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The Quantum Future Group 2006 Agenda is now available. Our critics say we have an agenda. Now you can have our agenda, too! This leatherbound pocket agenda includes a handy notepad as well as a double-page weekly view of all of the important events you need to remember. Moreover, it's in French, a subtle way to show your disapproval of the Bush Reich. Planning a trip to Europe next summer to scout out a safe haven for the future? An easy-to-use chart includes distances between major European cities. The Quantum Future Group 2006 Agenda will be available for a limited time for any donation of 20.06 euros (US$24.00 approximately). Get in on the agenda! Click here now to support the Quantum Future Group! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! The Quantum Future Group Comment: Supplies are very limited - once they are gone, they are gone!

Sharon: Massive Stroke: Transferred to Intensive Care Unit By STEVE WEIZMAN AP Jan 5,2006 JERUSALEM - Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was in serious condition Thursday after all-night surgery to stop "massive bleeding" from a life-threatening stroke. Doctors said he was transferred to intensive care with stable vital signs. Sharon's official powers were transferred to his deputy, Ehud Olmert, who chaired a special Cabinet session Thursday. A brain scan after surgery showed bleeding in Sharon's brain had been stopped, said Dr. Shlomo Mor-Yosef, the director of Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem. "At this point, all the vital signs are ... stable. The prime minister is still in serious condition," he said. Sharon fell ill at his ranch Wednesday evening and was rushed to the Jerusalem hospital where doctors began emergency surgery about midnight, working for more than seven hours, Mor-Yosef said. Surgery apparently had been complicated by blood thinners he had been given following a mild stroke on Dec. 18, and the medication may also have contributed to Wednesday's stroke. Mor-Yosef did not address Sharon's prognosis, but neurosurgeons not involved in Sharon's treatment said a full recovery was not likely following such a massive stroke. They said it usually takes at least a day after the surgery to determine the extent of any damage. An ambulance brought Sharon to the Jerusalem hospital only hours before the hard-charging, overweight, 77-year-old Israeli leader had been scheduled to undergo a procedure to seal a hole in his heart that contributed to a mild stroke on Dec. 18. Sharon's cerebral hemorrhage, or bleeding stroke, came at a time of upheaval among Palestinian factions in Gaza and in the midst of both Israeli and Palestinian election campaigns. Sharon's absence would slow momentum toward peacemaking with the Palestinians and leave a major vacuum at the head of his new Kadima party, which was expected to head a government after the March 28 vote. Palestinian officials said they were concerned the uncertainty in Israel could overshadow their campaign for Jan. 25 elections. In a written statement, President Bush praised Sharon as "a man of courage and Aides to Sharon said they were working on the assumption he would not return to work. peace," saying he and first lady Laura Bush "share the concerns of the Israeli people ... and we are praying for his recovery." Israeli Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger called on Israelis to read Psalms and pray for Sharon. "We are very, very worried," he said, and prayed for "mercy from Heaven." Pan-Arab satellite television broadcasters beamed out largely straightforward, nonstop live coverage from outside the hospital where Sharon - a particularly despised figure among many Arabs - struggled for his life. A radical Palestinian leader in Damascus, the Syrian capital, called the stroke a gift from God. "We say it frankly that God is great and is able to exact revenge on this butcher. ... We thank God for this gift he presented to us on this new year," Ahmed Jibril, leader of the Syrian-backed faction Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, a small radical group, told The Associated Press. Speaking to reporters outside the hospital, Sharon aide Raanan Gissin warned Israel's enemies: "To anyone who entertains any notion to try and exploit this situation ... the security forces and IDF (Israeli military) are ready for any kind of challenge," he said. But a Palestinian commentator on the Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya network offered Sharon unexpected praise as "the first Israeli leader who stopped claiming Israel had a right to all of the Palestinians' land," a reference to Israel's recent withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. "A live Sharon is better for the Palestinians now, despite all the crimes he has committed against us," said Ghazi al-Saadi. Doctors said chances of recovery were slim, especially because of the length of the surgery. "For them to have to go back in twice, that's not good," said Dr. Emil Popovic, at neurosurgeon at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital in Perth, Australia. "At 77, not too many people make a good recovery from a brain hemorrhage. So, it doesn't look very good for him." Dr. Larry Goldstein, director of Duke University's stroke program, said much depends on the extent, location and duration of the bleeding. "Bleeding in some areas of the brain, if it's caught early enough, you can actually have not a bad outcome," he said. Sharon was put in an ambulance at his ranch in the Negev Desert after complaining about feeling unwell. The stroke happened during the hourlong drive to Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem, Dr. Shmuel Shapira of the hospital told Channel 10 TV. Doctors checking Sharon late last month said he weighed 260 pounds at the time of the first stroke but had since lost more than six pounds and was otherwise in good health. Sharon is about 5-foot-7. The prime minister had been taking blood thinners since the first stroke to prevent another clot, but such drugs also raise the risk of cerebral hemorrhages, which account for only about 10 percent of strokes. Other possible causes are ruptured blood vessels, an aneurysm, or bulge in a vessel wall that bursts, or even chronic high blood pressure. Cabinet Secretary Yisrael Maimon said Sharon's authority was transferred to Olmert. Under Israeli law, he can hold the post for 100 days, then Israel's ceremonial president would meet with political leaders and choose someone to form a coalition government. On Dec. 18, Sharon was taken to Hadassah Hospital from his office after suffering the mild stroke. Doctors said he would not suffer long-term effects, but they discovered a birth defect in his heart that apparently contributed to the stroke. Sharon had been scheduled to check into the same hospital Thursday for a procedure to repair a tiny hole between the upper chambers of his heart. Doctors said the blood clot that briefly lodged in Sharon's brain last month, causing the mild stroke, made its way through the hole and from there to a cranial artery. Sharon first came to prominence as an army officer, setting up a unit that fought Palestinian infiltrators in the 1950s. Advancing through the ranks of the army, he served as commander of the Gaza region after Israel captured the territory in the 1967 war, launching punishing raids. After serving in the 1973 Mideast war, Sharon left the military and entered politics, forging the hardline Likud Party, which came to power in 1977. As defense minister, he directed Israel's ill-fated invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and was forced to step down by an Israeli commission of inquiry, which found him indirectly responsible for a massacre of Palestinians in two refugee camps by Christian Phalangist soldiers. Sharon re-emerged as prime minister in 2001, and two years later he reversed his course of decades of support for Jewish settlement construction and expansion in the West Bank and Gaza, promoting a plan for unilateral withdrawal from Gaza and part of the West Bank. The pullout was completed in September. The withdrawal fractured his Likud party, and he left it to form Kadima with a platform of seeking a compromise for peace with the Palestinians. He was putting together a list of candidates for the parliamentary election when he fell ill Wednesday. In the March 28 election, Sharon had been expected to face off against Benjamim Netanyahu, the former prime minister who recently won the Likud primaries, and Amir Peretz, who recently unseated veteran Israeli politician Shimon Peres as head of the liberal Labor Party. Olmert, who could emerge as Sharon's successor in Kadima, would likely have a far tougher time beating either Netanyahu or Peretz than Sharon would have.

Sharon's Stroke of Luck Barry Chamish 5 January 2006 Item: Sharon is in the midst of a career-ending scandal when he is struck down by a life-threatening blood clot in his brain. Item: A live Sharon will have to face prosecution for the Kern-Schlaff bribes, even in Israel's thoroughly corrupt legal system. A dead Sharon will not have to face prosecution. And that would be just fine for the creme de la creme of the country's political leadership. Item: The prognosis is a living, or real, death. The First Stroke Dec. 19 Prime Minister Sharon shares drinks with Shimon Peres in the Knesset. Within half an hour, Sharon is driven to hospital unconscious. It took him a day before he could even spell his own name. He was brought into the hospital by his bodyguard, Yoram Rubin. As a good chunk of Israel knows today, it was the Peres-Rubin team that murdered Yitzhak Rabin. When Rubin was shown on television news accompanying Sharon's stretcher, suspicions spread throughout the country. For two days, Sharon remained in hospital where he underwent intensive tests. We may ask, how did they miss the blood clot that struck Sharon barely two weeks later? The timing of Sharon's latest stroke is uncanny. It occurred one day after he was implicated in an enormous scandal. Recently, police have revealed the possibility that Kern served as a front man for Martin Schlaff, a known friend of Sharon’s and an Austrian-Jewish businessman heavily invested in Israel, and that he was the man who stood behind the “loan” in order to receive favors from the prime minister in the form of reopening the casino he owns in Jericho. From www.inn.com Jan. 4/05 POLICE : EVIDENCE Police Say There´s Evidence Linking Sharon to $3 Million Bribe CHANNEL TEN REPORTING The police say they know of evidence linking PM Ariel Sharon to the receipt of a $3 million bribe. So reported Channel Ten tonight, causing a storm of reaction and calls for Sharon to resign. CYRIL KERN & MARTIN SLEEP The investigation of the money trail to Sharon has been underway for over three years, and in fact was first publicized before the last national election, in 2003. The case is known as the Cyril Kern affair, named for the South African friend of Sharon who served as a conduit for the money. The source of the cash, however, has long been suspected to be Austrian millionaire and Jericho casino owner Martin Schlaf. The police say the money was used partially to help Sharon pay back campaign contributions that he had received illegally in 1999, and partly for the Sharon family's private use. SCHLAF'S PARENTS LIVING IN ISRAEL Because of the suspicions hanging over him, Schlaf has refrained from visiting Israel of late. His brother James, however, came for a visit two weeks ago - and the police jumped at the opportunity. They raided his parents' home in Israel, and confiscated documents and two laptop computers. However, the police were not permitted to extricate the information on the computers without James' permission - which he refused to give. SCHLAF'S BROTHER JAMES : SUSPICIOUS BEHAVIOUR Schlaf's behavior aroused the suspicion of the police, which turned urgently to the courts and said that the computer files will show that the $3 million was in fact passed as a bribe to Ariel Sharon or his sons. The police therefore say that it is imperative for them to be allowed to enter the computers in order to extricate vital evidence in the Kern-Sharon affair. James Schlaf, aware of the developments, has since given his permission for the police to peruse his computer files. Schlaf's lawyer Atty. Navot Tel-Tzur said there was actually nothing new in the case "except for the fact that there is a laptop computer involved." He expressed anger at the leak. END OF SHARON'S POLITICAL CAREER MK Roman Bronfman (Meretz): "If the police have evidence of Sharon's corruption, he must end his political career." STROKE TWO Dec. 21 - James Schlaff flies to Israel. He is immediately investigated by the police. Jan. 3 - The police investigation is leaked to Channel 10 television reporter Baruch Kra. Jan. 4 - Sharon is in the midst of a career-ending scandal until the late evening when he is struck down by a life-threatening blood clot in his brain. Tonight, in Vienna, some of the heroes of this affair, and of the next one, will meet at the huge bat-mitzvah celebration of Martin Schlaff’s granddaughter. Dov Weisglass, Schlaff’s old friend and lawyer will be there. Haim Ramon, another close friend, will also attend. There will be many others. Some of them from amongst the political, social, and economic elite of Israel. Avigdor Lieberman, for example. No one is embarrassed by it. Some are even proud of it. In another time, another place, one could consider it collusion, coordinating testimonies. After all, Schlaff’s name has recently been tied in to that other affair: “the Cyril Kern affair”. Schlaff, in case you’ve forgotten, is one of the owners of the casino in Jericho. A live Sharon will have to face prosecution for the Kern-Schlaff bribes, even in Israel's thoroughly corrupt legal system. A dead Sharon will not have to face prosecution. And that would be just fine for the creme de la creme of the country's political leadership. The first impression is that Sharon survived the first attempt on his life. In reaction, James Schlaff immediately flew to Israel with evidence to bring the prime minister down in scandal. Somehow, the police were tipped off and immediately confiscated the evidence. Once the investigation was done, the results were leaked to the media. On the day of the second stroke, the scandal spread fast, threatening to engulf many of the country's political elite in deep corruption. By 11 PM, Sharon was bleeding heavily from the throat and his prognosis was a living or real death.

Sharon's departure casts shadow over peace hopes By Matthew Tostevin Reuters Thu Jan 5, 2006 8:05 AM ET LONDON - Setting off earthquakes is what Israel's Ariel Sharon has always done best. His final, dramatic disappearance from politics will be no exception. It will shake Israel's political landscape to its core and its deeper effect may be to destroy his hope of ending decades of conflict with the Palestinians -- if only on his own uncompromising terms. "There is no-one that can unite the country around the hard decisions that need to be made the way that Sharon could," said Israeli political analyst Yossi Klein-Levi. Sharon, 77, "the Bulldozer" who had for long seemed invincible to his people, was fighting for survival on Thursday after a massive stroke and emergency surgery. Whatever the medical prognosis, the prime minister's political life appeared to be at an end. Doubt hung over whether Israel's giant shift toward the political center -- engineered by Sharon just weeks ago after completing a Gaza pullout -- could survive even until March elections that he had looked certain to win. Sharon's new centrist party Kadima not only lacks any other leader with his record or ability to forge a new political force, it does not even have a list of election candidates. That may have existed nowhere but in Sharon's head. "Sharon is Kadima and Kadima is Sharon," wrote Nadav Eyal of the mass-market Maariv newspaper. Ehud Olmert, the deputy who has assumed Sharon's prime ministerial powers, is a career politician who cannot command the same trust in Israel as the former soldier. Other potential successors, Justice Minister Tzipi Livni and Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, lack solid political bases.

Bush at Risk of Losing Closest Mideast Ally By Glenn Kessler Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, January 5, 2006; Page A12 The cerebral hemorrhage suffered by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon yesterday threatens to deprive the Bush administration of its closest working partner in the Middle East, casting doubt on President Bush's pledge to help create a Palestinian state before the end of his term. Much of the administration's policy in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, such as its decision in 2002 to refuse to deal with then-Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, has been influenced by Sharon, who first won election shortly after Bush took office in 2001. Sharon also persuaded Bush to back his plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip, winning from the president a written pledge that appeared to acknowledge that Israel could keep large settlements on the West Bank and refuse the resettlement of Palestinians in any eventual peace deal. Bush's agreement with Sharon initially caused a fierce backlash in the Arab world. But Sharon followed through with his plan, which ruptured his Likud Party and allowed some Arab states to make tentative diplomatic overtures to Israel. Sharon formed a new centrist party to push though his vision of "separation" from the Palestinians and, before yesterday's stroke, was leading in the polls for the March elections. In a statement last night, Bush lauded Sharon as "a man of courage and peace," and said he and first lady Laura Bush "are praying for his recovery." Yet, though Sharon and Bush have met nearly a dozen times, U.S. and Israeli officials say the relationship has generally been very proper and not especially warm. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is so politically sensitive, both domestically and internationally, that the two men have carefully plotted their formal meetings. Sharon, in particular, has wanted the focus to remain on political issues even when Bush tried to establish a closer personal bond. Bush first met Sharon in late 1998, when he was still Texas governor and trying to burnish his international credentials with a trip to Israel. Sharon gave Bush a helicopter tour over the Israeli-occupied territories, designed to demonstrate Israel's vulnerability to attack and the security provided by Israeli settlements on strategic hilltops. The helicopter trip made a definite impression on Bush, who mentioned it at his first National Security Council meeting, according to Edward S. Walker Jr., who attended the meeting as a senior U.S. official and who is now president of the Middle East Institute. A close working relationship with the U.S. president was considered critical to Sharon's success at home. Two previous Likud prime ministers fell from power after they clashed with a U.S. president. So Sharon has carefully maneuvered U.S. policy toward his goals -- while at the same time professing adherence to stated U.S. goals even if he viewed them with distaste. Thus, Sharon grudgingly accepted the U.S.-backed peace plan known as the "road map," but let it become moribund while he crafted his ideas to withdraw from Gaza. The departure from Gaza ultimately became the center of U.S. peacemaking efforts. Bush frequently reiterates his goal of creating a Palestinian state. But Sharon's goal appears to be something less than that -- Palestinian areas bordered by a fence and crisscrossed by roads and tunnels to well-protected Israeli settlements. Yet Sharon's Gaza plan raised Bush's opinion of the Israeli leader. Bush tended to view Sharon for much of his first term as a good person with little or no vision, but that assessment changed, U.S. and Israeli officials say, when Sharon presented Bush with his plan to vacate Gaza. Bush's statement last night referring to Sharon as a man of peace echoed an unscripted comment by the president in 2002 in which he publicly called the Israeli leader a "man of peace" during an especially tough crackdown on the Palestinians. Arab leaders at the time reacted with outrage at Bush's comment. During a meeting months later, when the Israeli leader -- who tends to speak in platitudes in formal sessions -- began to say that he was a "man of peace and security," Bush interrupted Sharon. "I know you are a man of security," Bush said, according to a witness to the conversation. "I want you to work harder on the peace part." Then, using colloquial language that first seemed to baffle Sharon, Bush jabbed: "I said you were a man of peace. I want you to know I took immense crap for that."

