday. As chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Hoekstra was in on the briefings. "Many, I believe, thought it was absolutely essential and appropriate to keep America safe. I see no pattern of objection to the program or concern about this program from Congress." But two of those Democrats, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, and Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV, D-W.Va., the Senate Intelligence Committee's ranking Democrat, insist that such assertions just aren't true. Until last week's disclosure of the snooping in the New York Times and Bush's subsequent comments, the two say they were unable to publicly voice concerns because of secrecy rules. Pelosi wrote this week to National Intelligence Director John Negroponte asking him to waive secrecy rules and allow her to release a letter she says she wrote to Bush several years ago expressing her reservations about the National Security Agency operation. Rockefeller went further, releasing a copy of a handwritten letter to Vice President Dick Cheney dated July 17, 2003, in which he laid out concerns about the program that Bush has reauthorized 30 times since starting it after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Citing his "lingering concerns,'' Rockefeller wrote, "Given the security restrictions associated with this information and my inability to consult staff or counsel on my own, I feel unable to fully evaluate, much less endorse, these activities.'' In the letter, he told Cheney that he was preserving a copy of the letter in a secure Intelligence Committee safe. Rockefeller has joined the long bipartisan list of legislators calling for hearings into the disclosures. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., plans hearings early next year, after his committee finishes hearings on U.S. Appeals Court Judge Samuel Alito's Supreme Court nomination. Alito's views on the president's power to order domestic spying could play a major role in his confirmation, right alongside his views on abortion and other privacy issues. That seems more likely with Friday's disclosure that in a 1984 memo Alito, then a Justice Department lawyer, defended government officials' right to order domestic wiretaps. Even after meeting last weekend with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Specter said he remains skeptical about the spying program. He expects the hearings to be substantive. "There may be legislation which will come out of it to restrict the president's power,'' Specter said. While the snooping controversy continues, Congress will be embroiled in a renewed debate over extending the Patriot Act. The two issues are intertwined because some senators who want greater civil liberties protections built into the renewed Patriot Act cite their mistrust of the administration over the National Security Agency story as a reason for their stand. The Patriot Act extension, which came after a game of high-stakes chicken between the administration and Congress' Republican leaders on one side and Democrats and a small group of dissident Republican senators on the other, merely postponed an acrimonious showdown, until the new Feb. 3 deadline. The delay was originally going to be six months, under a Senate-passed provision, but a peeved Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., objected and got it sliced to five weeks. Cain said the administration's theme that it must take secret measures in this country to protect against terrorism is losing its allure as more people question Bush's credibility about the war in Iraq, torture of prisoners and the Patriot Act and now the NSA spying. "It's pretty clear that terrorism-war themes no longer work in keeping people in line,'' he said. Particularly troubling for the administration is that judges seem to be questioning the White House's conduct. "In public esteem, the judges are the most highly rated of the three branches of government,'' Cain said. "These judges feel like they've been used and the administration has not made the case" that it had to go around the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court, he added. E-mail Edward Epstein at eepstein@sfchronicle.com.

Neo-Fascism and Paleo-Tyranny by Jack D. Douglas December 27, 2005 Neo-fascist regimes, defined as corporate-statist regimes with pseudo-democratic faces, face the difficult task of building their vast (so called "totalitarian" in popular usage) Party powers in secret in their early years in power. This was true even in Italy and Germany where civil liberties and democracy had only weak roots when the fascist regimes took power. It is far more true in the democratic nations, especially in the U.S., the cradle of modern democracy among major nations (following in part in Swiss footsteps). The Italian and German fascists created non-state armies, the black and brown shirts, and moved quietly below the public radar to get control of the media and courts and police by purchase, infiltration, and intimidation. The American Neo-Fascist Party, the Republicrats with their two factions, have done the same things, but have relied far more on corporate, legal purchases of the media and on infiltration than on direct intimidation, which always involves the danger of exposure which could be fatal as long as the people still oppose Party control of their lives. (The U.S. factions of the Party have at times used vast character assassination attacks by telephone, etc., and have used all kinds of less "formal" intimidation and "tricks" that cannot be traced back to a Party source.) The crucial task of the Party in its early years is to build legitimacy by deceiving the people. They do this mostly by using three devices. First, they frighten the people, or make use of real sources of fright, by creating foreign and domestic threats – the capitalist dogs, the Jews, the Versailles Slave Treaty, the commies are everywhere, The Terrorists want to destroy America, etc. Two, they use attacks on weak foreign "enemies" and weak domestic enemies to "prove" the Party can SAVE the people from the foreign and domestic threats. This leads to an explosion not only of relief for salvation, but also soaring nationalistic pride associated with the Party, which is crucial in building legitimacy for the Party. Three, the Party uses its growing control of the Media, both direct and indirect, and its control of growing secret police armies (Gestapo, SS, FBI, CIA, IRS, etc.) to deceive the people about what is happening – to transform foreign allies like Iraq into "ENEMIES that threaten our very existence!," to cover-up the growth of the secret tyrannical armies of police, to cover-up vast Party blunders and corruptions of all forms, etc. By these means the Party secretly builds the legitimacy of the secret tyrannies it has been building. Once it has widespread support among the less informed (more misinformed by the Party Media), less intelligent, and more paid-off (by Party contracts, etc.), the Party tries to carefully choose a TURNING POINT, a point at which it can bring its vast, secret tyrannical powers into the open and have them accepted and legitimized by the people. For the Nazis this turning point came after the dramatic burning of the Reichstag (the erstwhile parliament building). It was probably set by the Nazis, though we can only guesstimate this from how they operated in general, since they covered their tracks well and blamed it on their domestic enemies. The public sense of threat and outrage led to a great surge in Party support, as any politician knows will happen in such circumstances, and this led after months of build up and maneuvering politically to the Enabling Act which gave Hitler and the Nazis legitimacy for the secret tyrannical powers they had been building. The U.S. has followed this same basic scenario almost step by step. The attacks on the U.S. of 9/11 led to the vast expansion of secret police powers both by public legislation and by vast secret usurpations. The Party has moved in every way possible to get more control over the Media to silence opposition, to hide its secret activities, to cover its tracks, and so on. They have manufactured "ENEMIES WHO THREATEN OUR VERY EXISTENCE" (Muslims, not Jews, Iraq, not Poland) who can be easily defeated to build a sense of nationalistic pride, and on and on. The U.S. Party made a fatal mistake in forgetting a crucial lesson of modern warfare – guerilla warfare is very effective even against Superpowers. If Bush et al. had won their war against the "ENEMIES" of Iraq, they would have been seen as heroes by most ignorant Americans and would by now be passing legislation to legitimize all of their vast expansions of the tyrannical powers of their secret police. As it is, they have been losing legitimacy and some of the Media are no longer as intimidated as they were. The Media have begun to slowly reveal the perfectly obvious fact of their vast expansion of secret police tyrannies – spying massively on Americans, torture chambers, kidnappings, murders, and vast war crimes of all kinds. This has apparently forced the Bush Junta to "put up or shut up." They feel that they must "go for broke." If they back down now, the Media will reveal more and more of the awful truths about what they have been doing, their immense corruptions of every form will be exposed, their stupid mistakes will be exposed, and they will be in danger of facing war crimes tribunals or simple court actions for their vast kidnappings and torturing of people around the world. They feel they must play out their hand however weak it is. So they are forcing the issue: they are admitting their secret tyrannies and showing nationalistic pride in them and insisting that they are necessary for the Party to SAVE us from THE EVIL ONES. This is a very dangerous period, a turning point one way or the other. Bush et al. may now try to use far more secret police powers to intimidate people or to openly seize far more power, presumably under the pretense that it is necessary and legitimized by the state of national emergency that never ends. My guess is that most of the American people will not wake up to the obvious threat. They will see this as just "politics" and think Cassandras like me are RANTING as usual. But the military and secret police are split. Many secretly vehemently oppose the Party seizures of power that have been going on. (This is almost an exact parallel to the split in Germany where the military General Staff remained generally opposed to Hitler and almost killed him and the head of the Abwehr, comparable to the FBI, was stridently anti-Hitler.) In such a situation the emerging events will have great effects on the outcomes. And, of course, looming over it all is the vast financial BUBBLE the Party has built globally to advance their powers, a BUBBLE that can crash at any time. At this point, we cannot say for sure which way the U.S. will go. But my guesstimate is that the vastly powerful Neo-Fascist Party state will continue to grow, with fits and starts, retreats and advances, ups and downs, as it has done for a century, regardless of the fate of Gush et al. And whenever the Party BUBBLE finally implodes, as I strongly expect it will at some point, the resulting mass dread, suffering and chaos will be an ideal situation for the Party to seize vast new powers and have them legitimized by a people really facing mass starvation. I am, however, optimistic about the very long run. Having tried in some form almost every one of the totally bizarre, absurd and disastrous programs of modern totalitarianism, Americans will eventually realize that "FREEDOM WORKS" and retreat to some form of vastly reduced government power. The Nightmare Years of total corruption of everything by the Party will end and Americans will fall back on the simple and decent foundations of human nature to put their lives back together. The Utopian Plans of the Party will leave only a ghastly hangover Jack D. Douglas [send him mail] is a retired professor of sociology from the University of California at San Diego. He has published widely on all major aspects of human beings, most notably The Myth of the Welfare State.

Congressmen Request WMD Intelligence Info; Bush Arrogantly Ignores FOIA Demand By Greg Szymanski 27 Dec 2005 The White House and DOD have failed to turn over WMD evidence after 500,000 Americans signed a petition delivered to Bush six months ago. He also has failed to answer questions or turn over documents requested by 52 Congressmen after the Downing Street Memo also surfaced in May. Many observers feel Bush thinks he's above the law, acting like Hitler in Nazi Germany. The White House is again demonstrating how it feels above the law, as it arrogantly has refused to comply with a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request made six months ago by 52 Congressmen. The Democratic lawmakers are seeking information on whether President Bush doctored WMD intelligence data to justify the Iraqi War, a hotbed issue for millions of Americans with over 500,000 officially writing Bush, asking for immediate answers. However, Bush has ignored both the FOIA request and the public outcry, hiding behind what some call a cloak of arrogance, phony national security reasons and a Republican majority inCongress, openly furthering a neo-con war agenda destructive to American interests. Although Rep. John Conyers (D-Mi) and the other band of 50 Democrats are fighting the good fight and working within the system, critics suggest they are just “beating their heads against a neo-con brick wall” since Bush and his protective Republican allies have no intention of leaking the truth to the American people, knowing it will lead to impeachment. In the interim, many critics suggest Rep. Conyers and the others are fighting a losing battle, both on Capitol Hill and in the public relations arena, where much of middle class America has been sheltered from the facts behind Bush’s real motives for going into Iraq by a cooperative and partisan press, also protecting secret White House interests. It’s common knowledge Bush’s public approval ratings have fallen below the political Mendoza Line, but administration operatives and Bush himself appear to care less. Although support is fading, the administration appears anxious to further its war agenda, displaying outright arrogance while knowing the President is insulated from serious impeachment action due to what many critics feel is “a one-party dictatorship created after a 30 year neo-con power grab has now fully cast its dark shadow over the Washington D.C. landscape.” It’s no secret American is trouble going into 2006. But the question remains how can the people fight back? Or the bigger question looms: Do enough Americans really care? “Americans have been played for suckers and now all hell will break loose in the years to come,” said one neo-con critic, adding any corrections to America’s dilemma cannot be made from within a corrupt political system gone “mad with power” and beyond the point of return. “We need to remove the cancer from within, save the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and then begin again. I just hope it’s not too late.” While some in America are calling for outright revolution like fashioned by America’s forefathers against the British, Rep. Conyers is embroiled in a political battle within the halls of Congress against the administration over the release of vital documents concerning the strong possibility Bush lied to the American people about his real motives behind the Iraqi War. Although Bush’s foot has been put in the fire over a number of other issues meriting impeachment inquiries, the fixing of WMD intelligence data to fit a pre-established war policy remains his Achilles Heel if Democrats can ever break through the barrier of suppression and protection provided by neo-con minions in all three branches of government. To illustrate how uncooperative the administration has become with FOIA requests, it took the Department of Defense (DOD) almost five months to respond to Rep Conyers initial request when On Nov. 30 DOD officials told Conyers in part: “The request would take considerable time to process,” asking Conyers his willingness to pay fees for the WMD documentation, estimated by the DOD to be $110,000. This callous response, boarding on outright refusal to turn over anything, came after Rep. Conyers wrote the DOD on June 30 and then follow-up with an Aug 11 letter to the Office of Counsel to the President, saying: “On June 30, 2005, I and 51 other Members of Congress requested access to 'all agency records, including but not limited to handwritten notes, formal correspondence, electronic mail messages, intelligence reports and other memoranda,' as described in five enumerated paragraphs. A copy of the request letter is enclosed. “The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requires your office to respond to a FOIA request within twenty business days from the date of receipt of such a request. See 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(6)(A)(i). The deadline has now elapsed without any response from your office. Because the leaked memoranda from Great Britain raise serious questions over when important war-related decisions were made, time is of the essence. “I and the other Members of Congress do not wish to resort to litigation because, at this point, a cooperative approach is better suited to resolving the situation. I am available to assist your office in any way possible to facilitate the prompt release of the requested documents. If you need clarification of the request or have any questions, please contact Stacey Dansky of the House Judiciary staff at 202-225-6906.” Since Rep. Conyers has not received an adequate response from the administration, last week he has introduced bills to censure Bush and Cheney for their refusal to respond, the Resolutions to be voted on by the House when it again convenes in January 2006. “I have introduced a Resolution creating a Select Committee with subpoena authority to investigate the misconduct of the Bush Administration with regard to the Iraq war and report on possible impeachable offenses, as well as Resolutions proposing both President Bush and Vice-President Cheney should be censured by Congress based on the uncontroverted evidence of their abuse of power,” said Rep. Conyers.

Neoconservatism, the Israeli Lobby, and other Power Relations Andrés Perez-Alonso 27 Dec 2005 QFG The discourse of the war on terrorism cannot be understood without the context in which it emerged. A series of power relations of specific groups of people with similar ideologies have converged in a point in time allowing the apparition of this specific discourse. This is not a cause and effect relationship; rather a network of power has made this discourse possible. Not one of these agents or groups is solely responsible for it, much less for its consequences, but all have had a part to play. This chapter traces such a network. It will be noted that in the examination that follows the current president of the United States, George W. Bush, is not mentioned as often as other less known characters. One of the reasons is that Bush was new to foreign policy when he became president in 2000, and as he has insisted himself, his decisions have been nurtured by a group of advisers with a long experience in the subject, both in the academy and policy making. Another one is that it is possible to identify the influence that the men and women holding positions of power have had, to such an extent that Bush’s words and actions have followed previous documents prepared by these people almost exactly. Neoconservatism It is widely believed that a specific group of influence known as neoconservatism has had an enormous influence on the war on terror. Even self proclaimed conservatives, such as Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke judge that the current brand of US policy against terrorism that allowed the war on Iraq “closely reflected the established neo-conservative position and neo-conservative interventions in the policy process.” The most appropriate way to view neoconservatism is as a “special interest” or “faction”. Special interests are associations “representing the interests of their members to secure for themselves a privileged seat at the national decision-making table”. MIT professor Gene Grossman defines them as “any minority group of voters that shares identifiable characteristics and similar concerns”. The neoconservative faction consists of intellectuals and elitists who tend to be of Jewish or Catholic background, many of whom seem to have lapsed to secular humanism. The group has also been identified as “unipolarism”, “democratic globalism”, “neo-Manifest Destinarianism”, “neo- imperialism”, “Pax Americanism”, “neo-Reaganism”, and “liberal imperialism”. This special interest includes individuals who hold or have held positions in government, such as Chief of Staff to Vice-President Dick Cheney, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, until his resignation in late 2005 after the investigation on the Valerie Plame affair resulted in charges against him; Special Advisor to President Bush, Elliott Abrams; Deputy Secretary of Defence with the Bush Administration, Paul D. Wolfowitz, later appointed head of the World Bank; and State Department officials John R. Bolton, later appointed US ambassador the UN, and David Wurmser. On governmental advisory bodies Eliot A. Cohen occupies a position on the Defence Policy Board, a position that was also held by Richard Perle until recently. Perhaps most important are Vice-President Dick Cheney and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who would be better described as American nationalists than as neoconservatives, but whose careers and views, such as those concerning American exceptionalism and unilateralism, have run closely to those of neoconservatism. Both their signatures can be found on a key neoconservative document, the 1997 Statement of Principles by the Project for the New American Century. Neoconservatives can also be found in the academy: for example Yale professor Donald Kagan, Princeton professors Bernard Lewis and Aaron Friedberg; in the media: Weekly Standard editor William Kristol, Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, and most foreign policy editorialists on the Wall Street Journal and the Fox News Channel; in business: former CIA Director James Woolsey; and in research institutions: Max Boot at the Council on Foreign Relations, Norman Podhoretz and Meyrav Wursmer at the Hudson Institute, any member of the Project for the New American Century, and most foreign or Defence studies scholars at the American Enterprise Institute. This list is not all inclusive, but it should serve to illustrate the range of positions held by neoconservatives. An Introduction to Neoconservative Ideology Neoconservatives have a tendency to see or depict the world of international politics in black and white: a struggle between good and evil. It is a doctrine specifically about the relation between Moscow and Washington in the late twentieth century, and between the United States as the centre of democratic societies and rogue nations in the early twenty-first. According to neoconservative Irving Kristol, there is no set of neoconservative beliefs concerning foreign policy, only a set of attitudes derived from historical experience that can be summarized in four "theses": first, patriotism should be encouraged; second, international institutions should be regarded “with the deepest suspicion”; third, statesmen should make a clear distinction between friends and enemies, since it was a mistake for some to not count the Soviet Union as an enemy; and finally, for a great power, the "national interest" is not a geographical term, but also an ideological one. Therefore, Barring extraordinary events, the United States will always feel obliged to defend, if possible, a democratic nation under attack from nondemocratic forces, external or internal. That is why it was in our national interest to come to the defence of France and Britain in World War II. That is why we feel it necessary to defend Israel today, when its survival is threatened. No complicated geopolitical calculations of national interest are necessary. This Wilsonian notion of the spread of democracy is not pure idealism; it is also based on the supposition that if democracy and the rule of law are established in troubled countries around the world, they will cease to be threats. The promotion of democracy is not left to economic development and political engagement; if necessary, it is provided through military force. Some think-tank “fundamentalists” – as G. John Ikenberry identifies them – such as Tom Donnelly and Max Boot, go even further and argue for formal quasi-imperial control over strategically valuable failed states, backed up by new American bases and an imperial civil service. We could add to those theses the following common themes: a belief that the human condition is defined as a choice between good and evil and that the former (themselves) should have the political character to confront the latter; a willingness to use military power; and a primary focus on the Middle East and global Islam as the principal theatre for American overseas interests. In putting their ideas into practice, neoconservatives analyze international issues in absolute moral categories; focus on the “unipolar” power of the United States, seeing the use of force as the first, not the last option of foreign policy; disdain conventional diplomatic agencies such as the State Department and conventional country-specific, realist, and pragmatic analysis; and are hostile toward nonmilitary multilateral institutions and instinctively antagonistic toward international treaties and agreements. If there is any good to multilateralism it is as a tool of American power. As Robert Kagan has famously put it, “multilateralism is a weapon of the weak”. Or in Max Boot’s words: “Power breeds unilateralism. It is as simple as that”. Based on the above beliefs and approaches neoconservatives tend to find themselves in confrontational postures with the Muslim world, with some U.S.' allies, with the need for cooperation in the United Nations, and with those within their country who disagree with them and their objectives. Emphasis on Military Might and US exceptionalism Robert Kagan and William Kristol’s book of 2000, Present Dangers: Crisis and Opportunities in American Foreign and Defence Policy, which includes a wide range of contributions from fellow neoconservatives, provides something close to their canon. Kagan and Kristol speak of establishing the “standard of a global superpower that intends to shape the international environment to its own advantage,” and decry a narrow definition of America's “vital interests” arguing that “America's moral purposes and national interests are identical.” Their introductory chapter proposes to create a strong America capable of projecting force quickly and with devastating effect on important regions of the world. [An America which would act] as if instability in important regions of the world, and the flouting of civilised rules of conduct in those regions, were threats that affected us with almost the same immediacy, [and which] conceives of itself as at once a European power, an Asian power, a Middle Eastern power and, of course, a Western Hemisphere power. A principal aim of American foreign policy should be to bring about a change of regime in hostile nations – in Baghdad and Belgrade, in Pyongyang and Beijing and wherever tyrannical governments acquire the military power to threaten their neighbours, our allies and the United States. [W]hen it comes to dealing with tyrannical regimes... the United States should seek not coexistence but transformation. It is easy to identify this projection of neoconservative global intent as a blueprint for what was to become later known as the Bush Doctrine. The unipolarists emphasize that the United States is not like other nations but also maintain that other nations should be more like it, without a doubt supported in the long imagined idea that their country is an exception to history. In turn, exceptionalism supports the argument that military power must be returned to the centre of American foreign policy. For early neoconservatives of the 1970s, foreign policy in the post-Vietnam era had become too liberal and soft, and unwilling to confront Soviet expansionism. Years later they argued that during the Clinton era the United States was not taken seriously as a global military power because of his reluctance to use real force in Iraq; and when enemies stop fearing the United States, they are emboldened to strike. Their promotion of force has also a certain degree of admiration and fascination with the capabilities of the U.S. military, as Irving Kristol’s words reveal: Behind all [the neoconservative convictions about foreign policy there] is a fact: the incredible military superiority of the United States vis-à-vis the nations of the rest of the world, in any imaginable combination. [...] With power come responsibilities, whether sought or not, whether welcome or not. And it is a fact that if you have the kind of power we now have, either you will find opportunities to use it, or the world will discover them for you. Max Boot looks forward to a new era when The United States, like the British Empire, will always be fighting some war, somewhere in the globe. Likewise, Professor Eliot Cohen of the Defence Policy Board and former CIA Director James Woolsey have suggested that the United States is now “on the march” in “World War IV”. It should come as no surprise, then, that for neoconservatives, the applicability of force is the default measure against terrorism. David Frum and Richard Perle's book And End to Evil, sets out at full length the remedy for terror and tyranny that underlies the Bush foreign policy: using military force to overthrow noncooperative governments in troubled areas. The Middle East and Israel Both Kagan and Kristol’s book and Frum and Perle’s are mostly dedicated to the Middle East, the need for a strong military and Islamic-inspired terrorism as the only foreign policy challenge to the United States. Similarly, scholars at the Project for the New American Century pour most of their energies into the Middle East and members of Americans for Victory over Terrorism do so completely. Their views are very specific and tend to be hostile towards the peace process and Islam. Since the 1970s neoconservative publications have focused on defence of U.S. policies concerning Israel. For example, the neoconservative Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs was established following the 1973 Yom Kippur War, “partially at the prompting of the Pentagon for a counterbalance to liberal sniping at Defence spending.” Podhoretz provided a pro-Israeli voice in what many neoconservatives of the time thought of as an intellectual community lacking in support for Israel as the only genuine democracy in the Middle East. He also maintained that anti-Zionism was simply a mask of anti-Semitism and that it was often found among anti-American and radicals. Thus, commitment to Israel's security and right to exist and a patriotic support of U.S. values were inextricably linked for many neoconservatives. During the Cold War, intellectuals such as Midge Decter, Moynihan, and Podhoretz argued that the U.N., Communism, and much of the Third World was anti-Semitic, along with large portions of the U.S. intellectual community; therefore the United States and Israel shared a common ideological struggle against common enemies. The historical neoconservative commitment to Israel has been so pronounced that even traditional conservatives like Russell Kirk have charged them with mistaking “Tel Aviv for the capital of the United States”. Similarly, Patrick Buchanan, who had been sceptical of the need for war with Iraq and challenged George Bush for the 1992 Republican presidential nomination, commented that neoconservative “tactics – including the smearing of opponents as racists, nativists, fascists, and anti-Semites – left many conservatives wondering if we hadn't made a terrible mistake when we brought these ideological vagrants in off the street and gave them a place by the fire.” These comments sparked a debate over whether or not Buchanan was anti-Semitic. Philosophical and ideological origins Leo Strauss If we only read the above summary of neoconservative ideas we would be excused to believe with John Samples that neoconservatism has been “as much about politics as principles. ...They believed that the striving for national greatness would appeal to American idealism and create a new Republican majority.” Even if we do not accept those ideals, we would be forced to conclude that it is a form of idealism, and indeed, several commentators do so. Nonetheless, at least one interpretation of the philosophical origins of neoconservatism, which I believe to be more accurate, tells a rather different story – one which happens to disclose the will to power underneath the will to truth that Foucault wrote about. While some political analysts think of the University of Chicago professor Leo Strauss as the intellectual inspiration for neoconservatives (some studied with him or with lecturers that followed his ideas in the 1960s), others claim that his influence is exaggerated and that there is no direct link between him and positions of power in Washington. Modern neoconservatives generally write in good terms about Strauss, but they also deny that they owe any debt to him, and some even say they are not familiar with his work. However, while his importance may indeed be overstated, it is a fact that his perspectives closely resemble those of neoconservatives, and so we would be committing a mistake by dismissing him altogether. This is not to suggest that all neoconservatives are following Strauss, but to recognize that some influential neoconservatives in and with links to the Bush administration have fundamental connections to Straussianism in their published works, statements, attitudes and policy perspectives. Strauss used classical texts – not only the Greek, but also Christian, Jewish, and Muslim sacred writings – to comment on modern tyrannies, which he thought were the product of modernity's rejection of the values of classical societies that were hierarchically ordered and supported in religiosity. Strauss believed democracy could not enforce its own paradigm if it could not confront tyranny, which he believed was inherently expansionist. He argued that the European emphasis on human reason deriving from the Enlightenment represented a decline in religion-based values and not an advance, deploring a secular political order for its “movement away from the recognition of a superhuman authority – whether of revelation based on Divine will or a natural order – to a recognition of the exclusively human based authority of the State.” Such a position reveals a concern for principles and would suggest a form of idealism. Nevertheless, the significance of these values may be exclusively pragmatic – even nihilistic. Jim George argues that to the emphasis on national and cultural unity and the simple religious and philosophical morality, we would have to add as part of Strauss’s legacy to neoconservatism a “war culture” as the basis for that unity, along with the notion that “elite rule is crucial” and the belief that “the neoconservative elite has the right and indeed the obligation to lie to the masses in order that the 'right' political and strategic decisions be made and implemented. Hence, the use of the so-called 'noble lie'.” The reason is that Strauss was not the conventional conservative philosopher that he appears to be; instead, he was a philosophical nihilist influenced by Carl Schmitt, Heidegger and a particular reading of Nietzsche. For Strauss, the fundamental truth of the Western philosophical tradition is a nihilist truth: that all morality, all notions of justice, all distinctions between good and evil are actually matters of power and interpretation and political ideology – not metaphysical or theological irreducibility... Consequently, in the most natural and most just regimes the cleverest and strongest should rule the weak, for the good of society as a whole. [The ancient scholars guarded and concealed this knowledge], hence their reliance on esoteric deception as a way of protecting themselves. [Emphasis added] It is precisely here where the will to power has been made explicit within philosophical thought itself; a most important point that cannot be stressed enough, for ‘noble lies’ have made their appearance in the context of the war on terror. It is now part of the historical record that the case for the war on Iraq was built on false connections to the 11 September attacks and fake evidence of weapons of mass destruction, a contradiction that will be further explored in Chapter 5. This explains why Strauss regarded as vital the development of a new breed of ruling intellectuals – modern “philosopher kings” – that would project a hidden (“esoteric”) truth based on simple moral precepts for modern societies to be able to face tyranny. The elite is a necessity, since in his view democracy had become little more than a vulgar and futile attempt to create equality in a naturally unequal world... This clearly troubled Strauss, to the extent that, among many other things, he shared with Nietzsche the belief that ‘the history of western civilization has led to the triumph of the inferior’. A prospect that terrified them both. Thus, the intellectual elite needs to tell “noble lies” not only to people but also to powerful politicians. In 2000, William Kristol implicitly recognized this when he explained that a major teaching of Strauss was that no political position was really based on the truth. Strauss also advocated a reawakening of “a reverence for myth and transcendental illusion among the masses.” Again, this was confirmed by a neoconservative, Irving Kristol, who acknowledged that the neoconservatism movement had taken up the Straussian strategy of “explicit and strong support for religion – even if such support contradicted one's own atheism”. Thus, according to Kristol, “neoconservatives are pro-religion even though they themselves may not be believers”; a position that has been described as “noble hypocrisy” by Ronald Bailey. Another commentator, Shadia Drury, notes that like Marx, Strauss believed that religion was the opium of the masses, but unlike him, Strauss believed that masses needed opium. The Editor of the Christian Journal, Chronicles, has put it this way, “Straussians in general believe that religion might be a useful thing to take in the suckers with.” Another form of myth that needs to be created for the sake of the unity of the populace is that of an enemy to fight, “so that they can be reminded of the meaningfulness and precariousness of their culture and polity.” And here we see further parallels with the current discourse of the war on terror, a ‘war’ that from a Straussian perspective is not only waged against the external, but also against the domestic forces of individualism, historicism and relativism. Why should we prefer this interpretation of Strauss as consciously aware of the manipulation of society for the promotion of the elite rather than as an idealist? Because it explains better the behaviour of contemporary neoconservatives in power; and also because that is how Strauss interpreted the classics himself. Jim George writes: [I]f one reads Strauss in the way that he insists we must read philosophical texts – sceptically and always aware of esoteric strategies – he is very much what his detractors claim he is, a cynical manipulator of young minds, a right wing fundamentalist seeking to undermine liberal freedoms in the US and instigate an old world 'war culture' at the core of US foreign policy. In this reading of Strauss, his classically trained elite is little more than a reconstituted pre-modern aristocracy encouraged to believe that their intellectual superiority entitles them to rule over their fellow citizens and to use any duplicitous means at their disposal in this process. An argument could be made for a third possible interpretation: that Strauss did believe in the intrinsic value of ideals for the common good, but that it faced such a threat from tyrannical forces that the intellectual elite had no option but to make use of any means, even those that the people would not approve of. Maybe, but if so we would have to recognize that it would make absolutely no difference in practice. Thus, the idealistic aspect of straussianism would have to be dismissed. Albert Wohlstetter and Allan Bloom Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz had both been students of Albert Wohlstetter, another professor of political science at the University of Chicago who had worked for RAND Corporation and had been a consultant for the Pentagon. He also helped them both to get positions in Washington’s political circles. Wohlstetter and Allan Bloom, another University of Chicago academic who also tutored Wolfowitz, were protégés of Strauss. Wohlstetter thought that arms limitation talks with the Soviets were not a good idea, since the US would be in disadvantage by having its technological brilliance constrained. His alternative strategy proposed that the US should replace the traditional realist mindset of deterrence and balance of power with a posture that allowed fighting a limited nuclear war, a perspective was enthusiastically endorsed by neoconservatives like Wolfowitz. Wohlstetter sought to use game theory and statistics to construct precise scenarios of a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. He was the godfather of the nuclear hawks, opposed all forms of accommodating coexistence with the Soviet Union, and pushed hard for the development of an antiballistic missile system. As for Bloom, he preached the importance of traditional values, books and the classics, and rejected relativism. Most of his ideas were borrowed from Strauss, who had been his teacher. Bloom dedicated his first book to Strauss and described his first encounter with him as the “decisive moment” in his life. James Burnham In the 1930s, the maverick intellectual James Burnham was a leading Troskyist, but in 1940 he broke with Leon Trosky over the socialist status of the Soviet Union, and by the end of World War II he was a fierce right-wing anticommunist. He believed that the Soviets were certain to conquer the entire world unless the United States accepted the mission and responsibilities of a World Empire. In his words: The reality is that the only alternative to the communist World Empire is an American Empire which will be, if not literally world-wide in formal boundaries, capable of exercising decisive world control. Burnham was sorry that the United States was too moralistic to think about a global empire, and he worried that Americans were afraid of Soviet power. In 1955 he joined William F. Buckley, Jr., whom he had recruited to the CIA, in launching National Review, the right-wing magazine. The foreign policy conservatism of National Review of the 1970s was shaped mostly by Burnham. Conservatives and Ronald Reagan admired him as a leading anticommunist. The neoconservatives were equally indebted to him, although cautious about acknowledging it, since he was too cynical and reactionary to be a model of good American expansionism. Burnham developed some of the ideas of neoconservatism, for example the determinative role of cultural elites; the primacy of ideological conflict; the totalitarian, expansionist and conspiratorial nature of communism; the struggle for the world; and the quest for American global dominance. Burnham’s transition from the left to conservatism set an example that was often followed. While neoconservatives did not cite him, the echoes of his work were very strong. “And when the Cold War was over, they renewed the language of empire”. Neoconservatism in Historical Perspective Origins Social and political difficulties forced some liberal intellectuals to reconsider their positions by rejecting what they considered to be excesses of radicalism and hubris from reformists. This resulted in a split in US liberalism at the beginning of the 1970s. The parting intellectuals confounded their colleagues on the left who accused them of turning to the right, and at first were called “new conservatives”, changing later into “neoconservatives”. The break came in large part because they saw a threat in mounting social disorders and what they thought of wishful thinking in foreign affairs, isolating themselves within the Democratic Party. Most of the New York liberal community was Jewish, and so they were also disturbed by what they saw as a sharp increase in anti-Semitism from the black community – even when hard evidence to back up this claim was scarce. They also believed that criticism to the 1967 war Israeli victory and accusations of oppressing Arabs from the New Left were another form of anti-Semitism. The leading neoconservatives – Irving Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and Nathan Glazer, Daniel Bell, Midge Decter, Michael Novak, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Peter Berger and others – were veterans of the so-called vital centre of anti-Communist ideology. They rejected détente as a failure to stand against the evils of communism, argued that the defeat in Vietnam had led the Democratic party to go soft on national security, and endorsed Ronald Reagan because he promised to renew efforts in the struggle with the Soviets. The Committee on the Present Danger and Team B In March 1976, Republican and Democratic hardliners established the Committee on the Present Danger (CPD). It was led by Richard Allen, William Casey, Max Kampelman, Paul Nitze, Richard Perle, Norman Podhoretz, Eugene Rostow, and Elmo Zumwalt, and it included Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, Kenneth Adelman and Richard Pipes It supported the Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson and Ronald Reagan warning that coexistence with the Soviet Union as promoted by Henry Kissinger had dangerously turned the United States into a weaker power than the Soviet Union. Its purpose was to destroy détente and the Jimmy Carter administration, and ‘sell’ the Soviet threat scenario as presented by Team B, an alternative hard-line group of outside experts to the CIA appointed that year by the agency’s new director, George H. W. Bush. The thesis of both CPD and Team B was that the US must reject all ‘appeasement’ strategies, abandon arms control and engage in military build up to overwhelm all threats in any foreseeable future. Team B consisted of three groups: one analyzed Soviet low-altitude air defence capabilities, another studied Soviet ICBM accuracy, and the last one focused on Soviet strategic objectives. It was the last one, chaired by Pipes and including Wolfowitz as one of its members, which triggered controversy, earning the name Team B exclusively. This group believed that the Soviets had built their forces to fight and win a nuclear war – not to deter one – by gaining a strategic superiority that would deny the US any effective retaliatory options. This was the chief argument in their report, issued a month after Carter won the presidency; an argument that was promulgated as a factual imperative by the CPD. The Reagan Administration A sign of how much Ronald Reagan valued the work of the Committee on the Present Danger, was the fact that no less than thirty of its members received appointments to his administration in 1980, twenty of them in national security posts. Reagan entered office sharing their belief that previous administrations had neglected the nation’s defences and been too passive in the face of Soviet expansionism. Likewise, the neoconservatives believed that they had a president who shared their view of the world, and whose victory proved that US citizens had come to share their views of the present danger. Jean Kirkpatrick was appointed ambassador to the UN because of her articles published at Commentary. Elliott Abrams, Daniel Patrick Moynihan's former assistant, was made assistant secretary of state for international organizations. Richard Perle became assistant secretary of Defence for international security policy, and played one of the most skilful and influential roles among neoconservative policy-makers. Max Kampelman, a member of the Committee on the Present Danger remained head of the American delegation to the Madrid meeting of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, an appointment he had received from Carter in 1980. For two years Paul Wolfowitz ran the State Department's policy planning staff in the administration, working out the department’s long-term goals. His staff included Francis Fukuyama, Alan Keyes, Zalmay Khalilzad, and James Roche. Later, Wolfowitz became Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs. Through their declarations, neoconservatives contributed to the initial image of Reagan in the way he was regarded outside the US. They came rapidly to be seen, especially by outsiders, as the foreign policy specialists of Reagan, largely because other members of the right wing were oriented to domestic issues. From her position in the UN, Kirkpatrick consistently supported Israel in the Security Council and the General Assembly against “an ongoing process whose goals are to delegitimize... [Israel and] to deny it the right to self-Defence, to secure borders, to survival.” After the invasion of Grenada Kirkpatrick told the Security Council that “the [UN] charter does not require that people submit supinely to terror, nor that their neighbours be indifferent to their terrorization.” She applied the argument in other situations. “We do not think it is moral to leave small countries and helpless people defenceless against conquest by violent minorities”, she said of El Salvador in 1984. Following Kirkpatrick’s lead, Abrams portrayed Communism as the greatest threat to human rights. From their point of view for reasons of Soviet structure and politics, the conflict between Moscow and Washington was not susceptible of mitigation, but had to end with the death or transformation of one or other of the two countries. For the first three years the declarations coming from Reagan were what the neoconservatives could have wished. Reagan asserted that Soviet leaders were masters of an “evil empire” prepared “to commit any crime, to lie, to cheat” in order to achieve a Communist world. In a display of Anti-Communism, Reagan rejected détente and claimed that an expansionist USSR “underlies all the unrest that is going on. If they weren't engaged in this game of dominoes, there wouldn't be any hot spots in the world.” He identified the Soviets as the source of Third World disorders and he committed the US to the active support of anti-Communist movements around the world, such as the contras in Nicaragua and the Afghan rebels. However, Reagan’s declarations disguised the fact that his actions by no means matched his words. This may explain in part why differences between some neoconservatives and Reagan developed in the later years. The reason for the gap between words and actions is most probably that anti-Communism and threat exaggeration serve as vehicles for forging US unity at home, particularly in times of domestic crisis. Thomas G. Patterson notes that Given these characteristics [of creation of unity], leaders who have developed views of a malevolent Communism that preys upon a vulnerable world may not shift their views, even in the face of abundant evidence that Communism is not the omnipresent force they imagine. Because leaders work to maintain consistency in their ideas, they will often ignore contradictions, cling to exaggerations, and become intransigent. What is interesting about this observation are the parallels that may be drawn with today’s neoconservative exaggerations of the threat of global terrorism, and many others, like John Samples, have already noticed the similarities. Both ‘wars’ are reminiscent of Strauss’s idea of the creation of simple myths to encourage social unity. Neoconservatives who were unhappy with Reagan, such as Norman Podhoretz, Frank Gaffney, and Michael Ledeen outflanked him to the right. From the early years of Reagan’s presidency Podhoretz bitterly complained that Reagan, despite his rhetoric, huge military expenditures, and appointment of neoconservatives, capitulated to the Soviets. He became progressively more disillusioned as he realized that Reagan was not consumed with defeating Communism but instead was acting cautiously. In Podhoretz’s view, anything less than total victory was equivalent to defeat and he bitterly denounced Reagan for his compromises. In 1981 Irving Kristol complained that that no new, stronger measures had taken the place of the grain embargo imposed on the USSR after the invasion of Afghanistan; he worried that the administration's declared commitment to preventing a leftist revolution in El Salvador was not being matched by actions; and that arms sales to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, respectively, were not helping the Afghans and were a threat to Israel. Other neoconservatives resisted the attacks, relieving Reagan of responsibility and blaming a series of his officials for the shortcomings. In spite of Podhoretz and others, most neoconservatives retain an admiration of Reagan nowadays, considering him the exemplar of all the virtues they defend. The Reagan legacy is clearly present in the current Bush administration. Dick Cheney has said that “it was the vision and the will of Ronald Reagan that gave hope to the oppressed, shamed the oppressors and ended an evil empire,” while Edwin Feulner, president of the far-right Heritage Foundation happily described the Bush Jr. administration as “more Reaganite than the Reagan administration”. Ikenberry writes: New fundamentalists are inspired by a particular view of how the Cold War was won – and it is their lessons from their great victory that guide their strategy today. It was not engagement, detente, 'paper' agreements and mutual interest that brought the Soviet Union down, but the Reagan administration's hard-line policy of confrontation, military build up and ideological warfare. Reagan raised the stakes in the struggle with the Soviet Union by boosting military spending and putting ideological pressure on the 'evil empire'. This [flawed] historical narrative provides the ultimate defence for hard-line fundamentalist policies. After their overall successes with Reagan, neoconservative also began a generational transition from liberalism to mainstream conservatism, while maintaining an identity apart from that traditional southern and midwestern US conservatism. Younger neoconservatives and analysts influenced like Abrams, William Kristol and Charles Krauthammer began to assume the leadership positions long held by Irving Kristol, Podhoretz, and Kirkpatrick. The second generation of neoconservatives, which also included Alan Keys, Francis Fukuyama, Gary Schmitt, Abram Shulsky and Wolfowitz, was much more explicitly indebted to Strauss. The Bush Sr. Administration and the First Gulf War After serving as vice president with Reagan, George H. W. Bush became president himself. Various members of his staff would later serve again under his son’s administration in 2000. Colin Powell, for example, was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff with Bush Sr. while Dick Cheney was secretary of Defence. The latter was the only hardline Cold Warrior in the administration’s top rank. While most of his colleagues believed in Gorbachev, Cheney thought that the Soviet Union was still a mortal enemy and that glasnost was a trick to disarm the United States. He cultivated a team of hardliners in the Pentagon's policy directorate, led by Paul Wolfowitz. Powell, the former national security advisor with Reagan, was committed no less than Cheney to maintaining and strengthening America’s global military dominance. However, unlike Cheney, he believed that the Cold War was over, and wanted the American military to have maximum flexibility in order to focus on regional trouble spots. For him, the US had to be “the world’s global police force.” Part of his plan included military expenditure cuts. While Cheney and Wolfowitz did not agree with Powell on the reduction in military spending, the three of them designed a military policy based on responding to regional contingencies instead of a global war with the Soviet Union. However, the presentation of the new policy coincided with Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, pushing the plan to the background. The Bush administration had pushed a resolution through the UN Security Council setting a 15 January 1991 deadline for Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait and authorizing any member state to use “all necessary means” after the date. Bush claimed that with the UN resolution in hand and on the basis of his constitutional authority he could go to war after the deadline without a formal declaration of war by the Congress, and so the first attacks on Baghdad came on January 16. During the six months of US deployments in the gulf, several different justifications were given by the administration for it at different points in time; among them, getting rid of “a mad dictator”, defending the “oil-lifeline threatened”; the protection of freedom, liberty, national security, and jobs; the restoration of “rulers to Kuwait”, and Defence against Saddam Hussein’s “nuclear threat”. As we can see, the justifications given by the son for the Second Gulf War echo the father’s. Just as Bush Jr.’s discourse spoke of the war within the context of a global war, the “war on terror”, Bush Sr.’s had also a vision for the world. It was with the First Gulf War that Bush Sr. began to speak of a “new world order”: What is at stake is more than one small country, it is a big idea – a new world order where diverse nations are drawn together in common cause to achieve the universal aspirations of mankind: peace and security, freedom and the rule of law. And: [The war was waged] to defend civilized values around the world... a world where the rule of law supplants the rule of the jungle... I've had a lot of time to think about the situation in the Middle East, I've reconciled all the moral issues. It's black versus white, good versus evil. In another speech he added a religious dimension by declaring that the Gulf War coalition was “on the side of God”. Charles Krauthammer took the U.S. led response to the Iraqi invasion as a reminder that Western security still depended on Washington’s lead. “Where the United States does not tread, the alliance does not follow,” he wrote. He estimated that a new and major problem would be that advanced weapons technologies would enable “relatively small, peripheral, and backward states... to emerge rapidly as threats not only to regional but to world security,” so the U.S. would have to be prepared “to act alone [against these threats], backed by as many of its allies as will join”. Similarly, Elliott Abrams advocated a U.S. role centred on using its preponderance of power to enforce international norms of conduct, much as Great Britain’s during the nineteenth century. Norman Podhoretz welcomed the Gulf War as an opportunity for the US to ‘remoralize’ itself after the demise of the Soviet Union and the loss of a necessary ‘foreign demon’ as a focus of national unity and moral commitment. However, Bush’s failure to end the war with the removal of Saddam Hussein became a regular complaint in neoconservative publications such as Commentary; we get an insight of what they wished for the Middle East a decade before it would materialize. Another cause of neoconservative discontent with the Bush administration was its policies toward Israel. In 1992, the Bush administration demanded from Tel Aviv that a $10 billion in U.S. loan guarantees to Israel not be used in the building of settlements in the occupied territories. Jean Kirkpatrick suggested that this marked a point of departure from traditional U.S. support for Israel. Frustrated by the Israelis as well as their political allies in the United States, Secretary of State James A. Baker lost his temper, “Fuck the Jews. They didn't vote for us,” he said in a private remark which was leaked to the press. In this atmosphere, some neoconservatives would later find Bill Clinton an attractive alternative presidential candidate. The 1992 Defence Planning Guidance The document that is generally taken to be the basis for the so-called Bush (Jr.) Doctrine guiding the post 9/11 ‘war on terror’ is the Defence Planning Guidance (DPG) of 1992, ordered by Secretary of Defence Dick Cheney, supervised by Pentagon Undersecretary for Policy Paul Wolfowitz and prepared by his team. It had the input of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Zalmay Khalilzad, Andrew Marshall, Richard Perle, Eric Edelman and Albert Wohlstetter. The DPG was a military plan for fiscal years 1994 through 1999. It was never officially finalized, but it was leaked to the Washington Post and the New York Times. The strategy declared the U.S.’ right to wage preemptive wars – the word “preempt” was actually included – to avoid attacks with weapons of mass destruction or to punish aggressors. It called for a global missile defence system and a “U.S.-led system for collective security”. It opposed the development of nuclear programs in other countries while asserting the U.S.’ need to maintain a strong nuclear arsenal. The DPG warned the United States might have to take “military steps to prevent the development or use of weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq, North Korea, Pakistan, and India. It warned that allowing Japan or South Korea to grow into regional powers would be destabilizing in East Asia, and judged that the U.S. needed to thwart Germany’s aspirations for leadership in Europe and restrain India’s “hegemonic aspirations” in South Asia. In the Middle East and Southwest Asia, the overall objective was “to remain the predominant outside power in the region and preserve U.S. and Western access to the region's oil.” It also cautioned that a Russian relapse was a dangerous possibility. In short, the US had to become so powerful militarily that no other power or coalition of powers could any longer prevent it shaping the world in its own image. Since the report was leaked, Bush Sr. and Cheney were forced to distance themselves from it, but it was later published as the Regional Defence Strategy of 1993. Its promotion of preemptive military action in Iraq suggests that it became policy in 2002. Wolfowitz acknowledges that he personally started worrying about Iraq in 1979. The Clinton Administration During the decade of the 1990s neoconservatism seemed to fade because it was no longer in the administration. Also, it was identified with bygone debates, and it merged to some degree with mainstream conservatism. Though for some neoconservatives Bill Clinton seemed at first a good option to Bush, soon his administration became a disappointment, and so they accused him of not being a true moderate Democrat but, rather, a left winger disguising himself to win the election. In foreign affairs, neoconservatives began attacking the president in the Spring of 1993, criticizing his apparent acquiescence in the stagnation of multilateralism and his unwillingness to use military force. The Kosovo experience led the neoconservatives to conclude that the NATO alliance was more a hindrance than a help. They focused on Clinton’s failure to rescue the Bosnians. His indecision led the neoconservatives to worry that foreign governments might perceive the U.S. as turning isolationist and weakening militarily. The editors of the New Republic were also unhappy for Clinton’s softness toward Saddam Hussein: they thought the president had an “obsession” with U.N. requirements and “legalism”. Paul Wolfowitz stressed that the real questions facing U.S. foreign policy were not being addressed, such as future threats from “‘backlash states’ like North Korea, Iraq and Iran...”. With mounting anger he fixated on Iraq in the mid-1990s, fuelling a campaign to rectify the unfinished business. He warned that Saddam was too dangerous to be contained, because with his stockpile of biological weapons “he could kill the entire population of the world”. In 1997 Wolfowitz and Khalilzad demanded Saddam’s overthrow by the US and its Iraqi allies. They wrote: “If we are serious about dismantling Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction, and preventing him from building more, we will have to confront him sooner or later – and sooner would be better.” The disappointment and aspirations of neoconservatism were expressed by William Kristol, who wrote that conservatism ought to emphasize both personal and national responsibility, relish the opportunity for national engagement, embrace the possibility of national greatness, and restore a sense of the heroic, which has been sorely lacking in American foreign policy – and American conservatism – in recent years. The revival of the heroic required a “remoralization of American foreign policy” that recognized that the principles of the Declaration of Independence were “universal, enduring, ‘self evident’ truths.” The Project for the New American Century William Kristol and Robert Kagan founded the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) in 1997, an indication that neoconservatism had completed a generational transition. Kagan, Kristol, Muravchik, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, and others had assumed leadership roles that had been held by Nathan Glazer, Irving Kristol, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and Norman Podhoretz. The terms of their debate shifted replacing the Soviet threat with a broad idea of “American global leadership” and an intent above all else on waging a second Gulf-War. The members of the PNAC had strong links to the national security bureaucracy, the Defence establishment, the print and cable media industry, dominant sections of the U.S. Defence industry, and some of America’s wealthiest conservative foundations. A large portion of the signatories, such as Elliott Abrams, Gary Bauer, Bennett, Dick Cheney, Eliot Cohen, Aaron Friedberg, Frank Gaffney, Fred Ikle, Zalmay Khalilzad, Jean Kirkpatrick, Dan Quayle, Peter Rodman, Henry Rowen, Donald Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz had served in the Reagan and Bush senior administrations. Others had worked for the CIA, such as Reuel Marc Gerecht and James Woolsey, the agency’s director from 1993 to 1995. Among the intellectual members were Francis Fukuyama, Donald Kagan, Podhoretz and Midge Decter. Also in the PNAC were Jeb Bush, brother of the current president, and Perle. In February 1998 Wolfowitz told the House International Relations Committee that regime change in Iraq was the “only way to rescue the region and the world from the threat that will continue to be posed by Saddam’s unrelenting effort to acquire weapons of mass destruction...” That month an open letter was sent to the White House suggesting a strategy for bringing down the Iraqi regime, and another one in May with a similar message was addressed to the Speaker of the House and the Senate Majority Leader. Among the signatories of the letter to Clinton were Abrams, Richard Armitage, John R. Bolton, Douglas Feith, Khalilzad, Perle, Peter Rodman, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, David Wurmser and Dov Zakheim, Graffney, Kagan, Kristol, Muravchik, Martin Peretz, and Leon Wieseltier. They called themselves the Committee for Peace and Security in the Gulf. Of the 18 people who signed the PNAC letter to Clinton, eleven became part of the Bush administration. The PNAC is not the only influential neoconservative organization. The American Enterprise Institute, for example, sits on the three floors above the headquarters of the PNAC in Washington, and has a tradition of extensive associations with the top levels of government. AEI’s interaction with government circles has included George H. W. Bush, Gerald Ford, and ex Israeli Prime Minister Yitzak Shamir. Kirkpatrick, Ledeen, Muravchik, Perle Wattenberg, and Wurmser are all members. In the financial network organizations such as the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation, the Sarah Scaife Foundation, the Smith Richardson Foundation and the Castle Rock Foundation all provide the money for research institutions such as AEI, the Heritage Foundation, and the Hoover Institute – the latter includes Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice among its alumni, and several of the institute’s fellows sit on the Defence Policy Board. The Rise of the Bush Jr. Administration and the Bush Doctrine When George W. Bush came to power in 2000 an alliance between the two generations of neoconservatives was evident. For weeks, while the 2000 election verdict was being decided between the Florida Supreme Court and the US Supreme Court, the Weekly Standard fiercely contended that Bush should be president. Meanwhile, the neoconservatives got very good appointments, thanks to Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. John P. Burke reported that planning for the Bush administration commenced a year and a half before a possible inauguration and that the Bush team, particularly Karl Rove, drew on the experiences of the 1980 Reagan transition. In the Bush administration we find: Dick Cheney, Vice President; Lewis Libby, Chief of Staff until his resignation in late 2005; Eric Edelman, Foreign Policy Advisor; Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defence; Paul Wolfowitz, Assitant Secretary of Defence until his departure and appointment as head of the World Bank; Doug Feith, Under-Secretary of Defence (Policy); Steven Hadley, Deputy to National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and later Secretary of State replacing Collin Powell; John Bolton, Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and now ambassador to the UN; Richard Perle, Chairman of the Defence Advisory Board, until his resignation in March 2003; Zalmay Khalilizad, special envoy to Afghanistan and Iraq; an Paul Kozemcheak, Defence Department in charge of ‘radical innovation’ in Defence planning. Others connected to these individuals in the administration include Abram Shulsky, Director of the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans; and Stephen Cambone, Under Secretary of Defence (Intelligence). Both are at the centre of the concern about bogus intelligence on the Iraq war, examined in more detail in Chapter 5. The so-called ‘Bush Doctrine’ which emerged clearly after 9/11 resonates with neoconservative perspectives, almost word for word. It is characterized by its support for the use of overwhelming force in the face of threat, even if potential. Pre-emption is an official strategic policy. There is an inclination towards unilateralism, hostile attitudes towards global liberalism and its multilateral institutions, and an ideological representation of U.S.’ exceptionalism. The doctrine also includes the idea that this is an opportune time to transform international politics and that peace and stability require the U.S. to assert its primacy in world politics. The National Security Strategy of the US elaborates the doctrine by endorsing the idea of spreading freedom, democracy and free enterprise throughout the world. Clearly, both Kagan and Kristol’s book, Present Dangers: Crisis and Opportunity in American Foreign and Defence Policy of 2000, and the 1992 Defence Planning Guidance were the blueprints of the Bush Doctrine. Since they had been thinking about a strategy for years, September 11 found the neoconservatives well prepared, with their response in place and targets fixed. In the eight months after the terrorist attacks, the already huge US defence budget received a 14 per cent increase, a sign that the military would be having a primary role, confirmed by the wars in Afghanistan and in Iraq. These invasions are but the most visible effects of the Bush Doctrine so far, but the consequences have been profound in many other respects, some of which will be covered in further chapters. The Israeli Lobby What is called the U.S. Israeli “lobby” is not just the Jewish community, but also the major segments of liberal opinion, the leadership of the labour unions, religious fundamentalists, conservatives, and cold war warriors which strongly support Israel. The Israeli lobby happens to be closely connected to neoconservatism. Though there is no reason why neoconservatism should be linked to hardline Zionism, in fact it often is, mingling the neoconservative and Israeli lobby networks and making them sometimes indistinguishable from each other. Gary Dorrien writes: Most unipolarist leaders were Jewish neoconservatives who took for granted that a militantly pro-Israel policy was in America’s interest. Wolfowitz, Perle, Podhoretz, Krauthammer, Wattenberg, Muravchik, both Kristols, Kagan, Boot, and Kaplan fit the description, as did dozens of neocons at all levels of the Bush administration from the Pentagon desk officers to State Department deputy secretaries and advisors in the vice president’s office. Some of these were members of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), founded in 1976, which took a very hard line against the Palestinians and US diplomatic relations with Syria. According to Dorrien, JINSA has sometimes outflanked Israel’s Likud Party to the right. JINSA’s board of advisors before 2001 included Richard Perle, James Woolsey, Dick Cheney, John Bolton, and Douglas Feith, until the last moved into the Bush administration. JINSA gave a voice to those who wanted to see the US continue to provide Israel with ample support in case of another war in the Middle East. The Institute is now committed to argue in favour of the link between US National security and Israel’s security, as well as strengthening both. Since the 1970s, JINSA has grown to a highly connected and well-funded $1.4-million-a-year operation, much of which goes toward facilitating contact between Israeli officials and retired U.S. generals and admirals with influence in Washington. Indeed, one of the military figures connected to JINSA was Jay Garner, the Bush administration’s first choice for the reconstruction of Iraq, and one of the signatories of the U.S. Admirals’ and Generals’ Statement on Palestinian Violence, which stated: “We are appalled by the Palestinian political and military leadership that teaches children the mechanics of war while filling their heads with hate.” JINSA overlaps considerably with the Centre for Security Policy (CSP), another hardline Zionist organization. Both are underwritten largely by Irving Moskowitz, and their membership lists are interchangeable. The CSP is directed by Frank Gaffney, a Perle protégé, and it promotes wars for regime changes throughout the Middle East while stridently defending Israel’s settlements policy. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), founded in the 1950s and with a 100,000 members across the U.S., is mostly concerned about ensuring that Israel is strong enough to meet its security challenges. Its website boasts that publications such as The New York Times and Fortune have described it as one of the most powerful interest groups and the most important organization affecting the U.S.’ relationship with Israel. It helps pass more than 100 pro-Israel legislative initiatives through meetings with members of Congress. AIPAC might be involved in a case of espionage. The FBI is investigating Lawrence Franklin, an analyst specializing in Iran who worked with former under secretary of defence for policy Douglas Feith, for passing classified information to AIPAC. The FBI has been investigating AIPAC for about four years. That is not the only case of neoconservatism demonstrating more loyalty to Israel than the U.S. Perle, who functions as a link across many of the neoconservative think tanks, research institutions, and other organizations on the network, was, according to researcher Stephen Green, caught by the FBI in 1970 discussing classified information with an Israeli Embassy official. Wolfowitz was also investigated in 1978 for providing a classified document to an Israeli official via an AIPAC staffer on the proposed sale of a US weapons system to an Arab government. Other institutes lobbying for Israel include the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and the Middle East Forum. The loyalty of the neoconservative Jews seems to be exclusively related to the Likud Party and the extreme right of Israeli politics. One of the most outstanding events to come out of this relationship was the 1996 research paper published by the Israeli think tank the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm. It was a policy guideline for Israeli Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu which argued that Netanyahu’s “new set of ideas” provided an opportunity “to make a clean break” with the afflicted Oslo peace process. The paper criticized the “land for peace” initiative and emphasized: “Our claim to the land – to which we have clung for hope for 2000 years – is legitimate and noble.” The “clean break” also meant re-establishing “the principle of preemption”. The study group that contributed to the report included JINSA member James Colbert, Charles Fairbanks, Feith, Perle, Jr., David Wurmser, and his wife Meyrav Wurmser. The document also called for the use of proxy armies to destabilize and overthrow Arab governments. It advocated Israeli attacks on Syrian military targets in Lebanon, and, if necessary, Syria. Since Iraq was an enemy of Israel, it asked Netanyahu to support Jordanian Hashemites in their challenges to Iraq’s borders. Perle, Feith and Wurmser told Netanyahu, with whom they had close personal ties, that the U.S. would support a hard line against the Palestinians and a policy of “hot pursuit into Palestinian-controlled areas.” More important, Israel was under no obligation to honour the Oslo agreements if the Palestine Liberation Organization did not fulfil its obligations of compliance and accountability. The time had come to find alternatives to Arafat and Israel’s dependence on the United States, they urged. No doubt that Netanyahu paid good attention to the words of neoconservatives, since shortly after the 9/11 attacks he implored the United States to smash Iraq, Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Palestinian resistance. Neoconservatives added Syria, North Korea, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Sudan and Algeria. Bush’s announcement of 14 March 2003 of support for the road map for the peace in Palestine set off the alarms among neoconservatives and the Israeli government. The issue was Bush’s degree of seriousness to promote the road map and the State Department’s suggestion of the creation of a Palestinian state by 2005. On several occasions Bush signalled that he was not serious, suggesting that the plan could be amended later. As for the State Department of Colin Powell’s critical stance towards the barrier separating Israel from the West Bank, the supporters of Israel won the match. Though Powell complained about Israel’s repression on Palestine and Bush asked Ariel Sharon to build the security barrier as close as possible to the Green Line, on October 1 2003 Sharon resolved to cut deeply into the West Bank to protect the settlements, vowing to retain the major ones while withdrawing from the Gaza Strip. The Bush administration approved the decision and disavowed the Palestinian right of return. Though Sharon claimed to accept the goal of a two-state solution, its policy sabotaged the possibility of a viable Palestinian state. This should serve as example of the effects of the work of the Israeli lobby. Other Power Relations: Oil, Media and Religion Oil It is a common belief among critiques of the war on Iraq that the real reasons for the invasion had nothing to do with the threat posed by Saddam Hussein but with the desire to control Middle Eastern oil. Since it has been fairly determined that a great part of, if not all, the case for war was based on fabrications, as Chapter 5 will detail, it is sensible to assume that economics played a role. I do not believe, however, that the importance of oil is in itself sufficient to explain the war or any of the other effects of the war on terror for the matter. While it should definitely not be ignored, it is just one network of power relations among many, and not necessarily the one most directly related. That the importance that the Bush administration and its neoconservative advisers attribute to Persian Gulf oil can be traced back to 1976, when Paul Wolfowitz, working as the deputy assistant secretary of defence for regional programmes in the Carter administration, wrote the Limited Contingency Study, the first extensive examination of the need for the U.S. to defend the Persian Gulf. The document began: We and our major industrialized allies have a vital and growing stake in the Persian Gulf region because of our need for Persian Gulf oil and because events in the Persian Gulf affect the Arab-Israeli conflict… The importance of Persian Gulf Oil cannot be easily exaggerated. If the Soviet Union were to control Persian Gulf oil, Wolfowitz warned, NATO and the U.S.-Japanese alliance would probably be destroyed “without recourse to war by the Soviets”. The study also addressed the possible threat of Iraq to Western interests. The solution: we must not only be able to defend the interests of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and ourselves against an Iraqi invasion or show of force, we should also make manifest our capabilities and commitments to balance Iraq’s power – and this may require an increased visibility for U.S. power. The personal careers of some of the members of the Bush administration also suggest that the issue of oil was carefully taken into consideration. The Secretary of Commerce Don Evans is the former chairman of Tom Brown, an independent oil and gas position that exploits natural gas in the Rocky Mountains. Vice President Dick Cheney was chief executive of Halliburton, the world’s largest oil field service company. And George W. Bush himself owned a small oil company, Arbusto. That his experience shaped his decisions to some degree is revealed by his own words: “I lived the energy industry. I understand its ups and downs. I also know its strategic importance to the United States of America. Access to energy is a mainstay of our national security”. The assumption that oil was one of the main reasons for war on Iraq is reinforced by Crude Designs: The rip-off of Iraq's oil wealth, a 2005 report authored by Greg Muttitt, from the London-based charity PLATFORM, and backed by U.S. and British pressure groups such as War on Want, the New Economics Foundation (NEF), Global Policy Forum and Institute for Policy Studies. It claims that Iraq may lose up to $194bn (£113bn) of oil wealth if a U.S.-inspired plan to hand over development of

'Some People' Hope 9/11 Triggered America's Decline By Shen Dingli, China Daily December 27, 2005 In some Western media, there has emerged recently a theory of "U.S.-decline." Some people, disgusted with the hegemony exercised by the United States in international affairs, saw the September 11 terrorist attacks as the onset of America's decline and hoped for an acceleration of that decline. They have their reasons. People see that the United States randomly sent troops to overthrow the government of the sovereign nation of Iraq. No matter what Saddam Hussein did, his regime did not pose a direct threat to the United States in 2003. Nonetheless, the U.S. army carried out a pre-emptive attack without United Nations authorization. People see that the current American Government places itself above the United Nations, even though it was midwife at the birth of the international body. Washington is dragging its feet over paying the U.N. dues it has been assessed to contribute, and even threatens to cut its share to alter the U.N.'s political agenda in its favor. People see that time and again, the United States interferes with the sovereignty of other countries. For example, on the one hand it recognizes that Taiwan is an integral part of China but, on the other, it adopts a policy of selling arms to Taiwan. People see that the United States is has a policy of double standards or even multiple standards. Domestically, the United States operates on the basis of a representative, democratic system, saying that this system constitutes the cornerstone of America as a country. But on every important international political issue, it demands the final word, denying democracy to other countries. People see that the United States pursues as many international rights as possible, but tries as far as it can to avoid international obligations. If the United States of yesteryear was wise enough to offer the European nations plans for revival after World War II, today's U.S. Government seems to have forgotten the meaning of the word "obligation." The Clinton Administration, for example, signed the treaty to ban nuclear weapons testing, but the Bush government shelved it. The Clinton Administration signed the Kyoto Protocols, but the Bush government refused to accept it. All of this undermines America's global influence, and it is against this backdrop that the "U.S.-decline" theory has emerged. However, people have no choice but to admit that indeed, the United States has made contributions to the international community. Its involvement in World War II is the best example. Without the United States, the Nazi grip over Western Europe might have lasted much longer. The United States also played an important role in returning Taiwan to Chinese sovereignty from Japanese colonial rule. It helped bring an end to the German Nazis, Italian fascists and Japanese militarists. American GIs did not die for nothing. The international prestige of the United States' was boosted tremendously and its "hard power" and "soft power" grew significantly in the aftermath of World War II. Without the United States, there might be no United Nations, which was the brainchild of President Franklin Roosevelt. America's institutional innovation is its gift to the world, conceiving of new international bodies for changing times. When such institutions stabilize the world, they are clearly as in the interests of the international community. The U.N., among others, is one such institution, and one which other major countries, including China, helped establish. The United States also played a role promoting nuclear non-proliferation. Otherwise, there would be more countries and regions in the world equipped with nuclear "teeth." In the face of overwhelming U.S. influence, one after the other Brazil, Argentina, the Republic of Korea and China's Taiwan gave up their nuclear ambitions. In recent years, signs of the erosion of America's "soft power" have been obvious to all. According to influential U.S. Congressmen, in the history of the United States of America, Washington's diplomatic errors have never been so grave. If this situation is not addressed, Washington will lose moral support from other countries and will become more isolated. Confronted with this, the Bush Administration has made a number of policy adjustments. For example, rather than raising the pressure, negotiations were chosen to handle the nuclear ambitions of Iran and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea [North Korea]. This shows that the White House has realized the seriousness of the decline in America's "soft power," and has taken steps to tackle the problem. Changes in U.S. public opinion have also taken place, which do not favor the Bush government's past practices. Given these recent changes, the momentum of America's decline will not last. Although America's share of the world economy has dropped compared to the period after World War II, the U.S. economy still accounts for a quarter of the global economy's total volume, and its military expenditures are larger than that of China, Japan, India and Russia combined. It is beyond question that the United States will continue to use the U.N. for its own purposes, all the while showing a lack of respect for the global body. This is because it pays for Washington to use the favorable aspects of existing global organizations. We refuse to accept U.S. hegemony, but we welcome institutions that benefit the public and have been supported by the United States. A realistic goal for the international community would be rational co-existence with a United States, as long as Washington is better balanced by other global forces, is more willing to cooperate with other nations and takes more responsibility for its actions. The author is deputy director of the Centre for America Studies of Fudan University in Shanghai. This article first appeared in the Global Times newspaper.

NSA Snooping and Pro-Zionist Bias of the New York Times By Greg Szymanski 25 Dec 2005 Year Ends With NSA Snooping Issue while Reader Questions New York Times Censorship And Biased Reporting, Relating It To Protecting And Favoring Israeli Interests Over U.S. And The Rest Of The World Dr. Mohamed Khodr writes letter to New York Times that hasn't been published, raising questions as to fair and honest coverage. Is the Times protecting Israeli interests to the detriment of America, leading to censorship of important stories like the motives behind the Iraqi War, 9/11, the Patriot Act and NSA snooping on Americans. The year is ending with a flurry of concern over President Bush’s direct order to spy on Americans, using the Pentagon and National Security Agency (NSA) spooks to ration out the government’s dirty work on mostly innocent and unsuspecting Americans. The story recently broke in the mainstream press as the heated debate to renew the highly controversial Patriot Act took center stage in the Senate, ending last Friday as lawmakers agreed to a Feb 3, 2006, extension before any real action is taken. For years, critics of the Patriot Act have been screaming about its direct infringement on cherished constitutional privacy and speech rights, but without much luck in getting any significant changes. In fact, the NSA snooping story is directly related to the Patriot Act’s illegality since it gives spooks an unbridled power to wiretap and eavesdrop on “suspected domestic terrorists,” using mere suspicion, without a warrant, as the legal thresh hold instead of showing probable cause a crime is being committed. Relaxing the legal standard from probable cause to mere suspicion has most fair-minded legal scholars up in arms. But academia provides little consolation for the millions of Americans now living under the umbrella of a fascist state, since newspaper follow-up reports recently pointed out the 18,000 people on the Bush spy list in the recent NSA story is only the “tip of the iceberg.” The extent and sheer numbers of those being spied on by the NSA without court-approved warrants based on probable cause – not mere suspicion – is now thought to be much, much larger. And even The New York Times, who sat on the story for 18 months as a favor to the Bush administration, reported this fact in a Saturday follow-up to the original NBC story. However, media critics complain both new agencies are out to lunch and “a day late and a dollar short” with their reporting efforts since widespread NSA and Pentagon abuse, with White House acknowledgement, has been documented by the alternative press and civil rights activists as early as 2002. In fact, after the Times was caught red-handed in suppressing the NSA snooping story for more than 18 months, it provided just another example of the many stories, including 9/11 and the motives behind the war in Iraq, suppressed by Times management. The year-end question arises: Why? Many critics contend the Times is protecting the Bush administration and its neo-con world order agenda. Others also contend its policies favor and protect Israeli interests while turning a blind-eye to the U.S. and the rest of the world. But knowing the Bush administration will step up efforts in 2006 to spy on more Americans and the Times will continue to censor even more important stories, let’s end this year with a letter sent to the New York Times, sent by Mohamed Khodr, MD, which never was published but illustrated what Dr. Khodr feels is a “deep Israeli bias” resulting in the censorship of many important stories, including the truth behind the war in Iraq, 9/11, the Patriot Act, the NSA snooping story and many others. In an effort to hear all views, the following is the unedited letter sent by Dr. Khodr to the publisher of the Times, Arthur Sulzberger, but not yet published: Dear Mr. Sulzberger: Happy Hanukah: “Just a brief note to reiterate what I've written you on several occasions, written your editors including your letter editor, that your paper is unable to shake the influence and hold whether ideological, financial, political or just pure fear of confrontation of a Pro-Israel bias that has severely damaged the credibility of your paper. The once glorious paper of record has now become a timid infotainment paper that knows where its bread is buttered, and its not from any sense of justice or fairness it once embodied. “Your paper's scandals, Pro-Israel and Pro-Iraq War will continue to bleed your credibility as the wars have bled the blood of the innocent youth of America, Iraq, Palestine, and Israel. Your support of Israel in the long run is a losing proposition and will only further alienate Americans and the world not only from Israel but from the future peace and stability of Jewish grandchildren who may pay a burdensome price for what you and the Zionist cabals have done to destroy this nation and the future of peace in the MidEast. "Never Again" should be the standard for the suffering of all humans not just for Jews who suffered expulsions from every European country and principality, an Inquisition, pogroms, hate, persecution, murders, and finally a Holocaust at the hands of Europe, not in Muslim countries and certainly not in Palestine. It was Islam that took Jewish refugees in and protected them, in fact placed them in honorable governmnet positions, as was the case of RamBam (for your letter editor's sake: that's Moses Maimonedes). “Unfortunately your editor is of a lightweight intellect doing his "kosher" duty rather than seeking enlightenment on Zionism and Israel'shistory. I'm sure he's not read any part of the Babylonian Talmud nor of any United Nations report on Israel's terrorism --The Bunche Report to better understand why most Europeans think Israel is the main threat to world peace. Keeping such knowledge out of your paper will only further allow the Internet to exponentially expose the machinations of the media's silence when non-kosher blood is spilled as was the case when your front page plastered a huge photo of a suicide bomber's aftermath of an exploding bus with a young Israeli girl dead at the window. “I've lived through the hell of Sharon's cluster bombs, napalm, and white phosphours bombs along with asphyxiating unknown chemical gas in 1982 Beirut, his raiding of hospitals to take the wounded out and kill them, his destruction of entire buildings based on a "rumo" that Arafat maybe in it, his cutting off ofwater, food, and medicines fromentire cities and villages, his supportive massacre for 3 days of 2000 Palestinian civilians in two refugee camps------I don't see Bill Keller clamoring for the paper to publish a photo of such murders today for a historical context of Palestinian dead. "Incidentally, the United Nations Security Council (with U.S. support) passed several Resolutions just during the summer of 1982 "urging" Israel to withdraw, stop the massacred, and allow food, water, and medicines into Beirut, but as usual Israel can tell the world to go to hell for all it cares. Compare that with one U.N. Security Council Resolution against Syria to withdraw from Lebanon which it did, thus it seems the U.N. implements Israel's wishes but is impotent to even tell Israel "NO". “I see your paper took issue with the Congress cutting $40 Billion of spending from America's poor over the next five years. Given that's about $8 Billion a year from America's children, your paper "forgot" to mentionthat this amount is what Israel receives almost annually from the American taxpayer when all funding from so many hidden "amendments" in the federal budget is accounted for. So Congress and your paper obviously support starving America's children but more than willing to pay for Israel's illegal squatters to leave their U.S. subsidized homes from Gaza. “Thus the question here is: Who decides America's priorities? It's obviously not the silent majority of Americans who are kept in the dark by the media, such as yours, as to who's alienating this grand nation from the world and why are its children paying for the benefit of a rich nation, Israel, the 16th richest nations in the world and a nation who takes America's taxes and gives loans to other governments and entities, thus reaping aid and interest from the American taxpayer who can't pay for his or her drugs. “Perhaps your editors can answer this simple question: what conference was held in 1949 in Europe on the Palestinian issue and what was its result? “It's tragic that you as the publisher worry more about your bottom line than about the foundation of peace for Israel. Your hiring of such a biased editor who publishes TWO letters supporting Israel---to be fair he doesn't dare deny an Israeli counsel or an Abe Foxman letter which are published on an auto-pilot basis---and only ONE letter supporting Palestinian democracy is an outrage and a slap to the face of the editorial page, especially a page that helped launch a war based on known lies. America was pushed into war by your paper and others, by MILLER, LIBBY, PERLE, WOLFOWITZ, FEITH, ZAKHEIM, ABRAMS et. al---none of whom are Arabs or Muslims. “Do remove the "all the news that FIT to print". It's hypocritical and unbecoming given that men like your letter editor decide what's "FIT" to print. Obviously your public editor whom I've written on several occasions is unable to deal with this issue or is supportive of the letter editor's bias. "Human beings are dying overseas while you and your staff enjoy your peaceful and well paid life. As I've told you previously, your Grandfather was an "Anti-Zionist" who loathed the pressure placed on him by the Zionists." Happy Hanukah and Merry Christmas to your Editors and Staff. Mohamed Khodr M.D.