'Rocket barrage if Sharon dies' By Aaron Klein WorldNetDaily.com Posted: January 4, 2006 JERUSALEM – Palestinian groups in the Gaza Strip are watching the news regarding Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's deteriorating health carefully and will celebrate with Qassam rocket firings at Jewish towns if Sharon dies, terror leaders told WorldNetDaily. One militant leader threatened the life of Sharon's temporary replacement, Deputy Minister Ehud Olmert, who was installed as prime minister just hours ago. "I am ready with my candies and my rockets and praying to Allah that Sharon dies. We have prepared a celebratory barrage of rockets ready to fire into Israel on the occasion of the death of our enemy," said Abu Abir, spokesman for the Popular Resistance Committees, an umbrella group of Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists responsible for firing hundreds of Qassam rockets and mortars at Jewish towns. Hamas leader Dr. Mahmoud al-Zahar told WND Sharon's condition "plunges the Israeli political scene into chaos, which could bring about an equal response from the Palestinians." Sharon tonight was rushed to the hospital and suffered a "significant stroke" that caused "massive bleeding to the brain," according to officials at Jerusalem's Hadassah University Hospital, which is treating the Israeli leader. Sharon is undergoing emergency surgery after being anesthetized and placed on a breathing machine, one of Sharon's attending physicians told reporters. Executive powers have been officially transferred to Olmert. According to Knesset law, Olmert can serve for a maximum 100 days, after which new elections would be held. Sources close to Sharon told WND the prime minister's condition is life threatening, and that there was a significant chance he might not survive. "We are not hopeful," said a senior Sharon aide. One senior political leader said he has information Sharon is "clinically dead. He is on life support machines in the operating theater that can keep him alive for an extended period, but doctors are pessimistic he can return to normal functioning." [...]

Ancient Village Discovery Raises Questions By SARA TOTH Associated Press Wed Jan 4, 8:26 PM ET JERUSALEM - Discovery of an ancient village just outside Jerusalem has brought into question one of the strongest images of biblical times — the wholesale flight of Jews running for their lives after the Roman destruction of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem in 70 A.D. Just beneath the main road leading north from Jerusalem, archaeologists have found the walls of houses in a well-planned community that existed after the temple's destruction. It might lead to rewriting the history books if it was really Jewish. But at least one expert isn't sure it was. The discovery of stone vessels indicate Jews in the village continued to live by religious purity laws after 70 A.D., said Debbie Sklar-Parnes, of the Israel Antiquities Authority, who is overseeing the dig. This is the first evidence that Jews lived so close to Jerusalem — about a mile away — after the destruction of the Second Temple, Sklar-Parnes said. Archaeologists used pottery and coins found at the site to estimate that people lived there from around 70 to 132 A.D., when the Romans crushed a second Jewish revolt. About 30 Palestinian workers for the Israel Antiquities Authority — some of them sent to dig here by the government instead of collecting unemployment — uncovered and brushed dust off 2,000-year-old glass jewelry, bronze coins and stone vases in the hole carved out in the middle of the road as cars whizzed by. "We were surprised to find such a massive settlement," Sklar-Parnes said. She estimated the village covered between three and four acres. She said it is impossible to tell if the settlement was built before or after the destruction of the temple, though life continued there after 70 A.D. But Hebrew University historian Lee Levine questioned whether the village was actually Jewish. "The evidence is a little mixed," Levine said. The presence of wine amphorae from Italy and the absence of ritual baths cast some doubt on the Jewishness of the village, he said. During the years of the settlement, most historians believe observant Jews no longer used wine made by non-Jews, Levine said. And assuming the settlement existed before the destruction of the temple, it is unusual there were no ritual baths, which were tied directly to temple rituals, he said. But he noted they might still be found. Only a fraction of the settlement has been excavated, Sklar-Parnes said. It is a widely held belief that Jews fled north from the Jerusalem area in 70 A.D. because Romans persecuted them and confiscated their property, Levine said. There are tales of Jews being led away in chains and sacked treasures from the temple on display in Rome, where the Arch of Titus, built to celebrate the triumph, still stands. But it is "perfectly reasonable" that Jews continued to live around Jerusalem after the temple's destruction, said Daniel Schwartz, also a historian at Hebrew University. The Jews just would have had to pay higher taxes and do road work, farming or other labor for the Romans, he said. It is possible they operated two public bath houses for Roman soldiers that were found at the site, he said. Sklar-Parnes, Schwartz and Levine said the settlement appeared to have been abandoned around 132, in the time of the second Jewish uprising against the Romans, called the Bar Kokhba Revolt. That time frame provided strong evidence it was a Jewish settlement, they said. It is likely that the villagers fled upon hearing of an impending Roman attack, Levine said. "The Romans were pretty heavy-handed in putting down the second revolt," Levine said. From the jewelry, small stone vessels and other items found in the site, it appears the inhabitants fled in a hurry, Sklar-Parnes said. The stone vessels left behind provide the best evidence the settlement was Jewish, Sklar-Parnes said. Jews used stone vessels because they didn't absorb liquids, allowing different materials to be stored while satisfying religious purity laws, she and Schwartz said. It also appears that the settlement was not inhabited by anyone else after its original residents left, something rather unusual, Sklar-Parnes said. The excavations began in 2003 ahead of the construction of a light rail line, because Israeli law requires archaeological exploration before any building project, said Itsho Gur, spokesman for the Moriah Co., which is building the train route. According to historical records, the settlement was on the main Roman road between Jerusalem and Nazareth. Later, the Turks built a road in the same place and Jordan constructed a road on top of that early in the 20th century. Finally, Israel paved it after its capture of east Jerusalem in the 1967 war.

Some 120 killed in one of Iraq's bloodiest days By Sami Jumaili and Ammar Alwani Reuters January 5, 2005 KERBALA/RAMADI, Iraq - Two suicide bombers killed 120 people and wounded more than 200 in the Iraqi cities of Kerbala and Ramadi on Thursday in Iraq's bloodiest day for four months. Seven U.S. soldiers were also blown up in two separate attacks; another three bombs exploded in Baghdad, two of them detonated by suicide bombers; and insurgents sabotaged an oil pipeline near the northern city of Kirkuk, causing a huge fire. Coming a day after 58 people died in a wave of bombings and shootings, the latest bloodshed appeared certain to ratchet up tension between Iraq's Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims. Kerbala is one of Shi'ite Islam's holiest cities while Ramadi is a Sunni Arab stronghold and a hotbed of the insurgency. The violence shattered hopes the country might start 2006 on a more peaceful footing, allowing for a swift reduction in U.S. troop levels. The U.S. death toll was the highest since the December 15 election. Violence has killed more than 240 people and wounded more than 280 in the five days since the New Year started, a death toll comparable with some of the nation's bloodiest weeks since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003. "These groups of dark terror will not succeed through these cowardly acts in dissuading Iraqis in their bid to form a government of national unity," President Jalal Talabani said. BLOOD AND DEBRIS The Kerbala bomber detonated an explosive belt laced with ballbearings and a grenade, killing 50 and wounding 138 at a market within sight of the golden dome of the Imam Hussein shrine, one of the holiest sites in Shi'ite Islam. Television pictures showed pools of blood in the street, which was littered with debris. Passers-by loaded the wounded into the backs of cars and vans, and one black-clad woman stood crying while clutching her dead or wounded baby to her chest. "The bomb was caused by a suicide bomber wearing an explosive belt, walking among people," said Lieutenant-Colonel Razak al-Taee of the Iraqi police. "Explosives experts found wires, ballbearings and a grenade used in the explosion," he told al-Iraqiya state television. On Wednesday, a car bomb wounded three people in the first attack of its kind in Kerbala since December 2004. In March 2004 coordinated suicide bombings during an annual religious festival in the city killed more than 90 people. Around an hour after the blast, another bomber blew himself up near a group of police and army recruits in the western city of Ramadi, killing 70 and wounding 65, hospital sources said. The U.S. military said the blast ripped through a line of around 1,000 recruits as they waited to be security-screened at a glass and ceramics works which had been turned into a temporary recruiting center. After the debris and body parts had been cleared away, hundreds of Iraqis returned to the queue, they said. Insurgents have often attacked Iraqi police and army recruits, who the Americans hope will eventually replace them in the fight against the largely Sunni Arab insurgency, allowing U.S. troops to withdraw. Many young Iraqi men are drawn to work in the security forces by the promise of relatively high pay, although thousands of them have been massacred. SEVEN AMERICAN DEATHS At least seven U.S. soldiers were killed in Thursday's attacks, Iraqi police and the U.S. military said, taking the total number of U.S. fatalities since the start of the war to oust Saddam Hussein to 2,189, according to figures compiled by Reuters. Five died in Baghdad when a roadside bomb hit their vehicle and two were killed near the southern city of Najaf when a similar device destroyed their Humvee, killing two civilians and wounding seven, including three U.S. soldiers. Devices also exploded in Baghdad, although with less impact. Three car bombs, two of them suicide attacks, rocked the capital in quick succession, suggesting a level of coordination that may be a response by Sunni Arab insurgents to the largely peaceful parliamentary election. The bombs killed two people and wounded six, police and Interior Ministry sources said. The Kerbala and Ramadi bombings were the bloodiest attacks in Iraq since September 14 when a suicide bomber killed 114 in a Shi'ite district of Baghdad, among around 150 killed in total. Mistrust between Iraq's majority Shi'ite and minority Sunni Arab communities has been heightened by the results of last month's elections, which some Sunni and secular leaders say were rigged to favor the Shi'ites. After a series of bilateral meetings in Kurdistan, political leaders have agreed to meet in Baghdad soon to push their plan for a national unity government able to stem the bloodshed that has become part of daily life for millions of Iraqis since the U.S.-led invasion of 2003.

Dozens reported killed in Mecca hotel collapse The Independent 05 January 2006 A hotel at the gates to Mecca's Islamic shrines in Saudi Arabia collapsed today as millions of Muslims gathered in their holiest city for the annual hajj pilgrimage. Pan-Arab satellite television broadcasters reported dozens were killed or injured. The television reports said the Louloat al-Kheir, while security officials said the Al-Ghaza Hotel had collapsed. The tragedy occurred early afternoon local time. Millions of Muslim faithful are flooding into Mecca for the annual hajj pilgrimage that climaxes on Monday with the Eid al-Adha, a four-day feast. Islam's five pillars demand that followers profess there is one God and Mohammed is His prophet, pray five times daily, give alms, fast daily during the holy month of Ramadan and - if financially able - travel to Mecca at least once in their lifetime. The number of pilgrims to Mecca has increased eleven-fold over the past 15 years. During that time, the Saudi government spent billions of dollars to improve accommodation, transportation and medical facilities for the "guests of Allah." The massive gathering has been hit with tragedies frequently in recent years. The worst hajj-related tragedy occurred in 1990 when 1,426 pilgrims were killed in a stampede in an overcrowded pedestrian tunnel leading to holy sites in Mecca. In 2004, on the final day of the ceremonies, 251 people were trampled to death when the crowd panicked during the ritual stoning of the devil. Three years earlier, 35 hajj pilgrims were killed in stampede the same ceremony. In 1998, about 180 pilgrims were trampled to death when panic erupted after several of them fell off an overpass during the ritual. Four years earlier, in 1994, some 270 pilgrims killed in a stampede during the stoning ritual.

Ruler of Dubai, Sheik Maktoum, dies while on visit to Australia 20:47:03 EST Jan 4, 2006 LARA SUKHTIAN DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) - The emir of Dubai, Sheik Maktoum bin Rashid Al Maktoum, died Wednesday. He was 62. Sheik Maktoum, who was also vice-president and prime minister of the United Arab Emirates, died during a visit to Australia, the government said. Police in Australia said he died a resort on the Gold Coast in Queensland state. The body was expected to be flown home later Wednesday. Dubai declared 40 days of mourning. Prime Minister Paul Martin released a statement expressing "great sadness" at the news of Sheik Maktoum's death. "During the 15-year reign of Sheik Maktoum, the UAE experienced a remarkable period of increased prosperity and development. We have seen Dubai transformed into a world-class trade, transportation and tourism centre," Martin said. "Canada views the UAE as an important regional partner." Born in the family home in the Shindagha area of Dubai, Sheik Maktoum was educated at a British university and succeeded his father as ruler of the emirate in October 1990. His foremost interest was horseracing, and he and his younger brother, the crown prince Sheik Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, worked to put Dubai on the racing map. The annual Dubai World Cup is billed as the world's richest horse race. Sheik Maktoum often represented the country abroad during the years when the former president, Sheik Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, was ailing. But he tended to leave day-to-day government of Dubai to his younger brother, who will succeed him. "The United Arab Emirates today lost a historical leader who devoted his life to establishing the United Arab Emirates and enhancing its structure and the welfare of its people," the government said.

George Bush insists that Iran must not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons. So why, six years ago, did the CIA give the Iranians blueprints to build a bomb? The Guardian Thursday January 5, 2006 She had probably done this a dozen times before. Modern digital technology had made clandestine communications with overseas agents seem routine. Back in the cold war, contacting a secret agent in Moscow or Beijing was a dangerous, labour-intensive process that could take days or even weeks. But by 2004, it was possible to send high-speed, encrypted messages directly and instantaneously from CIA headquarters to agents in the field who were equipped with small, covert personal communications devices. So the officer at CIA headquarters assigned to handle communications with the agency's spies in Iran probably didn't think twice when she began her latest download. With a few simple commands, she sent a secret data flow to one of the Iranian agents in the CIA's spy network. Just as she had done so many times before. Article continues But this time, the ease and speed of the technology betrayed her. The CIA officer had made a disastrous mistake. She had sent information to one Iranian agent that exposed an entire spy network; the data could be used to identify virtually every spy the CIA had inside Iran. Mistake piled on mistake. As the CIA later learned, the Iranian who received the download was a double agent. [...] But it's worse than that. Deep in the bowels of the CIA, someone must be nervously, but very privately, wondering: "Whatever happened to those nuclear blueprints we gave to the Iranians?" The story dates back to the Clinton administration and February 2000, when one frightened Russian scientist walked Vienna's winter streets. The Russian had good reason to be afraid. He was walking around Vienna with blueprints for a nuclear bomb. To be precise, he was carrying technical designs for a TBA 480 high-voltage block, otherwise known as a "firing set", for a Russian-designed nuclear weapon. He held in his hands the knowledge needed to create a perfect implosion that could trigger a nuclear chain reaction inside a small spherical core. It was one of the greatest engineering secrets in the world, providing the solution to one of a handful of problems that separated nuclear powers such as the United States and Russia from rogue countries such as Iran that were desperate to join the nuclear club but had so far fallen short. The Russian, who had defected to the US years earlier, still couldn't believe the orders he had received from CIA headquarters. The CIA had given him the nuclear blueprints and then sent him to Vienna to sell them - or simply give them - to the Iranian representatives to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). With the Russian doing its bidding, the CIA appeared to be about to help Iran leapfrog one of the last remaining engineering hurdles blocking its path to a nuclear weapon. The dangerous irony was not lost on the Russian - the IAEA was an international organisation created to restrict the spread of nuclear technology. The Russian was a nuclear engineer in the pay of the CIA, which had arranged for him to become an American citizen and funded him to the tune of $5,000 a month. It seemed like easy money, with few strings attached. Until now. The CIA was placing him on the front line of a plan that seemed to be completely at odds with the interests of the US, and it had taken a lot of persuading by his CIA case officer to convince him to go through with what appeared to be a rogue operation. The case officer worked hard to convince him - even though he had doubts about the plan as well. As he was sweet-talking the Russian into flying to Vienna, the case officer wondered whether he was involved in an illegal covert action. Should he expect to be hauled before a congressional committee and grilled because he was the officer who helped give nuclear blueprints to Iran? The code name for this operation was Merlin; to the officer, that seemed like a wry tip-off that nothing about this programme was what it appeared to be. He did his best to hide his concerns from his Russian agent. The Russian's assignment from the CIA was to pose as an unemployed and greedy scientist who was willing to sell his soul - and the secrets of the atomic bomb - to the highest bidder. By hook or by crook, the CIA told him, he was to get the nuclear blueprints to the Iranians. They would quickly recognise their value and rush them back to their superiors in Tehran. The plan had been laid out for the defector during a CIA-financed trip to San Francisco, where he had meetings with CIA officers and nuclear experts mixed in with leisurely wine-tasting trips to Sonoma County. In a luxurious San Francisco hotel room, a senior CIA official involved in the operation talked the Russian through the details of the plan. He brought in experts from one of the national laboratories to go over the blueprints that he was supposed to give the Iranians. The senior CIA officer could see that the Russian was nervous, and so he tried to downplay the significance of what they were asking him to do. He said the CIA was mounting the operation simply to find out where the Iranians were with their nuclear programme. This was just an intelligence-gathering effort, the CIA officer said, not an illegal attempt to give Iran the bomb. He suggested that the Iranians already had the technology he was going to hand over to them. It was all a game. Nothing too serious. On paper, Merlin was supposed to stunt the development of Tehran's nuclear programme by sending Iran's weapons experts down the wrong technical path. The CIA believed that once the Iranians had the blueprints and studied them, they would believe the designs were usable and so would start to build an atom bomb based on the flawed designs. But Tehran would get a big surprise when its scientists tried to explode their new bomb. Instead of a mushroom cloud, the Iranian scientists would witness a disappointing fizzle. The Iranian nuclear programme would suffer a humiliating setback, and Tehran's goal of becoming a nuclear power would have been delayed by several years. In the meantime, the CIA, by watching Iran's reaction to the blueprints, would have gained a wealth of information about the status of Iran's weapons programme, which has been shrouded in secrecy. Comment: Yeah, or the "flawed plans" might give the Iranians that one little piece of information they were missing to make the bomb work. Furthermore, we're not talking about a bunch of trained monkeys here; we're talking about highly intelligent Iranian scientists and engineers whose job is to solve problems and find - and fix - exactly the kinds of flaws introduced by the CIA into the nuclear blueprints. Either the CIA is totally incompetent, or the idea all along was to give Iran the boost it needed to finish the bomb so that they would become a definite threat that had to be neutralized. The Russian studied the blueprints the CIA had given him. Within minutes of being handed the designs, he had identified a flaw. "This isn't right," he told the CIA officers gathered around the hotel room. "There is something wrong." His comments prompted stony looks, but no straight answers from the CIA men. No one in the meeting seemed surprised by the Russian's assertion that the blueprints didn't look quite right, but no one wanted to enlighten him further on the matter, either. In fact, the CIA case officer who was the Russian's personal handler had been stunned by his statement. During a break, he took the senior CIA officer aside. "He wasn't supposed to know that," the CIA case officer told his superior. "He wasn't supposed to find a flaw." "Don't worry," the senior CIA officer calmly replied. "It doesn't matter." The CIA case officer couldn't believe the senior CIA officer's answer, but he managed to keep his fears from the Russian, and continued to train him for his mission. After their trip to San Francisco, the case officer handed the Russian a sealed envelope with the nuclear blueprints inside. He was told not to open the envelope under any circumstances. He was to follow the CIA's instructions to find the Iranians and give them the envelope with the documents inside. Keep it simple, and get out of Vienna safe and alive, the Russian was told. But the defector had his own ideas about how he might play that game. The CIA had discovered that a high-ranking Iranian official would be travelling to Vienna and visiting the Iranian mission to the IAEA, and so the agency decided to send the Russian to Vienna at the same time. It was hoped that he could make contact with either the Iranian representative to the IAEA or the visitor from Tehran. In Vienna, however, the Russian unsealed the envelope with the nuclear blueprints and included a personal letter of his own to the Iranians. No matter what the CIA told him, he was going to hedge his bets. There was obviously something wrong with the blueprints - so he decided to mention that fact to the Iranians in his letter. They would certainly find flaws for themselves, and if he didn't tell them first, they would never want to deal with him again. The Russian was thus warning the Iranians as carefully as he could that there was a flaw somewhere in the nuclear blueprints, and he could help them find it. At the same time, he was still going through with the CIA's operation in the only way he thought would work. The Russian soon found 19 Heinstrasse, a five-storey office and apartment building with a flat, pale green and beige facade in a quiet, slightly down-at-heel neighbourhood in Vienna's north end. Amid the list of Austrian tenants, there was one simple line: "PM/Iran." The Iranians clearly didn't want publicity. An Austrian postman helped him. As the Russian stood by, the postman opened the building door and dropped off the mail. The Russian followed suit; he realised that he could leave his package without actually having to talk to anyone. He slipped through the front door, and hurriedly shoved his envelope through the inner-door slot at the Iranian office. The Russian fled the mission without being seen. He was deeply relieved that he had made the hand-off without having to come face to face with a real live Iranian. He flew back to the US without being detected by either Austrian security or, more importantly, Iranian intelligence. Just days after the Russian dropped off his package at the Iranian mission, the National Security Agency reported that an Iranian official in Vienna abruptly changed his schedule, making airline reservations to fly home to Iran. The odds were that the nuclear blueprints were now in Tehran. The Russian scientist's fears about the operation seemed well founded. He was the front man for what may have been one of the most reckless operations in the modern history of the CIA, one that may have helped put nuclear weapons in the hands of a charter member of what President George W Bush has called the "axis of evil". Comment: Read that last paragraph again... Operation Merlin has been one of the most closely guarded secrets in the Clinton and Bush administrations. It's not clear who originally came up with the idea, but the plan was first approved by Clinton. After the Russian scientist's fateful trip to Vienna, however, the Merlin operation was endorsed by the Bush administration, possibly with an eye toward repeating it against North Korea or other dangerous states. Several former CIA officials say that the theory behind Merlin - handing over tainted weapon designs to confound one of America's adversaries - is a trick that has been used many times in past operations, stretching back to the cold war. But in previous cases, such Trojan horse operations involved conventional weapons; none of the former officials had ever heard of the CIA attempting to conduct this kind of high-risk operation with designs for a nuclear bomb. The former officials also said these kind of programmes must be closely monitored by senior CIA managers in order to control the flow of information to the adversary. If mishandled, they could easily help an enemy accelerate its weapons development. That may be what happened with Merlin. Iran has spent nearly 20 years trying to develop nuclear weapons, and in the process has created a strong base of sophisticated scientists knowledgeable enough to spot flaws in nuclear blueprints. Tehran also obtained nuclear blueprints from the network of Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, and so already had workable blueprints against which to compare the designs obtained from the CIA. Nuclear experts say that they would thus be able to extract valuable information from the blueprints while ignoring the flaws. "If [the flaw] is bad enough," warned a nuclear weapons expert with the IAEA, "they will find it quite quickly. That would be my fear"

Iran fails to show up at nuclear meeting: IAEA Reuters Thu Jan 5, 2006 9:32 AM ET VIENNA - An Iranian delegation expected in Vienna to explain to the International Atomic Energy Agency Iran's decision to resume nuclear fuel research did not show up for a meeting on Thursday, the IAEA said. The meeting was called off after the delegation did not appear, said IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming. The IAEA does not know why the Iranian delegation missed the appointment, and no new meeting has been scheduled, she said.

NSA whistleblower asks to testify By Bill Gertz THE WASHINGTON TIMES January 5, 2006 A former National Security Agency official wants to tell Congress about electronic intelligence programs that he asserts were carried out illegally by the NSA and the Defense Intelligence Agency. Russ Tice, a whistleblower who was dismissed from the NSA last year, stated in letters to the House and Senate intelligence committees that he is prepared to testify about highly classified Special Access Programs, or SAPs, that were improperly carried out by both the NSA and the DIA. "I intend to report to Congress probable unlawful and unconstitutional acts conducted while I was an intelligence officer with the National Security Agency and with the Defense Intelligence Agency," Mr. Tice stated in the Dec. 16 letters, copies of which were obtained by The Washington Times. The letters were sent the same day that the New York Times revealed that the NSA was engaged in a clandestine eavesdropping program that bypassed the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court. The FISA court issues orders for targeted electronic and other surveillance by the government. President Bush said Sunday that the NSA spying is "a necessary program" aimed at finding international terrorists by tracking phone numbers linked to al Qaeda. Mr. Bush said during a visit to Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio that al Qaeda is "making phone calls, [and] it makes sense to find out why." Critics of the eavesdropping program, which gathered and sifted through large amounts of telephone and e-mail to search for clues to terrorists' communications, say the activities might have been illegal because they were carried out without obtaining a FISA court order. The Justice Department has said the program is legal under presidential powers authorized by Congress in 2001. Mr. Tice said yesterday that he was not part of the intercept program. In his Dec. 16 letter, Mr. Tice wrote that his testimony would be given under the provisions of the 1998 Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act, which makes it legal for intelligence officials to disclose wrongdoing without being punished. The activities involved the NSA director, the NSA deputies chief of staff for air and space operations and the secretary of defense, he stated. "These ... acts were conducted via very highly sensitive intelligence programs and operations known as Special Access Programs," Mr. Tice said. The letters were sent to Sen. Pat Roberts, Kansas Republican, and Rep. Peter Hoekstra, Michigan Republican. Mr. Roberts is chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and Mr. Hoekstra is chairman of the House counterpart. Spokesmen for the NSA and the Senate intelligence committee declined to comment. Spokesmen for the House intelligence committee and the DIA said they were aware of Mr. Tice's letters, but had not seen formal copies of them.

Arianna Huffington: Debunking Bush's NSA Lies: A Handy Pocket Guide Arianna Huffington Thu Jan 5, 1:10 AM ET President Bush and his minions keep offering up "new and improved" (though already disproved) defenses for the NSA domestic spying operation. David Sirota offers a terrific breakdown of the shifts from "it was legal" to "we needed to act faster" to "the paperwork was too hard." Now we have a new White House strategy: straight-up lying. (Here's what Holden had to say about it). Of course, GOP loyalists have been quick to follow the administration's lead. In fact, over the holidays I ran into many prominent Republicans who dutifully mouthed the administration's talking points. So, in case you, like me, run into Republicans in the course of your life -- or even if you only run into them on TV -- and feel the need for a quick response to set the record straight, here is a handy pocket guide. Lie #1: Trying to prove that he wasn't acting unilaterally and without oversight, the president has taken to claiming that the spy program was "constantly reviewed by Justice Department officials" -- making it sound to all the world that the initiative had received the law enforcement community's seal of approval. Nothing could be further from the truth. As the New York Times has reported, there was widespread concern about the legality of the program at the Justice department, with a number of high-ranking officials raising objections to it, including deputy attorney general James Comey, who refused to sign off on its continuation. Comey's refusal prompted Andy Card and Alberto Gonzales (in his role as White House counsel) to go to the bedside of then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, who was hospitalized for gallbladder surgery. But even Ashcroft had his doubts about the constitutionality of the program -- which tells you all you need to know about how dicey it really was. Their concerns led the White House to add some restrictions to the program -- but these restrictions weren't actually very restrictive since they still allowed the NSA to listen in on whatever calls it wanted without having to get the specific approval of Justice Department officials. So when Bush and company try to sell the idea that Justice was part of the no-warrant team, don't buy it. The program may have been "constantly reviewed" but it wasn't "approved." Lie # 2: Lie #2 is a companion to Lie #1's implication that everybody was on board with the spy program. It's the president's insistence that it was "reviewed by members of the United States Congress" and that it's "a program to which the Congress has been briefed." Again, it sounds like the legislative branch was consulted and signed off on what the White House was doing. Again, not true. Here are the facts: a very, very limited number of Senators and House members were briefed on the program -- with 14 of 535 senators and representatives receiving briefings over the last four years. What's more, those receiving these highly classified briefings were strictly prohibited from speaking about what they heard -- which kind of puts a crimp in one's ability to mount any opposition to the program. Former intelligence committee counsel Suzanne Spaulding offers chapter and verse on this "Congress has been briefed" smokescreen. And getting briefed is a far, far, far cry from exerting oversight -- or even offering an opinion. As Tom Daschle puts it, "We were told we were being informed and not consulted." Indeed, as Media Matters points out: "Of the seven Democratic lawmakers known to have been briefed by the program, three objected at the time and three more say they weren't given adequate information about the program." Jay Rockefeller put his objections into a letter to Dick Cheney, saying the program raised "profound oversight issues." Nancy Pelosi also put her concerns in writing. Bob Graham says his briefing left out any mention that the NSA would be listening in on calls of U.S. citizens. Even Jane Harman, the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, and a supporter of the program, told me over the weekend that she wants to introduce legislation to curb its excesses. So much for the idea that Congress actually had a hand in this. Lie #3: Bush has repeatedly attempted to underplay the reach of the spy operation. "This is a limited program," he claimed recently, "designed to prevent attacks on the United States of America. And I repeat, limited. And it's limited to calls from outside the United States to calls within the United States." Hogwash. First of all, it's not true that the program was "limited to calls from outside the U.S." Even the White House admits that the NSA listened in on calls initiated in the U.S. too. Second, I don't know about you, but the fact that the NSA has eavesdropped on thousands of people doesn't strike me as "limited." And how does that stat jibe with the president's claim that the warrantless wiretaps were "limited" to "known numbers of al Qaeda members or affiliates"? Are there really thousands of known al Qaeda members or affiliates in the U.S.? Plus, the program allowed the NSA to tap into our telecommunication system's main arteries, creating what the New York Times termed "a large data-mining operation." I guess it all depends on what your definition of "limited" is. And of "reviewed." And of "briefed." And of "lying through your teeth."