Top 12 media myths and falsehoods on the Bush administration's spying scandal A.S., J.K., J.S., S.S.M., & R.S.K. mediamatters 23 Dec 2005 Media Matters presents the top 12 myths and falsehoods promoted by the media on President Bush's spying scandal stemming from the recent revelation in The New York Times that he authorized the National Security Agency (NSA) to eavesdrop on domestic communications without the required approval of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court. As The New York Times first revealed on December 16, President Bush issued a secret presidential order shortly after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that authorized the National Security Agency (NSA) to eavesdrop on international phone and email communications that originate from or are received within the United States, and to do so without the court approval normally required under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Facing increasing scrutiny, the Bush administration and its conservative allies in the media have defended the secret spying operation with false and misleading claims that have subsequently been reported without challenge across the media. So, just in time for the holidays, Media Matters for America presents the top myths and falsehoods promoted by the media on the Bush administration's spying scandal. 1: Timeliness necessitated bypassing the FISA court Various media outlets have uncritically relayed President Bush's claim that the administration's warrantless domestic surveillance is justified because "we must be able to act fast ... so we can prevent new [terrorist] attacks." But these reports have ignored emergency provisions in the current law governing such surveillance -- FISA -- that allow the administration to apply to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for a search warrant up to 72 hours after the government begins monitoring suspects' phone conversations. The existence of this 72-hour window debunks the argument that the administration had to bypass the law to avoid delay in obtaining a warrant. The fact that the administration never retroactively sought a warrant from the FISA court for its surveillance activities suggests that it was not the need to act quickly that prevented the administration from complying with the FISA statute, but, rather, the fear of being denied the warrant. 2: Congress was adequately informed of -- and approved -- the administration's actions Conservatives have sought to defend the secret spying operation by falsely suggesting that the Bush administration adequately informed Congress of its actions and that Congress raised no objections. For example, on the December 19 broadcast of Westwood One's The Radio Factor, host Bill O'Reilly claimed that the NSA's domestic surveillance "wasn't a secret program" because "the Bush administration did keep key congressional people informed they were doing this." The claim was also featured in a December 21 press release by the Republican National Committee (RNC). In fact, both Republicans and Democrats in Congress have said that the administration likely did not inform them of the operation to the extent required by the National Security Act of 1947, as amended in 2001. Members of both parties have also said that the objections they did have were ignored by the administration and couldn't be aired because the program's existence was highly classified. As The New York Times reported on December 21, Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-MI), former Sen. Bob Graham (D-FL), Senate Intelligence Committee ranking member John D. Rockefeller IV (D-WV), and Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) have stated that they did not receive written reports from the White House on the surveillance operation, as required by the National Security Act: The demand for written reports was added to the National Security Act of 1947 by Congress in 2001, as part of an effort to compel the executive branch to provide more specificity and clarity in its briefings about continuing activities. President Bush signed the measure into law on Dec. 28, 2001, but only after raising an objection to the new provision, with the stipulation that he would interpret it "in a manner consistent with the president's constitutional authority" to withhold information for national-security or foreign-policy reasons. [...] [I]n interviews, Mr. Hoekstra, Mr. Graham and aides to Mr. Rockefeller and Mr. Reid all said they understood that while the briefings provided by [Vice President Dick] Cheney might have been accompanied by charts, they did not constitute written reports. The 2001 addition to the law requires that such reports always be in written form, and include a concise statement of facts and explanation of an activity's significance. Further, Rockefeller recently released a copy of a letter he wrote to Cheney on July 17, 2003, raising objections to the secret surveillance operation. As the Times reported on December 20, Rockefeller said on December 19 that his concerns "were never addressed, and I was prohibited from sharing my views with my colleagues" because the briefings were classified. The December 21 Times report noted that House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said she too sent a letter to the Bush administration objecting to the secret surveillance operation, and that Graham alleged that he was never informed "that the program would involve eavesdropping on American citizens." 3: Warrantless searches of Americans are legal under the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Conservatives such as nationally syndicated radio host Rush Limbaugh and American Cause president Bay Buchanan have defended the administration by falsely claiming that the administration's authorization of domestic surveillance by the NSA without warrants is legal under FISA. In fact, FISA, which was enacted in 1978, contains provisions that limit such surveillance to communications "exclusively between foreign powers," specifically stating that the president may authorize electronic surveillance without a court order only if there is "no substantial likelihood" that the communications of "a United States person" -- a U.S. citizen or anyone else legally in the United States -- will be intercepted. Such provisions do not allow for the Bush administration's authorization of domestic surveillance of communications between persons inside the United States and parties outside the country. FISA also allows the president and the attorney general to conduct surveillance without a court order for the purpose of gathering "foreign intelligence information" for "a period" no more than 15 days "following a declaration of war by the Congress." This provision does not permit Bush's conduct either, as he acknowledged that he had reauthorized the program more than 30 times since 2001, and said that the program is "reviewed approximately every 45 days." 4: Clinton, Carter also authorized warrantless searches of U.S. citizens Another tactic conservatives have used to defend the Bush administration has been to claim that it is not unusual for a president to authorize secret surveillance of U.S. citizens without a court order, asserting that Democratic presidents have also done so. For example, on the December 21 edition of Fox News's Special Report, host Brit Hume claimed that former presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton issued executive orders "to perform wiretaps and searches of American citizens without a warrant." But as the ThinkProgress weblog noted on December 20, executive orders on the topic by Clinton and Carter were merely explaining the rules established by FISA, which do not allow for warrantless searches on "United States persons." Subsequent reports by NBC chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell and The Washington Post also debunked the conservative talking point while noting that the claim was highlighted in the December 21 RNC press release. From ThinkProgress, which documented how internet gossip Matt Drudge selectively cited from the Clinton and Carter executive orders to falsely suggest they authorized secret surveillance of U.S. citizens without court-obtained warrants: What Drudge says: Clinton, February 9, 1995: "The Attorney General is authorized to approve physical searches, without a court order" What Clinton actually signed: Section 1. Pursuant to section 302(a)(1) [50 U.S.C. 1822(a)] of the [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance] Act, the Attorney General is authorized to approve physical searches, without a court order, to acquire foreign intelligence information for periods of up to one year, if the Attorney General makes the certifications required by that section. That section requires the Attorney General to certify is the search will not involve "the premises, information, material, or property of a United States person." That means U.S. citizens or anyone inside of the United States. The entire controversy about Bush's program is that, for the first time ever, allows warrantless surveillance of U.S. citizens and other people inside of the United States. Clinton's 1995 executive order did not authorize that. Drudge pulls the same trick with Carter. What Drudge says: Jimmy Carter Signed Executive Order on May 23, 1979: "Attorney General is authorized to approve electronic surveillance to acquire foreign intelligence information without a court order." What Carter's executive order actually says: 1-101. Pursuant to Section 102(a)(1) of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (50 U.S.C. 1802(a)), the Attorney General is authorized to approve electronic surveillance to acquire foreign intelligence information without a court order, but only if the Attorney General makes the certifications required by that Section. What the Attorney General has to certify under that section is that the surveillance will not contain "the contents of any communication to which a United States person is a party." So again, no U.S. persons are involved. 5: Only Democrats are concerned about the Bush administration's secret surveillance As part of a larger problem of imprecise reporting, a number of media reports have falsely suggested that the debate over the Bush administration's secret surveillance of domestic communications is purely a partisan dispute between Democrats and Republicans. For example, on the December 22 broadcast of NBC's Today, Newsweek chief political correspondent Howard Fineman said: "[W]hile the Bill of Rights is something we all cherish, I think the Democrats politically need to be careful, because the president's going to argue, as he already is, that post-9-11, strong surveillance measures are required." In fact, several prominent Republicans have expressed concern that the Bush administration's actions might violate the law or otherwise be objectionable. On December 18, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-SC) said that "I don't know of any legal basis to go around" the requirement that the White House formally apply to the FISA court for a warrant to engage in domestic surveillance, while Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said it is a "legitimate question" to ask why "the president chose not to use FISA." After Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales cited executive authority in defending the legality of the administration's actions, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) -- who is in charge of organizing an investigation into the issue -- responded that he was "skeptical of the attorney general's citation of authority." 6: Debate is between those supporting civil liberties and those seeking to prevent terrorism Many media figures have created a false dichotomy by framing the debate over the Bush administration's actions as one between those who support protecting civil liberties and those who favor protecting America from another deadly terrorist attack. For example, NBC host Katie Couric claimed the debate amounted to "legal analysts and constitutional scholars versus Americans, who say civil liberties are important, but we don't want another September 11," while NBC's Mitchell wondered whether Americans should be more concerned about "[a] terror attack or someone going into their hard drive and intercepting their emails." Such statements set up exactly the false debate put forth by Cheney and Bush to defend the administration's actions, as Mitchell subsequently noted on the December 21 edition of MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews: MITCHELL: [T]hey set up successfully, the White House, this premise of you're either for security and protecting the American people post-9-11 or you're worried about surveillance. This either-or proposition, when a lot of people say that's a false choice. 7: Bin Laden phone leak demonstrates how leak of spy operation could damage national security Several media outlets have uncritically cited a 1998 Washington Times report on Osama bin Laden as an example of how leaking information about the Bush administration's domestic spying operation could harm national security. The media have falsely suggested that the Washington Times report revealed that the United States was monitoring bin Laden's conversations on a satellite phone and that bin Laden quickly ceased using the phone after the report surfaced. In fact, the article only noted that bin Laden was using a satellite phone, not that the U.S. was monitoring it; according to a December 22 report by The Washington Post, bin Laden apparently had stopped using the phone by the time any newspaper reported that the U.S. had been monitoring his conversations. Further, the Post noted that another report on bin Laden's phone -- that relied on the Taliban as its source -- preceded the Washington Times article by nearly two years, while another report predating the Times article relied on bin Laden himself. One example of media misrepresenting the bin Laden incident occurred on the December 17 edition of CNN Live Saturday, when correspondent Brian Todd reported: TODD: We asked one expert how important it is for the NSA and its methods to be kept so secret. He cited one breach as an example, the damage done when it was made public that intelligence agencies were monitoring Osama bin Laden's cell phone calls. In a December 19 press conference, Bush also highlighted the purported bin Laden leak as an example of why leaking information about the domestic spying operation was a "shameful act" that is "helping the enemy": QUESTION: Thank you, sir. Are you going to order a leaks investigation into the disclosure of the NSA surveillance program? [...] BUSH: My personal opinion is it was a shameful act, for someone to disclose this very important program in time of war. The fact that we're discussing this program is helping the enemy. [...] BUSH: Let me give you an example about my concerns about letting the enemy know what may or may not be happening. In the late 1990s, our government was following Osama bin Laden because he was using a certain type of telephone. And then the fact that we were following Osama bin Laden because he was using a certain type of telephone made it into the press as the result of a leak. And guess what happened. Osama bin Laden changed his behavior. He began to change how he communicated. But as the December 22 Post report documented, the August 21, 1998, Washington Times article in question "never said that the United States was listening in on bin Laden"; the article merely reported that bin Laden "keeps in touch with the world via computers and satellite phones." The Post also noted that the Washington Times report was not the first article to note bin Laden's use of a satellite phone: A December 16, 1996, Time magazine report cited the Taliban in reporting that bin Laden "uses satellite phones to contact fellow Islamic militants in Europe, the Middle East and Africa." And the day before the Times article, CNN terrorism analyst Peter Bergen cited a 1997 interview he conducted with bin Laden to report that bin Laden "communicates by satellite phone." Finally, the Post noted that it was not until "after bin Laden apparently stopped using his phone" that the Los Angeles Times first reported on September 7, 1998, that the U.S. had been monitoring his phone conversations. As a follow-up Post article on December 23 noted, bin Laden stopped using the phone "within days of a cruise missile attack on his training camps in Afghanistan." The false claim that the Washington Times article was responsible for causing bin Laden to stop using the satellite phone apparently originated in the 9-11 Commission report, which asserted: "Worst of all, al Qaeda's senior leadership had stopped using a particular means of communication almost immediately after a leak to the Washington Times." 8: Gorelick testimony proved Clinton asserted "the same authority" as Bush In a December 20 article headlined "Clinton Claimed Authority to Order No-Warrant Searches," National Review White House correspondent Byron York drew attention to then-Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick's July 14, 1994, testimony before the House Intelligence Committee, in which she stated that the president has "inherent authority to conduct warrantless physical searches." While York's article did not explicitly draw a parallel between the Clinton administration's 1994 policy regarding such searches and the current Bush administration controversy regarding unwarranted domestic surveillance, conservative media figures such as National Review editor Rich Lowry and syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer have done just that. But Gorelick's testimony does not prove that the Clinton administration believed it had the authority to bypass FISA regulations, as the Bush administration has argued in the case of the NSA's domestic wiretapping program. Unlike electronic surveillance, the "physical searches" to which Gorelick referred were not restricted by FISA at the time of her 1994 testimony. Therefore, by asserting the authority to conduct physical searches for foreign intelligence purposes, the Clinton administration was not asserting that it did not have to comply with FISA. In October 1994, Congress passed legislation -- with Clinton's support -- to require FISA warrants for physical searches. Thereafter, the Clinton administration never argued that any "inherent authority" pre-empted FISA. To the contrary, in February 1995 Clinton issued an executive order that implemented the new FISA requirements on physical searches. By contrast, the Bush administration has argued that it has the authority to authorize surveillance of domestic communications without court orders, despite FISA's clear and longstanding restrictions on warrantless electronic eavesdropping. 9: Aldrich Ames investigation is example of Clinton administration bypassing FISA regulations Some conservatives have specifically cited the joint CIA/FBI investigation of Aldrich Ames, a CIA analyst ultimately convicted of espionage, as an example of Clinton invoking executive authority to overstep FISA by authorizing a physical search of a suspect without a court order. For example, on the December 21 edition of CNN's The Situation Room, Republican attorney Victoria Toensing falsely claimed that the Clinton administration did "carry out that authority" to bypass the FISA requirements "when they went into Aldrich Ames's house without a warrant." But as with Gorelick's testimony, the Ames investigation took place before the 1995 FISA amendment requiring warrants for physical searches. In other words, in conducting these searches, the Clinton administration did not bypass FISA because FISA did not address physical searches. Further, there is ample evidence that the Clinton administration complied with the FISA requirements that did exist on wiretapping: U.S. District Court Judge Royce C. Lamberth, who previously served on the FISA court, has noted the "key role" the court played in the Ames case to "authorize physical entries to plant eavesdropping devices"; and former deputy assistant attorney general Mark M. Richard established that "the Attorney General was asked to sign as many as nine certifications to the FISA court in support of applications for FISA surveillance" during the Ames investigation. 10: Clinton administration conducted domestic spying Conservative media figures have claimed that during the Clinton administration, the NSA used a program known as Echelon to monitor the domestic communications of United States citizens without a warrant. While most have offered no evidence to support this assertion, NewsMax, a right-wing news website, cited a February 27, 2000, CBS News 60 Minutes report that correspondent Steve Kroft introduced by asserting: "If you made a phone call today or sent an email to a friend, there's a good chance what you said or wrote was captured and screened by the country's largest intelligence agency. The top-secret Global Surveillance Network is called Echelon, and it's run by the National Security Agency." NewsMax used the 60 Minutes segment to call into question The New York Times' December 16 report that Bush's "decision to permit some eavesdropping inside the country without court approval was a major shift in American intelligence-gathering practices, particularly for the National Security Agency, whose mission is to spy on communications abroad." On December 19, Limbaugh read the NewsMax article on his nationally syndicated radio show. Limbaugh told listeners that Bush's surveillance program "started in previous administrations. You've heard of the NSA massive computer-gathering program called Echelon. 60 Minutes did a story on this in February of 2000. Bill Clinton still in office." The Echelon claim has also been repeated by Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund and radio host G. Gordon Liddy. The 60 Minutes report appears to have been based largely on anecdotal evidence provided by a former Canadian intelligence agent and a former intelligence employee who worked at Menwith Hill, the American spy station in Great Britain, in 1979. In addition, the report contained footage of an assertion by then-Rep. Bob Barr (R-GA) that "Project Echelon engages in the interception of literally millions of communications involving United States citizens." But the report also included comments from then-chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Rep. Porter Goss (R-FL), who, Kroft reported, "still believes ... that the NSA does not eavesdrop on innocent American citizens." Kroft asked Goss: "[H]ow can you be sure that no one is listening to those conversations?" Goss responded, "We do have methods for that, and I am relatively sure that those procedures are working very well." While Goss did not say in his 60 Minutes interview that the NSA does not spy on the domestic communications of Americans without a warrant, then-director of central intelligence George J. Tenet and then-National Security Agency director Lt. Gen. Michael V. Hayden said exactly that to Goss's committee less than two months later. As ThinkProgress has noted, Tenet testified before the intelligence committee on April 12, 2000. Denying allegations that Echelon was used to spy on Americans in the United States without a warrant, Tenet stated: "We do not target their conversations for collection in the United States unless a FISA warrant has been obtained from the FISA court by the Justice Department." In the same hearing, Hayden testified: "If [an] American person is in the United States of America, I must have a court order before I initiate any collection [of communications] against him or her." Hayden also denied the "urban myth" that the NSA "ask[s] others to do on our behalf that which we cannot do for ourselves." This appears to have been a response to the allegation -- noted by 60 Minutes -- that the NSA was exchanging information with foreign intelligence services that did monitor the domestic communications of Americans. Hayden stated: "By executive order, it is illegal for us to ask others to do what we cannot do ourselves, and we don't do it." Tenet and Hayden's congressional testimony leaves two possibilities: Either they were not telling Congress the truth, or the claim that the NSA used the Echelon program to monitor the domestic communications of Americans is incorrect. Hayden now serves as principal deputy director of national intelligence and has vigorously defended Bush's warrantless domestic surveillance program. At a December 19 press conference, he acknowledged that Bush's program goes beyond what is authorized under FISA. Hayden described it as "a more -- I'll use the word 'aggressive' program than would be traditionally available under FISA." 11: Moussaoui case proved that FISA probable-cause standard impedes terrorism probes Some of the administration's supporters have attempted to defend the domestic surveillance program by pointing to a purported situation where the cumbersome FISA regulations prevented crucial intelligence gathering. In a December 20 Washington Post op-ed, Weekly Standard editor William Kristol and American Enterprise Institute resident scholar Gary Schmitt cited the 2001 case of Zacarias Moussaoui as evidence that the "difficulty with FISA is the standard it imposes for obtaining a warrant aimed at" a domestic target. Kristol and Schmitt claimed that the evidence the FBI had compiled against Moussaoui did not "rise to the level of probable cause under FISA": Consider the case of Zacarias Moussaoui, the French Moroccan who came to the FBI's attention before Sept. 11 because he had asked a Minnesota flight school for lessons on how to steer an airliner, but not on how to take off or land. Even with this report, and with information from French intelligence that Moussaoui had been associating with Chechen rebels, the Justice Department decided there was not sufficient evidence to get a FISA warrant to allow the inspection of his computer files. Had they opened his laptop, investigators might have begun to unwrap the Sept. 11 plot. But strange behavior and merely associating with dubious characters don't rise to the level of probable cause under FISA. But contrary to Kristol and Schmitt's argument that the probable-cause standard established by FISA was too high in this case, a 2003 Senate Judiciary Committee report found that the FBI's evidence against Moussaoui was, in fact, sufficient. The report instead asserted that FBI personnel who handled the warrant application "failed miserably" in their efforts to convince FBI attorneys that the threshold for establishing probable cause that Moussaoui was an "agent of a foreign power" (and therefore subject to surveillance pursuant to FISA) had been met . The bipartisan report, compiled by Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Charles Grassley (R-IA), and Arlen Specter (R-PA), examined in detail the FBI's handling of the Moussaoui FISA application, which was delivered to FBI headquarters by the Minneapolis field office, handled by a supervisory special agent (SSA) there, and ultimately rejected as insufficient by FBI attorneys. The senators determined that the SSA in charge of the application provided the attorneys with a "truncated" version of the evidence compiled by the Minneapolis agents and failed to search for additional "information relevant to the application." Moreover, the report found that both the SSA and the attorneys had employed an "unnecessarily high standard" for probable cause -- one that exceeded the legal requirements set out by FISA: In our view, the FBI applied too cramped an interpretation of probable cause and "agent of a foreign power" in making the determination of whether Moussaoui was an agent of a foreign power. FBI Headquarters personnel in charge of reviewing this application focused too much on establishing a nexus between Moussaoui and a "recognized" group, which is not legally required. Without going into the actual evidence in the Moussaoui case, there appears to have been sufficient evidence in the possession of the FBI which satisfied the FISA requirements for the Moussaoui application. Despite this report's having established that the FBI's misunderstanding of the FISA requirements resulted in the rejection of the Moussaoui application, a December 23 New York Times article reported without challenge the FBI's argument that FISA's "cumbersome submission requirements" were to blame: Some agents complained that the FISA court's cumbersome submission requirements and insistence on strict adherence to the law had contributed to the impression that the court itself was an obstacle to aggressive investigation of terror cases. As an example, these agents suggested F.B.I. lawyers did not seek a FISA warrant in the case of Zacarias Moussaoui, who was arrested shortly before the 2001 attacks, in part because they believed the court would reject it. 12: A 2002 FISA review court opinion makes clear that Bush acted legally Recently, conservative media figures have misleadingly cited a 2002 opinion by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review (FISCR) to claim that the president could authorize warrantless domestic electronic surveillance despite FISA's restrictions. They have pointed to the court's reiteration of the president's inherent constitutional authority to conduct foreign intelligence surveillance without a warrant, which FISA cannot encroach upon. Therefore, they argue, Bush could authorize NSA's warrantless monitoring of "U.S. persons," regardless of FISA's restrictions. But, as Media Matters documented, this argument is a red herring. Their citation of the decision to support the contention that Congress cannot encroach upon the president's constitutional authority ignores constitutional limits on that authority. Of course a law passed in 1978 would not trump the Constitution -- the supreme law of the land. The question is the scope of that presidential authority and whether it extends to acts that would violate the provisions of FISA protecting U.S. persons from excessive government intrusion. Contrary to these media figures' suggestions, the 2002 FISCR opinion does not address that question. Regardless, media figures have asserted that the FISCR opinion supports the contention that Bush is not bound by FISA. Most prominent among these has been National Review White House correspondent Byron York, who in a post on the National Review Online's weblog, The Corner, titled "READ THIS IMPORTANT ARTICLE," promoted a Chicago Tribune op-ed by John Schmidt, an associate attorney general under Clinton, supporting the legality of the administration's surveillance program. Schmidt wrote: Four federal courts of appeal subsequently faced the issue squarely and held that the president has inherent authority to authorize wiretapping for foreign intelligence purposes without judicial warrant. In the most recent judicial statement on the issue, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, composed of three federal appellate court judges, said in 2002 that "All the ... courts to have decided the issue held that the president did have inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches to obtain foreign intelligence ... We take for granted that the president does have that authority." [...] But as the 2002 Court of Review noted, if the president has inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches, "FISA could not encroach on the president's constitutional power." The Drudge Report website also cited Schmidt's Tribune op-ed with a link captioned "Associate attorney general under Clinton: President had legal authority to OK taps ..." Similarly, a December 20 Wall Street Journal editorial asserted: FISA established a process by which certain wiretaps in the context of the Cold War could be approved, not a limit on what wiretaps could ever be allowed. The courts have been explicit on this point, most recently in In Re: Sealed Case, the 2002 opinion by the special panel of appellate judges established to hear FISA appeals. In its per curiam opinion, the court noted that in a previous FISA case (U.S. v. Truong), a federal "court, as did all the other courts to have decided the issue [our emphasis], held that the President did have inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches to obtain foreign intelligence information." And further that, "We take for granted that the President does have that authority and, assuming that is so, FISA could not encroach on the President's constitutional power." Fox News chief Washington correspondent Jim Angle made a similar claim on the December 20 edition of Fox News' Special Report with Brit Hume, stating, "In 2002, [FISA's] own court of review upheld the president's powers and pointed to an appeals court decision, noting that it, as did all other courts to have decided the issue, held that the president did have the inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches to obtain foreign intelligence information." Others who have repeated this claim in the media include Bradford Berenson, a former associate White House counsel, who made the assertion on the December 21 broadcast of PBS' The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. Berenson worked in the Bush White House from 2001 to 2003, and after the September 11 attacks "played a significant role in the executive branch's counterterrorism response." —A.S., J.K., J.S., S.S.M., & R.S.K.

US embassy close to admitting Syria rendition flight Ewen MacAskill, diplomatic editor Tuesday December 27, 2005 The Guardian The US embassy in London was forced to issue a correction yesterday to an interview given by the ambassador, Robert Tuttle, in which he claimed America would not fly suspected terrorists to Syria, which has one of the worst torture records in the Middle East. A statement acknowledged media reports of a suspect taken from the US to Syria. Torture is banned in the US but the CIA has been engaged in a policy of rendition, flying terrorist suspects to countries in the Middle East and other parts of the world where torture is commonplace. Although Mr Tuttle, a Beverly Hills car dealer and major donor to George Bush's re-election campaign, has been ambassador in London only since the summer, he is proving to be accident-prone. Last month he vigorously denied British media reports that American forces used white phosphorus as a weapon in Iraq, only to be undercut by an admission from the Pentagon the next day. Mr Tuttle gave an interview to the BBC Today programme on Thursday for broadcast yesterday morning. On Friday, the US embassy returned to the BBC with a lengthy statement of clarification, which was also broadcast yesterday at the end of the interview. Asked by the BBC if the US dumped suspects in Syria, Mr Tuttle said: "I don't think there is any evidence that there have been any renditions carried out in the country of Syria. There is no evidence of that. And I think we have to take what the secretary [Condoleezza Rice] says at face value. It is something very important, it is done very carefully and she has said we do not authorise, condone torture in any way, shape or form." A US embassy spokeswoman contacted the BBC on Friday to say the ambassador "recognised that there had been a media report of a rendition to Syria but reiterated that the United States is not in a position to comment on specific allegations of intelligence activities that appear in the press". The embassy spokeswoman "underscored that the president and secretary Rice have made clear that even in today's circumstances, where we are confronting a new kind of threat, the United States does not condone torture, its officials do not participate in such activities anywhere, and we do not hand over anyone in our custody to anywhere where we believe that they will be tortured. Full stop. "We take our actions in the fight against terrorism with full respect for our international obligations and with full respect for the sovereignty of our partners." The embassy's statement is close to an admission of at least one flight to Syria as it would be unlikely to embarrass the ambassador by referring to a media report it considered inaccurate. Maher Arar, a Canadian software engineer of Syrian descent, says he was arrested in New York in 2002 and transferred to Jordan, then to Syria, where he said he was tortured. The US use of Syria for rendition sits uneasily with Washington's portrayal of the country as a pariah state. The Guardian has reported the CIA used British airports to refuel for rendition flights, which would contravene British law. Asked if he knew whether the US had sought permission from Britain, Mr Tuttle said Ms Rice had maintained that rendition would respect each country's sovereignty. His reply would seem to imply the US had sought permission, possibly leaving the British government open to challenge. Backstory US presidents tend to treat the post of ambassador to Britain more as a reward for political donors and allies than a job for diplomats, and Robert Tuttle fits this pattern. A Beverly Hills car dealer and major Republican party donor, he became ambassador this summer. He served in Ronald Reagan's White House and was ranked as a "pioneer" in George Bush's re-election campaign for raising more than £100,000 (£57,000).

The Torturous Bush Administration by Bob Murphy December 27, 2005 Just some random thoughts on the Bush Administration to bring your family holiday cheer: * All this talk about torture bans seems a bit silly to me; it reminds me of when the movie Seven first came out and everyone debated as if any jury in the world would have convicted Brad Pitt’s character. Let’s suppose the government does adopt an absolute ban on torture. Does anyone really think, a few years down the road, that someone from the FBI is going to come forward and announce in a press conference, "I hate to say this, but my partner extracted a confession from a terrorist yesterday. Sure, we saved forty thousand lives, but the law’s the law"? If government officials ignore the Constitution, why would they respect a mere statute? * McCain and others have been arguing that torture isn’t effective in garnering information. The critics argue in response that if this weren’t the case, then why does the Administration want to reserve the right to use it? Well, I’ll give you two answers to this supposed conundrum. First, the Administration might think it’s effective and simply be mistaken. (After all, plenty of people support wage and price controls, even though they aren’t effective. And perhaps this is because some of those supporters are intellectually confused.) Second – and I realize how paranoid this sounds – maybe the Administration wants to be able to torture its enemies. After all, on the margin what do you think might deter someone considering joining Al Quada? These people aren’t afraid to die; they certainly aren’t afraid of a lifetime prison sentence. But they know full well that if they get taken alive, they will probably suffer excruciating pain at the hands of their American (or allied) captors. * This ties into the domestic spying business. I can’t believe that President Bush can claim, with a straight face, that the details of domestic spying need to be kept secret, so as not to tip off terrorists living in the US. Remember folks, these people are devoting their lives to stopping what, in their mind, is evil incarnate, the carpet-bombing, dictator-installing, WMD-story-fabricating, atom-bomb-inventing-and-dropping, US world empire. Do you really think that these people wouldn’t take safeguards to protect their email from the FBI and CIA, until they were tipped off by the New York Times? * Last, let me end with something obvious: The way we turn into 1984 is to allow the government to spy on its own people and to have the option of torturing its enemies. If enough people refuse to condone this behavior, sure, a few terrorist attacks may occur that could have been averted, but at least we will never have Big Brother. You may think that President Bush is too nice of a guy to allow that stuff to happen. Fine. But once that machinery is in place, some other tyrant down the road will expand it even further and use it for far less "Christian" ends. No, in order to prevent the totalitarian nightmare from coming true here in the land of liberty, the American people need to shake themselves from their stupor and say it is unacceptable for the government to officially torture people or spy on its own people. We mean it when we teach our children that the ends don’t justify the means. And maybe, just maybe, if we started living up to the ideals for which the USA ostensibly stands, foreigners would stop devoting their lives to killing Americans. Bob Murphy has a PhD in economics from New York University, and is the author of Minerva. See his personal website at BobMurphy.net.