Abramoff Lobbying Scandal: Big Timber Falls Hard Hastert on tainted money: Okay, okay, I'll give it back by James Ridgeway Village Voice January 4th, 2006 10:11 AM WASHINGTON, D.C. -- With leaders of both parties compromised in the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal, questions now center around Republican Dennis Hastert, speaker of the House, who yesterday shed himself of tainted campaign contributions totaling $70,000. He gave the money to an unspecified charity. In November of last year, the Washington Post described a fundraiser, held by Hastert, at one of Abramoff's restaurants. The party yielded Hastert $21,500 for his political action committee. While several lawmakers who received money from the fundraiser had already returned it, only yesterday did Hastert come forward. "The speaker believes that while these contributions were legal, it is appropriate to donate the money to charity," a spokesman for the Illinois Republican, Ron Bonjean, said. Hastert, often viewed as a weak Speaker and little more than a frontpiece for indicted majority leader Tom Delay, recently was linked to another potential political campaign scandal. Vanity Fair last fall ran an article in which Sibel Edmonds, the former FBI translator blocked by a government gag order from telling what she knows about the FBI operations around the time of 9-11, describes how, in her days as an FBI interpreter, she ran across wiretaps of Turkish officials discussing campaign contributions to various politicians, including Hastert. "Some of the calls reportedly contained what sounded like references to large-scale drug shipments and other crimes," wrote Vanity Fair. "To a person who knew nothing about their context, the details were confusing and it wasn't always clear what might be significant. One name, however, apparently stood out--a man the Turkish callers often referred to by the nickname 'Denny boy.' It was the Republican congressman from Illinois and Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert. According to some of the wiretaps, the F.B.I.'s targets had arranged for tens of thousands of dollars to be paid to Hastert's campaign funds in small checks. Under Federal Election Commission rules, donations of less than $200 are not required to be itemized in public filings." The magazine went on to point out that there had been a large amounts of money--some $483,000 from 1996 through December 2002--in non-itemized contributions to Hastert's re-election committee. Edmonds said the phone recordings made repeated references to Hastert's role in first supporting, then unexpectedly opposing, a House resolution declaring the killing of Armenians in Turkey as genocide. Hastert claimed he withdrew the resolution after then President Clinton said it would hurt U.S. interests in Turkey. There is no evidence Hastert himself knew anything about this, and his spokesman denied any connection to Turkish lobbyists or groups. He also denied any wrongdoing.

Chris Matthews Tied to Jack Abramoff, Credibility in Tatters by Anthony Wade http://www.opednews.com January 5, 2006 I have certainly written about Chris Matthews and his propensity for toeing the Republican Party line as well as using his show for a platform to excuse the abuses of the Bush administration and the GOP controlled Congress. It was just last month when Matthews exclaimed that “everyone likes this president except the real whack-jobs on the left.” Recently, Matthews has used his show to play softball with anyone willing to minimize the impending Jack Abramoff corruption scandal or try and turn it into a bipartisan event. Now it seems we know why. Daily Kos is reporting today that Mr. Matthews has ties to Mr. Abramoff and the details of those ties presents ethical problems for someone pretending to be a journalist. Jack Abramoff is the former super-lobbyist who bilked millions upon millions of dollars from his clients, bribed numerous republican congressmen, and even paid to have things inserted into the congressional record from those he did “business” with. Amongst the slime of Mr. Abramoff, he also ran a faux charity called the “Capital Athletic Foundation”, which allegedly was designed to provide sports related programs for youth. Instead, Jack used the charity as a front to funnel money in and out of to provide perks to the Congressmen he was bribing and doing business with. The reality is that less than ONE percent of the revenue of the Capital Athletic Foundation (CAF) actually went to sports related programs for youth. CAF was actually used to fund the overseas trips for Tom Delay and others we are starting to hear so much about. According to sourcewatch.com, the following is a breakdown of some of the dealings of CAF: • In 2001, CAF received $1 million from the Coushatta and $177,415 from Foxcom. • The Coushatta apparently believed that the donation was for a sky box from which Abramoff would lobby Members of Congress during Redskins games. • In 2002, CAF collected $2.56 million from 9 donors including 3 tribes. • In 2003, CAF collected $2.15 million from tribes, Michael Scanlon and an internet casino client of Abramoff’s. $2.13 million of the money went to the Eshkol Academy, a school started [in 2001] by Abramoff. • In a February 2003 email, Abramoff told Scanlon to make sure that his share of money went to Eshkol directly – 'using school as conduit for some of our activities . .. If that won’t fly with them, use CAF.' • CAF also paid $120,000 in August 2002 for Abramoff, Robert W. Ney, Ralph E. Reed, Jr., and then-General Services Administration Chief of Staff David Safavian "to St. Andrews to play golf with a stop in London on way back. Ney later claimed that the trip’s purpose was to raise money for a foundation, but there were no fundraising events during the course of the trip." So we have a sleazy lobbyist in bed with a lot of sleazy politicians, all of which are from the GOP. They use a fake charity to provide themselves with junkets around the world such as golfing at St. Andrews in Scotland. This is where Chris Matthews comes in. On March 5, 2003, Matthews helped put on a charity event for the purpose of raising $300,000 for the Capital Athletic Foundation. According to sourcewatch.com: “Fox News Channel's Tony Snow is master of ceremonies, and Fox's Brit Hume and MSNBC's Chris Matthews are aboard. Opera great Placido Domingo is an event committee member. But, this being Washington, the event will be mostly populated by powerful lawmakers, including Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas; Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa.; and Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif.” As Daily Kos correctly points out, there are two problems with Matthews’ involvement. The first is what in the world is Chris Matthews doing cavorting with Jack Abramoff and helping him generate money into his fake charity? The second problem and more unseemly, is what is Matthews doing at such a blatantly partisan event? A man who plays the role of impartial journalist is now exposed as being a darling of the Republican Party? Certainly no one would be surprised at Tony Snow’s involvement, since he works for Fox News, but Chris Matthews? Yes folks, Chris Matthews. If you have watched his show for the past week you have seen him attack Abramoff as a sleaze, but then use every other moment to minimize this scandal. He has tried to make it seem that this is just politics as usual and has gone out of his way to leave the impression with his viewers that Abramoff was an equal opportunity sleaze to both parties. The fact is that Abramoff was a republican, dealt primarily with republicans, and this scandal is not just politics as usual. It goes to the heart of what is wrong with our system when lobbyists have more control over our elected officials than the people they claim to represent. Corporate lobbying is one of the largest problems eating away at our democracy. Another cancer withering our democracy away is the consolidation of media which has resulted in the bludgeoning of the truth. The truth is massaged, packaged and sold to America. People like Chris Matthews has an incredibly powerful pulpit from which to influence public opinion and any appearance of impropriety or conflict of interest should be taken very seriously. For the past week we have seen Matthews try and pooh-pooh the Abramoff scandal and minimize it down to a politics as usual, bi-partisan event. Nonsense. This is potentially larger than Abscam and the cockroaches are starting to scatter, handing back their tainted money to charity as fast as they can and pretending they never knew Abramoff. People who are supposed to be impartial in the news business build their reputation upon their ethics. Without a neutral ethical base they have no credibility. That is why no one takes Fox News seriously. We all know they are bought and sold for the Republican Party. What a lot of America is not aware of though, is that so are a lot of other would-be-truth-tellers, such as Matthews. When Matthews tells America that everyone loves this president, we now must wonder who paid him for that opinion. When we see him minimizing the Abramoff scandal, we now know it is because he is in the middle of it. He is no longer a journalist; he merely plays one on TV.

A U.S. view: So this is how democracy dies Keith Gottschalk December 27, 2005 Sorry to interrupt what has been a very entertaining election season in Canada this holiday period, but I regret to inform you that your neighbour's house is on fire. As reported by Ron Hutcheson of the Knight Ridder new service on Tuesday: A defiant President Bush said he didn't need explicit permission from Congress or the courts to establish a secret domestic surveillance program to eavesdrop on suspected terrorists. “We've got to be fast on our feet, quick to detect and prevent,” said Bush. “Do I have the legal authority to do so? The answer is, absolutely.” What this means, I'm afraid, is that a dictatorship is being born on your southern border. Backing Bush up is his lapdog hireling, Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez who cites Article II of the Constitution as one rationale for Bush's power grab: Article II of the Constitution declares “The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States.” The other rationale Bush claims Congress gave him authorizing the use of military force after the 9/11 attacks which authorized the President “to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorist attacks ... ” Respected Constitutional scholar and George Washington University Professor Jonathan Turley disagrees strenuously with any assertion Bush acted legally. On the O'Reilly Factor, Turley said the following: “I think that this operation was based upon a federal crime. Under federal law, there's only two ways in order for the President to engage in the surveillance of citizens in this way. They can get a Title 3 warrant, which is the traditional electronic surveillance warrant in criminal cases, or they can get a so-called FISA [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] warrant from the secret court. But it is a crime for someone, acting under the color of law, to order surveillance — or to conduct surveillance — unless you've gone to a judge under one of those two schemes.” All right then, what we have is an impeachable offense, yes? Well, yes, but in the new American governmental paradigm, there's apparently little stomach in the Republican controlled Congress to do what must be done, according to Hutcheson's story. Apparently the best we'll get is an assertion by Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Senator Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) that there will be hearings held sometime early next year. This from the man who formulated the “magic bullet” theory to explain the unexplainable in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Pardon me if allowing Specter to talk to death what is essentially treason by the President to the Constitution of the United States does not strike me as necessary action. You may not realize it since it's not been reported in the mainstream press but only Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Ca.) and Congressman John Lewis (D-Ga.) have called for impeachment inquiries. Over on the right wing blogs, they're celebrating the death of American democracy and the rise of a new fascism, which many in this country have always wanted, truth be told. Like Bush they are angrier at the leak of the secret wiretaps than by the fact that, paraphrasing Benjamin Franklin, they've just lost their republic. Further, Bush said: “My personal opinion is, it was a shameful act for someone to disclose this very important program in a time of war. The fact that we're discussing this program is helping the enemy.” and: “I think I've got the authority to move forward,” he said, adding: “It's legal to make the decisions I'm making ... An open debate about law would say to the enemy, 'Here's what we're going to do.'” So let me get this straight. The President of the United States decides its okay to wiretap Americans within the United States without a warrant or any other oversight because of a “war” he created, attacking a country that did nothing to harm the United States and now claims he has Constitutional authority to commit a Federal crime? And still a third of Americans see nothing wrong with this because they've been brainwashed into believing that if the President isn't given the powers of a dictator the mullahs will be marching down Main Street? And after committing what most reputable Constitutional scholars see as a slam dunk Federal crime and an impeachable offense, only two Democrats have the guts to ask for impeachment inquiries even after the President has all but admitted his crime and dared the public to do anything about it, tarring those who uncovered this crime as treasonous (pot, kettle, black)? This is the land of the free and the home of the brave? This is a country under the rule of law, not of men? This is the “democracy” we're killing people to spread around the world? Are we serious? Bush is serious — about being the new American Caesar. Check this out from the Knight-Ridder article: Bush bristled when a reporter asked whether a decades-long war against terrorism might lead to “a more or less permanent expansion of the unchecked power of the executive in American society?” “First of all, I disagree with your assertion of 'unchecked power,'” Bush snapped. “To say 'unchecked power' basically is ascribing some kind of dictatorial position to the president, which I strongly reject.” My follow up question to Bush, if allowed to ask, would have been: “Then, Mr. President, could you delineate any particular action under what you see as your given authority during the duration of this war, that you would need any prior approval for by Congress or the courts?” And watch him fume. For the truth behind whatever answer he might give is that he believes there is no check on his authority. All he has to do for any action he wishes to take is invoke 9/11, claim we're at “war” (which will last however long he wishes it to), claim the Constitution gives him the power as Commander-in-Chief in a time of war, and he can rule by decree. And too many Americans think this is fine. So this is how democracy dies. Daniel Webster once wrote: “Hold on, my friends, to the Constitution and to the Republic for which it stands. Miracles do not cluster, and what has happened once in 6000 years, may not happen again. Hold on to the Constitution, for if the American Constitution should fail, there will be anarchy throughout the world.”

Court allows terror suspect Padilla's transfer By James Vicini Reuters 5 January 2006 WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way on Wednesday for the Bush administration to transfer "enemy combatant" Jose Padilla from U.S. military custody to federal authorities in Florida to face criminal charges. The order reversed a ruling by a U.S. appeals court in Richmond, Virginia, that had rejected the Justice Department's request to approve Padilla's transfer while his appeal of his military detention remained pending before the Supreme Court. The high court's action does not resolve the key question in the case on whether President George W. Bush in the war on terrorism has the power to order American citizens captured in this country held in military jails as an enemy combatant. Solicitor General Paul Clement of the Justice Department last month asked for approval to transfer Padilla so he can stand trial on charges of being part of a support cell providing money and recruits for militants overseas. The request was filed with Chief Justice John Roberts and he referred the matter to the full court, which approved the transfer. A Justice Department spokesman said he did not know when Padilla's transfer would take place. Padilla was indicted in November in Florida for conspiracy to murder and aiding terrorists abroad but the charges make no reference to accusations made by U.S. officials after his arrest in May 2002 that he plotted with al Qaeda to set off a radioactive "dirty bomb" in the United States. The indictment also makes no reference to later accusations by U.S. officials that Padilla plotted with al Qaeda leaders to blow up U.S. apartment buildings by using natural gas. In a stinging rebuke for the administration, the appeals court had said the government's decision to bring criminal charges against Padilla after he had been held by the U.S. military for more than three years gave the impression the government was trying to avoid high court review of the case. The government brought the criminal case against Padilla after his lawyers appealed to the Supreme Court over a ruling by the same appeals court in September that Bush had the power to detain Padilla in military custody as an enemy combatant. The Supreme Court said in its order on Wednesday that it will consider Padilla's appeal challenging his military detention "in due course." The case is scheduled to be considered by the court at the end of next week. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has said the enemy combatant issue before the Supreme Court should be moot since Padilla has now been charged in civilian court. Padilla's lawyers argued that the court still should decide the issue. They argued that Bush does not have the power to seize American citizens on U.S. soil and subject them to indefinite military detention without criminal charge or trial. (Additional reporting by Deborah Charles)

US may move some Guantanamo inmates to Afghanistan: report Reuters Thu Jan 5, 2006 3:05 AM ET LONDON - The United States wants to develop a high-security prison in Afghanistan to hold terrorism suspects, including some transferred from the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, the Financial Times said on Thursday. The U.S. government has chosen the site of a former Soviet-era prison near the capital, Kabul, to house the prisoners, the British newspaper reported. Some of the jail's facilities have already been refurbished as part of a European Union-financed criminal justice reform scheme backed by the United Nations, the paper said. It was intended to be used for people convicted of drugs offences, the paper said. The newspaper said the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Afghanistan issued a public notice last month for the renovation and construction of a cell block at the complex. The notice said the project would accommodate "detainees presently in sub-standard and/or overcrowded facilities". The prison was notorious for the torture and execution of Islamists by former Communist-backed regimes in the 1980s. Western diplomats say the United Nations and the European Union have been resisting Washington's proposals to set up the prison to hold Afghan suspects, the FT said. No explanation was given. The United States has faced criticism at home and abroad for treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo and for holding prisoners indefinitely. Only nine of about 500 prisoners being held at the base have been charged, and the United States has been holding prisoners there since January 2002. After the September 11 attacks on the United States, the naval base was used to house prisoners captured mainly in Afghanistan.

U.S. nabs man with 'suicide bomber' in journal Reuters Wed Jan 4, 8:06 PM ET SAN FRANCISCO - An airline passenger with the words "suicide bomber" written in his journal was arrested when his plane arrived in San Jose, California, on Wednesday, but the words appeared to refer to music and he was later released, officials said. "A male was observed by his fellow passengers as having a journal and handwritten on the journal were the words 'suicide bomber,'" FBI spokeswoman LaRae Quy said. "That, combined with the fact that he was clutching a backpack, and then finally he was acting a little suspiciously" prompted law enforcement to act. Authorities boarded the plane and detained the man on the Frontier Airlines plane on charges of being under the influence of drugs or alcohol. But the words "suicide bomber" in his journal appeared related to music, the FBI spokeswoman said. "Preliminary, what we believe is that that was the name of either a band or a song," Quy said. San Jose police later released the 36-year-old San Jose area man and did not charge him with any crime, a police spokeswoman said.

'Marlboro Marine': Home Front Woes CBS News NEW YORK, Jan. 3, 2006 In November 2004, a photo of a U.S. Marine made the front page of newspapers across the country. The picture is still one of the best-known images of the war. But the man himself has moved on, and is having trouble adjusting to civilian life. Lance Cpl. Blake Miller of Jonancy, Ky., came to be known as the "Marlboro Marine" when his picture was splashed across the nation. The attention didn't get him any special privileges, and he served his entire combat tour before he and his unit were ordered home. The Early Show co-anchor Harry Smith was there in February when Miller got to hug his mother upon his return. At the time, Miller told Smith, "I lost a few of some of my dearest friends. People don't understand how you can be so close to someone that you've only known for such a short time but, when you spend a year-and-a-half with someone, you know some things about them their own family doesn't even know about. People say that the Marine Corps is a brotherhood, and you truly do not realize that until you actually need your brothers, and that's when they're there." But, like many of his comrades, Miller wasn't able to completely put his time in Iraq behind him. While on duty during the Hurricane Katrina relief effort, Miller suffered from symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and was granted an honorable discharge from the Marines in November. Miller's life is also different in another way. In June, he married his longtime love, Jessica. On The Early Show Tuesday, Miller told Smith, "For the most part, I mean, it was a big adjustment (when I got home) just trying to get in that mindset of being able to just roam, run around without fear of being shot at or where to look for danger. … It's unexplainable. I mean, just to go from that mindset to being able to walk around freely and just enjoy it." Miller said the trouble that arose during his Katrina duties happened on the USS Iwo Jima when a sailor mimicked the whistle of a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG). "For anybody to duplicate that sound," Miller told Smith, "they've had to hear it. Without even knowing what I'd done until after it was over, I snatched him up, I slammed him against the bulkhead, the wall, and took him to the floor, and I was on top of him." Miller went into therapy, but wasn't told right away that he had PTSD. "At first, they thought maybe it was the pressure of being on the ship," he said. "The more doctors I talked to, the more they came to the conclusion that (PTSD) is what it is. … I'm continuing my therapy; continued up until the day I got out (of the service), actually." And Miller knows he's not alone. "A lot of guys have had way worse incidents from being in Iraq," he said. "And I guess it just — it troubled me due to the fact that their incidents may have been more severe, and they weren't suffering from the same things I was. I just didn't understand how it could affect me so dramatically and not affect some of these guys. But a lot of them deal with different ways. "The more and more I talk to (other guys), the more I found out there were a lot of Marines that are going through same or similar emotions. It's tough to deal with. Being in Iraq is something no one wants to talk about."

Intelligent Design Gains Momentum, Raises Eyebrows on Campuses By Sarah Price Brown Religion News Service When Hannah Maxson started an intelligent design club at Cornell University last fall, a handful of science majors showed up for the first meeting. Today, the high-profile club boasts more than 80 members. Until recently, the nationwide debate over whether intelligent design should be taught alongside evolution was centered primarily in public elementary and high-school science classes. In Dover, Pa., for example, parents won a legal fight against a school board decision to teach intelligent design in biology classes. A new school board formally ditched the intelligent design curriculum Tuesday (Jan. 3). Now the discussion is spilling over onto university campuses. At nearly 30 public and private universities across the country, students have started clubs aimed at promoting intelligent design. The clubs, sponsored by the Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness Center (IDEA), a small, nonprofit organization based in San Diego, have been gaining members and visibility. Proponents of intelligent design say the theory, which says the universe is so complex that it must have been created by a higher being, is a scientific one. Opponents -- including most of the nation's scientific establishment -- put their weight behind Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, and dismiss intelligent design as a religious idea based on the biblical creation story in Genesis. When Cornell's interim president, Hunter R. Rawlings III, denounced intelligent design as "a religious belief masquerading as a secular idea" in a speech in October, Maxson, a 21-year-old junior and president of the Ithaca, N.Y., school's IDEA club, responded with a press release. Rawlings' comments were a "gross misstatement," she said, and "an insult to people of faith throughout America." Suddenly, Maxson, a self-described "bookish" chemistry and math major, found herself and her club in the spotlight. "Before, we were just basically a science club," she said. "Now, we have to defend our ideas everywhere." During one recent week, she was scheduled to speak about intelligent design at a campus discussion, make a presentation to a biology class and give an interview on local radio. Intelligent design clubs at other universities have also been gaining momentum and attention. The first IDEA club meeting at George Mason University, a public school in Fairfax, Va., drew 20 people. At the group's most recent meeting, where a scientist guest speaker offered his criticisms of intelligent design, 90 people attended. So did CBS News, said Salvador Cordova, a 42-year-old engineer and George Mason alumnus who founded the club last year. Josh Norton, a 22-year-old math major who is president of the University of California at San Diego's club, said his group was meeting every week in order to plan an all-day conference on intelligent design for the spring. Casey Luskin, 27, founded the first IDEA club in 1999, at the University of California at San Diego. Luskin, then a college junior, had become interested in intelligent design after taking a biology seminar that taught about the theory. When Luskin graduated with a master's degree in earth sciences in 2001, he founded the IDEA Center to help other students start their own clubs. If a high-school or university student contacts the IDEA Center about starting an intelligent design club, the center will provide a curriculum with suggested discussion topics, books, videos and a bibliography of sources. Recently the center helped start clubs at the University of California at Berkeley and Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif. A few high schools, including one as far away as Kenya, have also started IDEA chapters. The organization is "very grass-roots," Luskin said. Its seven staff members volunteer part-time. They operate on a budget of a few thousand dollars, which comes from individual donations, he said. The group's advisory board includes Michael Behe and William Dembski, fellows at the Discovery Institute in Seattle, a think tank that is the driving force behind the intelligent design movement. Luskin himself recently started working at the institute as a program officer concerned with public policy and legal affairs. Still, he stressed that the IDEA Center remains independent and receives no funding from the institute. But Victor Hutchison, professor emeritus of zoology at the University of Oklahoma, who attended some IDEA club meetings on his campus, said he could not separate the clubs from the broader intelligent design movement, spearheaded by the Discovery Institute. "I find that they are espousing exactly the talking points of the creationist Discovery Institute," said Hutchison, who described himself as "an evolutionist" and "a person of faith." The way Hutchison sees it, the clubs fit into what he calls Discovery's larger plan "to attack evolution and replace it with their religious viewpoint of creationism," or the biblical story of creation, and eventually "establish a theocracy." The IDEA Center says intelligent design is a scientific concept, not a religious one. But students came to the meetings with their Bibles, Hutchison said. The IDEA Center also requires its club presidents to be Christian. Luskin explained that as a Christian group, "we wanted to be totally open about who we thought the designer was." But, he added, "this belief about the identity of the designer is our religious belief; it's not a part of ID theory." Hutchison nevertheless sees the requirement as a contradiction. "It just proves they are lying when they say it's not religious-based," he said. For Hutchison, the campus IDEA club could be a land mine. Recently a faculty member tried to "sneak in a course on intelligent design" by e-mailing IDEA club members to generate support, Hutchison said. After opposition from other faculty, the teacher backed down, he said. Glenn Branch, deputy director for the National Center for Science Education, an Oakland, Calif.-based group dedicated to keeping evolution in public school classrooms, downplayed the significance of the IDEA clubs. "I'm not sure that they really have been springing up in such a major way," Branch said. "Certainly, if you compare them to number of (college) juggling clubs that there are, there must be many more juggling clubs." Still, IDEA clubs are making waves. At Cornell, Maxson holds her weekly meetings and continually raises the subject of intelligent design with friends over dinner, even if she feels that the university environment is "hostile" to her ideas. "Sometimes," she admits, in a quiet, hesitant voice, "you sort of wonder, `What have we gotten ourselves into?"'

Calif. parents of home alone kids arrested www.chinaview.cn 2006-01-05 14:38:11 Beijing, Jan. 5 (Xinhuanet)-- A married couple in California of the United States were arrested on Tuesday for leaving their 5 and 10-year-old sons home alone, police said. Jacob Calero, 39, and Michelle De La Vega, 32 left their 10-year-old son Joshua home to care for his 5-year-brother, Jason, who is autistic when they celebrated the new year in Las Vegas for five days-- but got a dog-sitter for their puppies -- local police said. The children spent one night alone before police found them. Police found the children alone Saturday evening after receiving a phone call from their concerned maternal grandmother, Liberata Holden. The children are now in Holden's custody. "They should have known better than to leave us alone," 10-year-old Joshua Calero was quoted as saying by The Chronicle on Wednesday from his grandmother's house in Manteca. "They knew it was against the law." The couple were taken into custody as they arrived at Oakland International Airport at 11 a.m. and jailed in Contra Costa County, police said. Police said they believe the couple had left the boys home alone on previous occasions. The police asked the older boy how many times they'd been left alone, and he said "too many times to count." The couple had requested lawyers and declined to speak with police, authorities said.