A maiming of the soul: Feeling Sorry for Condoleezza John Maxwell December 11, 2005 Jamaica Observer It is hard to feel sorry for a woman who has a supertanker named after her, a woman whose IQ is probably nearly twice as high as most of the men she works with, a woman who if she wanted to change jobs would probably be offered three or four times what she is paid as the second most important official in the US Government. It is really hard to be sorry for Condoleezza Rice, US secretary of state. Last week I felt sorry for her. I was looking at a photograph of Dr Rice and the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, taken by the AP's Markus Schreiber at a media briefing in Berlin on Tuesday. Dr Rice had a hunted look; the face of one cornered, surrounded by enemies, with no place to hide, no way to turn. Frau Merkel just looks terribly sad. They were surrounded only by journalists, who these days are among the most toothless and harmless alleged predators anywhere. Dr Rice's face reflected an entirely different reality: she was trapped, cornered and hunted by the lies of the Bush administration about its treatment of 'unlawful combatants' or 'battlefield detainees' hidden and tortured in dozens of black holes round the world. We've known about them and their treatment for a long time. On January 19, 2002, before the start of the Iraq War, I wrote: "The American prisoners of war, or, as they call them, 'battlefield detainees' are causing a great deal of trouble for the United States. A large number of people round the world are repulsed and horrified by the treatment meted out to these men, even if, as the Americans claim, they are 'the most dangerous folks in the world'. "To sedate them on their flights, or to put hoods over their heads and surgical masks over their faces, to shave them and put them in solitary confinement on a concrete floor surrounded by barbed wire may be, of course, some people's idea of a Caribbean vacation. "Mr Donald Rumsfeld, that macho symbol of American resolve, says he does not greatly care how the men are treated, although, as their official captor, he is accountable under the rules of war. And the attorney-general of the United States, Mr Ashcroft, the principal lawman for the United States of America, says he doesn't think that the men 'deserve basic constitutional protection'. They are, according to him, 'war criminals'. ". In the words of General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, these most dangerous 'folks' are ready, to chew their way through the hydraulic lines of a C-17 plane, to bring it down. And no doubt, they are capable of levitation, of causing ball lightning and turning people to stone with their basilisk's eyes." Three years later, I see nothing to retract in that judgment. The US administration never regarded their 'battlefield detainees' as human beings - which is why the administration has now found itself trapped in a semantic and moral maze, leaving it to Dr Rice with her formidable intellect, to convince the world that the United States does not torture its captives despite the enormity of the evidence to the contrary. According to the Associated Press on May 3, 2003, Dr Rice's predecessor as secretary of state had, "In a strongly worded letter,. urged Pentagon officials to move faster in determining which prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay can be released". Even then, shortly after the start of the Iraq invasion, the former soldier was obviously worried about the developing scandal, part of which was the disclosure that children as young as 13 were being held at Camp Delta in Guantanamo Bay. According to the US News & World Report that week, "Citing complaints from eight allies whose citizens are among the prisoners, Powell said in the letter that mishandling the detainees undermines efforts to win international co-operation in the war on terror". In the same story, the AP reported that "Rumsfeld has said the prisoners were being interrogated for any information they had on planned terrorist activities. they would continue to be held indefinitely until it is determined they pose no threat and until interrogators were convinced they had no more useful intelligence to offer". Long-Range Planners Al-Qaeda are reputed to be long-range planners, but can anyone believe that any of the detainees who have been in durance vile for two and three years have any plans to disgorge? Yet, the stories coming out of Guantanamo Bay and other places reveal that the torture continues, inexorably, with no end in sight. Occasionally the US releases people who are clearly innocent. Their stories are heartbreaking. They do not know what is wanted of them, their inquisitors go over the same questions day after day, week after week, month after month. They are humiliated, degraded, treated as less than human. The lucky ones have killed themselves. After the Korean War, Americans should understand better than anyone that many people can be brainwashed, but many can never be broken. The story I related last week, of Fidel Castro's comrade in arms, Abel Santamaria, proves the point. The behaviour of Haydee Santamaria, his sister, only makes it more forceful. In a jail cell, presented with her brother's bleeding eye, torn from his living body, Haydee was told, "This eye belonged to your brother. If you will not tell us what he refused to say, we will tear out the other". She, who loved her brave brother above all other things, replied with dignity, "If you tore out his eye and he did not speak, neither will I". Torture does not work. Most of the information gleaned from it is untrustworthy. Those who cannot stand the pain will tell the inquisitors whatever they think they want to hear. So, can anyone believe that information-gathering is the real purpose of torture? The original inquisitors did not think so. They put their victims "to the test" knowing perfectly well that there was no information to be gained. But they tortured and burnt their victims for the greater glory of God and their own perverse and pathological satisfactions. It is clear that Dr Rice's torture explanations have satisfied no one. The European foreign ministers, having embarrassed the US to the point where Dr Rice apparently promised no more torture, no more renditions, chalked up a victory. Their constituents, however, continue to be incensed by the behaviour of the United States and will continue to complain as more horror stories come to light. Last week, as Dr Rice was speaking to the Europeans, a man called Khaled al-Masri was speaking by satellite link-up to a news conference in Washington. Mr al-Masri is a German citizen of Lebanese origin. On holiday in Macedonia, he was kidnapped and handed over to Americans. He was taken to a prison in Afghanistan where he was held incommunicado for five months and tortured. He was also sodomised by his jailers. With the help of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Mr al-Masri is suing the Central Intelligence Agency and its former head, George Tenet, and the US government. The ACLU says this is the first case to challenge the kidnapping of foreign nationals for 'interrogations' in secret prisons in third countries. The German Chancellor, Frau Merkel, brought the case to the attention of Dr Rice on Tuesday. According to Merkel, "The US government has, of course, accepted the case as a mistake". Who told her to say that? Dr Rice's spokesmen denied that the secretary had accepted al-Masri's case as a mistake; Dr Rice had said only that "Any policy will sometimes result in errors, and when it happens we will do everything to rectify it". That's odd, because Mr al-Masri was denied entry to the US last weekend when he arrived in Atlanta. If the US is serious about correcting mistakes, that was not a promising start. But perhaps it was all due to an error in interpretation - except that Frau Merkel speaks excellent English. Values we Share? Four years ago, shortly after 9/11 I was one of those who counselled the US not to allow anger to distort judgment. "In all the millions of words about Tuesday's horrific tragedy, few have been used to ask Why? to seek the real reasons. Blasting the visible manifestations of a cancer may achieve cosmetic improvement, but the concealed body of the parasitic tumour will not disappear. "Injustice is the most eloquent recruiter for terrorism. Injustice breeds desperation. Suicidal behaviour is almost always a desperate call for help. People who are willing to destroy themselves along with randomly selected groups of innocents are speaking the language of violence, which they know their enemies understand. Unfortunately, while their enemies understand the language, they do not usually listen to the message." But Mr Bush was adamant: "Remember. the ones in Guantanamo Bay are killers. They don't share the same values we share" (March 20, 2002). There was angry and learned dissent, of course. One of the most eloquent came from one of Britain's most senior judges: "The purpose of holding the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay was, and is, to put them beyond the rule of law, beyond the protection of any courts and at the mercy of victors. "As a lawyer brought up to admire the ideals of American democracy and justice I would have to say that I regard this as a monstrous failure of justice," Lord Steyn said. Lord Steyn said it was a recurring theme in history "that in times of war, armed conflict, or perceived national danger, even liberal democracies adopt measures infringing human rights in ways that are wholly disproportionate to the crisis. Often the loss of liberty is permanent" (November 26, 2003). "The question is whether the quality of justice envisaged for the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay complies with the minimum international standards for the conduct of fair trials," Lord Steyn continued. "The answer can be given quite shortly. It is a resounding 'no'. Prisoners at the Camp Delta base on Cuba are being held in conditions of 'utter lawlessness'." That verdict was reinforced last week by some of the most learned and respected judges in the world, the British House of Lords, sitting as the Supreme Court of the UK. In a judgment delivered on Thursday, the seven Law Lords denounced torture and any attempt to use evidence obtained by torture in British courts. Lord Bingham of Cornhill, the former Lord Chief Justice who chaired the panel, said English law had regarded torture and its fruits with abhorrence for more than 500 years. "The principles of the common law, standing alone, in my opinion compel the exclusion of third-party torture evidence as unreliable, unfair, offensive to ordinary standards of humanity and decency and incompatible with the principles which should animate a tribunal seeking to administer justice." Lord Hoffman: "The use of torture is dishonourable .It corrupts and degrades the state which uses it and the legal system which accepts it. In our own century, many people in the United States have felt their country dishonoured by its use of torture outside the jurisdiction and its practice of extra-legal 'rendition' of suspects to countries where they would be tortured." Lord Hope: "Torture [is] one of the most evil practices known to man. practices authorised for use in Guantanamo Bay would shock the conscience if they were ever to be authorised for use in our own country." Lord Rodger: The torturer is abhorred "not because the information he produces may be unreliable but because of the barbaric means he uses to extract it". Lord Nicholls: "Torture is not acceptable. No civilised society condones its use. This is a bedrock moral principle in this country. For centuries the common law has set its face against torture." Lord Brown: "Torture is an unqualified evil. It can never be justified. Rather, it must always be punished."

What everyone should know about Jose Padilla by Mike Whitney 26 Dec 2005 The constitution is the last flimsy obstacle between Bush and absolute power. That is why the administration has persisted for nearly 4 years in its case against Jose Padilla. The Padilla case has nothing to do with Al Qaida, “dirty bombers” or terrorism. These are simply the empty diversions that conceal the administration’s real intention; to remove the final impediment to the supreme authority of the executive. The real issue in the Padilla case is whether or not the president can repeal the central tenet of the Bill of Rights and jail an American citizen without charges. The constitution states that a man’s liberty cannot be taken away without due process of law. Habeas corpus, the right to know why one is being imprisoned, is the clearly delineated fault–line between freedom and tyranny. If the administration succeeds in its efforts, Bush will have overturned that fundamental principle and the inalienable rights of man will become the provisional gifts of the president. The importance of the Padilla case cannot be overstated. The final verdict will determine whether we are still a nation of laws or if we are simply governed by the arbitrary authority of one man, George Walker Bush. So far, the administration has succeeded in its main objective; to keep Padilla behind bars for nearly 4 years while preventing him from accessing the criminal justice system. The case has meandered from court to court, giving the appearance that some form of legal process is taking place but, in fact, Padilla has never been charged with a crime and, thus, has been denied all of his constitutional rights. At no point in time, has he ever been given the opportunity to challenge the terms of his incarceration before a judge. Bush’s actions have created a parallel justice system that exists outside statutory law and is answerable to the president alone. For Padilla, this means double jeopardy. First, he was held as an “enemy combatant” for 3 and a half years and, now, the administration wants to reverse itself and change that classification to “criminal suspect”. If the court allows the government to proceed on this track, Padilla’s years of solitary confinement will merely be dismissed as (what the 4th Circuit called) “a mistake”. The moniker “enemy combatant” is critical to understanding the administration’s strategy. It is a label that was hatched in a right-wing think tank to create a special category of criminal who can be summarily stripped of all civil liberties and human rights without legal recourse. The very term “enemy combatant” challenges our traditional values vis-à-vis the rights of man. The fate of the enemy combatant, whether an American citizen or not, depends entirely on presidential discretion. It confers dictatorial and “unreviewable” power on the executive. It is the end of any meaningful notion of inalienable rights or of checks on presidential power. The government clearly has no interest in Padilla, a luckless gang member whose connection to terrorism is sketchy at best. In fact, the Justice Dept’s claims have changed so frequently that it is impossible to know what they may be from one month to the next. It is the precedent that matters to the Bush administration, not the spurious allegations. They are seeking a judicial ruling that will vindicate the cancelling out constitutionally-guaranteed civil liberties. This will put the president squarely above the law. The case has demonstrated the awesome power of the administration to manipulate public perceptions through demagoguery and to destroy Padilla’s chances for a fair trial. It has also exposed the collaborative role of the media in promoting the government’s position while obscuring the shocking violations to personal freedom. And, although the administration has now completely changed its position and wants to charge Padilla as a criminal, (a clear admission that he was falsely accused to begin with) not one media organization in the nation has called for Padilla to be released. This week’s ruling by the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals has temporarily upset the administration’s plans. Although the court endorsed the administration’s position that the president has the right to indefinitely imprison enemy combatants in the war on terror, it has rejected the government’s petition to vacate that ruling to prevent the case from going to the Supreme Court. The administration’s motives are clear. They do not believe that the Supreme Court will rule in their favor and deny an American citizen the right to due process. Now, the administration must figure out a way to preserve the tenuous notion of “enemy combatant” which guarantees the enhanced power of the president. Would the Supreme Court really reject the arguments of the man they helped to catapult into office by a 5 to 4 vote in the 2000 presidential election? Or will they find some way of defending these unconstitutional powers by issuing a purposely ambiguous verdict that will allow Bush to continue to act with impunity? There’s no doubt that the administration believes in the supreme power of the executive and is dragging the nation towards some form of tyranny. The White House attorneys have worked tirelessly drawing up the legal justifications for everything from massive domestic spying operations to the cruel and inhuman treatment of foreign nationals. The solitary function of the Bush legal team is the dismantling of existing laws. Padilla’s case is no different. Dick Cheney’s chief-of-staff David Addington, summarized it best when he stated, “Congress may no more regulate the president’s ability to detain and interrogate enemy combatants than it may regulate his ability to direct troop movements on the battlefield.” The president is answerable to no one. He stands above the law and may do as he pleases. Padilla has no rights and, by extension, neither does any other American citizen. It is now up to the Supreme Court to decide whether the Constitution has any meaning or if it just a “goddamned piece of paper” as Bush claims. Mike lives in Washington State with his charming wife Joan and two spoiled and overfed dogs, Cocoa and Pat-Fergie.

CIA Patsy Spins Fairy Tale Plot to Assassinate Bush December 23rd 2005 Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, the captured al-CIA-duh “commander,” has supposedly revealed that it was his job to kill George Bush, probably at the behest of his dead leader and his right-hand man, Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, according to a report published by the New York Daily News. Of course, an idiot patsy of al-Libi’s caliber would never get near Bush in a zillion years, but never mind—we are to be reminded, ad nauseam, of the viciousness of “al-Qaeda” (not the database but the myth), especially when Bush’s popularity ratings are at an all-time low. In Bushzarro world few remember crucial details about events that occurred last month or last year and thus our rulers and their friends in the corporate media figure we will believe whatever absurd nonsense they feed us. For instance, in July of 2004, we learned that al-Libi had recanted his various confessions, most notably the big whopping lie that Osama and Saddam were best of buddies and Saddam trained “al-Qaeda” in the use of chemical weapons. “We’ve learned that Iraq has trained al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and gases,” said Bush in an October 2002 speech in Cincinnati. “Other senior administration officials, including Secretary of State Colin L. Powell in a speech to the United Nations, made similar assertions. Al-Libi’s statements were the foundation of all of them,” the Washington Post reported on August 1, 2004. In short, Bush—or rather the Zionist neocons in the White House and Pentagon, since Bush is ostensibly little more than a good old boy yahoo from Texas (a fabrication since in reality he is a brain damaged member of the ruling elite and not a cowboy)—invaded Iraq based on a passel of lies. It is significant that at least some of these lies were extracted through torture. In normal, non-Bushzarro times, the fact the neocons went to “war” predicated in part upon a fairy tale extracted under torture would be more grist for the impeachment mill. Of course, we no longer live in normal times and thanks in large part to the fact a large portion of the American public suffers from amnesia, the corporate media is able to float absurd stories about idiot patsies plotting to kill the president, who is in fact an appointed dictator.

For Agency's `Rendering' Teams, A Lavish Overseas Lifestyle By JOHN CREWDSON Chicago Tribune December 25 2005 MILAN, Italy -- When the CIA decides to "render" a terrorism suspect living abroad for interrogation in Egypt or another friendly Middle East nation, it spares no expense. Italian prosecutors wrote in court papers that the CIA spent "enormous amounts of money" during the six weeks it took the agency to figure out how to grab a 39-year-old Muslim preacher called Abu Omar off the streets of Milan, throw him into a van and drive him to the airport. First to arrive in Milan was the surveillance team, and the hotels they chose were among the best Europe has to offer. Especially popular was the gilt-and-crystal Principe di Savoia, with acres of burnished wood paneling and plush carpets, where a single room costs $588 a night, a club sandwich goes for $28.75, and a Diet Coke adds another $9.35. According to hotel records later obtained by the Milan police investigating Abu Omar's disappearance, two CIA operatives managed to ring up more than $9,000 in room charges alone. The CIA's bill at the Principe for seven operatives came to $39,995, not counting meals, parking and other hotel services. Another group of seven operatives managed to spend $40,098 on room charges at the Westin Palace, a five-star hotel across the Piazza della Repubblica from the Principe, where a club sandwich is only $20. A former CIA officer who has worked undercover abroad said those prices were "way over" the CIA's allowed rates for foreign travel. "But you can get away with it if you claim you needed the hotel `to maintain your cover,'" he said. "They would have had to pose as high-flying businessmen." Judging from the photographs on the passports they displayed when checking into their hotels and the international driving licenses they used to rent cars, not many of the Milan operatives could have passed as "high-flying businessmen." In all, records show, the CIA paid 10 Milan hotels at least $158,000 in room charges. Although the Milan police obtained the hotel bills of 22 alleged CIA operatives, they say at least 59 cellphones were used in the weeks leading up to the abduction. Even allowing for the possibility that some operatives used more than one phone, prosecutors believe that a significant number of operatives remain unidentified. A senior U.S. official said the agency's deployment in Milan was "about usual for that kind of operation." But in December 2001, when the CIA arrived in frigid Stockholm to transport two suspected Islamic militants to Cairo, it sent eight rendition experts to do the job, according to a Swedish television documentary. When a rendition team showed up in Macedonia in January 2004 to collect a Kuwait-born Germany citizen, Khalid el-Masri, and fly him to Afghanistan, there were only 11 operatives on the plane, according to a Spanish police report. At the beginning of February 2003, with the abduction still three weeks away, 10 of the operatives, who presumably had been spending their days charting Abu Omar's movements as he walked from his apartment to the local mosque and back, left Milan to spend the weekend in a hotel overlooking the harbor at La Spezia, on Italy's Mediterranean coast. Some male and female operatives shared the same hotel rooms, records show. Before heading back to Milan, five members of the group detoured to Florence, where they checked into the renowned Grand Hotel Baglioni. Once Abu Omar was safely behind bars in Cairo, some of the operatives who had helped put him there split up into twos and threes and headed for luxury resort hotels in the Italian Alps, Tuscany and Venice. Hotel records indicate at least two couples on those trips shared the same rooms. Asked if there had been some operational or other official reason for the ultra-expensive hotels and side trips, the senior U.S. official shrugged. "They work hard," he said. One expense the CIA did spare the U.S. taxpayers was the dozen traffic tickets generated when the agency's rented cars were photographed by police cameras driving illegally in the city's bus and taxi lanes. Because the cars had been rented using false names and addresses, the $500 in fines was paid by the car rental agencies. Since Sept. 11, 2001, the U.S. intelligence budget has been increased by Congress to an estimated $40 billion a year, an all-time record. In their travels around Europe, some of the CIA's rendition teams gravitated to another vacation resort spot, the Mediterranean island of Palma de Mallorca, according to a recent report by a Spanish police agency, The Guardia Civil. At least three planes believed to be owned or operated by the CIA - including a Boeing 737 that rendered el-Masri to Afghanistan and the Gulfstream executive jet that Italian prosecutors say flew Abu Omar to Cairo - made at least 10 stops on Mallorca during 2004. The Spanish government says it has been assured by the Bush administration that none of the CIA planes stopping on Spanish soil had prisoners on board or otherwise infringed Spanish law. At least some of the Mallorcan stopovers were used to take on fuel after arriving from, or before departing for, the United States. But according to the Guardia's report, the 737 spent five days on Mallorca in April of last year before departing for Libya - more time than required for refueling. Another of the Mallorcan stopovers lasted three days. There were five two-day visits, and three others that lasted a single day and night. The police say most of the passengers on those flights spent the layovers at two of Palma's most exclusive hotels, the Mallorca Marriott and the Gran Melia Victoria. The five-star Gran Melia charges $1,018 a night for a suite during the month of September, when several of the stopovers occurred, although it is not known whether they rented a suite. The $1,018 price does not include breakfast. At the Marriott, a junior suite goes for $300 a night, and an executive suite for $325. Access to the hotel's golf course is $65. According to the local newspaper, the Diario de Mallorca, the hotel bills incurred during some of those layovers included greens fees, massages and $78 bottles of Pesquera red wine.

Called on their errors BY JOHN CREWDSON THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE December 27, 2005 MILAN -- The trick is known to just about every small-time crook in the cellular age: If you don't want police to know where you are, take the battery out of your cell phone when you're not using it. Had that trick been taught at the CIA's rural Virginia training school for covert operatives, the Bush administration might have avoided much of the crisis in Europe over the practice the CIA calls "rendition." When CIA operatives assembled here nearly three years ago to abduct an Egyptian-born Muslim preacher named Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, and "render" him to Cairo, they left their cell phone batteries in. Even when not in use, a cell phone sends a periodic signal, enabling the worldwide cellular network to know where to look for it in case of an incoming call. Those signals allowed Italian police investigating Abu Omar's disappearance to construct an almost minute-by-minute record of his abduction in February 2003, and to identify nearly two dozen people as his abductors. CIA director Porter Goss, "horrified" at the sloppiness of the Milan rendition, has ordered a "top-down" review of the agency's "tradecraft," the nuts and bolts of the spy business. Amateur time So amateurish was the rendition that the Italian lawyer for Robert Seldon Lady, whom prosecutors identify as the former CIA chief in Milan, says Lady's primary defense will be that he was too good a spy to have been involved in anything so badly planned and carried out. Lady, 51, who retired from the CIA two years ago, is believed to be living in Florida. If he or any of the 21 other CIA operatives charged in Abu Omar's abduction set foot in the European Union they are subject to arrest and extradition to Italy for trial. Prosecutors say there is little doubt Lady was a key player in Abu Omar's kidnapping and his rendition to Egypt, where he claims to have been tortured. Evidence seized by police last summer from Lady's Italian villa includes a surveillance photograph of Abu Omar walking from his apartment to a nearby mosque, at the precise spot where he was later seized and thrown into a van. Although Abu Omar is not an Italian citizen, he obtained political asylum in 2001. In ordering further probes, Milan judge Chiara Nobili said it was necessary "to identify which agency is responsible for such a severe violation of international law as kidnapping a person legitimately living in Italy." Should the CIA decide to teach its trainees how not to conduct a covert operation, it could find few better examples than the Milan rendition. The list of mistakes made here begins with the operatives' indiscriminate use of their cell phones. One of the CIA's operatives made at least four calls to what appear to be friends and family in Texas, court records show. Another made a personal call to Greece. A man whose passport claims he was born in Tennessee made nine apparently personal calls, including one to a stockbroker in Kentucky. Leaving tracks Although the Milan operatives frequently changed hotels, the changes only made it easier for the police to identify them. Officials involved with the case said police searched for the numbers of cell phones that had been close to the scene of the abduction at the moment it occurred. They found 19. Then they discovered that many of those phones had been in communication with one another, in most cases for short calls. The phones turned up in Milan in the weeks before the abduction but stopped transmitting shortly after it was over, making it a good bet that they belonged to the kidnappers. Police also noticed that each night, based on their positioning signals, the suspect phones had come to rest in particular Milan hotels. Dozens of Americans had been registered at those hotels, but after a few days or weeks at one hotel, many of the phones had moved to another hotel. Checking registration records for guests who had changed hotels on the same days produced the names of Americans who had listed U.S. post office boxes as their addresses and nonexistent companies as their employers. A few of the operatives actually put their cell phone numbers on their hotel registration cards. When one bought a cell phone in Milan, she registered it in what police believe is her real name. At least three other operatives used their own names when registering at hotels and renting cars, investigators say. One operative made sure when checking into hotels to hand over her frequent flyer number, to get credit for her hotel stay.

Boxing Day horror downtown Dec. 26, 2005 JEN GERSON Toronto Star Shots rang out on busy Toronto streets crowded with Boxing Day shoppers today, killing one person and wounding seven others. The first shots were apparently fired around 5:30 p.m. from a vehicle driving north on Yonge St. near Gerrard St., severely wounding one woman in the head. She was in the doorway of a Foot Locker store. Police received calls within minutes about other shooting victims — including one in the Delta Chelsea hotel, one at a Pizza Pizza near Yonge and Gould St., a second person in the doorway of the Foot Locker and one at a Red Lobster restaurant. Police have two men in custody in connection with the shootings. They were apprehended at the Castle Frank subway station. At least one firearm was seized, police said. Police did not immediately say if the victims were targeted or if they were injured by random gunfire. The woman with the head wound who was shot at the Foot Locker has died. Two of the others shot are in critical condition at St. Michael’s hospital. One victim walked into Mt. Sinai hospital. The wounded reportedly include a 16-year-old boy, and others appeared to be in their late teens or early twenties. One of the victims who suffered a minor injury was an off-duty police officer. Wendy Perry and her husband were staying at the Delta Chelsea hotel when the violence erupted. They could see the area streets from the balcony of their hotel room. She said she heard a number of shots go off and the sound of a car squealing away. "We saw people racing out of stores," she said. "I thought it was fireworks." One witness, a man in his twenties who would only identify himself as Vikram, said he saw two men in a BMW leaning out the windows and firing guns. “People were screaming,” he said. “Everywhere in the shop they were down on the floor.” An employee with Sam the Record Man said people were lying out in the street and “not doing too well.” Holiday shoppers were just wrapping up the last of their Boxing Day purchases when the violence erupted. Police received several calls asking for help controlling the frightened shoppers crowded into nearby stores such as Sam the Record Man, HMV and Future Shop. After the shootings, much of the normally bustling shopping district around the Eaton Centre was blocked off with police tape. Two male suspects, including a teenager, were arrested soon after at a subway station a short distance from the scene, and at least one firearm was seized, police said. Police Chief Bill Blair said two men who were standing on the street opened fire for reasons that were not immediately clear. He did not say if the two were shooting at each other or targeting people in the crowd. Blair said police would be reviewing video surveillance tapes from cameras in the area to piece together what happened. News of the shootings angered Mayor David Miller, who called it ``a brazen act of senseless violence.” The busy downtown area, popular with tourists, was also the site of two other shootings this year. On a Saturday night in late July, a man was fatally shot in a crowd of about 1,000 people at Dundas Square despite a heavy police presence. On a Sunday afternoon in April, three people — including two bystanders — were wounded after a gunman opened fire on another man on the same stretch of street where today's shootings occurred. There have been 78 murders in Toronto this year, including a record 52 by gunfire. The city set a record for murders in 1991, with 88.

Fairfax Gunman's Rampage Detailed: Motive in Mass Killings May Never Be Known By Mary Beth Sheridan and Serge F. Kovaleski Washington Post Staff Writers Tuesday, December 27, 2005; A01 Police yesterday described a harrowing scene at the Great Falls home where a triple slaying occurred Christmas morning, with the 27-year-old gunman rampaging through the spacious residence, shooting two victims at bedside and one cowering in a closet. Shocked neighbors, friends and law enforcement officials struggled to make sense of the killings, which occurred less than an hour after the gunman, identified as Nathan Cheatham, allegedly killed his mother, Sheila Cheatham, at her McLean home eight miles away. The bloodbath ended when Cheatham shot himself in the head with the 9mm handgun, bringing the day's death toll to five, authorities said. The lone survivor, a 20-year-old man who called police, had sought refuge in the basement of the Great Falls home. Even as police swarmed around the home yesterday, looking for clues, they acknowledged a sense of mystery about the killings, which brought the number of homicides in Fairfax County this year to 22. "Perhaps we will never be able to answer the question that is most prevalent, and that is, why?" Fairfax County Police Chief David M. Rohrer said at an afternoon news conference. Police identified the victims in the Great Falls home as Adam Sebastian Price, 19, a friend of Cheatham's, and his mother, Janina C. Price, 50. They had moved from their longtime home in another part of Great Falls a few weeks ago and appeared to be renting the Sycamore Springs Lane house, which is owned by a retired U.S. diplomat, neighbors said. Also slain was Christopher James Buro, 20, a friend of the Price family whom Cheatham apparently did not know, police said. Friends recalled Cheatham in his earlier years as a respectful youth who was gifted at drawing. But in recent years, he had run into trouble, with emotional problems, convictions on minor assault and concealed weapon charges, and arrests on drug charges, according to police, public records and friends. "He seemed to be a loner," said a woman who lived near the Lewinsville Road home of Sheila Cheatham, near Tysons Corner. "I would see him sitting out on the porch by himself." Police said that autopsies were being conducted and that they will ascertain whether Nathan Cheatham had drugs in his system. Cheatham had moved back to his mother's home in the past few weeks after living for a while with two brothers elsewhere in Fairfax County, police said. Sheila Cheatham, 53, ran a day-care center, Mother Nurture, on her property. Acquaintances described her as enthusiastic about her business and delighted with a new beachfront condo in Fort Walton Beach, Fla., one of several properties she owned. They said she was divorced from Nathan's father, who was described by one of his co-workers as a former Navy SEAL. One Lewinsville Road resident, who spoke on condition of anonymity, described the area -- a mix of modest homes and large, new houses -- as "a wonderful neighborhood. I've been here 40 years, never had anything" happen. Until Christmas morning. Police said a witness saw Sheila and Nathan Cheatham in a car together at their home about 9:30 a.m. Gunshots rang out a short time later but were not reported to police, they said. After killing his mother, investigators said, Nathan Cheatham went to Great Falls. Sometime that morning, Cheatham had called the Price family to see whether he could come over, police said. They turned him down, according to police. But he headed to the quiet, wooded neighborhood anyway. Police said Cheatham, driving his Ford Ranger pickup, drove up to the Price home, a two-story, 3,600-square-foot residence on a hill. He started firing even before he entered the house. "He was not trying to hide that he was coming," said Maj. Bob Callahan, commander of the Fairfax police criminal investigations bureau. Police believe Cheatham broke into the house and methodically went from room to room, looking for his victims. He fired more than 50 shots in all, reloading as he hunted down the victims while they scrambled for their lives, police said. One victim was found slain inside a bedroom closest, where the person apparently was trying to evade the gunman. The other two were found dead next to beds. Authorities said all the victims had been shot multiple times in the upper body. "Once he started shooting, it did not take long," Callahan said. Buro was found in a first-floor bedroom. He had been staying at the Prices' home for about a week, police said. Buro, of Vienna, had been doing odd jobs since graduating from Langley High School, said his stepfather, Ralph Hendry. Buro had also had a recent scrape with the law, having appeared in court two weeks ago in connection with a minor theft charge, according to public records. Janina Price was found in the master bedroom, and her son Adam was discovered in a second-floor bedroom. "It appeared that they probably were still asleep or in their rooms when everything started," Callahan said. "It certainly appears that people in the house heard gunshots and tried to take cover in their rooms." Neighbors near Janina Price's previous home, on Woodleaf Lane, said they did not know what she did for a living. According to court records, Price, a widow, had been charged nearly 20 times in the past 12 years with minor violations ranging from concealing merchandise to trespassing to driving with a suspended license. The most serious offense appears to have occurred in 1999, when she was sentenced to 30 days in jail on a misdemeanor theft charge. About 10:25 a.m. Sunday, police received a 911 call from a Price family member who had hidden in the basement after hearing the shots outside. That person, whom authorities declined to further identify, was to be the sole survivor of the attack. Police arrived at the house four minutes later and found Cheatham's idling truck at the end of the driveway. But the shooting was over, they said. Authorities said that about 11:30 a.m., the survivor fled the house, and police then secured the basement. The tactical unit entered the home about 2 p.m. and found the four dead people, including Cheatham, whose body was in the master bedroom. Police said they discovered bullet holes in the bedroom doors and unused ammunition on Cheatham's body. Meanwhile, officers sped to the address of the truck's registered owner, Nathan Cheatham, in the 8500 block of Lewinsville Road, about 11 a.m. They discovered the body of Sheila Cheatham, shot multiple times, in the driveway behind the house. The day's casualties also included a black Labrador retriever named Max, who was found at the Sycamore Springs Lane home. The dog had been shot three times and was taken to a Vienna emergency clinic, where veterinarians performed surgery. The dog is expected to survive, police said.

Slayings shock D.C. suburbs CNN 26/12/2005 Police are trying to determine what prompted 27-year-old Nathan William Cheatham to kill his mother on Christmas Day and then drive to another home in suburban Washington, where he killed three others before committing suicide. "Perhaps we'll never be able to answer the question which is most prevalent, and that is: Why?" said Fairfax County Police Chief Col. Dave Rohrer. A 20-year-old man, who hid in the basement, survived the carnage.

New Orleans Police Shoot, Kill Man on Tape By BRETT MARTEL Associated Press 27 Dec 2005 NEW ORLEANS - Police officers shot and killed a man brandishing a knife in a confrontation that was partially videotaped by a bystander, setting off another internal investigation of the embattled department. Monday's daylight shooting was the first involving police since New Orleans reopened after Hurricane Katrina. It follows the videotaped police beating of a man that led to two firings in the department. A police spokesman, David Adams, said the officers who fired on the man will be reassigned pending the outcome of the probe, but he defended their response, saying at least one officer's life was in danger just before the barrage of gunfire. "You have a subject who's lunging at them with a knife... swinging wildly at them and they're fearing for their life," Adams said. "They had no other choice but to resort to lethal force." Adams said he did not know how many officers fired shots or how many shots were fired. Witnesses said a half dozen or more shots were fired. Officers repeatedly asked the man to drop the knife and used pepper spray to try to subdue him, but he covered his face with a cloth and continued walking toward an officer and threatening him, authorities said. "Evidently, the pepper spray had no effect," Adams said. The 38-year-old man's name was not immediately released. A businessman had called police after a confrontation with the victim in the Lower Garden District west of downtown. The shooting happened on St. Charles Avenue, the thoroughfare famous for its historic green streetcars and Mardi Gras parades. Phin Percy videotaped a portion of the confrontation before the shooting from his father's second-story apartment. "The cops kept telling him 'Lay down! Lay down!' This went on for about three minutes," he said. While he was running downstairs, Percy said, he heard numerous shots. By the time he ran out the door, many more officers had arrived and the body was lying against a car. When he reviewed his videotape, Percy said, he saw a small knife in the man's hand. The tape, broadcast nationally, appears to show about a dozen officers taking part in the confrontation. Trey Brokaw, a patron at a nearby bar, said he saw the victim with a knife in his hand shortly before the shooting. "I didn't see anyone near him," Brokaw said. "It didn't seem like anyone was going to get hurt to me." But Brokaw said he did not see what happened in the final moments before the shots rang out. It was the first shooting of any kind involving a New Orleans officer since the city was officially reopened following Hurricane Katrina's devastation four months ago, Adams said. Since the storm, the police department has struggled to rebuild its ranks and address questions about officers' conduct. Hundreds of officers left the city without permission in the days after the storm. There were also allegations of theft and looting by officers, still under investigation, and the videotaped beating of a retired teacher by police in the French Quarter that led to the firing of two officers. The police chief resigned a month after the storm.

The year of unnatural disasters PARIS AFP Dec 27, 2005 In the space of a year, a tsunami, an earthquake, brutal storms and floods have claimed more than 300,000 lives and cost at least 100 billion dollars in damage. Humans prefer to view these catastrophes as the result of misfortune, of randomness, of the unfathomable forces of Nature, of the whim of gods or of God. But the exceptional disasters of the past 12 months raise a far more difficult question. Could mankind be to blame? For many scientists, the deep pain from this year's string of disasters is to a very large degree man-made. From the Mississippi delta to the mountains of Kashmir and the beaches of the Andaman Sea, governments failed in almost every case to respect the basic laws of sustainable development. In a nutshell, these rules are: don't house people in places that are at risk to disasters -- but if you do, respect natural defences; keep the population growth to sensible limits; build wisely and ensure high safety standards in construction; and set up effective alert and response networks in the event disaster does strike. "We like to talk about natural disasters because it puts the blame on Mother Nature... (but) it's nonsense, it misrepresents what the causal factors really are," said Anthony Oliver-Smith, a doctor of anthropology at the University of Florida at Gainesville. "Obviously, there are big, big hurricanes and there are big, big earthquakes that will create a certain amount of damage. But the degree and level of destruction is really much more a result of society than it is of the natural agent." The October 8 earthquake that struck Kashmir, killing 73,000 in Pakistan and 1,400 in India, exposed shoddy construction standards in which homes and schools became killers and the lack of emergency backup in a vulnerable seismic region. The Geological Survey of Pakistan described the temblor as "a wakeup call". "Construction codes are non-existent, or criminally violated," it said. "It is feared that if mushrooming construction of inferior quality continues unchecked in the cities, half the newly-constructed buildings will crumble in 20-30 years with just a moderate earthquake hitting the region." In the case of the December 26 2004 Asian earthquake and tsunami, which killed at least 220,000 people, the toll was amplified by the burgeoning development on the Indian Ocean coastline, where villages, towns and tourist resorts have sprung up in the past decade. This was most notable in Thailand, where hotel complexes were built right on the beach, thus putting them right in the path of a big wave, and mangroves and coral reefs, which would have dampened much of the impact, had been destroyed. "Indiscriminate economic development and ecologically destructive policies have left many communities more vulnerable to disasters than they realise," said the Washington-based environmental group the Worldwatch Institute. A classic example of this was the monsoon flooding that hit Mumbai in August, temporarily transforming the city of 15 million into the so-called "Venice of the East" where streets were drowned and more than 400 lost their lives. Experts blamed the tragedy on decrepit drainage dating back to the British colonial era, explosive growth in slum housing and the loss of green areas and river channels that used to soak up rainwater seepage and then take it out to sea. "A myopic view of development and misuse of no-development 'green' zones has virtually killed the city," said Chandrashekar Prabhu, an urban planner. Such folly is not exclusive to a developing country. On August 29, Hurricane Katrina laid waste to New Orleans -- a delta city built below floodlevel and whose coastal wetlands, which would have been a useful buffer against storm surge, had been destroyed by developers. Katrina left a trail of a thousand dead across the US Gulf coast and an economic bill variously estimated from 80 billion to 200 billion. It was the peak in an Atlantic hurricane season that broke records for duration, the number of storms -- 26 tropical storms, 14 of them hurricanes -- and severity, with three reaching the topmost category of five on the Saffir-Simpson intensity scale. The tsunami and quakes were natural events whose impacts were magnified by human mistakes. The big, troubling question is whether Katrina and Co. were spawned by man. Climate scientists are loath to pin a single event, or even a season, to the greenhouse-gas effect. Despite this, a small but increasing number of experts are venturing the opinion that the 2005 hurricane season was no accident, for it coincides with ever-rising sea temperatures that fuel bad hurricanes, and a year set to be the warmest ever recorded. Others urge caution, saying it could be years before we get confirmation as to whether 2005 was just a freak year for storms, part of a natural cycle for hurricanes, or the start of a man-made phenomenon. Oliver-Smith says it is too early to say whether the string of catastrophes of the past 12 months has dented mankind's obsession with economic growth regardless of the cost. "It's a tough call to say that people's consciousness is being changed by these disasters," he said. "We will do anything rather than change."