Again! Woman 'has sex with boy, 12' WorldNetDaily.com Posted: January 5, 2006 A California woman is the latest teacher suspected of raping a student, as 41-year old Sherry Brians is in custody for allegedly having a sexual relationship with a 12-year old boy. Brians, a third-year language-arts instructor at Buttonwillow School in Buttonwillow, Calif., was arrested yesterday and charged with committing a lewd or lascivious act with a child under the age of 14, a felony. Kern County Sheriffs Sgt. Richard Wood said Brians, who is unmarried and had no previous disciplinary problems, was involved in "some type of romantic relationship" with the victim, and the alleged offense took place on school property. Authorities began their probe just before Christmas when the boy's mother provided them a letter she found in her son's backpack. Wood said the note from Brians indicated there was a romantic relationship between the teacher and the boy. "We're just in shock and disbelief," principal James Murphy told the Bakersfield Californian. "This is a heavy (situation) ... It's stunning. (The allegations) came out of the blue." Murphy stressed the teacher was innocent until proven guilty, but added, "It's very important for our Board of Trustees and teachers that the public know that students are safe and in an orderly environment." Some students at the middle school are coming to Brians' defense. Steve Carranza, 13, is an eighth-grader who had Brians as a homeroom teacher last year. He said that although Brians hugged her students routinely and had a swimming pool party last year at her house, she was always professional. "I doubt Ms. Brians would do (a lewd act with a student)," Steve told the paper. "She's the nicest teacher there." Local area residents are already blogging about the issue: - "No more slut teachers in public schools. If it we're my son, they'd be burying that 'woman.' First the apple in Eden. Now molesting innocents. Hang her." (Dallas) - "She was really the best teacher we had and might possibly ever have. When, not if, she is proven innocent, me and my friend will be the first ones to see her." (Alan Lopez, former student of Brians) Brians was booked on a $100,000 bail, and is slated for a court appearance tomorrow morning at Kern County Superior Court. She is joins a long list of women who have been accused or convicted of having illegal sexual activity with children. Among the most well-known is the case of Debra Lafave, a 26-year-old reading teacher in Florida accused of having sex with a 14-year-old boy in her classroom, car and at home. Her plea deal sparing her jail time and giving her just house arrest was thrown out last week and her trial is now slated for April 10. Other cases collected by WND from news reports include: Adrianne Hockett: Accused of having sex with a 16-year-old special-needs student in a Houston apartment she rented for the get-togethers. The boy has testified the pair would "have sex, drink beer and smoke weed." Amber Jennings, 31: Initially charged with having sex with a 16-year-old, the counts against the Sturbridge, Mass., woman were reduced to a single charge of disseminating harmful materials to a minor. She reportedly admitted e-mailing naked photos of herself to a former student. Amber Marshall, 23: Northwest Indiana woman allegedly had sexual contact, including intercourse, with several students, and turned herself into authorities, telling police she knew what she did was illegal. Amira Sa'Si, 30: Clayton County, Ga., woman remarked she didn't think her relationship was inappropriate based on her Internet research, learning the Peach State's age of consent is 16. Amy Gail Lilley, 36: Inverness, Fla., woman charged with an alleged relationship with a 15-year-old girl. Angela Stellwag, 24: Delran, N.J., woman accused of having sex in her apartment with a 14-year-old boy she met in school. Beth Raymond, 31: Private-school employee from Pownal, Maine, charged with risk of injury to a minor and second-degree sexual assault of a juvenile male. Bethany Sherrill, 24: Daughter-in-law of school-board president is charged with molesting a middle school student when he was 14. Carol Flannigan, 50: Boca Raton, Fla., music teacher reportedly slept with 11-year-old former student, and also had a simultaneous sexual relationship with the boy's father. Celeste Emerick, 32: Police in Huber Heights, Ohio, say she hosted a party where students were shown porn. Christina Gallagher, 26: Jersey City, N.J., woman ordered to pay more than $1,000 in fines, sentenced to a lifetime registration as a convicted sex offender and ordered to attend therapy for having sex with a 17-year-old student. Deanna Bobo, 37: Arkansas teacher allegedly had sex twice with a 14-year-old boy in his own bed while his parents were not home. Donna Carr Galloway, 33: Married mother of two found naked in a car with a 17-year-old student. Elisa Kawasaki, 25: Officials say ex-biology teacher had sexual relations with a 16-year-old student on up to 20 different occasions. Elizabeth Miklosovic, 36: Grand Rapids, Mich., woman pleaded no contest to sexually assaulting a 14-year-old female student she "married" in a pagan ritual. Elizabeth Stow, 26: Woman from Fresno, Calif., area convicted of having sex with three of her students was sentenced to nine years, but the judge suspended that sentence and gave her one year, possibly on house arrest, as well as faces five years probation. Ellen Garfield, 43: Former student says teacher took him into an empty classroom where she worked, partially disrobed, and coaxed him into having sex with her in 1998. Garfield was acquitted of all charges in September of this year. Emily Morris, 28: Alabama woman faced a possible 20-year sentence, but received one year in jail for having consensual sex with a 15-year-old student. Erica Rutters, 29: York, Pa., woman allegedly wrote erotic messages to a 17-year-old student and had sexual intercourse with him four times in her apartment. Georgianne Harrell, 24: Sylvester, Ga., woman charged with performing oral sex on a 9-year-old boy, allowing students to gaze down her blouse and slashing her wrists with glass in front of her students. She pleaded not guilty. Gwen Ann Cardozo, 33: Colorado woman charged with having sex with a 17-year-old male student. Heather Ingram, 30: Mathematics, science and business teacher in British Columbia had sex with a 17-year-old student. Janelle Marie Bird, 24: Accused of having a two-year affair with a 15-year-old student from East Hill Christian School, in Pensacola, Fla. Jaymee Wallace, 28: Basketball coach in Tampa, Fla., charged with having an 18-month lesbian relationship with a student. Joan Marie Sladky, 28: Redwood City, Calif., woman sentenced to six months in county jail for having sex with a 16-year-old student after pleading no contest to four counts of unlawful sexual intercourse, oral copulation and penetration with a foreign object. Katherine Tew, 30: Married English teacher from Greenville, N.C., arrested for having sex with a 17-year-old student. Kathy White, 39: Charged with having sex with a 17-year-old student in Lumberton, Texas. Victim alleges: "She just started grabbing me and hormones were on and it just happened." Kelly Lynn Dalecki, 28: Woman from St. Augustine, Fla., pleaded no contest to charges she had sex with a 13-year-old boy. Kristen Margrif, 27: Michigan woman accused of having sex with a 16-year-old male student in her car or at his summer workplace. Kristi Dance Oakes, 32: Former Tennessee high-school teacher allegedly had sex with a 16-year-old boy who was in her biology class the previous year. Lakina Stutts, 40: School-bus driver admitted to cops she had sex with a 14-year-old student in her home and in a car outside the boy's home. Laura-Anne Brownlee, 26: Former music mistress at a top private school in Belfast, N. Ireland, was sentenced on six charges of indecently assaulting a 15-year-old boy. Laura Lynn Findlay, 30: Middle-school band teacher in Buena Vista Township, Mich., charged with having sex with at least 5 students, one as young as 14. Margaret De Barraicua, 30: Sacramento, Calif., area woman arrested after police found her having sex with a 16-year-old male student in her car while the woman's toddler was strapped into a seat in the back. Maria Saco, 28: Passaic, N.J., woman sentenced to a year in jail for an intimate relationship with a teen student who was 14 when they first met. Mary Kay Letourneau, 34: Des Moines, Wash., woman did prison time after having an affair with a sixth-grade student, and had two children by him. The couple recently married. Melissa Michelle Deel, 32: Bristol, Tenn., woman pleaded guilty to crossing the state line into Virginia to have oral sex with a 13-year-old male student. Michelle Kush, 29: Ohio woman allegedly had sex with a 15-year-old boy several times during summer break. Nicola Prentice, 22: British woman from Sheffield, England, given a 12-month suspended jail sentence after she seduced a 16-year-old student and began a 19-month affair. Nicole Andrea Barnhart, 35: Colorado woman reportedly told police she loves the 16-year-old boy with whom she was having sex. She pled guilty to felony sexual assault on a child, resulting in a two-year prison sentence and a minimum of 10 years in a sex-offender probation program. Nicole Pomerleau, 31: High-school English teacher in Charlotte, N.C., accused of having a sexual relationship with her 16-year-old student. Pamela Smart, 22: Media-services director at Winnacunnet High School in Hampton, N.Y., had convinced her 15-year-old lover to murder her husband. The Nicole Kidman film "To Die For" is based on her story. Pamela Turner, 27: Former model and beauty-pageant contestant accused of having a three-month sexual relationship with a 13-year-old boy. Rachelle Vantucci, 32: Ex-substitute teacher in western New York admitted having sex with a 16-year-old boy. Rebecca Boicelli, 33: Redwood City, Calif., woman gave birth to a baby last year and DNA test results gave prosecutors enough evidence to prove the father is Boicelli's former student, who was 16 at the time of conception. Rhianna Ellis, 24: New York City teacher who allegedly had a 10-month affair with an 18-year-old, and allgedly gave birth to his baby. Robin Gialanella, 26: Elementary teacher in Toms River, N.J., engaged in kissing, and inappropriate conduct and conversations with two sixth-grade boys, ages 11 and 12. She was sentenced to 364 days in jail. Robin Winkis, 29: York, Pa., woman allegedly had sex with a 17-year-old boy after giving him alcohol. Samantha Solomon, 29: Fired after school bosses learned she was having sex with a teenage boy. She denies the charges. Sandra "Beth" Geisel, 42: Albany, N.Y., woman was fired from her job at an private all-boys school after police in found her in a parked car with a 17-year-old. She pleaded guilty to a single count of rape and was sentenced to six months in jail. Shelley Allen, 35: East Texas teacher's aide accused of sexual assault and faces a possible 20 years behind bars. Shelley White, 24: Geography teacher in Britain had been engaged to be married before she kissed a 15-year-old student on at least three occasions. She avoided jail, but received 12 months community service. Stephanie Burleson: Volleyball coach and teacher at Floresville High School in Texas six years ago, pleaded guilty to all charges for molesting a 16-year-old female student. She was sentenced to 10 years probation, and required to register as a sex offender. Susan Eble, 35: Former teacher's aide is accused of having a sexual relationship with a 14-year-old boy. Tara Lynn Crisp, 29: Police allege she had sex with a student at least three times beginning when he was 14. Toni Lynn Woods, 37: The Braxton County, W.Va., woman confessed to having sexual intercourse with three juveniles a total of four times and oral sex with one of those juveniles and another juvenile a total of four times. She resigned.

The Myth of Sanity Martha Stout, Ph.D. Book Excerpts Recently we have quoted from Martha Stout's book The Sociopath Next Door. This book should be required reading for every normal human being. We also reccommend Predators: Pedophiles, rapists, and other sex offenders by Anna C. Salter Ph.D., for everyone, particularly women and parents. What you don't know CAN hurt you and most particularly, your children. Save a life TODAY: Knowledge Protects! Today, we would also like to bring to the attention of our readers another book by Dr. Stout. It is entitled The Myth of Sanity. The Myth of Sanity is about survivors of trauma including being traumatized by psychopaths or other pathological elements of our reality. Below are excerpts that we believe will serve as an introduction to further reading and research and even work on the self, with or without therapeutic intervention. It seems that the survivors of trauma have a lot to teach the rest of us about LIVING. My patients come from both genders and all walks of life. Some are simple. Others possess intellects as brilliant and faceted as diamonds. Most are somewhere in between. They come to my office bearing a wide variety of diagnoses currently in medical vogue: depression, manic-depressive disorder, panic disorder, anorexia nervosa, alcoholism, borderline personality disorder, paranoia. Their stories are seemingly diverse. Some have survived earthquakes. One, when she was two years old, watched from inside the basket someone had hidden her in, as her Cambodian parents and nine sisters and brothers were shot to death by invading soldiers. Many others have survived chronic childhood incest. Still others are adult survivors of other kinds of childhood-long abuse, physical and psychological. I have learned that they all have one thing in common. Underlying the various forms of heartrending pain and diverse complaints with which they come to therapy is the same fundamental question: shall I choose to die, or shall I choose to live? They come to therapy to help themselves answer that question... The survivors I see in my practice have known undistilled fear, have seen how nakedly terrifying life can be, and in many cases have seen how starkly ugly their fellow human beings can be. ... In a struggle with the power of their past experiences, even the biological imperative to survive is puny. ...What is so extraordinary about these people is that they choose to live - not just to "not die", not just to survive, but to LIVE. I have become convinced that these courageous people, in winning their struggles, must learn things about genuine living, and about genuine sanity, that the rest of us have never even imagined. The honest, purposeful self-examination of a traumatized life creates a heat so exquisite that it burns away the usual appeasements, self-deceptions, and defenses. "What is the meaning of this life?" becomes a very personal question and demands an answer. Some of the people I have known have burned so fiercely that they have gone all-stop, have quit their jobs, and even endured temporary poverty, because answering the question consumed more energy than can reasonably be generated by a solitary individual. There is something electric in the eyes, a little wild. But paradoxically - and yet, I think, for all the same reasons - these same people often reveal an irresistible sense of humor, an ironic angle on life that has dispensed with the polite and the guarded, and that tends to get right to the core of things. And so, though it may sound odd, when I am with my patients, I laugh out loud a lot. Many trauma patients are detached and objective when they speak of extraordinary events... As I listen to the telling of a personal history, more often than overt "symptoms," it is just such Faulkneresque understatement of the sometimes macabre, along with the burning light in the eyes, and the cunning humor, that makes me begin to suspect extreme trauma in the individual's history. I am impressed with the irony that these severely traumatized patients, people who have been through living nightmares, people who might blamelessly choose death, often emerge from successful treatment by constructing lives for themselves that are freer than most ordinary lives from what Freud, a century ago, labeled as "everyday misery." They become true keepers of the faith and are the most passionately alive people I know. Or maybe it is more necessity than irony. I have been told more than once by the survivors of trauma that it would not be worth the struggle merely to go on surviving. And that is exactly what most of the rest of us do: we do not choose to die, or to live; we go on surviving. We do not choose nonexistence; nor do we choose complete awareness. We slog on, in a kind of foggy cognitive middle-land we call sane, a place where we almost never acknowledge the haze. Over the years, what my trauma patients have taught me is that this compromise with reality and its traumas is simply not sanity at all. It is a form of madness, and it befuddles our existence. We lose parts of our thoughts in the present, we sabotage the closeness and comfort in our relationships and we misplace important pieces of ourselves. All of us are exposed to some amount of psychological trauma at some point in our lives, and yet most of us are unaware of the misty spaces in our brains left there by traumatic experience, since for the most part we experience them only indirectly. Seldom do we ponder the traumatic events in our own lives, let alone the frightening hardships and life-or-death struggles that were the daily lot of people as close to us, in terms of time, as our great-grandmothers or even our grandmothers. But we do feel crazy, and a little silly, when from time to time we cannot remember a simple thing we ought to be able to remember.... And we feel our insanity and sometimes a near-frantic sense of being out of control of our lives, in the misunderstandings and rifts in our most cherished relationships, in the same emotionally muddled arguments that go on for years and years. The conflicts never quite kill the love that we feel, but they never quite end either. And, as a society, we feel incompetent, and sinkingly helpless, when we reflect upon the greater-than-half failure rate of marriages in general. Too many of us walk on eggshells around our life partners, theoretically the very people whom we should know the best. We do this because we are never certain when that lover or that spouse is going to become aggrieved, or fall silent, or fly into an impenetrable rage at something that happens, or at something we have said, and becomes a distant stranger, a different person altogether whom, in all honesty, we do not know at all. [We make resolutions to do things] but when we actually try to think about accomplishing our resolutions, our thoughts skitter away from us like frightened deer from an open meadow, and in the next moment our minds are elsewhere - anywhere else- the rising price of gasoline, a memo at work, a spot on the carpet. Many of use find it difficult, and sometimes impossible, to stay in one "mode," to be constant and recognizable, even to ourselves. One of the most universal examples of this is the experience of returning "home" to one's parents. After a family visit, the commonest revelation, sometimes private and sometimes voiced aloud to friends, is "I turn into a different person. I can't help it. I just do. All of a sudden I'm [a kid] again." We are completely grown up, may even consider ourselves to be rather sophisticated. We understand how we ought to act, know what we want to say to our mothers and our fathers. We have plans. But when we get there, we cannot follow through - because suddenly, WE ARE NOT REALLY THERE. Needy, out of control children have taken over our bodies and are acting in our stead. And we are helpless to get our "real" selves back until well after we have departed from our "homes." Perhaps worst of all, as time passes, we often feel that we are growing benumbed, that we have lost something - some element of vitality that used to be there. Without talking about this very much with one another, we grow nostalgic for our own selves. We try to remember the exuberance, and even the joy, we used to feel in things. And we cannot. Mysteriously, and before we realize what is happening, our lives are transfigured from places of imagination and hope into "to-do" lists, in to day after day of just getting through it. Often we are able to envision only a long road of exhausting hurdles that leads to somewhere we are no longer at all certain we even want to go. Instead of having dreams, we merely protect ourselves. We expend our brief and precious life force in the practice of damage control. And all because of traumatic events that occurred in the long ago past, that ENDED in the long-ago past, and that, in actuality, threaten us with no present danger whatsoever. How does this happen? How do childhood and adolescent terrors that should have been over years ago manage to live on and make us crazy, and alienated from ourselves, in the present? The answer, paradoxically, lies in a perfectly NORMAL function of the mind known as dissociation, which is the universal human reaction to extreme fear or pain. In traumatic situations, dissociation mercifully allows us to disconnect emotional content from our conscious awareness. Disconnected from our feelings in this way, we stand a better chance of surviving the ordeal, or doing what we have to do, of getting through a critical moment in which our emotions would only be in the way. Dissociation causes a person to view an ongoing traumatic event almost as if she/he were a spectator, and this separation of emotion from thought and action, the spectator's perspective, may well prevent him/her from being utterly overwhelmed on the spot. A moderate dissociative reaction - after a car crash, for example - is typically expressed as, "I felt as if I were just watching myself go through it. I wasn't even scared." Dissociation during trauma is extremely adaptive; it is a survival function. The problem comes later: long after the ordeal is over, the tendency to be disconnected from ourselves may remain. Our old terrors train us to be dissociative, to feel safe by taking little psychological vacations from reality when it is too frightening or painful. But later, these mental vacations may come upon us even when we do not need them or want them, or recognize them. Being "trained" by early trauma to dissociate, being "habituated," we depart from ourselves. Those we love also depart from themselves, and these unrecognized psychological absences play havoc with our lives. Not surprisingly, survivors of extreme psychological trauma have extreme dissociative reactions. Listening to my trauma patients has allowed me to understand not only dissociation itself, but also how to overcome it. I have come to believe in the possibility, for all of us, of staying in touch with reality, of becoming truly SANE. If trauma survivors can learn to remain present with the reality of their memories, if they can make a commitment to live their lives consciously and meaningfully, so can people who have not suffered such extreme trauma. The mental reality - [how they have been programmed to perceive the world] - of the extreme trauma survivor is full of violence and violation, natural demons and unnatural acts. I wonder every day how such people find the courage to decide to go on living. Such individuals live in a world where trusting someone is NOT an option. What's more, one's own imagination becomes and inescapable stalker. In such a landscape, whenever the inhabitant becomes so bone-weary that she/he lets down his/her guard a little, another memory cabinet door swings open to reveal precisely the thing that she/he cannot endure. This "thing" is different for each person, but it always hovers at the outside limit of terror. Letting down his/her guard is at once what the trauma survivor most achingly desires and what he/she most vigilantly avoids. It is a universe of fear and exhaustion - especially exhaustion - and people will try almost anything, however irrational, to make it stop. ... But after recovery, after they have chosen to live, these same people often truly live - passionately, in a way many other people never achieve. Survivors embody extremes of human experience such that every day misery is a stranger to them. At first, their pain is much worse than our everyday misery, by a factor so large that it would be difficult for most to conceive of it. And then later, after recovery, everyday misery is simply unacceptable. Life must be a passionate, conscious journey, or it is just not worthy the survival effort. Survivors inevitably address certain questions. Does anyone truly care about anyone else? Is love just a word? On this planet, is it possible to be in control of anything? Is it alright not to be in control? Does human life, in its pain and vulnerability, contain something that makes it worthwhile? These questions are not asked philosophically, from the relatively detached stance the rest of us may enjoy at times, but rather from a position of intense and consuming personal relevance every day. Perhaps most instructive of all is the recovered trauma survivor's intimate relationship with what is for many people the most distant of philosophical concepts: awareness of the truth. That awareness is life-giving, that dissociation and numbness are lethal is a lesson the recovered survivor has learned down to his/her bones. It is the lesson that sparks the missionary's glint. It restores faith, and makes living a workable choice. And though the turnabout may seem ironic, this lesson is precisely the one that many of us have not learned deeply enough to make genuine living possible. Imagine that you are in your house - no - you are locked in your house, cannot get out. It is the dead of winter. The drifted snow is higher than your windows, blocking the light of both moon and sun. Around the house, the wind moans, night and day. Now, imagine that even though you have plenty of electric lights, and perfectly good central heating, you are almost always in the dark and quite cold, because something is wrong with the old-fashioned fuse box in the basement. Inside this cobwebbed, innocuous looking box, the fuses keep burning out, and on account of this small malfunction, all the power in the house repeatedly fails. You have replaced so many melted fuses that now your little bag of new ones is empty; there are no more. You sign in frustration and regard your frozen breath in the light of the flashlight. Your house, which could be so cozy, is cold as a tomb. In all probability, there is something quirky in the antiquated fuse box; it has developed some kind of needless hair trigger, and is not really reacting to any dangerous electrical overload at all. Should you get some pennies and use them to replace the burned-out fuses? That would solve the power-outage problem. No more shorts, not with copper coins in there. But using coins scuttles the safeguard function of the fuse box. What if the wiring in the house really is overloaded somehow? A fire could result, probably will result eventually. ...You almost imagine there is smoke in your nostrils right now. So, do you go back upstairs and sit endlessly in a dark living room, defeated, numb from the cold, though you have buried yourself under every blanket in the house? No light to read by, no music, just the wail and rattle of the icy wind outside? Or, in an attempt to feel more human, do you make things warm and comfortable? Is it wise to gamble with calamity had howling pain? If you turn the power back on, will you not smell non-existent smoke every moment you are awake? How will you ever risk going to sleep? Do you sabotage the fuse box? I believe that most of us cannot know what we would do in such a situation that required such a seemingly no-win decision. But I do know that anyone wanting to recover from psychological trauma must face just this kind of dilemma, made even more harrowing because the circumstances are not anything so rescuable as being locked in a house, but rather involves a solitary, unlockable confinement inside the limits of his/her own mind. The person who suffers from severe trauma disorder must decide between surviving in a barely sub lethal misery of numbness and frustration, and taking a chance that may well bring her a better life, but that feels like issuing an open invitation to the unspeakable horror that waits to consume her alive. And in the manner of the true hero, he/she must choose to take the risk. Trauma changes the brain itself. Like the outdated fuse box, the psychologically traumatized brain houses inscrutable eccentricities that cause it to overreact - or more precisely, mis-react - to the current realities of life. These neurological mis-reactions become established because trauma has a profound effect upon the secretion of stress-responsive neurohormones such as norepinephrine, and thus an effect upon various areas of the brain involved in memory, particularly the amygdala and the hippocampus. ... Overwhelming emotional significance registered by the amygdala actually leads to a decrease in hippocampal activation, such that some of the traumatic input is not usefully organized by the hippocampus, or integrated with other memories. The result is that portions of traumatic memory are stored not as parts of a unified whole, but as isolated sensory images and bodily sensations that are not localized in time or even in situation, or integrated with other events. Exposure to trauma may temporarily shut down the region of the left hemisphere of the brain that translates experience into language, the means by which we most often relate our experiences to others and EVEN TO OURSELVES. A growing body of research indicates that in these ways, the brain lays down traumatic memories differently from the way it records regular memories. Such memory fragments are wordless, placeless, and eternal, and log after the original trauma has receded into the past, the brain's record of it may consist only of isolated and thoroughly anonymous bits of emotion, image, and sensation that ring through the individual like a broken alarm. Worse yet, later in the individual's life, in situations that are vaguely similar to the trauma - perhaps merely because they are startling, anxiety-provoking, or emotionally arousing - amygdala mediated memory traces are accessed more readily than are the more complete, less shrill memories that have been integrated and modified by the hippocampus and the cerebral cortex. Even though unified and updated memories would be more helpful in the present, the amygdala memories are more accessible, and the trauma may be "remembered" at inappropriate times, when there is no hazard worthy of such alarm. In reaction to relatively trivial stresses, the person traumatized long ago may truly feel that danger is imminent again, be assailed full-force by the emotions, bodily sensations, and perhaps even the images, sounds, smells that once accompanied great threat. In the next heartbeat, a long-entrenched dissociative reaction to the false emergency is triggered to protect the individual from the unbearable past trauma. This can produce sensations of moving in an uncomfortable, hazy dream or the individual may completely depart from the self for awhile, continuing to act, but without self-awareness. Most of us do not notice these experiences very much. They are more or less invisible to us as we go about daily life, and so we do not understand how much of daily life is effectively spent in the past, in reaction to the darkest hours we have known. Nor do we know how swampy and vitality-sucking some of our memories really are. Deepening the mire of our divided awareness, in the course of a lifetime, such protective mental reactions acquire tremendous HABIT STRENGTH. These over-exercised muscles can take us away even when traumatic memory fragments have NOT been evoked. Sometimes dissociation can occur when we are simply confused or frustrated or nervous, whether we recognized our absences or not. Typically, only those with the most desperate trauma histories are ever driven to discover and perhaps modify their absences from the present. On account of our neurological wiring, confronting past traumas requires one to re-endure all of their terrors mentally, in their original intensity, to feel as if the worst nightmare had come true and the horrors had returned. All the brain's authoritative warnings against staying present for the memories and the painful emotions, all the faulty fuses, have to be deliberately ignored, and in cases of extreme or chronic past trauma, this process is nothing short of heroic. It helps to have an awfully good reason to try, such as suffocating depression or some other demonic psychological torment. Perhaps this is a part of the reason why philosophers and theologians through the centuries have observed such a strong connection between unbearable earthly sorrow and spiritual enlightenment. This is a timeless relationship that psychologists have mysteriously overlooked. All human beings have the capacity to dissociate psychologically, though most of us are unaware of this and consider "out of body" episodes to be far beyond the boundaries of our normal experience. In fact, dissociative experiences happen to everyone, and most of these events are quite ordinary. For example, many people are completely dissociated when watching movies. Effectively, they go into a trance and identify with a character in the movie. At the end of the movie, the individual may notice that he/she has spilled popcorn, and he will suddenly remember all the details of his own "real life." What happens is that, for a little while, the movie-goer took the part of himself that is focused on everyday reality, and separated it from the imaginative part of himself so that the imaginative part had dominance He/she dissociated one part of himself from another. Plainly stated, under certain circumstances, ranging from pleasant or unpleasant distraction to fascination to fear to pain to horror, a human being can be psychologically absent from his or her own direct experience. We can go somewhere else. The part of consciousness that we nearly always conceive of as the "self" can be not there for a few moments, for a few hours, or even for much longer. The physiological patterns and the primary behavioral results of distraction, escape, dissociative state, and trance are virtually identical, regardless of method. The differences among them seem to result not so much from how consciousness gets divided as form how often and how long one is forced to keep it divided.

Bolivia: Race and Revolution Gwynne Dyer Tuesday, December 27th 2005 Bolivia has had more presidents by far than any other country in South America, mainly because so many of them were overthrown long before their terms ended. They were also all white, even though the majority of Bolivia's population is "indigenous", descended wholly or in part from the Indians whose ancestors already lived there as subjects of the Inca empire at the time of the Spanish conquest five centuries ago. So what are the odds that Evo Morales, Bolivia's first indigenous president, will survive a full term of office? Morales, who won an absolute majority of the votes in the recent presidential election, faces not only the usual hazards of life as the president of South America's poorest country, but also the threat of American intervention to overthrow him. As a socialist whose declared goal is to "end the colonial state" and a leader of the coca farmers who promises to lift the ban on growing coca leaf, the crop from which cocaine is produced, he is deeply unpopular in Washington. In the past, policies that are unpopular in the United States have proved to be bad for the president's health in a number of Latin American countries. To those who argue that the Bush administration is too deeply mired in the war in Iraq to contemplate acting against Morales, the pessimists point out that the US found the time to organise the overthrow of the president in Chile in 1973 despite being neck-deep in the Vietnam war. The main target of Washington's wrath so far has been Venezuela, whose president, Hugo Chavez, has built an unassailable domestic base (he has won eleven elections and referendums in the past seven years) by spending a lot of the country's oil revenues on the health and education of poor Venezuelans. He has built a close relationship with Cuba's Fidel Castro, whose regime has obsessed US administrations since the beginning of the 1960s, and he is now providing Venezuelan oil at a discount to other Caribbean and Central American countries (and even to poor Americans). It is Chavez's incendiary language that gets the headlines - last month he called President George W Bush a "madman, a killer and a mass murderer" - but his aim is serious: to free all of Latin America from the grip of neo-liberal economic policies, indeed from American influence in general. Last July's launch of Telesur, a new television network whose aim is to provide an alternative to US-based news and analysis for all Latin Americans, is a case in point. It is based in Caracas and 70 per cent financed by Venezuela, but it is also backed by the governments of Argentina, Uruguay, Cuba and Brazil. The larger reality is that while the Bush administration has been obsessed by its grandiose plans for reshaping the Middle East, the real transformation has been happening in America's own "back yard". Left-wing governments have come to power in Brazil and Argentina, the two biggest countries of South America, and in a number of smaller countries as well. Like Chavez in Venezuela, they combine a commitment to the poor and a rejection of the project for a US-dominated Free Trade Area of the Americas with a pragmatic respect for the rules of the free market: no nationalisations (except for oil and gas) and more or less balanced budgets. With this month's presidential election victories by Michelle Bachelet in Chile and now by Evo Morales in Bolivia, virtually all of South America except Colombia and Peru is now part of this nascent left-wing bloc. But the continent is seeing more than just a comeback in modern dress by the traditional left. The Indians and part-Indians who form a downtrodden majority in most of the Andean countries are staging their own comeback. They mostly talk in terms of winning elections and re-writing constitutions, but they basically share the view of Antauro Humala, leader of the Etnocaceristas in Peru: "There are four races, black, white, yellow and copper. We are the copper people and I want us to be recognised as a race." Hugo Chavez's Indian and black ancestry is written all over his face, and explains much of his popularity with the majority of mixed-race Venezuelans who felt excluded by the dominant white minority in that oil-rich country. Evo Morales is even more clearly a descendant of the Incas who ruled the central and southern Andes before the white conquerors and settlers arrived, and he wants the two-thirds of Bolivians who share his heritage to hold the power in their own country at last. It will get very fraught in Bolivia when Morales starts re-writing the constitution to include the excluded, as he has already sworn to do, but the ethnic solidarity among Bolivian Indians that has helped him into power will also make it very hard for Washington to overthrow him. So long as he avoids the civil war that some of the more extreme members of the white minority may now try to provoke, he will probably manage to serve a full term in office. What he does with that term may change Bolivia beyond recognition. Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.

There is an alternative by Derrick O'Keefe January 2, 2006 The reign of TINA, There Is No Alternative, is beginning to come to an end. In Bolivia, Evo Morales has swept into the presidency after years of popular mobilization; the long-suffering indigenous and poor majority is demanding an alternative economic and social order. In Venezuela, seven years after Hugo Chavez first won power, the Bolivarian Revolution is demonstrating an alternative path, powered by a people awakened to political action and in the process of transforming their society. Part of the reason for the resurgent radicalism in Latin America is the fact that the United States government — for all their efforts at sabotage and asphyxiation — has never been able to fully eliminate the Cuban Revolution. Immediately following news of his massive election victory, Morales passed on this unsubtle message via Cuban television: I want to tell the Cuban people, its government and its leaders: thank you, for showing how to govern, to Latin America and the rest of the world, and for defending its dignity and sovereignty. (“Morales Praises Castro in Cuban TV Interview,” Agence France-Press, December 20, 2005) Back in 1999, the year Chavez was inaugurated as Venezuela's President, capitalism was still at the height of its triumphalism (until late in the year, at least, when the twin spectres of a raucous protest in Seattle and Y2K paranoia intervened). In addition to the bombast of fashionable neo-liberal intellectuals, and the scolding insistence of right-wing politicians, we would do well to recall that the deans of social democracy had also, by the 1990s to be sure, fallen in line to prostrate themselves before the market and justify the rule of capital. The “Left” in power, at least in the form that Canada and Europe had known it as mass social democratic parties, has seemed all too willing to impose, or all too impotent to oppose, neo-liberal measures and legislation. A remarkably colourless (in terms of both the pigmentation and the style of the writers) and vapid collection of essays — published the same year that Chavez came to power in Venezuela — outlined the perspectives of social democracy's statesmen as of the late 1990s. The Future of Social Democracy (Russell, 1999) includes contributions from noted “leftists” like Shimon Peres, who recently formed a new political party in Israel with Ariel Sharon, and Bob Rae, the former New Democratic Party (NDP) premier of Ontario who used a column a few years ago in the ultra right-wing National Post to formalize his defection (“Parting Company with the NDP,” April 16, 2002). Rae's essay is the book's concluding one and includes, believe it or not, a sentence analogizing Tommy Douglas, Marin Luther King Jr. and Tony Blair! Without dwelling on this dry little book too long, it is worth noting the rigid and sectarian line explicitly laid-out by editor Peter Russell in his introduction: * “The social democracy advocated here must be and is reformist, not revolutionary — social democratic, not democratic socialist.” * “Social democracy's mission has become not replacing capitalism with an alternative economic system but humanizing capitalism — both nationally and internationally.” * “Capitalism is the only economic system capable of producing the wealth needed to sustain a full and rewarding life for all citizens.” (Russell, PP.8-9) None of the essays — including the one by Canada's former NDP leader and outgoing Member of Parliament Ed Broadbent — strays from Russell's narrow confines. In an era of rampant privatization, “respectable” social democracy has prostrated itself before the market as just another shade of liberalism. Many prominent social democrats have in fact formally become Liberals. Taking just a couple of recent examples, former British Columbia NDP premier Ujjal Dosanjh is now the federal Liberal Minister of Health, while Rae is a darling of Liberal governments at both the provincial level as well as in Ottawa. Last year, for instance, the former Rhodes scholar angered student groups by recommending that the Ontario Liberal government further deregulate university tuition fees. The Future of Social Democracy also makes almost no mention of any of the organizations in the Global South that have continued to emerge to challenge neo-liberalism. Despite the stated global outlook, the myopic vision of the leaders of the West's major social democratic parties is startling. The lionization of capitalism's efficiency and productivity seems all the more absurd, of course, from the perspective of the impoverished majority in the neo-colonial world, where for centuries labour and natural resources have produced the wealth of Western Europe and North America. Today, global capitalism is being challenged most directly in Venezuela. Hugo Chavez's own discourse has sharpened dramatically against international capital in recent months and years. The Bolivarian leader has made repeated calls for the building of “socialism for the 21st century.” The Bolivarian Revolution is carrying out a transformation of both the reality of Venezuela and of the global alignment of political forces. The gains of el proceso are preciously concrete, as seen in rising rates of literacy and education, mass expansion of health care services, land reform, new housing for the poor, and an explosion in cooperative worker co-managed enterprises. These reforms are part of a revolutionary process with a continental and global dynamic. Forget TINA. Regardless of what we are told by the guardians of economic and political power, there is an alternative. All progressive-minded people would be wise to look closely at Venezuela, Bolivia and at the social movements of Latin America, where the people are leading the way towards a future beyond neo-liberalism.