Rock Slides in Vt. Force 50 to Evacuate By CHRISTOPHER GRAFF Associated Press 27 Dec 2005 MONTPELIER, Vt. - A series of rock slides dumped boulders the size of cars across a downtown street Monday, forcing about 50 people to evacuate as debris spilled up to their doorsteps. The first slide happened shortly before sundown, spreading stones and several tall trees across the road and bringing down power lines. "There was a loud noise — I thought it was a plow coming through — then a flash of light, and then the big stuff started coming down," said Howard Curtis, who lives nearby. Additional slides continued for roughly two hours. Police said no one was injured. Rocks, trees and dirt fell some 60 feet from the cliffs that rise above the city, falling onto a block-long portion of Vermont Route 12. Officials estimated the boulders weighed from 20 to 30 tons. Authorities evacuated about 50 residents of an apartment complex across the street from the cliffs as debris piled up to their doorsteps. Emergency workers also evacuated several homes above where the slides began because of concern about parts of the cliff collapsing. Stephen Gray, Montpelier's public works director, said the slide was probably caused by recent swings in the temperature combined with rain Sunday night. "We've had freeze and thaw, and then it probably froze again," he said. Evan Shper, 16, was walking toward the center of the city when the rock slides began and dialed 911 on his cell phone. "I stood there for about five seconds," he said. "Then we heard a huge sound. A huge part was coming down with a tree on it. I started running." Comment: Two HOURS of rocks tumbling??? Cold and rain?

Winter woes: Eastern Canada feels effects of slow-moving storm Last Updated Tue, 27 Dec 2005 08:13:55 EST CBC News Many parts of Eastern Canada are being told to expect little or no relief Tuesday as they continue to feel the punishing effects of a rampaging winter storm. "It's a very slow-moving system that has caused all kinds of problems," says the CBC's Colleen Jones. "It's going to be a really messy, dirty day." All this comes after many areas in Eastern Canada were hit with heavy snow, winds, and rain on Monday. As well, there were electricity blackouts to some 70,000 homes and businesses in Quebec. Still waiting for power On Tuesday morning, some 2,000 homes, mostly in the areas around St-Bruno, Que. and St-Hyacinthe, Que, were still without power. By late Monday night, the storm had already dumped more than 40 centimetres of snow on parts of Quebec and New Brunswick. Elsewhere in the Atlantic provinces, people were bracing themselves after forecasts predicted they could see as much as 60 cm of snow, 60 millimetres of rain or wind gusts of more than 100 kilometres per hour.

Catfish on I-20 spawn mystery By Francis McCabe Shreveport 24 Dec 2005 Somebody knows how catfish ended up on eastbound Interstate 20 near Airline Drive on Friday afternoon, Dec 23. Just not Bossier City authorities. Passing motorists had already pummeled, squashed and obliterated the slippery aquatic creatures by the time police were called. They arrived about 1:30 p.m. and shut down traffic because the gooey remnants left an oily service that could pose a driving hazard. Eastbound travel was halted completely for about 15 minutes while firefighters used grease sweep, a granulated substance, to provide traction on slippery surfaces. Delays continued for about another half-hour as emergency workers cleaned up the remaining catfish -- at least the ones not lambasted by Christmas shoppers tackling last-minute errands and holiday travelers rushing to turkey or ham dinners. But the question of how the fish got on the highway remains unanswered. "It's somewhat of a mystery," Bossier City spokesman Mark Natale said. "There were no witnesses to say what kind of vehicle the fish fell out of. Obviously, they fell out of some type of vehicle." Comment: Maybe they did, maybe they didn't.

AURORA WATCH Spaceweather 27 Dec 2005 A solar wind stream is expected to hit Earth's magnetic field on Dec. 28th or 29th possibly triggering a geomagnetic storm. Northern sky watchers should be alert for auroras.

AN EXPLOSION ON THE MOON December 23, 2005 NASA scientists have observed an explosion on the moon. The blast, equal in energy to about 70 kg of TNT, occurred near the edge of Mare Imbrium (the Sea of Rains) on Nov. 7, 2005, when a 12-centimeter-wide meteoroid slammed into the ground traveling 27 km/s. "What a surprise," says Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) researcher Rob Suggs, who recorded the impact's flash. He and colleague Wes Swift were testing a new telescope and video camera they assembled to monitor the moon for meteor strikes. On their first night out, "we caught one," says Suggs. The object that hit the moon was "probably a Taurid," says MSFC meteor expert Bill Cooke. In other words, it was part of the same meteor shower that peppered Earth with fireballs in late October and early November 2005. (See "Fireball Sightings" from Science@NASA.) The moon was peppered, too, but unlike Earth, the moon has no atmosphere to intercept meteoroids and turn them into harmless streaks of light. On the moon, meteoroids hit the ground--and explode. "The flash we saw," says Suggs, "was about as bright as a 7th magnitude star." That's two and a half times dimmer than the faintest star a person can see with their unaided eye, but it was an easy catch for the group's 10-inch telescope. Cooke estimates that the impact gouged a crater in the moon's surface "about 3 meters wide and 0.4 meters deep." As moon craters go, that's small. "Even the Hubble Space Telescope couldn't see it," notes Cooke. The moon is 384,400 km away. At that distance, the smallest things Hubble can distinguish are about 60 meters wide. This isn't the first time meteoroids have been seen hitting the moon. During the Leonid meteor storms of 1999 and 2001, amateur and professional astronomers witnessed at least half-a-dozen flashes ranging in brightness from 7th to 3rd magnitude. Many of the explosions were photographed simultaneously by widely separated observers. Since the Leonids of 2001, astronomers have not spent much time hunting for lunar meteors. "It's gone out of fashion," says Suggs. But with NASA planning to return to the moon by 2018, he says, it's time to start watching again. There are many questions that need answering: "How often do big meteoroids strike the moon? Does this happen only during meteor showers like the Leonids and Taurids? Or can we expect strikes throughout the year from 'sporadic meteors?'" asks Suggs. Explorers on the moon are going to want to know. "The chance of an astronaut being directly hit by a big meteoroid is miniscule," says Cooke. Although, he allows, the odds are not well known "because we haven't done enough observing to gather the data we need to calculate the odds." Furthermore, while the danger of a direct hit is almost nil for an individual astronaut, it might add up to something appreciable for an entire lunar outpost. Of greater concern, believes Suggs, is the spray—"the secondary meteoroids produced by the blast." No one knows how far the spray reaches and exactly what form it takes. Also, ground-shaking impacts could kick up moondust, possibly over a wide area. Moondust is electrostatically charged and notoriously clingy. (See "Mesmerized by Moondust" from Science@NASA.) Even a small amount of moondust can be a great nuisance: it gets into spacesuit joints and seals, clings to faceplates, and even makes the air smell when it is tramped indoors by moonwalkers. Could meteoroid impacts be a source of lunar "dust storms?" Another question for the future.... Suggs and his team plan to make more observations. "We're contemplating a long-term monitoring program active not only during major meteor showers, but also at times in between. We need to develop software to find these flashes automatically," he continues. "Staring at 4 hours of tape to find a split-second flash can get boring; this is a job for a computer." With improvements, their system might catch lots of lunar meteors. Says Suggs, "I'm ready for more surprises."

17 planets? Astronomers' heads spinning BY ROBERT S. BOYD Washington Bureau St Paul Pioneer Press The discovery of new objects in the icy junkyard called the Kuiper Belt forces science to rethink the definition of a planet. WASHINGTON — The familiar solar system that you learned about in school — nine well-behaved planets, from Mercury to Pluto, circling sedately in tidy paths around the sun — isn't what it used to be. Astronomers recently have discovered a flock of at least eight other planet-like objects in sometimes wildly eccentric orbits. Four new "ice dwarfs," plus two more probable moons around Pluto, were announced in the last six months. The latest mini-world, temporarily nicknamed "Buffy" and more than 5 billion miles from the sun, was revealed Dec. 13. The object, about half the size of Pluto, was spotted roaming through the so-called Kuiper Belt, a vast junkyard of icy, rocky bodies stretching for billions of miles beyond the orbit of Neptune. The first scientific mission to explore Pluto and the Kuiper Belt, a nine-year voyage to the outer solar system, is set to be launched in January. "Next month, we set sail for Pluto," said Alan Stern, chief scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo. Unlike the rest of the planetary family, Pluto resides in the Kuiper Belt. But it's not alone there. More than 1,000 frozen chunks of debris left over from the formation of the solar system have been found since 1992. Astronomers expect at least half a million more pieces are out there. "The discovery of the Kuiper Belt in the 1990s has given Pluto a place to call home, with icy brethren to call its own," said Neil deGrasse Tyson, the director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, in an e-mail. "The Kuiper Belt is the largest structure in the solar system," Stern said recently. "We used to think Pluto was a misfit," he added. Now Earth and the other inner planets are the oddballs. Even the inner solar system looks different. Astronomers no long believe that the four biggest planets have always been in their present orbits. Instead, they now say, Jupiter has moved toward the sun from its original home. Saturn, Uranus and Neptune have slid outward from their birthplaces, according to Donald Yeomans, a planetary scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., "The field of planetary science is currently enjoying an intense period of readjustment and discovery," Yeomans wrote in the journal Science. Scientists no longer are sure what a planet is and how many reside in our system. In addition, 160 extra-solar planets have been discovered around other stars, not the sun, in the last 10 years. The International Astronomical Union, a worldwide alliance of astronomers, has been struggling for about two years to agree on a definition for planets. Three proposed definitions are being studied, but a decision isn't likely until spring, according to Robert Williams, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. Depending on what definition is adopted, Pluto may be demoted from its status as the solar system's smallest planet to what astronomers call a "trans-Neptunian object." That's a fancy name for any world beyond Neptune, which is 2.8 billion miles from the sun or 30 times farther than Earth. Teachers are scrambling to stay current. "It's a very exciting and fast-changing area," said Richard Pogge, an astronomy professor at Ohio State University in Columbus. "It requires us to get out and do research on our own, since the textbooks are behind." Pogge uses classroom computers to connect his students to NASA's Web site and other Internet pages to view the latest findings. Science museums and planetariums have special problems since they can't afford to update expensive exhibits when a new object is found. "It's hard to hit a moving target," said Tyson of the Hayden Planetarium, who's writing a book on the difficulty of defining Pluto. Pluto would remain a planet if the International Astronomical Union accepts a definition that would declare a planet to be any round object larger than 1,000 kilometers — 625 miles — across that's orbiting the sun. So far, nine such mini-worlds, including Pluto (diameter 1,430 miles), are known to dwell in the frigid Kuiper Belt. They are "a completely different type of object that predominates in the outer solar system beyond Neptune," Pogge said. The largest and most distant of the ice dwarfs is nicknamed Xena after the television warrior princess. Discovered in 2003, it's 1,600 miles across and 20 percent bigger than Pluto is. Xena has a moon of its own, named Gabrielle after the TV Xena's sidekick. If Xena and Pluto are counted, our solar system has 10 planets; if they're not, it has eight. But if all the known objects larger than 625 miles across are included, there would be 17 planets with more expected soon. A small Kuiper Belt mini-worlds is nicknamed Santa and has a moonlet named Rudolph. Until the International Astronomical Union assigns official names, the others are known as Easter Bunny, Orcus, Quaoar, Ixion and now Buffy. The most distant such object is called Sedna; its elliptical orbit carries it more than 9 billion miles beyond the sun. As an added complication, new moons keep popping up around planets, and some old moons are found to be performing unusual tricks. Even some asteroids have tiny moons of their own. One asteroid has two moonlets. In November, two possible new moons were sighted around Pluto. If confirmed, that would mean Pluto has three satellites, counting its previously known moon, Charon. "The total number of natural satellites orbiting the major planets has grown to more than 150, with more than 50 percent of these discoveries occurring within the last six years," said Yeomans of the Jet Propulsion Lab. Unlike our own moon, which is geologically dead, at least four moons show signs of activity. Titan, Saturn's largest moon, has rainfall and rivers of liquid methane (natural gas), and renews its atmosphere by venting more methane from below the surface. Enceladus, another of Saturn's moons, spews huge jets of icy particles, probably driven by subsurface radioactivity. Jupiter's moon Io is wracked by volcanic explosions and gigantic lava flows. Neptune's moon Triton has active geysers of dust and gas. "For planetary explorers like us, there is little that can compare to the sighting of activity on another solar system body," said Carolyn Porco, an astronomer at the Space Science Institute in Boulder.

Europe's space race with US begins Ian Sample, science correspondent Tuesday December 27, 2005 The Guardian At 3am tomorrow morning a Russian Soyuz rocket is set to streak into the skies over Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan carrying a satellite that is purpose built to break one of the most ubiquitous monopolies on Earth. If all goes according to plan, the rocket will soar to a height of 14,000 miles before releasing Giove-A, a wardrobe-sized box of electronics, into orbit. Once in position it will gently unfold its twin solar panels and begin to loop around the planet twice each day. In doing so, Europe's most expensive space project, a rival to the US military-run global positioning system GPS, will have taken its first step. Giove-A is a test satellite that paves the way for a network of 30 more to be launched in 2006 and beyond. Together they will form Galileo, a £2.3bn global positioning system more reliable and accurate than GPS. Galileo has been hailed in Europe as a means to make money. The highly accurate tracking system means road charging could be automated, air traffic monitored with unprecedented precision and goods tracked to people's doors. With mobile phones due to include satellite-positioning receivers, emergency calls will be traced to within a metre. If industry embraces Galileo, it could drive a multibillion euro market, say experts. But Galileo is largely a political project, aimed at asserting Europe's independence. Although GPS is free and ubiquitous, it is optimised for America and the accuracy of the system can drift by more than 30ft. GPS is controlled by the US military which has the power to degrade or switch off the signal at will. Because Galileo will be a highly accurate civilian system run by a private consortium, supporters believe it will usher in a new range of safety-critical services, such as aircraft and emergency vehicle guidance systems. Richard Peckham of EADS Astrium, a partner in the project, says that the Galileo network is being launched at a time of increasing dependence on satellite positioning systems. "Car satellite navigation systems seem to be this year's top selling Christmas gadget," he said. "It is becoming an intrinsic part of life." With Galileo, services that can position goods, people and vehicles to within three feet will be possible. While ramblers might make do with the free signal, emergency services could use an encrypted, more accurate signal to guide ambulances, fire engines or police cars to their locations with unprecedented precision. Mike Dillon of ESYS, an electronics company involved in the project, says that ultimately Galileo could be used for automatic road charging, and improving safety on Europe's roads by warning drivers of accident blackspots, junctions or curves in the roads. "Right now there are around 1.3bn accidents causing 40,000 fatalities each year," he said. "That's the equivalent of two jumbo jets full of passengers crashing every day." Although the European Space Agency is forbidden to take part in military projects, officials accept that once the signals are being broadcast the defence industry will undoubtedly take advantage of them, and develop devices that can operate with both GPS and Galileo. According to plans, the Galileo satellites will be launched into orbit eight at a time. There they will form three rings around the Earth, with the full cluster of 30 due to be in place and working by 2010. Giove-A, which was built in a record two years and three months by Surrey Satellites, is crucial to Galileo's success. The satellite must be in orbit and transmitting useful positioning signals by July 2006 to meet a deadline set by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). If the deadline passes and no Galileo signals are being broadcast from space, the European Space Agency will lose permission to use the frequencies and the project will be knocked back to the drawing board. With more than €130m (£89m) invested, missing the deadline is an outcome the British government will not be keen to witness. If the launch is successful, news that the satellite is working is likely to come from Chilbolton Observatory in Hampshire early on Wednesday morning. Scientists at the observatory will use a 25m receiving dish to hunt the heavens for signals from Giove-A as evidence that it reached the right orbit and powered up. A failed launch will not necessarily mean the end of Galileo. A back-up satellite, which carries more new technology than Giove-A is on standby for launch to meet the ITU deadline. Since its inception the Galileo project has been marred by disputes over financial contributions within the EU and rows with the US over the frequencies Galileo satellites would broadcast on. Military officials in America initially raised strong objections to Galileo because one of its signals was on a frequency close to the encrypted military signal used by US forces. Their objections centred on the argument that if the US wanted to deny satellite positioning services to other countries they were in conflict with, they would have to jam Galileo's signal, but in doing so risked jamming their own. Under intense pressure which nearly saw the Galileo project scrapped entirely, the EU backed down and moved the frequencies Galileo will broadcast on. The US also balked at China's signing of a multimillion pound contract to be part of the Galileo project. The launch tonight has special poignancy for engineers at the firm behind the satellite. It carries its own unusual cargo, a plaque inscribed with the name of Tom Fairbairn. The 25-year-old engineer worked on the probe at Surrey Satellites, a university spin-off company, until his life was cut short by the tsunami that struck the shores of the Indian Ocean on Boxing day last year. Mr Fairbairn died with his parents when waves battered Khao Lak in Thailand where they were holidaying. "We hope the plaque will be a fitting tribute to Tom," said Phil Davies of Surrey Satellites. Footnote GPS The US network is the most popular global satellite positioning system in the world. GPS satellites broadcast signals which, when picked up by a device on the ground, can show a user's location to within 10 metres or so. The Russian Glonass system and Europe's fledgling Galileo project work in the same way. Test satellite Giove-A will not be part of the final 30 satellites that make up the Galileo network. It will try out new technology developed for the project and ensure that the European Space Agency claims the frequencies reserved for Galileo. Encrypted GPS and Galileo have signals that anyone can pick up free of charge, but they also broadcast more reliable and accurate encrypted signals that have to be unscrambled. To use the US military GPS signal, US and allied forces must use special decryption software. The same signal is used by satellite-guided missiles. European Space Agency Supported with money from member states, the ESA is embarking on ever more ambitious forays into space. The ESA is not allowed to fund military projects. To some, that position is compromised by the surety that Galileo will be exploited by the defence industry.

Putin wants to hurry satnav system MOSCOW AFP Dec 26, 2005 President Vladimir Putin urged the government Monday to speed up development of Russia's planned satellite navigation system, as the European Union prepared to launch the first satellite in its own system. The Russian system, known as Glonass, and the European Space Agency's Galileo system will compete with and complement the American Global Positioning System, originally designed to locate targets for guided missiles, but now used in a host of civilian applications. The Glonass network of 24 geostationary satellites is not scheduled to be in operation before 2008, but according to the Ria-Novosti news agency, Putin told the cabinet, "We have to see what we can do in 2006 and 2007 to develop the commercial utilization of this system." Russia has already launched 17 of the planned system satellites, including three placed into orbit on Sunday, but Putin warned that some of these may be out of date by the time the navigation system is inaugurated unless the development is hurried along. Russia also has a hand in the competing Galileo system. One of its rockets is scheduled to lift off from the Baikonur launch site in Kazakhstan on Wednesday carrying a British-built test satellite for the European network. While both the American and Russian systems are under military control, Galileo will be strictly intended for civilian satellite navigation after its inauguration scheduled for 2010.

Math Professor Solves Decades-Old Problem AP Tue Dec 27, 4:22 AM ET COLUMBIA, Mo. - A professor at the University of Missouri-Columbia is being recognized for solving a math problem that had stumped his peers for more than 40 years. The achievement has landed Steven Hofmann an invitation to speak next spring at the 2006 International Congress of Mathematicians in Madrid, Spain. [...] Hofmann became curious about the problem as an undergraduate when a professor introduced him to it. The professor was unable to solve the problem. Hofmann, 47, would have more success when the problem began to take over his life in 1996. Until he solved it in 2000, it was the last thing he thought about before he went to bed and the first thing he thought about when he woke. He spent two to eight hours each day on the problem, working periodically with several colleagues. [...] The problem, known as Kato's Conjecture, applies to the theory of waves moving through different media, such as seismic waves traveling through different types of rock. It bears the name of Tosio Kato, a now-deceased mathematician at the University of California-Berkeley, who posed the problem in research papers first written in 1953 and again in 1961. Part of the problem, called the one-dimensional version, was solved about 20 years ago. Though it was a breakthrough, work remained. Hofmann solved the problem in all its dimensions in a 120-word paper that he wrote with several colleagues — Pascal Auscher, Michael Lacey, John Lewis, Alan McIntosh and Philippe Tchamitchian. "Philosophically, the reason research in math matters is that by pursuing math ideas that are deep and interesting for their own sake, you will get real-world applications in the future," Hofmann said. "It is like making investments." [...]

Einstein Was Right (Again): NIST And MIT Confirm That E=mc2 by Staff Writers Washington DC Dec 27, 2005 Albert Einstein was correct in his prediction that E=mc2, according to scientists at the Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) who conducted the most precise direct test ever of what is perhaps the most famous formula in science. In experiments described in the Dec. 22, 2005, issue of Nature,* the researchers added to a catalog of confirmations that matter and energy are related in a precise way. Specifically, energy (E) equals mass (m) times the square of the speed of light (c2), a prediction of Einstein's theory of special relativity. By comparing NIST measurements of energy emitted by silicon and sulfur atoms and MIT measurements of the mass of the same atoms, the scientists found that E differs from mc2 by at most 0.0000004, or four-tenths of 1 part in 1 million. This result is "consistent with equality" and is 55 times more accurate than the previous best direct test of Einstein's formula, according to the paper. Such tests are important because special relativity is a central principle of modern physics and the basis for many scientific experiments as well as common instruments like the global positioning system. Other researchers have performed more complicated tests of special relativity that imply closer agreement between E and mc2 than the NIST/MIT work, but additional assumptions are required to interpret their results, making these previous tests arguably less direct. The Nature paper describes two very different precision measurements, one done at NIST by a group led by the late physicist Richard Deslattes, and another done at MIT by a group led by David Pritchard. Deslattes developed methods for using optical and X-ray interferometry--the study of interference patterns created by electromagnetic waves--to precisely determine the spacing of atoms in a silicon crystal, and for using such calibrated crystals to measure and establish more accurate standards for the very short wavelengths characteristic of highly energetic X-ray and gamma ray radiation. According to the basic laws of physics, every wavelength of electromagnetic radiation corresponds to a specific amount of energy. The NIST team determined the value for energy in the Einstein equation, E = mc2, by carefully measuring the wavelength of gamma rays emitted by silicon and sulfur atoms. "This was Dick's original vision, that a comparison like this would someday be made," said Scott Dewey, a NIST physicist who is a co-author of the Nature paper. "The idea when he started working on silicon was to use it as a yardstick to measure the wavelengths of gamma rays, and use this in a test of special relativity. It took 30 years to realize his idea." The NIST/MIT tests focused on a well-known process: When the nucleus of an atom captures a neutron, energy is released as gamma ray radiation. The mass of the atom, which now has one extra neutron, is predicted to equal the mass of the original atom, plus the mass of a solitary neutron, minus a value called the neutron binding energy. The neutron binding energy is equal to the energy given off as gamma ray radiation, plus a small amount of energy released in the recoil motion of the nucleus. The gamma rays in this process have wavelengths of less than a picometer, a million times smaller than visible light, and are diffracted or bent by the atoms in the calibrated crystals at a particular energy-dependent angle. Using a well-known mathematical formula, scientists can combine these angles with values for the crystal lattice spacing to determine the energy contained in individual gamma ray particles. In the experiments described in Nature, NIST scientists measured the angle at which gamma ways are diffracted by crystals with known lattice spacings at the Institut Laue Langevin (ILL) in Grenoble, France. The ILL has the world's premier facility for colliding nuclei and neutrons and capturing the resulting gamma rays at the same instant. Accurate gamma-ray measurements are particularly challenging because the diffraction angles are less than 0.1 degree. The measurements were done using an instrument that was originally designed and built at NIST. The MIT team measured the mass numbers used in the tests of Einstein's formula by placing two ions (electrically charged atoms) of the same element, one with an extra neutron, in a small electromagnetic trap. Scientists counted the revolutions per second made by each ion around the magnetic field lines within the trap. The difference between these frequencies can be used to determine the masses of the ions. The experiment was performed with both silicon and sulfur ions. The novel two-ion technique virtually eliminates the effect of many sources of "noise," such as magnetic field fluctuations, that reduce measurement accuracy. This work led to greatly improved values for the atomic masses of silicon and sulfur. * S. Rainville, J.K. Thompson, E.G. Myers, J.M. Brown, M.S. Dewey, E.G. Kessler Jr., R.D. Deslattes, H.G. Börner, M. Jentschel, P. Mutti, D.E. Pritchard. 2005. A direct test of E = mc2. Nature. Dec. 22, 2005. Comment: Why don't they check whether 2 2=4 and with what precision?

Chinese scientists claim new bird flu drug better than Tamiflu BEIJING AFP Dec 27, 2005 Chinese scientists say they have created a drug to treat humans infected with bird flu that is superior to the existing and widely stockpiled drug Tamiflu, state media said Tuesday. Like Tamiflu, which is made by Swiss pharmaceutical group Roche, the new medicine is a neuraminidase inhibitor that prevents the virus from spreading to other cells, but costs about a third of the price, China Daily said. The Chinese drug was developed by a research group at the Academy of Military Medical Sciences, which could not be reached for comment about the report. "We have completed clinical experiments, and find it is more effective on humans than Tamiflu," the newspaper quoted Li Song, a leading scientist in the academy's research group, as saying. No details were given on whether any clinical tests had been conducted on the drug and whether it had been approved for production and sales. The new drug will cost only a quarter to a third of the price of Tamiflu, which sells for 29.8 yuan (3.73 US dollars) per capsule in China, Li told a high-profile forum on prevention and control of avian influenza Monday. He said the new medicine would be produced by domestic firms and stockpiled for use in the event of a bird flu pandemic. A spokesman for the World Health Organization's China office said he had no information about the drug. Tamiflu is acknowledged as being effective against human infections of the deadly H5N1 virus and is being stockpiled by various countries for use in case of a pandemic. China has reported six human infections of bird flu, including two fatalities, and 31 outbreaks among poultry this year. This month, Shanghai Pharmaceutical Group (SPG) became the first company in Asia to secure a licence from Roche to produce and sell a generic version of Tamiflu. China has announced several breakthroughs on bird flu in recent days, but it was unclear whether the discoveries had been subjected to international scrutiny. State media said Monday that China has developed a new, more efficient and cheaper bird flu vaccine which can also protect its massive poultry population against deadly Newcastle disease. One billion shots are expected to be produced by the end of this month. The vaccine will be used from the beginning of next year in combination with other treatments. China has the world's largest poultry industry, with 14 billion poultry produced a year. Bird flu has cost the industry more than 60 billion yuan (7.5 billion dollars) in losses between October and December alone, China Daily said, citing official figures. The bird flu virus has killed more than 70 people in Asia since 2003. It is currently spread among animals and from animals to humans. Scientists fear it could mutate to a strain easily spread between humans, causing a pandemic.

U.S. puts sanctions on Chinese firms for aiding Tehran By Bill Gertz THE WASHINGTON TIMES December 27, 2005 Several Chinese companies involved in selling missile goods and chemical-arms materials to Iran have been hit with U.S. sanctions, Bush administration officials said yesterday. The sanctions cover six Chinese government-run companies, two Indian firms and one Austrian company, according to officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The penalties have been under consideration since April and were approved by Deputy Secretary of State Robert B. Zoellick within the past several weeks. An announcement will be published in the U.S. government's Federal Register in the next several days -- and perhaps as early as today, the officials said. The sanctions were imposed under the Iran Nonproliferation Act, which Congress passed in 2000 to deter international support for Iran's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs and missile-delivery systems. The penalties, which will last until December 2007, bar the companies from doing business with the U.S. government and prohibit U.S. firms from obtaining export licenses to sell sensitive products to these companies. The details of the transfers to Iran were not disclosed. The sanctions are part of a more aggressive policy aimed at identifying foreign companies engaged in helping rogue states gain access to weapons technology. So far, 40 companies and people have been punished since 2001. They come as the United States and Europe consider whether to seek U.N. Security Council action on Iran's covert nuclear arms programs. Iran has violated International Atomic Energy Agency commitments by denying access to numerous nuclear-related facilities. The U.S. government suspects oil-rich Iran is building nuclear weapons under the cover of producing civilian facilities for generating electrical power. These latest sanctions show that China is continuing to support the missile and weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs of states that support international terrorism. "We think these transfers helped [Iran's] ballistic missile and WMD programs," a senior official said. Beijing has denied U.S. reports that the government or any of its companies have supplied missile- or weapons-related goods and technology to Iran and other rogue states and, in 2004, denounced a previous round of sanctions as "wrong." A Chinese Embassy spokesman could not be reached for comment yesterday. The Chinese companies involved in the transfers are the China National Aerotechnology Import Export Corp., known as CATIC; the missile exporter China North Industries Corp., known as NORINCO; Zibo Chemet Equipment Co.; the Hongdu Aviation Industry Group; Ounion International Economic and Technical Cooperative Ltd.; and the Limmt Metallurgy and Minerals Co. The officials said that three of the Chinese companies have been sanctioned in the past for illicit arms transfers -- CATIC, NORINCO and Zibo. "NORINCO is a serial proliferator," one official said. "All these sanctions are for transfers to Iran." The 2000 law requires the U.S. government to impose sanctions on companies or people that supply Iran with goods, services or technology related to nuclear weapons, missiles and toxic chemicals that can be used to make chemical arms. Zibo is known to make glass-lined containers that can be used to make chemical weapons. CATIC and Norinco are involved in manufacturing missiles. A CIA report to Congress made public last year stated that Chinese companies' supplies of ballistic missile-related assistance have "helped Iran move toward its goal of becoming self-sufficient in the production of ballistic missiles." Chinese firms also have provided dual-use missile-related items, raw materials and assistance to Iran, Libya and North Korea, the CIA report stated. The two Indian chemical companies that will be sanctioned are Sabero Organics Chemical and Sandhya Organics Chemical. The Austrian firm Steyr-Mannlicher, which makes high-quality assault weapons, also is being sanctioned. The sanctions announcement will also state that the U.S. government is lifting sanctions imposed last year on Chaudhary Surendar, one of two Indian nuclear scientists who had been linked to Iran's nuclear program. India's government had denied that Mr. Surendar was linked to Iranian proliferation activities. Mr. Surendar was sanctioned in September 2004 for his role in providing weapons of mass destruction and missile goods to Iran under the Iran Nonproliferaiton Act. The other scientist, Y.S.R. Prasad, continues to face sanctions until they expire in September.

Bush Authorizes Export Of Sensitive Equipment To China Washington AFP Dec 16, 2005 US President George W. Bush authorized Friday the export to China of certain sensitive equipment for a railroad project, saying it would not pose a threat to the US space industry. Bush told Congress that the export of 36 accelerometers to China's Ministry of Railways for use in a railroad track geometry measuring system "is not deterimental to the US space industry," the White House said in a statement. Accelerometers are instruments used to track speed. Bush said "the material and equipment, including any indirect technical benefit that could be derived from such export, will not measurably improve the missile or space launch capabilities" of China. The US leader has to give clearance for such exports under a national defense law. The United States is concerned over China's military-buildup and that Beijing may use its manned space program to achieve its military ambitions.

AFTER 15 YEARS I CAN TELL TRUTH OF MARKS MADE BY UFO 24 December 2005 Western Daily Press A West crop circle expert has lifted the lid on a previously long-forgotten chapter in the bizarre history of the West's 1990 crop circle mystery. Colin Andrews revealed to a coast-to-coast audience in America the goings-on under the cover of a summer night 15 years ago. Mr Andrews, who left his West home for the US a decade ago, said that, far from being an embarrassing flop, the three-week vigil on the hilltops of Wiltshire was an astounding and secret success. Listeners on US radio heard claims yesterday that the British Army watched and filmed a UFO making a ground-breaking crop circle near Silbury Hill while the world's media were camped 20 miles away. Back in 1990, it was the high point of the crop circle hysteria gripping the world. Dozens of volunteers, a host of foreign TV cameras, the world's foremost crop circle experts and the British Army launched a round-the-clock vigil from the famous white horse above Bratton, near Westbury, in a bid to spot a crop circle being made. And within days it appeared Operation Blackbird had been successful - night vision cameras spotted something in a field below, and, sure enough, a new crop circle could be seen as dawn broke. For a few hours, the world reported the crop circle mystery as solved - but operation leader Colin Andrews soon realised he had been hoaxed and the figures on night-vision cameras were not aliens but local mischief-makers. According to Mr Andrews, however, across Wiltshire a more mysterious and sinister event was happening, which has remained top secret ever since. He said: "The public knew but half of what was going on at the time. While the media present at Operation Blackbird were looking at the right hand, they did not see what happened with the left. "The British Army were looking at a secret site and a very important place nearby." Strange things did happen at the Operation Blackbird HQ in Bratton - a strange hum, odd bass noises in the dead of night, and people seeing flashes of energy in the night sky. "While, above Bratton, there was a formation appearing in front of the cameras which was supposed to convince the world of a hoax, the Army filmed a UFO at the secret site, and crop circles appeared next to the hill. "The crop circle story will not be complete until Operation Blackbird is fully understood and why, and who, is behind the larger plan" added Mr Andrews. Why he has chosen now to reveal more information now might have something to do with him winding down his research into the crop circle phenomenon. He recently put his entire collection of photos, videos, books, sketches and reports up for sale on eBay.

More Conditioning? QFG Member,CM 27 Dec 2005 Being home due to the holidays, I've seen a lot more tv than usual. Has anyone else noticed the increasing references to meteors and asteroids in weird places? The most blatent one is a commercial for a new variety of garbage bag (Glad) which is more stretchy. It's got a lady emptying her kitchen trash while listening to a tv report of a meteor shower impacting the earth. The next scene is '50s style sci-fi kitsch with the meteors coming down on the earth and being caught in this super-stretchy strong new garbage bag. It then shows this gal taking her trash out to be collected and pulling a chuck of rock off the windshield of a car and putting in the bag. (Nothing to worry about here . . .) The second weird reference was in a Discovery channel show, which was a "teen science challange". They got these teams of whiz kids together for a sort of science-under-pressure contest. The teams were presented with five types of natural disaster and had to come up with ways of accurately modeling them for study and ways to collect the data. Among the things they had to figure out was how to make a device to cause a wave tank to consistently model a tsunami. The talking head host mentions that tsunamis can be caused by earthquakes, underwater landslides, **asteroid strikes**, and volcanic eruptions. These were both today. It just seems like there's a general uptick in the mentions of asteroids/meteors lately.

Ark's Quantum Quirks SOTT December 27, 2005 SOTT Correspondent in Singapore

Where's My Flying Car? Designing a World Without Gravity Gregory Daigle ohmynews.com 26 Dec 2005 In the 1960s the Saturday morning American cartoon The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle introduced the world to upsidaisium, that fanciful antigravity element discovered by the uncle of Bullwinkle J. Moose. In the show the title characters triumphantly rode their upsidaisium mine (actually the mine AND the entire Mt. Flatten) to Washington D.C. Sadly, upsidaisium does not exist, though the dream of antigravity flight endures. The use of the term antigravity has been a hindrance to earnest research. Dr. Ron Koczor of the Science Directorate, NASA/Marshall Space Flight Center knows about choosing the terminology to match your audience. Speaking for himself, he said, “When you talk to the general public or the kids whose eyes are half-glazed with anticipation, call it antigravity. But when you talk to people who control the course of research and who themselves have the credibility of their decisions questioned by higher-ups, I think you need to rethink your use of that term.” In Part 1 of this series the term gravity-lensing replaced antigravity as a description of the phenomenon observed by inventor Marcus Hollingshead. But what should we call its range of effects including propulsion, standing fields, etc? If gravity-lensing aligns with the Earth’s gravitational field then it produces the effect of more than 1G of gravity, also known as hypergravity (hG). If it is contra-aligned then it produces less than 1G of gravity, also known as microgravity (mG or μG). What would a future with modified (either hG or μG ) gravity — call it modG — look like and what are the potential impacts for propulsion? Attempts to modify gravity for propulsion are not isolated to inventors. NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) and BAE Systems (a major British aerospace company) have all conducted gravity research. It has been reported on by corporate journals such as Business Week, mainstream magazines like Popular Mechanics and in scientific journals such as the American Institute of Physics. How could an inventor have succeeded where NASA failed? Without verification the claims about such a device sound like science fiction. But many inventions and discoveries were science fiction until the very day they were revealed. If true, what we’ll see is that the long dreamed of skycar of the future may be preceded by a sky conveyor belt, and the futuristic spaceport will look more like Duluth harbor than Star War’s Mos Eisley. Future Visions In 1979 the visual futurist Syd Mead depicted a family arriving at a picnic in a hovering station wagon in his book "Concept" for U.S. Steel. That friendly image of a hovering automobile contrasts greatly with the flying police vehicles Mead later designed for the dystopic film "Blade Runner". In that movie the spinner vehicles were a symbol of police power and authority while common citizens were restricted to ground transportation. As the film “The Fifth Element” portrayed, traffic can also take over a city and dehumanize it. As early as 1940 Norman Bel Geddes in his publication “Magic Motorways” portrayed a city dominated by the automobile with nothing of human scale in sight. Would flying cars doom cities to become the megastructures of film, or is that just in the movies? Gravityships In a 2004 interview [.wma download] with the editor of the American Antigravity newsgroup, Hollingshead mentioned that one of the first applications he considered for his device was to reduce the load (also the inertia) of commercial aircraft. But sci-fi fans want to know, "Where is my flying car?" First, is it a car? All but hovering vehicles that rely upon ground-effect for lift are classified as aircraft under the UN's International Civl Aviation Organization (ICAO). So flying cars that lift more than a few feet off the ground might be classified as aircraft, but a modG craft would operate like no known aircraft. It would be highly maneuverable and operate low to the ground like a helicopter — but it’s not a rotorcraft. In the U.S. the closest applicable Federal Aviation Association (FAA) category is that of an airship, an engine-driven, lighter-than-air vehicle that can be controlled in flight. Since a gravity airship is not conventional and not a gas-filled envelope (as required by the FAA) it needs to be called something else. For now, let's call this vehicle a gravityship because rather than being dependent upon the force of Earth’s air to produce buoyancy it is dependent upon the force of Earth’s gravity. As a commuter vehicle it would probably operate in Class G airspace. It is uncontrolled airspace where helicopters operate: altitudes 1200 feet above ground level (AGL) and less. In Class G airspace the rules for right-of-way are a little like boating, where the slower and less maneuverable your craft the greater your right-of-way. For example, a motorboat yields to a sailboat, which yields to a canoe. In Class G airspace a power-driven, heavier-than-air craft gives way to airships, gliders and balloons. Hang gliders or cluster balloons may be of some concern, but the real issue here is rules of the HIGH-way when encountering other gravityships. The Crowded Skies Look up. Not many blimps in the sky today. But if personal gravityships are produced then the skies are going to get crowded. Where do you “build” a highway in uncontrolled airspace? Is it a corridor above existing boulevards and interstate highways? Why even follow a highway if you are not constrained by lanes? Straight line express to your destination? Hubs? Spokes? Interchanges? Sounds confusing and dangerous. We will need an airspace control system to keep us safe. Luckily there is a candidate technology for airspace that is already positioned to make our land-based highways safer. It’s called the Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). The U.S. Department of Transportation is using the ITS architecture to integrate intelligent vehicles with intelligent infrastructure for a safer, more efficient transportation system. Implementing a similar system of intelligent sensors and adaptive integrated systems into gravityships would be a necessity. Without ITS for airspace it would be like watching a demolition derby — overhead! So smart sensors and ITS help vehicles avoid collisions and manage incidents. But what about defining the boundaries of lanes? Keeping arteries flowing smoothly? There could be floating traffic signals and buoys (our thanks to the Jetsons for those innovations), but why clutter the sky with added devices? This is where efforts to establish wireless cities might mesh with the use of gravityships. Wireless Mesh Avoids Mess Dozens of cities across the globe are planning muniwireless networks as alternatives to DSL and Cable modem connections to the Internet. One concern for deploying wireless is the power of the signal to punch through your home’s exterior and interior walls to reach your receiver. But this is not a concern when you’re trying to detect the signal above the nodes where there are no barriers. When you have a clear view of a node it’s known as line-of-sight (LoS). The LoS range for even older wireless technology is measured in the kilometers. The altitude limit of Class G airspace is less than half a kilometer. That’s plenty of range for sending information to vehicles flying overhead. Information to navigate, communicate and locate (see insert). Networked Platforms Question: How do you ensure the success of a new technology today? Answer: Make it an essential strategy for the corporate giant Wal-Mart. This has been true with RFID chips and it could be true with modG. The biggest horizontal industry in the world is logistics (getting raw materials in, processing of products, packaging them, transporting them, warehousing them, distributing them, retailing them to the consumer). Wal-Mart succeeds as they do because they own the complete supply chain. If Wal-Mart knew there was a technology to transport and distribute their goods for pennies less on the dollar, they would bring it to maturity. A grid of pilotless platforms controlled by ITS and carrying a wide range of cargo containers could navigate between cities/nodes by satellite GPS and within cities by Wi-Fi. Shipping goods between cities is perhaps the largest growth area for modG, even surpassing transport for people. The system could be designed using the model of the Internet. Individual packetized shipments could travel point-to-point to their destinations as if they were physical manifestations of TCP (transmission data) packets used to deliver information over the Internet. Distribution centers would be unnecessary. Local point-of-delivery transport within neighborhoods could be navigated by means of municipal mesh wireless location services tracking packages, confirming delivery and alerting the receiver of delivery via their IP or email address. Recipients could even change the final delivery destination on-the-fly by querying the system. This would allow recipients to have packages follow them to whatever location they might be within a city. It would take many years of testing before such a freight-based ITS would be ready to graduate to human passengers in gravityships. Until that time the skies would be mostly filled with platforms and packages. Only the occasional early-adopter would fly their unlicensed experimental gravityship (or perhaps a gravitycycle?). Is There Spaceport in Your Future? Paul Horwood, moderator of the Antigravity_open-source newsgroup, relays in a posting that Hollingshead claims to have a contract with the European Space Agency to produce propulsive drives. Further, that he has over 50 million pounds in investment funds and employs 50 people. How would ESA use such a drive? The International Space Station and shuttle demonstrated the potential for large-scale production of new materials and pharmaceuticals in microgravity. But an ability to control gravity through modG would mean that microgravity and zero-gravity production could be conducted on the ground in conventional manufacturing facilities. Factories in space would be unnecessary. So the remaining rationale for going into orbit would be for transporting people and raw materials. The people interested in traveling to space would be either space tourists or astronauts. The Ansari X Prize was a step toward space tourism and commercialization. Virgin Galactic (owned by Sir Richard Branson) has now set plans for the first commercial spaceport to be located in New Mexico and be completed by 2009 or 2010. Tourism is the necessary focus of this effort because, even though the tickets are $200,000 and there are hundreds who have signed up, the ships can not reach orbit. Nevertheless, it should be quite a ride! If you can use modG to deliver platforms inexpensively above the atmosphere then every one of them becomes not just a satellite but a geosynchronous satellite, suitable for all sorts of communications needs. They can move synchronously above the Earth because platforms wouldn’t have to reach orbital speed (17,000 to 18,000 mph) to stay aloft. The Earth only rotates at a bit over 1,000 mph at the equator, which is why one of the first jobs for the platforms would be to remove the millions of pieces of debris traveling at orbital speed. Why? Because they are traveling past you faster than a rifle bullet! Payload for the platforms would be astronauts and rocket fuel. Remember that gravity decreases with the inverse square of the distance. It may be an inexpensive means for launching and landing compared to rockets, but between planets (or the moon, or asteroids) you’d get more propulsion from rockets. Saving your rocket fuel for the large distances between destinations decreases transit time and allows for greater payloads on the return trip. Minerals from the moon? Corner the market on hematite “blueberries” from Mars? Possibly, but the business argument is still difficult to make. Even so, someone will want to have their kitchen counters built with slabs of sedimentary stone from Mars or mine the kimberlite pipes of Olympus Mons. Space travel suggests establishment of a spaceport. Traditional rocketry required a large area near open water or desert for boosters to fall (or fail) downrange. Kennedy Space Center is located on the coast of Florida. The Canadian Space Agency operates the Churchill Rocket Research Range on Hudson Bay. Using modG propulsion there would be no boosters and no downrange — just up. A more fitting model reflecting the smaller area needs would be a large airport or shipping port. Each nation, region and state would want to create their own facilities to benefit local commerce and to draw talent, jobs and investors. A major international airport and shipping port already transporting millions of tons of cargo a year would be a prime candidate for the location of the first industrial spaceport. Okay. Where do we locate the first one? Mt. Flatten Redux Remember Bullwinkle J. Moose of upsidaisium fame? His home was Frostbite Falls in northern Minnesota. How fitting it would be to establish the first industrial spaceport in northern Minnesota at the tip of Lake Superior. The city of Duluth has an international port there, one of the largest in America as gauged by tonnage. It has an international airport and a world-class aircraft maintenance facility. The B. J. Moose Spaceport. Kind of catchy.

Russian upper house approves curbs on NGOs 27 Dec 2005 AFP Russia's upper house of parliament has almost unanimously approved a hotly disputed law restricting the activities of non-governmental organisations which critics say erodes democratic rights. The Federation Council on Tuesday voted by 153 votes against one, with one abstention, in favour of the law, which also easily passed in the lower house last week. The upper house vote had been seen as a mere formality, as is President Vladimir Putin's expected signing of the bill into law. Critics in Russia and abroad fear the law will be used to clamp down on the country's buoyant NGOs -- one of the last independent sectors in Russia, where the media, parliament and big business are seen as increasingly under Kremlin control. However, the government maintains the measure is necessary to prevent NGOs from doubling as fronts for subversive foreign political causes -- though these are not defined in the bill -- for foreign intelligence agencies, and for money laundering. Moves to tighten control of NGO activities also come amid widely expressed fears among Kremlin supporters that US- and European-based NGOs played key roles in the pro-West "rose revolution" in Georgia and "orange revolution" in Ukraine over the last two years. Yury Sharandin, head of the upper house's committee on constitutional law, said: "This law doesn't bother anyone from those organisations intending to work honestly in Russia." But Lyudmilla Narusova, another senator, said that "the law in one swoop gets in the way of organisations involved in humanitarian and charity work and also those organisations exporting 'orange revolution', which is not right." After widespread internal and international criticism of an earlier version of the bill, Putin asked the State Duma to come up with an amended draft. However, NGO representatives in Russia broadly condemned the final version as differing little in substance. Under the new law, NGOs can be shut down if they threaten the country's "sovereignty, independence, territorial integrity, national unity and originality, cultural heritage and national interests." Foreign NGOs will have to notify the federal registration service of their existence within six months and the registration service will then rule on their legality. Another requirement under the law will be to report every foreign donation, a measure that could overwhelm small organisations in red tape, according to NGO critics.

DR Congo army claims to be wiping out Ugandan rebels 27 Dec 2005 AFP The army in Democratic Republic of Congo, working with UN military support, has overrun bases of a Ugandan rebel movement, saying it had seized the lot apart from the insurgents' headquarters. "As I speak to you, our military is pounding Mutura, which is going to fall shortly," General Eugene Mbuy of the FARDC (Congolese army) said in Nord-Kivu province, on the vast DRC's eastern border with Uganda and Rwanda. "All that's left is Mwalika (hard up close to the border with Uganda), where the rebels have their headquarters," added Mbuy, deputy commander of the 3,500 troops who went into action on Saturday. Backed up by 600 Indian troops and helicopters from the UN mission deployed in DRC (MONUC), the army has for three days hunted down the Allied Democratic Front/ National Army for the Liberation of Uganda (ADF/NALU) and seized bases. The mineral-rich but much looted DRC is undergoing a UN-monitored transition from years of corrupt misrule and successive conflicts to polls due next year for the first democratically elected government since independence in 1960. The sudden and joint Christmas weekend offensive on Ugandan rebels who are among a range of armed movements, both internal and from across borders, active in the volatile east of the country has been welcomed by the Kampala government. MONUC spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Frederic Menard on Monday said simply that "the situation is under control" in Nord-Kivu and the military activity had led to "no population displacement". Earlier Monday, the FARDC said that in fighting on Sunday the army had cleaned out the three main ADF camps in Nord-Kivu, in the Beni, Eringeti and Rwenzori zones, and taken back all districts under rebel control. The army put the death toll late over the weekend at 40 rebels, six FARDC soldiers and one Indian UN peacekeeper who was killed in a night ambush with a an RPG rocket. Mbuy reckoned the ADF, a force long considered defeated inside Uganda, had "between 2,500 and 3,000" men based in the DRC. MONUC military observers said there were probably about 1,500 of them. In Uganda, Foreign Minister Sam Kuteesa said the joint operation was welcome if long overdue: "I am very happy that MONUC has started doing something because this is exactly what we have been calling for." "Now they are realizing that the ADF is not only capable of causing havoc to civilians in Uganda, but they are doing the same in the DRC." On Sunday, Medard said the rebels "rejected all disarmament proposals and an amnesty and repatriation to Uganda" and stressed this was why the UN mission had moved in as well to back the FARDC troops. Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni had in April 2001 declared the ADF wiped out after five years of insurgency against his regime. They had been defeated during Ugandan army operations in DRC at a time when the Kampala government also gave military backing to DRC rebels at war with Kinshasa. For most regional observers the ADF have been a completely moribund force since the end of a war which embroiled more than half a dozen other African armies in the DRC on rival sides between 1998 and 2003. However, a UN observer in Nord-Kivu said the operation "is mainly aimed at pleasing Museveni and taking away any excuse he might have for threatening to enter the DRC now that elections are approaching."

A Schwarzenegger backlash in Austria By Richard Bernstein The New York Times MONDAY, DECEMBER 26, 2005 Sometime over the Christmas holidays, the authorities of Graz, a classically pretty Austrian town, took down the sign that for the past seven years has identified the local 15,000-seat sports arena as the Arnold Schwarzenegger Stadium, and as they did so, a rare combination of local hero worship, European indignation at the death penalty, and provincial Austrian politics came to a climax. The stadium had been named after Schwarzenegger in 1997 as an act of a kind of fealty toward the poor farmer's son and international celebrity who, though born in a little village nearby, was educated in Graz and has always readily identified it as his native place. But when Schwarzenegger, now governor of California, declined to commute the death sentence for Stanley Tookie Williams, the former Los Angeles gang leader who was executed in California two weeks ago, the reaction in Graz, where the death penalty is seen as a medieval atrocity, was swift and angry. "I submitted a petition to the City Council to remove his name from the stadium, and to take away his status as an honorary citizen," Sigrid Binder, the leader of the Green Party said in an interview in Graz's stately City Hall, describing the first step in the chain of events that led to the renaming of the stadium. "The petition was accepted by a majority on the Council." But before a formal vote was taken on the petition, Schwarzenegger made a kind of pre-emptive strike, writing a letter to Siegfried Nagl, the town's conservative mayor, informing him that he was withdrawing Graz's right to use his name in association with the stadium. There will be other death penalty decisions ahead, Schwarzenegger wrote, and so he decided to spare the responsible politicians of the City of Graz further concern. "It was a clever step," Binder said. "He took the initiative," she continued, and then suggested a bit of the local politics that has entered into the matter. "It was possible for him to do so, she said, because the mayor didn't have the courage to take a clear position on this point." Needless to say, Nagl, a member of the conservative Peoples Party who opposed the name-removal initiative, doesn't agree. He is against the death penalty, he said in an interview in his office in Graz, and on Dec. 1, he wrote a letter to Schwarzenegger pleading for clemency for Williams. But he blames the leftist majority on the City Council - consisting of Greens, Social-Democrats and two Communists - for trying to score some local political gain at Schwarzenegger's and - he believes - Graz's own expense. "One stands by a friend and a great citizen of our city and does not drag his name through the mud even when there is a difference of opinion," Nagl said in a letter he wrote to Schwarzenegger. "I would like to ask you to keep the Ring of Honor of the city of Graz which you received." The very heated nature of the debate revealed something very European about the collective consciousness, how a relatively small place like Graz, certainly a place with no military might or diplomatic power, wants to play a role as a sort of moral beacon, waging the struggle for the good.< Graz, a place of old, onion steeples, museums, and art nouveau architecture, designated itself five years ago, via a unanimous vote of the City Council, to be Europes first official city of human rights, and while the designation has no juridical meaning, it provides a sort of goal to live up to. "We are against the death penalty not only in word, but really against the death penalty," Wolfgang Benedek, a professor of international law at Graz university, said. Benedek is also director of the European Training Center for Human Rights, created five years ago in Graz to further its ambition to be a human rights center. It is a sort of human rights academy designed to promote respect for the rule of law especially among the new democracies of Southeastern Europe. It was also the particular circumstances of this case that led to this reaction, Benedek continued, meaning the special circumstances surrounding Williams case, of a man who had written a children's book aimed at steering young people away from violence, had already spent two decades in jail , and who seemed, to many Europeans at least, to have reformed himself. "Many people around the world pleaded with Mr. Schwarzenegger to show mercy in this case, and when he didn't, the city had somehow to react," Benedek said. Benedek allows that there is an element of elite- versus- popular opinion on this matter. A poll by the local newspaper found over 70 percent of the public opposed to removing Schwarzeneggers name from the stadium. This adds to a practical consideration very much on Nagls' mind, namely that Graz will no longer be able to count, as it has for years, on using its special relationship with the California governor to promote its image. "We had the great classical culture on the one side," Thomas Rajakovics, the mayors spokesman said, referring to other important figures who are associated with Graz, from the astronomer Johannes Kepler to the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Erwin Schrodinger to the conductor Karl Bohm. "And on the other we had Arnold Schwarzenegger and the popular culture. These were the two poles for us, but we're not allowed to use his name any more." But what's done is done. The Schwarzenegger name has, as it were, been erased. The new name is now simply Graz-Liebenau Stadium - Liebenau being a district of Graz - though there were other proposals. One was to name the Stadium after the Crips, the gang that Williams founded, but that idea did not get widespread support. Another was to name it Hakoah, after an Austrian Jewish sports club that was banned after Hitler annexed Austria in 1938. But the number one city of human rights didn't seem quite ready for that either. It's not that there was vocal opposition, but, as Binder put it, Austrians don't generally want a day to day reminder of the terrible wartime past. Hakoah just seemed to go a bit far.

In French suburbs, rage 'is only asleep' By Katrin Bennhold International Herald Tribune MONDAY, DECEMBER 26, 2005 BONDY, France - "Burn!" A knot of young men join their voices in a battle cry as they edge closer to the silhouette of a parked Mercedes, some of them aiming what look like handguns, others reaching for lighters. In the harsh light of an underground parking lot in this grim suburb northwest of Paris, the guns and lighters are imaginary - but the sense of aggression is real. As one of the young men films with a digital camera, the others move to the angry beat of music blasting out of an open car door, echoing into the dark December night. They sing about the riots that erupted two months ago, about being Muslim and about not feeling French in France. For them the unrest is not over, it is waiting to break loose again. "The quiet is deceptive," said Bala "Balastik" Coulibaly, 24, of nearby Clichy-sous-Bois, his eyes scanning the deserted parking lot from deep inside his sweatshirt as he took a break between two songs. It was in Clichy that the accidental death of two teenagers on Oct. 27 set off three weeks of rioting in immigrant neighborhoods across France. Since then, the whiff of gasoline and tear gas has disappeared. But the calm is fragile, impatient and tinged with the cynicism of youths who fear being let down again by a political class that allowed mass unemployment and social exclusion to accumulate over three decades in the poor suburbs ringing France's big cities. "The rage in the suburbs is only asleep," said Balastik, a French youth of Mauritanian origin who has been jobless since dropping out of school seven years ago and is dreaming of a career as a rapper with his band, Styladone. "It wouldn't take much to wake it up again." Social workers and nongovernmental organizations working in the suburbs say they are managing the calm from one day to the next. The police are on high alert ahead of what promises to be a tense New Year's Eve in France, where even in normal years hundreds of cars are torched. "The apparent calm that reigns today should not suggest that the real problem is solved," the French police intelligence service, the Renseignements Generaux, said in a report leaked to Le Parisien newspaper this month. Indeed, a Nov. 10 ban on sales of gasoline in plastic containers remains in place, as does a state of emergency that allows the local authorities to impose a curfew and gives special powers to the police. "New Year's is a concern every year," said Franck Louvrier, the Interior Ministry spokesman. "But after the riots we are more vigilant than usual. That is one reason why we extended the state of emergency to February." In the first three weeks of November, about 10,000 cars were torched and several hundred public buildings vandalized across France in the worst social unrest since the student-worker rebellion in 1968. Some 4,770 people were taken into custody for suspected rioting. Convicted youths without French nationality face possible expulsion from the country. At the same time, the government announced a raft of measures aimed at fighting joblessness and discrimination, and declared 2006 the year of "equal opportunity." Businesses will be offered tax breaks for setting up shop in difficult suburbs, local schools will receive more attention, a new apprenticeship program for teenagers is being drawn up, and state funds for nongovernmental organizations that were canceled three years ago will be restored. President Jacques Chirac, clearly shaken by the riots, has urged French media and businesses to reflect the country's diverse population. The minister for equal opportunity, Azouz Begag, is pondering ways of measuring diversity in order to provide companies with a benchmark. But in suburbs like Bondy and Clichy-sous-Bois, the buzz and debate sparked by the riots are dismissed by many as little more than political posturing. "Right now they're afraid of us, so they're making a lot of promises," said a friend of Balastik's, Ker, 23, whose parents are from Cambodia and who sings in the same band. "What we need is concrete action that is felt, here, on the ground." According to Marilou Jampolsky, a spokeswoman for SOS Racisme, an organization fighting discrimination, no NGO has seen its funds restored yet, though that, she said, would have been one of the quickest ways for the government to make a "tangible" difference in people's lives. Outside the Clichy-sous-Bois city hall, Mehdi, 24, who also works for an NGO for disadvantaged youth, confirmed that he had not seen any of the new funds promised by the government. "The faster some of the promises are transformed into action the better," said Mehdi, a Frenchman of Algerian-Moroccan origin who grew up in Clichy. "We are taking the temperature with people every day. They are waiting for changes that they feel in everyday life - and they are also waiting for justice for the two dead teenagers." The trigger for the November violence was the accidental electrocution of two teenagers of African origin who hid in a power substation. A third teenager, who survived the incident, says the three friends were being pursued by police, a claim officers deny. The outcome of an investigation is keenly awaited in the suburbs. If the police are exonerated, it could trigger new unrest, said Mehdi, who, like others interviewed for this article, did not give his last name. Back in the parking lot in Bondy, Balastik mimes lighting a lighter, his eyes glimmering in the harsh neon light. One of his friends is wearing a red T-shirt with a big caption that reads "Rakaille" - a rap spelling of "racaille," or "thugs," which is what Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy called the rioters at one point, fueling their anger. "We're thugs and we're proud," Balastik quipped, adding that music was "one way of dealing with the frustration of never getting a reply to your job application." Others channel their anger differently. Cars have continued to burn every night since the riots ended, including more than 100 across France on Christmas Eve. Some NGOs have launched a campaign with minority celebrities like the rap singer Joey Starr and the comedian Jamel Debbouze to get suburban youths to register for the 2007 presidential and parliamentary elections. Only 7,000 of the 28,000 inhabitants of Clichy-sous-Bois are registered voters, according to a local official. "One thing the riots have shown is that these kids are desperate for attention," said Samir Mihi, a social worker in Clichy-sous-Bois. "We're trying to tell them that you matter most when you vote, that's when politicians have to start listening to you." He said he was concerned that a new outbreak of violence - or even intensified media coverage of burning cars on New Year's Eve - would strengthen parties with anti-immigrant platforms. In a poll published by the newspaper Le Monde earlier this month, more than one in six respondents felt there were too many immigrants in France. "The more people are afraid, the more they will demand security policies rather than social policies," Mihi said. "That is precisely what is not in the interest of these kids." But Balastik and his friends are unimpressed. "I've never seen a politician represent me in my life," said Ker, who went to school with a brother of one of the teenagers who were killed at the power station. "Why vote if nothing ever changes anyway?" [...]

Libel legacy of ousted aristocrat threatens internet David Pallister Tuesday December 27, 2005 The Guardian A 156-year-old pillar of libel law prompted by an eccentric German duke which has allowed wealthy foreigners to sue in English courts could be declared obsolete, in a move that would have profound implications for the future of the internet. The Department of Constitutional Affairs wants to re-examine the judgment, which set the precedent after it ruled in favour of the Duke of Brunswick in 1849. The department is to launch a public consultation into whether the judgment is still relevant, following sustained criticism from lawyers and judges. The ruling, Duke of Brunswick v Harmer, remains a bedrock of England's archaic defamation laws. It says that each individual publication of a libel gives rise to a separate cause of action - the so-called multiple publication rule. Translated onto the global reach of the internet, this has had what lawyers call "chilling effects" on freedom of expression. Under it, an individual who downloads something he or she regards as libellous can in principle sue a publication based anywhere in the world. The legal action can be taken either in his or her own country or in England. For the celebrities and overseas businessmen who sue through the high court in the Strand, all they have to show is that the story had more than a minimal circulation and that they had connections to England and a reputation to defend there. With defamation actions generally on the decline, they have provided new rich pickings for the libel bar as suits from as far afield as Russia and Saudi Arabia have been prosecuted in London. In 1848 the Duke of Brunswick, then living in Paris, sent his manservant off to the British Museum to get a copy of the Weekly Dispatch published 17 years previously which he believed had defamed him. He also got a copy from the Dispatch's London publisher. Despite a limitation rule of six years in those days, the court of Queen's Bench decided that these receipts constituted a new publication of a libel and a cause for action. He was awarded £500, a huge sum at the time. The duke's rule, says the media lawyer Mark Stephens, "is bringing the English libel courts into disrepute, with the rich jetting in from all over the world to launder their reputations". Dan Tench, a specialist media lawyer at Olswangs, thinks it ought to go. "The duke's case is one of the hoariest of old precedents. It also is unconscionable that it is still considered good law today." Earlier this year the court of appeal said that if a latter-day duke tried to sue in similar circumstances he would be given short shrift. "We would today condemn the entire exercise as an abuse of process," Lord Phillips, master of the rolls, said. Three years ago in the high court of Australia, one judge remarked: "The idea that this court should solve the present problem by reference to judicial remarks made in England in a case, decided more than 150 years ago, involving the conduct of the manservant of a duke, dispatched to procure a back issue of a newspaper of minuscule circulation, is not immediately appealing to me." In a report on defamation and the internet produced in December 2002, the Law Commission suggested a review that would consider the way the US approaches the problem. Under America's single publication rule there is only one act of publication, when an article first appears, and only one cause of global action, in the place of publication. With internet users now nudging a billion, the threat of unpredictable litigation has grown. In England the cases have principally involved foreign businessmen, often Russians accused of wrongdoing, and Saudis accused of financing terrorism post 9/11. None of these accusations has stuck. The Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky's case against the US magazine Forbes (UK circulation 2,000) took six years to resolve in his favour in 2003, going to the House of Lords. Forbes' lawyers argued that the case should have been tried in the US or Russia. But the Lords prayed in aid the duke's rule, adding that Mr Berezovsky could sue in England because he had links and a reputation to protect here. In a forthright minority opinion about libel tourists, Lord Hoffman laid out what he called "the common sense of the matter". Mr Berezovsky, he said, "wants the verdict of an English court that he has been acquitted of the allegations in the article, for use wherever in the world his business may take him. He does not want to sue in the United States because he considers it too likely that he will lose. He does not want to sue in Russia for the unusual reason that other people might think it was too likely that he would win." But with new questions being asked about the judgment's relevance in an age of fast-changing internet publishing, the duke's grip over libel law may soon be loosened. Profile: The Duke of Brunswick While the principles of the Duke of Brunswick case are engraved on every libel lawyer's heart, nobody really knows what gross calumny was heaped on the duke in the issue of September 19 1830 of the Weekly Dispatch. Copies of the paper for that year are missing from the records of the British Library and the Library of Congress. But it is likely that the offending article referred to an event seven days earlier when the people of his north German dukedom rose up against his autocratic tendencies and sent him packing, to live the next 43 years in dissolute and litigious exile in London, Paris and Geneva. Variously described as paranoid, obsessive and indiscreet, he once remarked that were it not for his enormous wealth, he would be in an insane asylum. In Paris he was a regular at the great restaurants with his heavily painted face, dyed black wig and extreme corpulence, brought on by a vast consumption of sweets. In his efforts to regain his lands from Karl II, King of Hanover, Friedrich Herzog von Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel set the precedent for immunity of heads of states that led to the Pinochet case six years ago. But it was not only as a prodigious litigant that he is remembered. He fancied himself as a competent chess player; in 1858, in one of the most famous defeats in the history of the game, he lost to the American prodigy Paul Morphy who gave a virtuoso attacking performance in the duke's private box at the Paris Opera. The duke was also the century's most acquisitive collector of rare coloured diamonds, including the Brunswick Blue and the Agra Pink, which he kept in a strong box protected by a fearsome array of mechanical security devices. An article written shortly after his death described him stepping out for the evening in diamond-festooned costumes; once he confided to some female guests at a party that crown jewels were also embroidered on his underclothes. His legacy may be on the way out but his presence will certainly live on. At his death in 1873 he bequeathed his fortune to the city of Geneva, where he had spent the last three years of his life, on condition that it bury him in an ornate monument which would be the exact replica of Verona's 14th-century Scaligeri family mausoleum. It stands on the Quai du Mont-Blanc.

'Worst' historical Britons named BBC 27/12/2005 Historians have put together a list of the 10 "worst" Britons of the last 1,000 years. They chose one rogue from each century of the last millennium to compile the list for the BBC History Magazine. Jack the Ripper, King John and Oswald Mosley - founder of the British Union of Fascists - are among the selection. Magazine editor Dave Musgrove said the different "definitions of wickedness" of the 10 historians questioned had led to a diverse list. Oswald Mosley continued to have "a pernicious impact on our society" as an inspiration for far-right groups in the UK, according to Professor Joanna Bourke of London's Birkbeck College. "On his death in 1980, his son Nicholas concluded that his father was a man whose 'right hand dealt with grandiose ideas and glory' while his left hand 'let the rat out of the sewer'." The "greedy" Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, was nominated by Professor John Hudson, of St Andrews University, as the 12th century's worst villain. "He divided England in a way that even many churchmen who shared some of his views thought unnecessary and self-indulgent," he said. "He was a founder of gesture politics. "Those who share my prejudice against Becket may consider his assassination in Canterbury Cathedral on 29 December, 1170, a fittingly grisly end." 'Wicked deeds' Marc Morris, writer and presenter of Channel 4's Castle, described King John, who died in 1216, as "one of the worst Kings in English history". "John committed some wicked deeds and was a deeply unpleasant person," he said. "He was untrusting, he would snigger at people while they talked and couldn't resist kicking a man when he was down." Mr Musgrove said deciding on the worst Britons was "not an easy choice". "Is it the person who murdered the most citizens or the one who led the country into the most desperate straits of poverty or war, or perhaps just he who trod most unscrupulously on those around him?" he said. "We left the criteria up to the 10 historians we spoke to, and it's their definitions of wickedness that give us such a diverse selection of figures on our list of evilness." Comment: No prizes for guessing who our nomination for the worst Briton of the 21st century is. Here's a hint: with this person, the problem of choosing between the person who murdered the most citizens or the one who led the country into the most desperate straits of poverty or war, or the person who trod most unscrupulously on those around him, is solved by the fact that this person fulfills all three criteria.

Russia wields energy as political tool By Andrew Kramer, Moscow December 28, 2005 RUSSIA and Ukraine are on the brink of a political crisis over gas prices that highlights the widening gulf between the two former Soviet countries. State-controlled Russian gas monopoly Gazprom is threatening to cut off flows on January 1 if Ukraine does not agree to pay quadrupled prices for gas, which comprises a third of its energy needs. Ukraine buys Russian gas for its homes and factories at a heavily subsidised $US50 ($A68) per 1000 cubic metres but a disgruntled Moscow wants to raise the cost to $US230, in line with world prices. Kiev has retaliated by threatening to increase tariffs for gas transit to western Europe and raise the rent paid by the Russian Navy to keep its Black Sea fleet in the Ukrainian port of Sevastopol. Last winter, the Kremlin-backed candidate in Ukraine's presidential election lost to pro-Western Viktor Yushchenko. This winter, Russia is demanding the massive increase in the price of gas supplied to Ukraine, a move widely seen as payback for that election embarrassment. At the centre of this geopolitical game is Gazprom — Russia's natural gas monopoly, the country's largest company and the producer of a third of the world's supply of natural gas. Gazprom is a corporation aspiring to join the ranks of major energy companies such as ExxonMobil and BP, with the ability to operate worldwide. Gazprom is also a powerful instrument of Russia's emerging foreign policy, which relies on energy exports and the power and prestige they bring in place of lost military might. Defiant Ukrainian Prime Minister Yuri Yekhanurov told his cabinet on Friday to prepare Kiev's case against Gazprom to be submitted for international arbitration if no other solution to the conflict is found. The problem for Gazprom is how to shut taps to Ukraine without hampering supplies to other European clients — 80 per cent of its European gas exports goes through the Ukrainian pipe. Gazprom on Friday staged a rehearsal for switching off gas supplies to Ukraine, clearly aimed at demonstrating that the company was capable of doing this without stopping supplies to Europe. But Ukrainian officials are making every effort to assure people that the country would survive whatever the outcome of the row with Gazprom. "My forecast is that nothing happens on January 1," Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko's chief of staff, Oleh Rybachuk, said. "Individuals and communal services will feel no difference at all, while the interests of enterprises will be defended." Gazprom, which opened its shares to foreign buyers this month, is seeking institutional investors and acceptance in Western markets to further its goals. In the conflict with Ukraine, Gazprom is at risk of appearing a tool of the Kremlin, used to punish a pro-Western government in eastern Europe, rather than as a company that is attractive to investors. Yet Gazprom's new pricing policy in Ukraine would also benefit shareholders; Gazprom could earn more than $US3 billion next year by raising prices. Far from serving as a mere tool, some analysts see Gazprom as a driving force in pushing the Kremlin's Ukraine policy with the intention to drive up profits from energy sales. The lifting of prices in Ukraine comes amid a long-running effort at Gazprom to move away from its origins as a Soviet ministry and into its role as modern corporation, which has had uncertain results so far. Gazprom accounts for 10 per cent of Russia's economic activity, but it is sprawling, inefficiently managed and overstaffed, with divisions running everything from newspapers to poultry farms outside its core business. It is often seen as a slush fund for the Kremlin's off-the-books needs.

Kremlin aide quits, says Russia no longer free Tuesday 27 December 2005, 7:53am EST By Darya Korsunskaya MOSCOW, Dec 27 (Reuters) - An outspoken aide to President Vladimir Putin resigned on Tuesday, saying he did not want to work for a state that had ended democracy and basic freedom. Andrei Illarionov, who was stripped of many of his duties a year ago after he called the assault on oil company YUKOS "the scam of the year", was one of the few independent voices in an increasingly monolithic Kremlin establishment. In potentially embarrassing remarks for Putin as Russia prepares to take over the presidency of the G8 club of free-market democracies on Sunday, he told reporters: "It is one thing to work in a country that is partly free. It is another thing when the political system has changed, and the country has stopped being free and democratic". "I did not sign a contract with such a state, and therefore it is absolutely impossible to remain in this post." Illarionov was best known in the west for his fierce opposition to the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, which he compared to an "economic Auschwitz". Comment: Gee, who else is strongly against the Kyoto Accord? But he is also a respected economist who, until last January, headed Russia's team at the G8 group of industrialised nations. INCREASINGLY AT ODDS But his liberal views were increasingly at odds with the Kremlin's move to centralise all aspects of Russian life through bringing companies back under state control, while squeezing critics out of parliament and the media. "Up to now, while there was the possibility of doing something, including speaking out, I thought it was important to remain in this post. Until not long ago no one put any limits on me expressing my point of view," he said. "Now the situation has changed." Many rights activists say Putin has undermined almost all aspects of the Russian state that prevented the Kremlin asserting full control. His administration has trimmed the powers of the over-mighty businessmen that plagued 1990s Russia -- most notably, in the battle against oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was jailed and whose YUKOS oil firm was broken up. During Putin's almost six years in the Kremlin, independent media has also largely disappeared, while parliament and regional governors have been reduced to subservient bodies answerable to the Kremlin. On Tuesday, the Federation Council upper house of parliament approved a bill that will introduce tight controls on non-governmental organisations -- a sphere of Russian life seen by activists as the last outside Kremlin control. Comment: Let's look at the language used in this article, an article which is obviously aimed at discrediting Putin and the Russians. The "over-mighty businessmen" referred to made their money by looting the state property of the Russian people in the nineties. They are in no way heros, except to those right-wingers for whom free enterprise is the holy grail. They were the darlings of hawks such as Henry Kissinger in Washington. As ordinary Russians struggled to make ends meet, these pirates raided the remnants of the old Soviet economy and made enormous fortunes in just a few years. They were supported by the West, especially people like Khodorkovsky who was planning to sell off Russian oil and gas to the West. Putin, in moving against Yukos, was doing what the US would do if Russians tried to come in and take over US oil and gas production and send it to Russia. Just look at what the US is doing all over the world to ensure its energy sources don't fall into its competitors' hands. Everyone is doing the same thing, however, they justify it by appeals to different values. Putin is calling upon Russian nationalism and the tradition of the strong central state. Bush and his PR hacks reference freedom and democracy. Each uses the tools at hand and the emotional hooks that work in his culture. However, at root, they are doing the same thing. These appeals to nationalism or freedom are what Lobaczewski calls para-moralisms. They are fake morals used to justify the actions of pathocrats everywhere. A truly moral or conscious society would ensure that everyone had enough energy and would find ways for a just distribution of the natural resources of the planet, resources that belong to us all, not only to the strong. As long as we continue to fall victim to such manipulations of language, we will never be able to break free of the pathocratic state. One will follow another in mechanical succession, each claiming to right the injustices of its predecessor. This is a trap within which we have been caught for thousands of years. Until we see it for what it is, we won't get out.

Afghanistan may demand war compensation from Russia www.chinaview.cn 2005-12-27 16:47:04 KABUL, Dec. 27 (Xinhuanet) -- The Afghan government on Tuesday hinted at demanding war compensation from Russia for the former Soviet Union's invasion of the country in 1979. "The government of Afghanistan is mulling over the issue," Presidential spokesman Mohammad Karim Rahimi told a questionnaire while his opinion was sought with regard to demanding war compensation from Moscow. He made the comment on the 26th anniversary of the ex-Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan. Over 100,000 troops of the former Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan on December 27, 1979 and occupied the country till Feb.15, 1989. The poor central Asian state plunged into civil war following the withdrawal of the Red Army and experienced brutal factional fighting as well as Taliban's hard-line rule till the regime's removal by the U.S.-led war in 2001. He also said millions of Afghans had been killed and handicapped during the 10-year Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. "The destruction of Afghanistan began with the invasion of the Soviet Union as the country's all political, economic and social infrastructures had been destroyed," Rahimi noted. Afghan officials in the past have also proposed unofficially to demand war compensation from Russia, but the government is yet to forward it formally. Comment: Hmmm, a country invades another leading to civil war and the destruction of the society. Wonder where else this demand for compensation could be used?

North Korea calls US envoy "tyrant wearing mask of diplomat" SEOUL AFP Dec 25, 2005 Stalinist North Korea on Sunday described US ambassador to Seoul Alexander Vershbow as a "tyrant wearing a mask of diplomat" in a renewed attack on his criticism of Pyongyang, Yonhap news agency said. Vershbow earlier this month labelled North Korea a "criminal regime" engaged in money laundering, drug running, counterfeiting and other illicit activities. "He must be a tyrant wearing a mask of diplomat since he recklessly make imprudent and provocative remarks," Rodong Shinmun, newspaper of the North's ruling Workers Party, said in a commentary monitored by Yonhap. The North's official Korean Central News Agency demanded earlier that the "bitchy and malignant" US envoy, who took over in Seoul in October, be sacked. South Korean officials fear the US envoy's harsh rhetoric might foil their efforts to end the stalemate in nuclear disarmament talks. The North refuses to return to the six-nation nuclear talks, citing US sanctions imposed on it over allegations of counterfeiting and money laundering. At the six-party talks in September, North Korea agreed in principle to dismantle its nuclear weapons program in exchange for diplomatic and economic benefits and security guarantees. But at the last session in November it said US sanctions were blocking any progress.

Mobile phones to announce 'you've been indicted' Reuters Mon Dec 26, 9:22 AM ET SEOUL - South Koreans may look at their mobile phones with some trepidation in the new year because prosecutors will start telling people they have been indicted via text messages, an official said Monday. In a country where about 75 percent of the population carries mobile phones, prosecutors felt it was time to move away from sending legal notices on paper and send them electronically instead, said Lee Young-pyo, an administrative official. "Most people in South Korea have mobile phones and since the notices don't reach them immediately by regular mail, this is a more definite way for the individuals to know they have received a legal notice," Lee said. The indictments by text messages are not intended to take people by surprise. "People will receive a text message of a legal notice only after they apply for the service," he said. Prosecutors expect to save about 160 million won ($158,000) a year by shifting to the service and reducing the number of legal notices it sends through the mail. Other notices that will be sent by text messages include information on fines and penalties. The service starts Tuesday but will be fully implemented in 2006.

Two nuclear power plants to be built in China next year BEIJING AFP Dec 27, 2005 China will build two nuclear power plants next year as part of the fast-growing economy's plan to satisfy its massive energy demand and reduce the country's heavy reliance on coal, state press said Tuesday. The plans to build plants in the northeastern province of Liaoning and the eastern province of Shandong are part of the nation's ambitious efforts to increase its nuclear generating capacity from the current 8,700 megawatts to 40,000 megawatts by the year 2020, China Daily reported. Two 1,080-megawatt reactors will be built at a new 2.8 billion-dollar facility in Liaoning, the country's first nuclear base in the northeast, the report said, quoting a China Guangdong Nuclear Power Group (CGNPG) official. It will be located in the coastal city of Dalian, and is scheduled to begin generating electricity in 2011, the official said. China's own nuclear technology will be used to design the new reactors, it said. The second new plant, the Haiyang nuclear power station in the coastal city of Yantai in Shandong, will be equipped with two 1,000-megawatt reactors. According to earlier China Daily reports, the Haiyang plant is one of three nuclear power stations that Shandong had planned to build by 2010, although they were still subject to government approval. The report quoted industry sources as saying that up to 10 reactors would eventually be built at the two plants, with six to be built at Dalian and four at Haiyang. No timeframe was given for the projects. The plans for the two nuclear power plants are subject to the approval of the National Development and Reform Commission, the country's economic planning body. Both projects are part of the 11th five-year economic plan (2006-2011) -- the Chinese government's blueprint for the country's economic development, the China Daily said. The ambitious plan is being implemented in an effort to overcome ongoing energy shortages and to build up alternatives to massive coal use which is causing serious air pollution, acid rain and global warming. By 2020, about four percent of China's total power output will be from nuclear power, up from just under two percent currently. China already has nine nuclear power reactors in operation.

Iran cleric protests shutdown of satellite TV TEHRAN AFP Dec 26, 2005 The managers of a reformist-funded satellite television channel are to take legal action against Iranian authorities for allegedly banning their activities and broadcast, a company executive said Monday. Saba TV's managing director said they came to understand that their station was being banned by the government days after Iranian security agents tried to confiscate a tape from a network official at Dubai airport. "We realize that the Supreme National Security Council has asked the newspapers to avoid publishing Saba TV advertisements and news of Saba TV (and said) this network's activities are illegal in Iran," Behrouz Afkhami said in a statement. Afkhami said the managers intended to file a legal complaint against Ali Larijani, head of the Supreme National Security Council, who has allegedly ordered the ban. Funded by Mehdi Karoubi, a reformist cleric and failed presidential hopeful, Saba TV was scheduled to make its first broadcast from Dubai at midnight Wednesday. But when an Iranian airliner carrying Saba's production manager arrived in the Gulf emirate of Dubai, Iranian security agents tried to confiscate the tape and prevented him from getting off the plane, Afkhami said. Iran's constitution does not allow any radio or television stations to operate outside state control. With a start-up budget of 330,000 dollars, its aim was "to provide objective and unbiased news about Iran to Persian-speaking viewers all over the world". "Mr. Larijani, does your interpretation of the radio and TV monopoly include the Persian speaking media outside Iran?" asked Afkahmi, a well-known movie director and former reformist MP. "How come your understanding of the law allows media activities for British representatives and their Iranian employees, but bans the Iranians from working for Iranians?" he said. Saba would have been the first satellite TV to be funded by a former Iranian official, while Iranians receive signals of more than 20 opposition-run satellite channels mainly based in the United States. Satellite television is banned in Iran but police raids and fines have not stopped dishes springing up like mushrooms on the roofs of homes in the country's bigger cities.

Women, children found in Iraqi mass grave 27 Dec 2005 AFP The remains of women and children, believed to be victims of Saddam Hussein's ousted regime, have been found in a mass grave dug up by workers who were laying down pipes in Iraq's southern city of Karbala, a local official said. "The skulls of children and women with long hair were found in the grave," Abdel Rahman Meshawi, a spokesman for Karbala province told AFP on Tuesday. Some 20 bodies have so far been recovered and taken to the local hospital for DNA testing, he said. The people appear to have been victims of Saddam's bloody suppression of a Shiite uprising in 1991. "Inhabitants who lost relatives when a Shiite rebellion was crushed in 1991 have come in to help assist with the identification," he added. The mass grave was uncovered by chance on Monday some 500 metres (yards) away from Imam Hussein's mausoleum, in the centre of the Shiite town, some 100 kilometres (60 miles) south of Baghdad. A 50-year-old local man, Salman Saadoun, 50, said he remembered seeing bulldozers digging in the area after Saddam Hussein's elite Republican Guard entered the town to crush the rebellion in 1991. A small public park was later built there. The US-installed provisional authority suggested in 2004 that some 259 mass graves containing some 300,000 people had been discovered in the country since the fall of Saddam. Most are concentrated in the south, where Saddam put down Shiites who rebelled against his rule after the 1991 Gulf war, and in the north, where Iraqi forces clamped down on Kurdish rebels. Comment: How many mass graves of the victims of George W. Bush will be found by workers of the future?

Thousands protest election results in Baghdad 27 Dec 2005 AFP At least 5,000 demonstrators rallied in western Baghdad to protest alleged fraud in Iraq's December 15 general elections and demand a re-run of the poll as top politicians discussed the formation of a national unity government. "No democracy without real elections", "rigged polls", "down with the electoral commission" read a number of banners. Tuesday's demonstration was called by the Maram alliance, an Arabic acronym for the Conference Rejecting Rigged Elections which includes both Sunni Arab and secular factions, dissatisfied with the preliminary election results suggesting that the Shiite-based religious parties will control the next parliament. Ali al-Tamimi, a spokesman for the Maram alliance of some 42 parties and factions said the rally was meant to "show the Iraqi people's rejection of the ballot-rigging" in the election. A similar demonstration was held in Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit, in the north of the country. The leader of Iraq's main Shiite party, Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, met Tuesday in the north of the country with the leader of the Kurdistan regional government, Massud Barzani, to discuss the setting up of a coalition government, Kurdish officials said. Hakim, a cleric and the leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), the main Shiite party in a majority Shiite country, was also expected to address the Kurdish regional parliament in Arbil on Wednesday. President Jalal Talabani's office announced that the president would hold meetings on Wednesday with the heads of all the major political coalitions, particularly the disaffected parties, in the northern town of Dokan in a bid to help set up a 'national unity' government. The electoral commission has acknowledged receiving some 1,500 complaints, but says only a couple of dozens are "serious" enough to warrant possible annulment of some of the results. Final election results are not expected before next week. Meanwhile a top defence ministry official, Major General Abdul Aziz Mohammed Jassim, accused insurgents of spreading false information "to cast doubt on the fairness of the elections" and incite "disorder and riots". In the northern city of Kirkuk, Turkmen and Sunni Arabs on Tuesday called on the US administration, the United Nations and the Arab League to investigate the results of the elections, especially in their region. The oil-producing city hosts a delicate balance of Sunni Arabs, Kurds, and Turkmens. "We want to send a message to Iraqi political forces and to the US administration and the UN that the Arab and Turkmen in Kirkuk stand alongside the national forces in rejecting the (election) results," Abdel Rahman Monshid al-Aasy, head of the Arab Council of Kirkuk. Shiite politicians on Saturday rejected the accusations of fraud and denounced the use of street pressure to try to overturn the results. In the Shiite city of Karbala on Monday, hundreds demonstrated in support of the election results and called for a new term for Shiite Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari. "We voted for who we wanted to represent us, in total freedom and without any fraud and we demand that our vote be preserved and not be thrown away," said demonstrator Mohammed Jassim Hussein, who carried a poster of Shiite spiritual leader Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. Meanwhile, two US pilots died when their military helicopter crashed in west Baghdad Monday evening, the military said Tuesday. "There was no hostile fire involved," the military said in a statement, giving no details. At least one more US soldier and 19 Iraqis were killed and dozens were wounded in a spate of attacks Monday, most of them targeting police units. On Tuesday, three Iraqis, including an army colonel, were killed in separate attacks. Comment: Based on past performance, you know that if the mainstream media is saying 5,000 demonstrators, there were probably about 15 to 20 thousand.

Syrian Junkman arrested over Lebanon MP's killing 27 Dec 2005 AFP Lebanese authorities have arrested a Syrian man on suspicion of involvement in the killing earlier this month of anti-Syrian MP and newspaper magnate Gibran Tueni, a judicial source said. Abdel Kader Abdel Kader, 30, was arrested after he was questioned by military investigating magistrate Rashid Mezher over the December 12 Beirut car bombing that killed Tueni, the source said Tuesday. Abdel Kader, who sold scrap metal from a patch of land he rented near the scene of the killing in east Beirut, was under suspicion because of phone calls he made immediately before and after the bombing, the source said. Mezher has asked for Abdel Kader, the first suspect to be arrested over the killing, to continue to be held at military justice headquarters in Beirut for questioning. Many in Lebanon have attributed the killing of Tueni, 48, to Syria. Damascus condemned the bombing. Tueni, director of the An-Nahar daily, his driver and his bodyguard were killed a day after his return from France where he had spent some time for fear of an attempt on his life amid a spate of attacks on critics of Syria. Thirty others were wounded in the blast that severely damaged nearby buildings. Tueni was instrumental in the campaign to end three decades of Syrian political and military domination of Lebanon and has been hailed as a "martyr" of the country's fragile regained independence since Syrian troops left in April. His editorials were vitriolic attacks on Syrian policies in Lebanon in which he insisted repeatedly on Lebanon's right to sovereignty, free from the Syrian yoke. Tueni's killing sparked international condemnation, including a UN Security Council statement condemning the death of "a patriot who was an outspoken symbol of freedom and the sovereignty and political independence of Lebanon." The assassination was one of a string of attacks targeting anti-Syrian politicians and journalists, most notably the February killing of five-time premier Rafiq Hariri in a massive Beirut seafront blast. There have been 15 attacks and political killings in Lebanon since October 2004. Massive street protests and international pressure after Hariri's death led to the withdrawal of Syrian troops and intelligence personnel. Lebanese security forces have been conspicuously present on Beirut streets over Christmas and ahead of the New Year, in particular in commercial districts of the capital. Detlev Mehlis, who has been heading a UN investigation into Hariri's death, has accused Syria of the killing, a charge strongly denied by Damascus. Rafiq Hariri's son and political heir, Saad, has accused the "terrorist regime" in Syria of seeking to topple the Beirut government. Damascus has said that it is the target of an international witch-hunt over its alleged failure to prevent militants crossing into Iraq and support for what Washington calls "terrorist groups" such as Lebanon's Shiite militant group Hezbollah.

Diplomats Say Iran Laying Groundwork For Uranium Enrichment Vienna AFP Dec 19, 2005 On the eve of crucial nuclear talks with Iran, [unidentified] diplomats say Tehran is already laying the groundwork for uranium enrichment, and may even be secretly making parts for sophisticated P2 centrifuges. "The Iranian National Security Council is at this very time deliberating exactly when enrichment is to be resumed," a diplomat told AFP. Enriched uranium can fuel nuclear power plants or be used in atom bombs, and the ability to produce it is considered a "breakout capacity" for making nuclear weapons. The diplomat, who asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the information, says Iran has not stopped making parts for centrifuges, which, arranged in cascades, spin uranium gas to distill out uranium that is highly enriched with the U-235 isotope. An Iranian diplomat said this assertion -- also voiced by Iranian opposition groups -- was "not true, not yet." He said however that "Iran has the capacity to make P2 centrifuges." A Western diplomat said that if Iran was "taking the incremental step" to make centrifuges it would be almost as significant as enrichment itself. Iran and the European Union are to meet in Vienna on Wednesday to discuss re-starting formal negotiations on obtaining guarantees that Tehran will not make nuclear weapons. The Europeans demand that Iran maintain a suspension of "all enrichment-related" activities including making centrifuges, according to an agreement reached in Paris in 2004. The West sees uranium enrichment as a red flag issue that could prompt Iran's referral to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions, while the Islamic Republic insists on its right under the Non-Proliferation Treaty to enrich uranium for what it says is a peaceful nuclear program to generate electricity. Diplomats said that even if talks go well, they expect Iran to say that work with centrifuges short of actually enriching uranium does not violate the freeze. "Iran serially produces and assembles centrifuge parts. Production has continued without interruption ever since this capability was acquired," the first diplomat said. The diplomat said Iran was making centrifuges in military workshops which "do not come under IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) safeguards, and Iran has not declared all these parts." Another diplomat from a member state of the IAEA's 35-nation board of governors said the agency, which has been investigating Iran for almost three years, does not "have a clue" what Iran is up to at its military workshops. "Iran has the machine tools to enable them to churn out many P2 centrifuges a day, and the IAEA would have no idea," the diplomat said. IAEA officials refused to comment. The diplomat said there was "suspicion and concern" about "lots of activity at military workshops like Mashhad, Moborakeh and Nobonyad." It is not clear how the EU would react if Iran resumed enrichment activities that stopped short of actually putting feedstock gas into centrifuges. The EU has apparently accepted that Iran is converting uranium ore into the feedstock gas, even though the conversion work forced the breakdown of EU-Iran talks last August. Research and development in enrichment "is indeed the key phrase, and conceivably Iran's strategy is to secure Europe's agreement to engage in R and D," the first diplomat said. The diplomat said the Iranians hoped to inch their way towards acceptance of their enrichment activities, as they did with conversion, and might initially propose running a small, pilot centrifuge cascade in Natanz "without feeding gas into the centrifuges." Non-proliferation expert David Albright, head of a think tank in Washington, said that running a cascade, even if only as a test using air, would help "see if vacuum seals hold and work out other major problems." "You don't want Iran to start running cascades because the question then is, once they've started, can you get them to back down?" Albright said.

No Evidence Of Iran Nuclear Weapons Program Says Russian Spy Chief Moscow AFP Dec 19, 2005 Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service is unaware of any attempt by Iran to develop nuclear weapons, the head of the service was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying Monday. "We attentively observe what is going on around Iran and report on this to our leadership. We are not indifferent to how events will develop. But at the moment we have no information to suggest Iran is developing nuclear weapons," the service's director, Sergei Lebedev, said. "Accordingly we see no basis for using force against Iran," he added. Moscow has defended Iran's right to develop a civilian nuclear energy programme, a programme that Washington suspects is a cover for developing nuclear weapons. Russia is building Iran's first nuclear power station at Bushehr and recently agreed to sell Iran 29 TOR M1 mobile surface-to-air missile defence systems.

So Why DID Support for War Go South? By Col. Daniel Smith U.S. Army (Ret.) Wed, 21 Dec 2005 From Walter Cronkite to John Murtha, how the public loses faith in a war “To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past. To suggest we are on the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism. To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion. On the off chance that military and political analysts are right, in the next few months we must test the enemy’s intentions, in case this is indeed his last big gasp …” – Walter Cronkite, February 27, 1968 “I said to the President, ‘We’re not winning the war.’ And he asked, ‘Are we losing?’ I said, ‘Not yet’ … he couldn’t hear it.” – Former Bush administration high official, late 2004 The most frequently-cited reason for the rapid waning of public support for the second Iraq War is casualties. This is not an inconsequential consideration, to be sure; many in Congress, both Republican and Democrat, have expressed deep emotion when recounting their visits with families of those killed (2,130 as of December 5) and with the wounded. However, casualties are more often the revered symbol of deeper currents, ones that take longer to appear, but once articulated by a respected and trusted public figure, generate an irresistible power that eventually sweeps all before it. Before television, before radio, such public figures tended to be writers, orators, or humorists. Statesmen, as opposed to politicians, might be quoted, but normally in support of the position espoused by the quoter—and invariably long enough after the death of the honored personage that his less edifying pronouncements have been forgotten. Murrow and McCarthy These musings surfaced in mid-November when “Good Night, and Good Luck” hit movie houses across the United States. The film recounts events leading to the March 9, 1954 broadcast of See It Now , hosted by legendary CBS journalist Edward R. Murrow. That broadcast revealed quite clearly the often-unfounded, destructive tactics of Senator Joe McCarthy (WI) in his crusade to uncover communists in the U.S. government and the army. Even Dwight Eisenhower hesitated to take on McCarthy publicly until after the Murrow broadcast and a subsequent disastrous public relations appearance by McCarthy on See It Now in which the Senator’s unethical methods were laid bare as he attacked the press. Until that point, the press, apparently intimidated by the reception accorded a February 9, 1950 “Lincoln Day” speech by McCarthy, had been more supine than critical. McCarthy’s claim that the State Department employed 205 known communists or individuals with questionable backgrounds resonated with the public as an explanation of why the United States, victorious in World War II, was now on the defensive. (Remember that the early 1950s were unsettled times with spy trials, the Korean War, and Moscow’s acquisition of “the bomb”—all of which seemed to validate McCarthy’s accusations.) Murrow’s commentary provided enough political cover for the Senate to investigate the investigator, and in December 1954 McCarthy’s colleagues finally mustered the courage to rebuke him for bringing discredit on the Senate. Cronkite and Vietnam Fast-forward 14 years to February 1968, to the fourth year since major U.S. combat formations first began to arrive to fight another Asian war (Vietnam). In the aftermath of the Tet offensive of 1968, another highly-regarded journalist stepped forward with an editorial on the war’s conduct (above). President Johnson, on hearing Walter Cronkite’s conclusion that the war could not be won, reportedly remarked that in losing Cronkite he had lost the country. The proof came in the March 1968 New Hampshire Democratic presidential primary in which Johnson garnered only 49 percent against the 42 percent for —ironically—another McCarthy (Eugene). Confronted by such a sharp division, on March 31, declaring that “No other question so preoccupies our people … [as] peace in Vietnam and Southeast Asia,” Johnson affirmed he would neither be a candidate nor accept his party’s nomination for president for the November 1968 race. But “peace” was to remain elusive under Richard Nixon. A war that may well have started for U.S. combat units because of a cover-up was perpetuated by more lies, cost additional casualties among U.S. troops for five years, and in the end was “lost” as North Vietnamese forces swept into Saigon in April 1975. Murtha and Iraq Skip a further 30 years to November 2005. Representative John Murtha (PA), a Marine Corps veteran of Vietnam and an unswerving Pentagon supporter, surprises the nation by making an impassioned call for withdrawal of troops from Iraq. While others in Congress had earlier opposed the continued U.S. troop presence in Iraq, the policy reversal of a proud veteran and military hawk for pragmatic reasons (inadequate strategy) and as a matter of conscience (unnecessary casualties), created a shock wave. Compared to the casualties in Korea and Vietnam, the number of war fatalities in Iraq remains low. But the charge by Murtha and others—a charge that was already circulating broadly in public discourse—is that these deaths stem from premeditated public misrepresentations of already-flawed intelligence on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction developments, stockpiles, and programs as well as knowingly false innuendos that Iraq gave direct support to al-Qaida linked terror groups. These three fundamentally different events are connected both in their shape and in the reactions they spurred. McCarthy’s was an anti-communist crusade to purge the U.S. government. Conducted in parallel to the anti-communist hot war being waged in Korea, the hearings relied on distrust and fear to intimidate and prevent formation of a unified opposition and enabled McCarthy to ride roughshod over the innocent, traditional justice, and truth. Johnson’s identification with the seemingly endless “anti-communist” Vietnam War suggested his “stay the course” posture would soon split the nation as it had split New Hampshire Democrats. In Iraq, “stay the course” has split the United States but along party lines rather than within the party in power. Moreover, just as Johnson and his inner circle missed the overarching nationalism of the Vietnamese struggle, so too did Bush and his ideologues fail to recognize the force of this same current among most Iraqis. Fifty-eight months elapsed between Joe McCarthy’s Lincoln Day speech and his censure by the Senate (and 49 months between the speech and Murrow’s broadcast). Johnson had only 40 months between his election in November 1964 and his announcement that he would not stand for reelection. In Iraq, in June 2004—the same month that the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority was dissolved—U.S. public support for the war fell below 50 percent for the first time. A mere 15 months had elapsed since the first missiles were launched on Baghdad. (John Murtha’s call for withdrawal came 17 months after the public’s change of heart.) Losing Support: Then and Now Two interrelated factors may be driving the rapid and steep rate of decline in support of the Iraq adventure as compared to the 1950s and 60s. One is the progressive easing in the public’s perception of the overall threat to the nation’s survival. In the 1950s (McCarthy), the reality was that communist spies had revealed vital national defense secrets to a hostile USSR—and more secrets would be lost unless security measures were tightened for government employees. Another reality was the threat of nuclear war, particularly Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD), which was hyped in the 1950s, almost happened in 1962 over Soviet missiles in Cuba, and while still a possibility to this day, has receded in public consciousness. The U.S. public bought into the idea of a “threat” to U.S. interests spreading across the Far East from Southeast Asia until the absurdity of U.S. troops and Vietnamese dying to thwart this “domino theory” became overwhelmingly apparent. The theory played itself out in Laos and Cambodia – and collapsed when a united, nationalistic-modified communist Vietnam invaded Cambodia and fought a border war with the People’s Republic of China. Today, more than four years have passed since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The horror of that September 11, strongly etched in memory primarily among those who lived that experience first-hand or who had to cope with its consequences, has become for most an iconic event to be recalled annually, like Pearl Harbor on December 7. But unlike World War II or present-day Afghanistan, the continued existence of the United States and the American way of life were never in mortal danger because of September 11. Moreover, the inability of the Bush administration to demonstrate any incontrovertible connection between September 11 and Iraq reduces the invasion and occupation of that country to the same level as Vietnam. It is a war that need never have been because the clear and imminent threat by which a preemptive military strike is deemed lawful never existed. Losing Trust The second is the growing public distrust in the veracity of leaders, particularly within government. McCarthy vilified any and all who had the temerity to question his assertions or his methods. Not a few lost their job and reputation; many others were cowed into silence. Endless assurances by military and Johnson administration officials of “a light at the end of the tunnel” never materialized—becoming a phrase of derision surpassed only by the daily “five o’clock follies” (Saigon briefings) and the daily “body count” of Viet Cong and North Vietnamese killed. But years passed before the whole truth emerged and long-term public support disappeared for these nationalism-cloaked campaigns. Today, strong public support at the beginning of the Iraq war was quickly tried as the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq proved a myth, and a seemingly endless and increasingly unpersuasive string of justifications for toppling Saddam followed. But unlike earlier eras, the media itself has become implicated in the deceit, sometimes wittingly, sometimes not. Prominent personalities have been paid to hype administration themes. “News” stories written by “consultants” have been planted in the foreign press, sometimes with money changing hands. At one point, the administration allegedly considered releases to foreign journalists of “stories” that were absolutely false. When Bush is not appearing in strictly military or military-oriented venues for presidential speeches, his applauding audiences are pre-screened to ensure only supporters are present. Writers and journalists critical of U.S. government policies risk losing access to briefings and press conferences—and hence their livelihood. Others are constrained by their own non-media corporate conglomerates. In this climate, the public doesn’t know who to trust—not the government, for it has shaded the truth in every way possible; not the media, for one no longer knows who is on a secret payroll or who is as much a victim of planted stories as the readers or viewers; and certainly not consultants or most politicians. That is why Americans sit up and pay attention when a person of the stature of John Murtha speaks out against dissembling and misleading statements out of an obvious commitment to principle. Such individuals understand that the suffering and the dying on the battlefield—whether Korea, Vietnam, or Iraq—or the ideological crusades against communism, nationalism, or the extreme violence of terror may not be the real “war.” The real war is internal. It is for the spirit of the nation and the soul of representative democracy, both of which fall into jeopardy when government leaders fail to tell the truth, substitute character assassination for accountability, and consciously suborn the press. In 1954 and 1968, respected arbiters of truth cut through public fear to open the way for a change in public discourse and accountability from leaders who had exploited public trust. In 2005, Representative Murtha may be the decisive voice for the truth that restores the most fundamental necessity of democracy: a well-informed public. Dan Smith is a military affairs analyst for Foreign Policy In Focus (online at www.fpif.org), a retired U.S. Army colonel, and a senior fellow on military affairs at the Friends Committee on National Legislation.

Space burials, star names on sale by US company WASHINGTON AFP Dec 25, 2005 Offer a personalized star for Christmas, or buy your late loved one a celestial sepulchre, a Texas company specializing in extra-terrestrial services for space lovers has a gift line that few others can match. Houston-based Space Services Inc. certainly markets its gifts out of this world. Since 1997 the company has offered the opportunity to have one's ashes, post-cremation, delivered up into orbit for posterity. More recently, the company has offered the chance for people to single out a star have it named for whoever they like. "We are attempting to give the public around the world the opportunity to be involved in very real space missions," said Space Services chief executive Charles Chafer. The challenge of arranging space flights for its special payload notwithstanding, the company's space burials have taken off. It is preparing for its sixth launch in March 2006. The first launch in 1997 carried the remains of 24 men, including Gene Roddenberry the creator of the legendary television series Star Trek; 1960s counterculture icon Timothy Leary, and Princeton University physicist Gerard ONeill. The upcoming launch will also evoke Star Trek memories, carrying remains from the late actor James Doohan, who played the engineer on the spaceship Enterprise. Chafer, who started his career developing rockets for commercial launches, explained that the company sends into space vials of people's ashes as a secondary payload accompanying commercial launches of satellites. The ashes are then set into orbit at the same level of the satellite. The cost is not out of orbit, however. The company charges by the weight, 995 dollars for a capsule containing one gram of a person's ashes, and up to 5,300 for seven grams, inserted into a container which resembles a lipstick tube. "We actually launch what we call a symbolic portion of cremated remains," Chafer told AFP. "It reflects a growing trend, here in the US and around the world, of doing things with someone's ashes that will be meaningful for that person." More recently Space Services has come up with a new idea, to allow people to name stars, at least unofficially. The idea is that people will name stars for their loved ones as gifts. For a start, the company has listed stars in a catalogue. Customers tell the company a constellation or astrological sign that interests them, and the company officers a list of possibilities. From there the process is automated -- an emailed star certificate, a photograph of the star, and other helpful information. However, the company plans to take it much further. Next year a customer will be able to look at their star by tapping into a page on the company's website that is connected to a robot-controlled telescope in the Canary Islands. Moreover, said Chafer, the star's name and a personal message can be launched into space on a disc carried by a commercial rocket. "People love star gifts because of the fascination with space and the romance stars represent," said Susan Schonfeld, communications director for Space Services. ""Everybody has his own star." "It's a symbolic gesture. Nobody actually, officially named a star," Chafer said. Chafer said he started his company to allow people to take part in space exploration. With his products, he said, "Not only can you do something meaningful ... but you can be part of a real space mission."

Record number of British children in hospital because of alcohol 27 Dec 2005 AFP Record numbers of British children were treated in hospital last year with alcohol-related problems, The Daily Telegraph said, quoting figures from the Liberal Democrats opposition party. Some 4,809 children were admitted to accident and emergency units for the effects of drinking alcohol in 2004-05, a rise of 15 percent since Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labour party came to power in 1997. The illnesses included cirrhosis, mental behaviour disorders and the toxic effects of drinking when young, the newspaper said. The Department of Health figures also showed a rise in the number of adults admitted to hospital for drink-related conditions, up 30 percent from 35,740 in 1996-97 to 46,299 in 2004-05. The Liberal Democrats blamed the cost of alcohol, Britain's binge-drinking culture and the more relaxed licensing laws introduced in England and Wales in November for fuelling the rise. Both the Daily Mail -- which was editorially opposed to the move to so-called "24-hour drinking" -- and The Times carried the same figures. The Times said the government was looking to get tough with unscrupulous retailers who sold alcohol illegally to under-18s and that binge-drinking among under-age youngsters could reach record levels over the new year weekend. One of the arguments for relaxing the licensing laws was that it would allow more civilised socialising. But opponents argued that because of Britain's hard-drinking reputation, it would merely increase alcohol abuse, drink-fuelled violence and anti-social behaviour. Comment: But God forbid they should smoke, or be in a house where someone else does!

Comedy of terror Terry Jones Tuesday December 27, 2005 The Guardian Tony Blair, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld - you're my prize guys Well the end of the year is as good a time as any to distribute prizes. And first is the Gary Glitter Cup for Self-Restraint, to Tony Blair. It can't have been an easy couple of years for him, and yet he has somehow managed to keep that smile on his lips and that cheerful sparkle in his eye with a degree of self-restraint that impressed the judges. Over the past two years, Tony has seen all his Iraq policies turn into unmitigated disasters. Instead of his stated aim of bringing peace and happiness to the people of Iraq, he has brought them chaos, bloodshed, violence and misery. Instead of making Britain safer, his policies have made this country a target for terrorism for the foreseeable future. And now there is open talk in the Senate of impeaching George Bush; the New York Times accuses him of "recklessness" and claims he "may also have violated the law". Tony must be finding it difficult to sleep. Yet he is able to get up in the morning unassisted! He is able to look at himself in the mirror, shave without damaging his throat, and go to work with every appearance of a man who imagines he's doing a good job. This achievement richly deserves the Gary Glitter Cup. Well done, Tony! And now we come to the Dick Cheney "Goblet of Fire" Award for Courage in the Face of Action. And for the sixth successive year, the award goes to ... the vice-president of the US ... Dick Cheney! This year the judge (who is, once again, Dick Cheney) cites in particular Mr Cheney's fearlessness in speaking with authority on military matters despite the fact that he has never served in the military. In fact Mr Cheney received no less than five deferments rather than serve his country in uniform. Nor has he lost his nerve, despite seeing the death rate of American servicemen and women climb above the 2,000 mark. Those who have already died will be heartened by his courageous determination to risk yet more people's lives. Well done, Dick. The "Goblet of Fire" is yours once again. The Kellogg Brown and Root Shield for Corporate Services also goes to Dick Cheney, along with the purse of between $180,000 and $1m (payable annually as "deferred compensation"). KBR is the engineering and construction arm of Halliburton, of which Dick Cheney was CEO from 1995 to 2000 - in which time the value of Halliburton's US government contracts almost doubled from $1.2bn to $2.3bn. He then became vice-president, and things have got even better for KBR, even though Mr Cheney resigned his company position. As of March 1 2004, KBR has been awarded reconstruction work in Iraq and Afghanistan worth at least $3.9bn. So step up, Dick Cheney! We now come to the Abu Ghraib Trophy for Human Rights, and ... yes, it's another triumph for the VP! Dick Cheney has stood firm against a wicked cabal of Republican senators - John Warner of Virginia, John McCain of Arizona, and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina - who tried to sneak a clause into the 2005 military spending bill that would outlaw "cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment" to military prisoners. How can the US champion human rights unless it is allowed unrestrained access to any torture techniques it considers fit, to use against enemies that are both sub-human and have forfeited any rights to be treated as our fellow creatures? Well done, Dick! I hope the Abu Ghraib Trophy will sit proudly alongside all those others. We now move on to the Narnia Prize for the Closest Impersonation of Donald Rumsfeld, which this year goes to ... yes, Donald Rumsfeld! Donald has consistently played himself, throughout the unfolding military and public relations disaster in Iraq and the exposure of torture in US military prisons. Eschewing all imitations, he has brought his philosophical double-think and understated, homespun comedy to all affairs of state, no matter how grave. Chaos and lawlessness in Iraq? "Freedom's untidy," says the defence secretary, November 2005. Hunger strike at Guantánamo Bay? "There are a number of people who do go on a diet," says Rummy. Great stuff. Finally we come to the Apocalypse Now! Award for Redefining the World, which this year goes to the president of the United States, George Bush. The judges were unanimous. The president claimed that in the second world war, the forces of freedom defeated the ideology of fascism. In the cold war, those same forces defeated communism. "Today, in the Middle East, freedom is contending with ... terrorists affiliated with or inspired by al-Qaida," whose ultimate aim is to "establish a totalitarian Islamic empire that reaches from Indonesia to Spain". With a simple piece of unnoticed elision, George Bush has recreated the crusades. Rumsfeld and Cheney can rest assured that the arms industry will flourish for years to come. The west has a new enemy: Islam. Poor Islam. Poor Christianity. Poor us. George Bush, the Apocalypse Now! award is yours.

Fraud Alleged at Red Cross Call Centers By Jacqueline L. Salmon Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, December 27, 2005 Nearly 50 people have been indicted in connection with a scheme that bilked hundreds of thousands of dollars from a Red Cross program to put cash into the hands of Hurricane Katrina victims, according to federal authorities. Seventeen of the accused worked at the Red Cross claim center in Bakersfield, Calif., which handled calls from storm victims across the country and authorized cash payments to them. The others were the workers' relatives and friends, prosecutors said last week. The scam came to light when Red Cross officials noticed that a suspiciously high number of people were picking up Red Cross money at Western Union outlets near the Bakersfield center, even though few evacuees were in the area. The Red Cross called law enforcement authorities. Forty-nine people in the Bakersfield area have been indicted in the past three months for filing false claims with the center. More indictments are expected soon, said Stanley A. Boone, an assistant U.S. attorney in Bakersfield. The incident reveals a sometimes chaotic system that the Red Cross cobbled together after the devastating storm get cash to desperate evacuees. Many had fled their homes with only the clothing they wore and what they could carry. Before winding up the program two weeks ago, the Red Cross gave out $1.3 billion to evacuees in more than 1.4 million households. It was the charity's largest cash-assistance program ever -- double the amount of cash it distributed after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, according to financial statements. "We went in knowing that we had a great need, almost an incomprehensible need," said Michael Brackney, manager of the Red Cross's client services program. But charity experts say that in this era, when a highly visible disaster can trigger an outpouring of hundreds of millions of dollars, relief groups are under enormous pressure to disburse the money as quickly as possible or risk the ire of donors. In the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, when the Red Cross was criticized for attempting to use some of the money to prepare for future disasters, donors have little tolerance for diverting funds to other causes, say those who study charitable giving. But that presents challenges to charities that usually are careful to parcel out aid based on need. "Sometimes they have so much money, there is no obvious, easy way to give it out," said C. Eugene Steuerle, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute who conducted studies of the money donated to charities after Sept. 11. In the days after Katrina tore through the Gulf Coast, Red Cross officials realized they faced a gargantuan task. Hundreds of thousands of evacuees fleeing the storm would need money quickly. Some left their homes with no identification, no cash and no access to their local banks. Red Cross workers usually meet individually with victims of disaster -- whether a house fire or a hurricane -- to determine how much money will be needed to get through the first few days. But with more than 1 million evacuees headed to 47 states, Brackney said, "the scope became apparent, and we realized we had to enact nontraditional means for getting assistance to people." Otherwise, Red Cross officials calculated, it might have taken until March to get all the cash to those who needed it. Red Cross officials decided to give aid to those who lived in Zip codes designated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency as the most severely damaged areas. They also set up call centers to field most of the claims -- the first time in its history it had done so. Regardless of the damage suffered or individual needs, payments to evacuees were the same: $360 for a single-person household to a maximum of $1,565 for households with more than four people. To run the call centers, the charity contracted with a North Carolina company, 2XCL, which in turn subcontracted with a Florida staffing company, Spherion Corp., to hire hundreds of temporary workers to handle calls to the Bakersfield center and smaller call centers in Falls Church and Niagara Falls, N.Y. Red Cross also arranged with Western Union to issue cash to evacuees after they had been approved for assistance through the call centers. The call centers, however, soon became overwhelmed. Up to 16,000 calls a day flooded the Bakersfield center, where 450 Spherion employees and Red Cross volunteers were on duty. A Red Cross volunteer from Bowie who worked in the Bakersfield call center said the facility's call agents had to use three or four awkward database systems to determine eligibility. It made it relatively easy to cheat by filing multiple claims, said the woman, who asked that her name not be used because she is an active volunteer. Some evacuees remained on hold as long as eight hours while waiting for an available call center agent. Sometimes they fell asleep. "We would have to get on the phone and yell: 'Hello! Hello! Hello!' " said Jen Elliott of Bowling Green, Ohio, a volunteer who worked in the Bakersfield call center in September. If they were unable to wake up callers, they would have to hang up, she said. The work was stressful, workers said. Some frustrated evacuees who had spent days trying to get through cursed and shouted at the workers. Some Spherion employees, according to criminal complaints filed in the cases, found ways to manipulate the system to their advantage. Information provided by victims -- such as names, addresses and birthdates -- was supposed to be verified by call center agents before evacuees were issued a claim number that they could submit to a Western Union office to receive payment. But word spread through the center, prosecutors said, that the system's security could be circumvented. Some Spherion call center workers started creating files for themselves and for others, obtaining claim numbers and picking up cash at Western Unions, prosecutors said. In one fairly typical case, according to the indictments, three Spherion workers -- 23-year-old Robert Johnson, 19-year-old Aminah Randle and 20-year-old Candice Brown -- allegedly set up false accounts for one another and for several relatives and friends. All have been charged with wire fraud. Johnson's sister, Nashima Johnson, was arrested after she picked up relief funds at a Western Union outlet in a check-cashing store in Bakersfield. The store manager recognized her as a regular who had lived in Bakersfield for several years and called the FBI. Among those indicted, six people have pleaded guilty. Red Cross officials emphasize that no Red Cross workers have been accused in the fraud and that the amount stolen was a tiny fraction of their cash program. They plan to seek restitution. But they say they have learned from the experience. They are testing systems for the next hurricane season that offer more security but also speed up the process for victims. "We knew we ran the risk of putting assistance in the hands of potentially unscrupulous individuals not affected by the hurricanes," Joe Becker, a Red Cross official, told a congressional Ways and Means subcommittee at a hearing this month on the charity response to Katrina. "We concluded that it was a reasonable business risk and mitigated the risks as possible."

Fewer children being given antidepressants By Marilyn Elias USA TODAY 12/27/2005 1:54 AM Use of antidepressants by children continued to drop sharply this year in the wake of warning labels linking the prescription drugs to suicidal behavior, according to market analyses. The decrease signals that doctors and parents are taking a more careful look at benefits and risks of treatments for depression, says child psychiatrist David Fassler of Burlington, Vt. "Not all depressed kids need medication. There are effective therapies, especially for milder forms of depression." The Food and Drug Administration ordered "black boxes," the most severe safety warning, for antidepressants in October 2004, and these stronger labels were on the medicines by March. The FDA said two out of 100 children were more likely to think about or try suicide because they were taking the pills. There has been a 25% drop in pediatric prescriptions for antidepressants since the FDA started issuing safety warnings in 2003, according to a September analysis by Medco Health Solutions, pharmacy-benefit managers. About a 20% overall drop is reported by NDC Health Inc. from March 2004 to June. At a peak in 2002, nearly 11 million antidepressant prescriptions were written for U.S. children, the FDA says. The long-term effect of the drop on children's mental health, if any, is unknown. Teen suicides fell by a third from 1990 to 2002, "and I hope this won't be reversed because parents or doctors are afraid to use the medicine when it's needed," Fassler says. "We'll need to continue monitoring the situation closely over coming months and years," he says. "The most important question is not how many are taking antidepressants, but whether or not kids are getting the most appropriate treatment possible." Comment: What is truly sad about this state of affairs is that no one seems to be asking the questions: Why are so many young Americans apparently so depressed? Why not seek out and address the root causes of the high rates of teenage depression - if they are in fact so high? Why are so many parents so eager to pump their children full of Big Pharma's latest creation?

Christmas thief steals 'Nun Bun' BBC 27/12/2005 A cinnamon bun that bears a striking likeness to late Catholic nun Mother Teresa was stolen from a US coffeehouse on Christmas Day. The owner arrived to find that the famous flaky pastry had vanished from the shop in Nashville, Tennessee. Bob Bernstein said he thought the culprit was angry over the display. The "Nun Bun" has drawn tourists since it was preserved and put in a glass case at the shop, where it was discovered by a customer in 1996. The bun became international news following the find in the folds of its pastry. The Bongo Java coffee shop sold T-shirts, prayer cards and mugs with the bun's image until Mother Teresa wrote a letter asking the sales be stopped, before her death in 1997. Mr Bernstein said the thief "went right for the bun", ignoring cash lying nearby. "Unfortunately I think it's somebody who wanted to take it to destroy it," he said.

Man who died after 9 years in coma unknown 26 Dec 05 UPI NEW YORK -- New York police are trying to identify a crime victim who died after nine years in a coma. Otherwise he will be buried in a potter's field. Police are urging anyone who might know him to come forward, the New York Post said. Known only as Henry, the man was savagely beaten in The Bronx near Yankee Stadium in July 1996. Police ruled his death in October a homicide but have little to go on. They aren't even sure if Henry is his real first name. He was black, 26 years old, 5-foot-7 and 165 pounds. He was wearing a burgundy, blue and green vertical-striped shirt, red pants and beige and white Adidas sneakers.

Holiday retail spending up 8.7 pct: report Reuters Mon Dec 26, 2005 9:23 PM ET10 NEW YORK - U.S. consumers spent 8.7 percent more during the just ended holiday shopping period than in the comparable period a year ago, according to a report from an affiliate of MasterCard Inc., the Wall Street Journal reported in its online edition on Monday. The study, by SpendingPulse, covered the period from the Friday after the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday through December 24, Christmas Eve. That period included 30 days in 2005, compared with 29 days in 2004. The report found the biggest increases in spending on home furnishings, up 15.2 percent, followed by consumer electronics and appliances, up 10.5 percent. Spending on jewelry was down 4.6 percent. The report covers spending in stores and on the Internet, and includes food sales. It excludes spending on autos and gasoline. Comment: So that means there's nothing wrong with the economy, right? Well, no, actually... With shrinking or nonexistent pay increases, high energy costs, and extraordinary personal debt levels, the 8.7% spending increase this holiday season means that Americans spent more money that they didn't have. That may be good news for the credit card companies, but it only weakens the US economy more. Even if we accept that the economy is entirely manipulated and manufactured, history shows us that when countries are in a position such as the one the US finds itself in at present, an economic crash has always followed. When you add in the fact that the Bush gang could really use a nice distraction at the moment, you might suspect that the crash won't be far off now.

Post-Christmas Sales Keep Shoppers Buying By SARAH KARUSH Associated Press December 27, 2005 DEARBORN, Mich. - Shoppers armed with newly obtained gift cards and poorly greeted presents returned to malls and stores in search of returns, post-Christmas discounts and fresh merchandise. The day after Christmas offered merchants another shot at getting consumers to open their wallets, with retailers hoping customers would be lured by sales and come to spend their gift cards, which are recorded as sales only after they are redeemed. According to ShopperTrak RCT Corp., the week after Christmas accounted for 10 percent of holiday sales last year, but analysts expect the post-holiday period could account for as much as 14 percent this year, given the increasing popularity of the cards. At a Best Buy in Okemos, Erik Sellen used a $40 gift card and a bit of his own money to buy three DVDs — "Gotti," "The Usual Suspects," "A Few Good Men" — and a Johnny Cash CD. The 23-year-old Holt resident said the gift card was nice because it let him pick exactly what he wanted. Mary Padgett in the Fairlane Town Center in Dearborn said she was taking advantage of sales to stock up on Christmas decorations and gifts for next year. She said she had been bracing herself for big crowds, but was pleasantly surprised. "It's been nice so far — easy parking," Padgett, 63, said as she browsed a display of Christmas decorations at a JCPenney store, where much of the merchandise was 50 or 60 percent off the regular price. [...]

Millions More May Pay AMT for 2006 AP Mon Dec 26,11:59 AM ET NEW YORK - The alternative minimum tax is becoming even stickier - and could entangle even more taxpayers next year. Congress is expected to recess for the holidays without an agreement on how to limit the effect of the AMT for 2006. While the AMT is expected to affect about 4 million taxpayers for 2005, that number will swell to about 21.6 million for 2006 unless Congress acts to lessen the impact. Congress has said it will do so next year, making it retroactive to Jan. 1, but it's still unclear exactly how that will play out, since other initiatives, like extending cuts on capital gains and dividends, loom in the background. "Congress can address that dilemma, or growing probability of AMT exposure, by passing legislation that retroactively reduces that bite, and it would probably be as simple as maintaining or increasing the exemption amount," says John Nersesian, wealth-management strategist at Nuveen Investments. "The exemption is used to ensure that moderate-income taxpayers do not fall victim to the tax." In the current tax year, married couples filing jointly with income above $58,000 may be subject to AMT, though that figure, or exemption, is dropping to $45,000 next year unless new legislation is passed. The exemption is phased out for those with higher incomes, or $150,000 for married couples filing jointly. The AMT was never intended for the masses: It's a parallel tax system that was installed in the late 1960s to ensure the wealthiest Americans were paying their fair share of taxes by reducing the amount of deductions they can take. However, it was never indexed for inflation and has increasingly trapped more middle-class taxpayers. Indeed, both proposals to revamp the tax code announced last month by the Federal Tax Reform advisery panel recommended eliminating the AMT. To determine AMT tax liability, two calculations are necessary: one under the traditional tax system and another under the AMT system, where various deductions — such as state and local income taxes, property taxes, miscellaneous deductions and personal exemptions and others — are added back. You must pay the greater of the two. Though the AMT rate is either 26 percent or 28 percent — a lower rate than the highest marginal tax bracket of 35 percent — it's applied to a wider base of income, making that tax bill more costly. Also, unlike the traditional tax code, the AMT isn't a progressive tax, but rather a flat tax. Those most likely to be hit are individuals in high-tax states like New York and California with many deductions, such as small-business owners whose companies are structured as passthrough entities (meaning income flows through to the individual returns). [...]

Watch it crash: your health care, your pension, your house or, You better stay healthy and die quick by nyceve Mon Dec 26, 2005 Everything is collapsing. This isn't just bleak conjecture. You can read about the pension and health care catastrophe facing New York City retirees here, on the front page of the NY Times: I'm going to tell you what such news might mean for you and me and our friends and neighbors. A gym acquaintance, Larry who usually occupies the elliptical next to me, is a semi-retired NYC school guidance counselor. He's youngish--probably mid 50s. nyceve's diary :: :: A couple of weeks ago, he was telling me about his blessed life. He was most proud of his decision to buy an inexpensive apartment in Manhattan when one could do so on a teacher's salary. The dramatic appreciation in the value of his apartment has become central to securing his future. He explained that thanks to the real estate bubble, he was a wealthy man. He was amazed, how a civil servant could become rich on a simple real estate acquisition. I listened. Then he told me about his great retirement benefits. He also said his future health care needs were all taken care of courtesy of the time he spent in the New York City school system. I continued listening and started to feel real pangs of envy. I cautioned him not to count on the continued appreciation of his apartment. I also suggested he think of selling it, if he no longer needed to live in Manhattan. No, he told me, he doesn't have that much equity any longer since he took out a home equity loan to buy another little retirement place in upstate New York. I was starting to feel melancholy for Larry. But he maintained that since the apartment would continue to appreciate and since his retirement was secure, what with the guaranteed pension and health care benefits, he felt secure about his future. I laughed and said, "Larry, I hope you're right but the way I see things, nothing is sacred any longer, what makes you think they're not cooking the books, this is Bushworld?" "They can't do that, it's guaranteed." He looked at me like I had taken leave of my senses. If you don't want to go to the link, here are a couple of key paragraphs from the Times: "But the cost of pensions may look paltry next to that of another benefit soon to hit New York and most other states and cities: the health care promised to retired teachers, judges, firefighters, bus drivers and other former employees, which must be figured under a new accounting formula. The city currently provides free health insurance to its retirees, their spouses and dependent children. The state is almost as generous, promising to pay, depending on the date of hire, 90 to 100 percent of the cost for individual retirees, and 82 to 86 percent for retiree families. Those bills - $911 million this year for city retirees and $859 million for state retirees out of a total city and state budget of $156.6 billion - may seem affordable now. But the New York governments, like most other public agencies across the country, have been calculating the costs in a way that sharply understates their price tag over time. Although governments will not have to come up with the cash immediately, failure to find a way to finance the yearly total will eventually hurt their ability to borrow money affordably. When the numbers are added up under new accounting rules scheduled to go into effect at the end of 2006, New York City's annual expense for retiree health care is expected to at least quintuple, experts say, approaching and maybe surpassing $5 billion, for exactly the same benefits the retirees get today. The number will grow because the city must start including the value of all the benefits earned in a given year, even those that will not be paid until future years." So the question remains, what will happen to Larry and perhaps millions of others like him across America? Was I correct--is anything sacred any longer? States and municipalities may not be totally cooking the books, perhaps such accounting sleigh-of-hand, is still considered permissible. The bottom line is: there is no money for millions of Larry's across America. What an unbelievable mess. I was thinking of calling this diary: You better stay healthy and die quick.

Debt meter just keeps running Palm Beach Post Editorial Tuesday, December 27, 2005 In the time it took to type this sentence, the digital numbers on my slick, new, credit-card-size national debt clock rose from $8,165,949,483,500 to $8,165,950,071,500. That long row of numbers, more than $8 trillion, is what the U.S. government owes. To put it more succinctly, that amount is more than $100,000 for every American family of four, or $27,000 for every man, woman and child in America. At the end of 2005, despite all the warnings of recent years, the debt is growing at the rate of $10,500 per second. In the four minutes or so it took to write those paragraphs, the mesmerizing digital figures of my keen new debt clock never stopped, rising to $8,165,951,814,500. That's another $2.33 million. What is Congress doing about it? It congratulated itself last week for cutting the deficit by $40 billion — over five years. It wasn't even cutting, really, since about half the $40 billion is actually new money from higher pension premiums and selling rights to the broadcast spectrum. And shaving $40 billion from the deficit won't reduce the $8 trillion national debt because the $40 billion doesn't come close to balancing even this year's budget, which is still more than $300 billion out of whack. But Congress isn't through. In January, Congress is about to take up $100 billion in tax cuts. So the deficit — and the debt — probably will go up, not down. "Today's successful vote on the Deficit Reduction Act is a victory for the American people, and for future generations," said Senate Budget Committee Chairman Judd Gregg, a Republican from New Hampshire. "Yes, there is more to be done, but it is a step in the right direction. We simply cannot continue on the path to higher deficits, saddling our children and grandchildren with this generation's fiscal obligations. They deserve better than that." If only.

Flashback: U.S. Congress approves $600 million aid for Israel 12/25/2005 The U.S. congress approved Friday the transfer of 600 million dollar in aid to Israel for joint defense projects, in addition to aid Israel already receives from America, Haaretz Daily reported. The aid approved will be used to fund joint security projects between Israel and the U.S, according to media reports. The main component in the package, according to the Jerusalem Post, is the Arrow anti-missile system, a collaborative project between Israel Aircraft Industries and Boeing. Congress provided 133 million dollars for the arrow, 45 million more than what the U.S. government requested for this project, so that the extra money be used to increase the pace of the production of the Arrow components in the U.S, and thus enable Israel complete its anti-missile shield.

Israel strikes Gaza, poised for security zone 27 Dec 2005 AFP Israeli air raids struck buildings and roads in the Gaza Strip with the army poised to implement a security zone in the Palestinian territory intended to thwart militant rocket attacks. Army helicopters fired missiles Tuesday, heavily damaging offices connected to the ruling Fatah movement and roads in the northern part of the territory. The latest air assault came just hours after Israeli Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz ordered the army to begin assembling a security zone in northern Gaza that Palestinians will be barred from entering. Helicopter rockets slammed into the offices of Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas's party at the northern town of Beit Lahiya, causing serious damage but no injuries, Gaza security sources said. The army said the buildings in Beit Lahiya were used by the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed offshoot of Fatah. Helicopters also raided roads and a bridge used to access sites from where rockets are fired, the army added. "These are used by terror organizations to reach the launching grounds from which terrorists fire projectile rockets at Israel," it said. "The objective of targeting these routes is to prevent the passage of terrorists to the rocket launching grounds, and to disrupt the repeated attempts to fire projectile rockets at Israeli targets." Al-Aqsa claimed responsibility for firing rockets into southern Israel on Monday, one of which landed near a nursery school but none of which caused any damage or injuries. Israel had threatened a major retaliation to repeated rocket attacks, three months after withdrawing all Jewish settlers and troops from the Gaza Strip following a 38-year occupation. After months of talk about setting up a "security strip" as a buffer zone to protect Israel against militant attacks, Mofaz late Monday ordered the army to begin implementing the precaution zone in northern Gaza. The decision would put a "limitation" on Palestinians circulating in northern Gaza, a defence ministry source said. Palestinian political and militant leaders have rejected the plan outright. An Israeli military told AFP that said movement on the security zone could come in the "next few days", with talks still underway to determine its size and logistics. "In terms of exactly what this zone or strip will be is still being decided upon" in talks within the army and defence ministry, the source said. "Nothing has changed so far at the ground level. There hasn't been an operational order given to the ground forces to redeploy or change anything." After a security meeting on Thursday, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ordered the army to establish the no-man's land. Any Palestinian straying into the zone could be shot by troops from across the border. Local media had reported that the army were awaiting an improvement in the weather before starting to enforce the area, albeit without reoccupying the territory iwth ground troops. Israeli television said that helicopters would play a key role in enforcing the "sterile" zone, largely to envelop former Jewish settlements. Palestinian prime minister Ahmed Qorei has "categorically rejected" the plans and warned against "the consequences" of the security buffer zone. The main militant groups have been observing a less than watertight truce since the beginning of the year although an upsurge in violence is predicted ahead of Palestinian elections in January. A spokesman for the radical group Islamic Jihad in Gaza has threatened an upsurge in rocket attacks should Israel go ahead with the plans. In further evidence of the heady chaos in Gaza, around 30 Fatah gunmen seized the premises of a local authority building in Beit Lahiya, in a bid to demand jobs in the rebranded Palestinian security services.

Israel to Expand West Bank Settlements By JOSEF FEDERMAN Associated Press Dec 26, 2005 JERUSALEM - Israel said Monday it will build more than 200 new homes in Jewish West Bank settlements — a blow to peace efforts despite word that Ariel Sharon's new party plans a major push for Palestinian statehood if it wins upcoming elections. In a separate sign of accommodation, Israeli officials said they will likely permit east Jerusalem's Palestinians to vote in next month's Palestinian election. Israel had recently threatened to bar east Jerusalem residents from voting. The latest settlement construction, revealed in newspaper ads published Monday seeking bids from contractors, would violate Israel's commitments under the U.S.-backed "road map" peace plan. The plans include a total of 228 homes in the settlements of Beitar Illit and Efrat — both just outside Jerusalem. The road map calls for a freeze on all settlement construction in the West Bank, which the Palestinians claim as part of a future independent state. Since accepting the plan in June 2003, Israel has continued to expand settlements. The Palestinians also have not carried out their road map obligation to disarm militant groups. Raanan Gissin, spokesman for the prime minister, said plans for the latest construction began more than five years ago and would take place in existing communities. He also noted that the construction would be in settlements that Israel plans to retain after a final peace settlement with the Palestinians. "These are the large settlement blocs, they will be strengthened," he said. Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat condemned the expansion and urged the U.S. to intervene. U.S. Embassy spokesmen in Israel were not immediately available for comment. The settlement plans came as Sharon's new political party, Kadima, signaled it is ready to hand over West Bank territory to the Palestinians and work toward an independent Palestinian state after the March 28 elections. Opinion polls forecast a strong victory by Sharon's bloc. Sharon left the hard-line Likud Party last month to form Kadima, saying he would have more freedom to negotiate a peace deal. Many Likud members remain furious with Sharon following his withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in September. A draft of Kadima's election platform published Monday calls for conceding more land to the Palestinians as part of peace talks culminating in a Palestinian state. The talks would be based on the road map, which endorses a Palestinian state but says its borders must be reached through negotiations. "The basic tenet of the peace process is two national states," says the platform. Party spokesman Lior Chorev said the draft, detailed in the Maariv daily, was expected to be approved by next week. With the Gaza withdrawal, Sharon became the first Israeli leader to turn over captured territory to the Palestinians. Since leaving the Likud, the former patron of the settlement movement has made it clear that giving up more land, including parts of the biblical Land of Israel in the West Bank, is necessary to maintain a Jewish majority in Israel. More than 2 million Palestinians live in the West Bank. The Kadima platform, which reflects views Sharon has expressed in the past, says Israel's existence "requires giving up part of the Land of Israel." Still, the platform would fall short of Palestinian claims to all of Gaza, the West Bank and east Jerusalem — territories captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war. The platform rules out any withdrawal from Jerusalem, which Israel claims as its eternal capital. In a separate development, Israeli officials said the government may drop its opposition to allowing Palestinian residents of east Jerusalem vote in next month's Palestinian elections. Israel threatened last week to bar voting in east Jerusalem since the Islamic group Hamas is participating — a warning that infuriated the Palestinians. Control of Jerusalem is one of the central disputes in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. An Israeli official said the government is now considering ways to allow the thousands of Palestinians living in east Jerusalem to vote, without infringing on Israel's sovereignty over the city. The plan would probably allow some Palestinians to vote in post offices or outlying neighborhoods — as they have in the past. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the plan has not been approved yet. Erekat, the Palestinian negotiator, said the Palestinian Authority has not received formal word of the plan.

Fury over Israel's new settlement plans 27/12/2005 The more moderate line promoted by Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon’s new centrist party suffered a big setback when plans for new settlement buildings were revealed. Sharon’s Kadima party had declared Palestinian statehood as a central goal and Israel signalled it would drop a threat to ban Jerusalem’s Palestinians from voting in their parliamentary election. But the news was dampened by an announcement of new Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank, disclosed in newspaper ads published yesterday, seeking bids from contractors. The plans, including 228 homes in the settlements of Beitar Illit and Efrat - both near Jerusalem, appear to violate Israel’s commitments under the US-backed “road map” peace plan. Sharon aide Raanan Gissin said plans for the latest construction began more than five years ago. He said the building would be in settlements that Israel planned to retain after a final peace settlement with the Palestinians. Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat condemned the expansion and urged the US to intervene. US Embassy spokesmen in Israel were not available for comment. The settlement plans came as Kadima signalled it was ready to hand over more West Bank territory to the Palestinians and work towards an independent Palestinian state after the March 28 elections. Opinion polls forecast a strong victory by Sharon’s bloc. Yesterday, doctors disclosed that Sharon, 77, will have to undergo a procedure to close a tiny hole in his heart. They said the defect led to the mild stroke he suffered on December 17. Sharon’s health is becoming an issue in the election campaign. And early today, rumours circulated about the health of Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas after he went to a Ramallah hospital late at night. But Palestinian officials said he went only to visit a Fatah leader who had suffered a stroke. A draft of Kadima’s election platform published yesterday calls for conceding more land to the Palestinians as part of peace talks culminating in a Palestinian state. The talks would be based on the road map, which endorses a Palestinian state but says its borders must be reached through negotiations. “The basic tenet of the peace process is two national states,” says the platform. Party spokesman Lior Chorev said the draft, detailed in the Maariv daily, was to be approved by next week. Israeli officials also said the government may drop its opposition to allowing Palestinian residents of Jerusalem vote in next month’s Palestinian elections. Israel threatened last week to bar voting in east Jerusalem since the Islamic group Hamas is participating – a warning that infuriated the Palestinians and led to threats to cancel the election and blame Israel. Control of Jerusalem is one of the central disputes in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In Ramallah, a Palestinian court cleared the way for the ruling Fatah Party to submit a single list of candidates for the parliamentary election, although registration officially closed on December 14. A poll published yesterday showed Hamas would finish first, ahead of the two Fatah lists – Abbas’ old guard and young leadership. The two squabbling factions had already decided to reunite and the Monday court decision cleared the way for them to enter a combined list.

Palestinian: Settlers uprooted 120 trees Efrat Weiss Police launch investigation into cutting of 120 olive trees in West Bank Palestinian village. Residents claim settlers were behind crime; police say villagers may have caused damage to get compensations The police forensics unit and investigators set out for the West Bank village of Borin Monday, after villagers claimed Jewish settlers cut down 120 olive trees in an orchard belonging to local farmers. Police officials visited Borin in a bid to asses and document the damage caused to the orchard, and to collect testimonies from the residents. According to one of the villagers who witnessed the incident, he spotted a group of settlers residing at an illegal outpost near Elon Moreh, situated near the orchard. The man immediately called his fellow village members, who summoned the police. The people of Borin said this was not the first time settlers had uprooted their olive trees. "Last month they burnt down and destroyed about 50 acres of orchard and more than 300 trees. Earlier they also cut down hundreds of trees," Bassam Shataya of Borin told Ynet. 'IDF capable of arresting offenders' Borin Deputy Mayor Ali Id told Ynet: "I can't believe that over the last five years the police and the IDF failed to apprehend even one suspect, after more than 5,000 trees were uprooted, more than 100 cattle heads were torched and tens of houses were looted." Id estimated that the people responsible for the recent act are members of the neighboring illegal outpost near the Bracha settlement. "Ever since the intifada started, the lives of the villagers became unbearable. I am not just talking about the financial damages, but the mental damage as well… we are talking about more than money here, this is about farmers who have lost their life's work," Id said. Id is convinced that the army is capable of arresting the offenders, but that for some reason or other it refrained from doing so. "I can't explain why the army has not arrested any settler so far. It is either because the army is afraid of confronting the settlers, or because it silently condones their doings," he said. According to Id, none of the village members have been compensated for the damages as of yet. Spreading phenomenon Three cases of vandalism in Palestinian orchards were registered during the last month-and-a-half in the Samaria region, while another two took place in the vicinity of Borin over the past two weeks. In both incidents police claimed trees were not entirely cut off, and that only branches were severed. No suspects have been arrested so far. Police sources explained this was partly because they were met with difficulty in questioning the Palestinians. In most cases, there were no witnesses to the tree-cutting, and some were too terrified to file charges. Regarding the current incident in Borin, police sources said they were looking into all options, but that "there is a possibility the Palestinians caused the damage in order to get compensations from the government." 'An act of terror' Knesset Member Avsahlom Vilan (Meretz) said in response to the Borin affair that Israel should "impose closure on the West Bank until the tree-cutters are apprehended." "This is an act of terror plain and simple. Had it been Arabs who cut down the trees, security forces would have acted a long time ago," he said. Vilan also asked Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz and Internal Security Minister Gideon Ezra to boost operations against the assailants. Yesha Council officials harshly criticized the vandalism, saying that "if Jews did commit these acts, than they acted against human and Jewish values and harmed the settlement project in the West Bank." However, Yesha council sources stressed that until the police establishes who was behind the tree cutting, "it would be wrong to point the finger at an entire sector."

Palestinian leader rushed to hospital From correspondents in Ramallah The Australian December 27, 2005 PALESTINIAN Authority President Mahmud Abbas was urgently admitted to hospital in Ramallah, medical sources said. The sources did not provide any additional information about his health condition or the reason for his hospital admission.

Holocaust Denial in Error, Islamists Say REUTERS December 25, 2005 CAIRO - The Islamist organization that is the largest de facto opposition group in Egypt's Parliament said Saturday that its leader had not meant to say that the Holocaust never happened when he called it a myth this week. The office of Muhammad Mehdi Akef, the supreme guide of the group, the Muslim Brotherhood, said that his initial remark, on Thursday, had been intended to make a point about Western attitudes toward democracy and the Palestinians. In that message, Mr. Akef said, "Western democracy has attacked everyone who does not share the vision of the sons of Zion as far as the myth of the Holocaust is concerned." He cited as evidence of Western intolerance the cases of the French writer Roger Garaudy, who was convicted in France in 1998 of questioning the Holocaust, and the British historian David Irving, who faces similar charges in Austria next month. But on Saturday, his office said: "Some media gave this a meaning which he did not intend, a denial that the Holocaust of the Jews by the Nazis during World War II happened. The fact is that he did not deny that it took place." In elections in November and December, Mr. Akef's group, though outlawed, won 88 of the 454 seats in the Egyptian Parliament.

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