Another radioactive unit stolen in Venezuela www.chinaview.cn 2006-01-05 10:05:55 CARACAS, Jan. 4 (Xinhuanet) -- A radioactive unit used in the oil industry was stolen last month in Venezuela, the second such theft within a month, the civil defense department in the eastern state of Azoategui said on Wednesday. The capsule containing cesium-137 was part of a device used to measure the pressure in oil wells and was stolen on Dec. 27 from BJ Services of Venezuela, a private firm that was doing soil studies in the region, said Wolfgang Castillo, head of the state'scivil defense department. Castillo asked the public to be alert to the possible danger of exposure to the radioactive material. In 1987, four people died and some 250 suffered from radiation contamination in Brazil after being exposed to cesium-137 in an abandoned container. On Dec. 18, part of a medical X-ray equipment was stolen in Yaracuy, central Venezuela, but was recovered on Dec. 29.

Peru recalls ambassdor to Venezuela www.chinaview.cn 2006-01-05 19:45:35 LIMA, Jan. 5 (Xinhuanet) -- The Peruvian government announced on Wednesday that it will recall its ambassador to Venezuela, in response to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's public support to Peruvian leftist presidential candidate Ollanta Humala. Hugo Chavez's public support for Ollanta Humala is seen as the intervention in the internal affairs of Peru, the Peruvian Foreign Ministry said in a press release on Wednesday. The Peruvian government will make efforts to ensure the success of the presidential election, to be held in April, and will not allow any intervention in the poll, the ministry added. President Chavez met with Humala and Bolivian President-elect Evo Morales on Tuesday in Caracas, Venezuela. Both Chavez and Morales offered support to Humala, who led a fruitless military rebellion against former President Alberto Fujimori in 2000, and was pardoned by the parliament after Fujimori stepped down. Recent polls showed that Humala ran ahead of other presidential candidates.

China takes another step towards flexible yuan www.chinaview.cn 2006-01-05 09:13:22 BEIJING, Jan. 5 -- China took another step towards currency flexibility on Wednesday by letting banks set its daily opening foreign-exchange rate, a change that might allow the yuan to move much faster than previously possible, the Reuters reported. The new system, the latest in a long line of policies aimed at gradually freeing up the yuan, accompanied the introduction of open over-the-counter trading that will eventually replace the current system of anonymous and automatic order matching. The changes, announced late on Tuesday, went into operation on Wednesday. The yuan remains tied to a 0.3 percent range on either side of a daily mid rate against the dollar. But whereas the mid rate has until now been the previous day's close, allowing only very slow movement, it will now be the average quote of market makers -- theoretically allowing a rise at the opening of trade each day. "The old system was effectively a crawling system that limited day-to-day movement within 0.3 percent," Jun Ma, Deutsche Bank's Greater China chief economist, said in a research note. "This change theoretically allows a very different central parity rate from the previous day's closing price." But maybe only theoretically. Ma reckoned the central bank would allow the yuan to rise only slowly -- about 4 percent this year. Even under the more restricted flexibility of the previous system, the currency never moved more than a tiny fraction of its permissible 0.3 percent each day. Indeed, the first mid-rate quoted by the market makers, Wednesday's 8.0702 per dollar, was identical with previous close. And the central bank was quick to dampen speculation of a further appreciation of the yuan, which the United States says is still seriously undervalued and gives Chinese goods an unfair advantage in global markets. The central bank said it would keep the yuan stable for now. OVER-THE-COUNTER TRADING China revalued the yuan in July by 2.1 percent and dropped a dollar peg in favour of managing its value with reference to a basket of currencies. The yuan has consistently trended higher since then, but in minuscule steps, gaining just 0.5 percent since revaluation. "The (mid) rate will be near the yuan's previous day's close for now as market markers will be cautious and take hints from the central bank," said a dealer at a major Chinese bank. "But it will drift away gradually to become a more independent rate along with the deepening of currency reforms." Other changes launched on Wednesday supported the introduction of market makers -- banks who stand ready to trade when no one else wants to, keeping the market liquid. Market participants would be allowed to trade openly over the counter, as is usual in foreign exchange markets elsewhere. The old system, which the central bank said would eventually be scrapped, automatically matches trades for anonymous bidders. The 0.3 percent daily range applies to the dollar mid rate. The yuan is allowed to move further against other currencies. The China Foreign Exchange Trade System will announce the daily mid rates against the U.S. dollar, euro, Japanese yen and Hong Kong dollar at 9.15 a.m. daily.

Personal gains lagging strong economy, poll reports Last Updated Wed, 04 Jan 2006 14:52:38 EST CBC News Canadians are feeling optimistic about the country's economy, but the picture changes dramatically when it comes to their personal expectations, a new poll indicates. About two-thirds of the 1,260 people polled in early December said they believed the economy is in a period of strong or moderate economic growth, the Pollara polling company reported Wednesday. But only 11 per cent said they expect their household income will rise more than inflation this year, while a third said they will lose ground and just over half anticipate that they will break even. All those figures are better than in the poll taken a year ago; the groups expecting they will do better or keep pace are larger, while the proportion expecting to lose ground has shrunk. But the gain is nowhere near large enough, Pollara chairman and CEO Michael Marzolini said. "We're making progress, but the progress is too small," he told CBC.ca. "About nine out of 10 Canadians are going nowhere." Speaking to the Economic Club of Toronto, Marzolini said the gap between perceptions of an economy doing well and individuals not sharing in the gains is socially and politically dangerous. He suggested the lack of personal progress led the Conservative and Liberal parties to promise tax cuts during the current election campaign. And yet the poll shows Canadians have low expectations that the election will affect their standard of living; 63 per cent expect no effect, 14 per cent expect an improvement (one per cent a big gain), and 10 per cent expect a drop (three per cent a big drop). The doubt about the impact of the election is carried over into political parties. Fully 19 per cent of the respondents answered "none" when asked which party would best improve the standard of living, and another 19 per cent said they didn't know. (The Liberals and Conservatives were virtually tied at just over 20 per cent each, and the NDP lagged at 10 per cent. ) Canadians are weathering the higher dollar well, Marzolini said. The proportion believing a strong dollar is good is unchanged at 43 per cent, but the group fearing the dollar would hurt the economy fell to 41 per cent in the 2005 sample from 50 per cent in the 2004 poll. The nationwide survey of representative Canadians, conducted between Dec. 5 and 11, is accurate to plus or minus 2.8 per cent, 19 times out of 20.

Luxury and Japanese cars sold well in 2005 Last Updated Wed, 04 Jan 2006 17:49:12 EST It was a Cadillac of a year for General Motors Canada, and for some of the other companies that sell luxury cars. But it was a record-breaking year for sales of the cars made by companies based outside Canada. DesRosiers Automotive Consultants calculated the Canadian market grew 3.2 per cent last year, to 1.58 million vehicles. Import sales jumped 5.1 per cent, three times the growth rate of sales of the North American brands produced by General Motors, Ford and DaimlerChrysler. Imports increased their share of the Canadian market to 44.4 per cent in 2005 from 43.6 per cent in 2004. GM Canada reported Wednesday that total sales rose 2.6 per cent in 2005 to 444,879 cars and trucks. Truck sales represented nearly half the total, and grew 3.3 per cent, compared with 1.9 per cent for car sales. At 8,511 vehicles, Cadillac sales "finished the year strong, up 28 per cent overall, representing the highest calendar year total since 1987," GM said in a release. BMW and Porsche, both known for their top-of-the-line models, both said they broke Canadian sales records last year, as did Toyota's Lexus brand. Audi, however, had a second year of falling sales. DaimlerChrysler said total Canadian sales of 216,857 vehicles were up 2.8 per cent in 2005, while Ford of Canada sales fell 0.8 per cent to 211,986 units, DesRosiers Automotive Consultants reported. Mazda Canada, Nissan Canada and Toyota Canada all said they had record years in 2005. The Canadian reports came as two of the Big Three U.S. automakers reported a weak year, despite sales incentives. GM sales fell four per cent in 2005 and Ford sales sagged 4.4 per cent, but DaimlerChrysler bucked the trend, reporting a five per cent gain. Just before the year-end sales figures were released, a new survey showed senior auto industry executives are increasingly pessimistic about the prospects for North American auto brands. Toyota Canada said it sold 175,787 units in 2005, up 3.3 per cent from 2004. A record 4,511 Lexus cars were sold, a gain of 41.5 per cent from 2004, while the 5,597 Lexus trucks sold represented a 9.1 per cent increase. Honda Canada reported a seven per cent sales increase, to 154,587 vehicles. Honda said its Civic was the best-selling car in Canada for the eighth year in a row. Mazda Canada said it sold a record 77,867 vehicles in 2005, up 5.4 per cent from 2004, which was also a record. The Mazda3 compact did especially well, with sales surging 18.8 per cent to 50,713 units, making it the second-best-selling passenger car in Canada. Nissan Canada said it sold 70,983 units in 2005, up 2.1 per cent from the record of 69,534 set in 2004. BMW Group Canada said its BMW and MINI brands combined set a record, jumping 11.1 per cent to 21,551 vehicles. Volkswagen Canada said it sold 31,724 vehicles in 2005, up 3.2 per cent from 2004. About 24,000 units of the total were counted in two brands – the Jetta and Passat. Audi Canada sold 7,209 units, down from 7,422 in 2004 and 7,861 in 2003. Porsche sales in Canada rose six per cent to 1,926 cars. Nearly half – 917 vehicles – were Cayenne SUVs. Comment: Even in bad economies, luxury items still sell well. What does that tell us?

Bird flu claims 2nd Turkish child CNN Thursday, January 5, 2006 ANKARA, Turkey -- A 15-year-old girl has died of bird flu in Turkey, becoming the country's second person to succumb to the virus, health officials said Thursday. Fatma Kocyigit's brother, Mehmet Ali Kocyigit, 14, died of the H5N1 strain of avian influenza Sunday. Test results confirming the lethal strain came back late Wednesday from a facility in Istanbul, Health Minister Recep Akdag said. The siblings are the first known human deaths from the illness outside of China and Southeast Asia. Nine other people, most of them members of the teenagers' family, are in hospital with flu-like symptoms in the city of Van in eastern Turkey. The head doctor of the facility said he is in urgent need of more respirators to treat the patients. Five additional patients, also with flu-like symptoms, have been hospitalized in Erzurum. On Thursday, health officials also announced 11 additional patients, also with flu-like symptoms, have been hospitalized in two eastern cities -- Erzurum and Aralik -- bringing the national total of suspected cases to 20. All 14 patients are from the Dogu Beyazit area, an agricultural town in eastern Turkey. [...]

UK to launch acts in tackling human trafficking www.chinaview.cn 2006-01-05 19:08:25 LONDON, Jan. 5 (Xinhuanet) -- Britain launched a three-month nationwide consultation on Thursday on proposals for an action plan in tackling human trafficking. Under the plan, some victims of human traffickers could be given an automatic right to stay in Britain. Illegal immigrants could be given special residence permits when trafficking scams are uncovered, said the Home Office. It is among a series of measures being considered to combat the trade in both children and adults. Public opinions are welcome with regard to all aspects of trafficking, from prevention and demand reduction, to investigating and prosecuting the traffickers, to protection and support for victims. "Human trafficking, often for the purpose of sexual exploitation or forced labor, is an appalling crime and amounts to modern day slavery. It causes great harm, not just to the victims, but to our society as a whole," said Home Office Minister Paul Goggins. The government is determined to tackle this terrible crime and reduce the harm it causes, he added. The consultation will look at all forms of trafficking in human beings, covering labor exploitation as well as sexual exploitation, and trafficking in children. Police believe thousands are smuggled into this country and forced or tricked into the sex trade. An estimated 80 percent of London's prostitutes are foreign nationals, mainly from the Baltic states, the Sky news reported. Last year police launched 343 operations against human traffickers, seizing almost 5-million-pound (some 9 million U.S. dollars) worth of assets with 1,500 arrests. Currently, most trafficking victims face repatriation after they are discovered and they do not have a right to remain in Britain.

Italians to build telescope on moon www.chinaview.cn 2006-01-05 02:33:32 ROME, Jan. 4 (Xinhuanet) -- Italy plans to build a large telescope on the moon that will expand knowledge of the moon, Earth and the universe, Italian News Agency ANSA reported here on Wednesday. The telescope will be built by robots and positioned in a lunarcrater to give a new perspective on the Earth, said the head of the Italian Space Agency (ASI), Sergio Vetrella. The telescope will also be able to look deeper into space than Earth-based equivalents. The project will provide new information on the moon's resources, Vetrella added. ASI has earmarked 150 million euros for the project and will contact the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA for help in getting the telescope in place. The first robots will be sent up between 2010 and 2012, Vetrella said. "Over the next few years we'll launch the pieces of the huge telescope which should be completed within 15 years," the ASI chief said. "The goal of the project is "to gain more knowledge of the parts of the universe not visible from the Earth, as well as looking at our own planet with extreme precision." The so-called "modular robots" will be taken to the moon aboard the Vega launcher, Vetrella said.

Bomb explodes at empty Spain hotel From CNN Madrid Bureau Chief Al Goodman Thursday, January 5, 2006 MADRID, Spain -- A small bomb exploded at a vacant hotel in Spain's northern Zaragoza province Thursday, following a warning call in the name of the Basque separatist group ETA. There were no reported injuries, a government official told CNN. The explosion apparently did not cause significant damage, the official said, who is based at the central government's main office in the city of Zaragoza about 45 miles (75 kilometers) south of the attack. Senior government officials were heading to the scene, he said. A recording at the government-run hotel -- the Parador Nacional in the village of Sos del Rey Catolico -- said the hotel is closed through February 11. The village is located about 250 miles (400 km) northeast of Madrid. Spanish news reports said the warning call was made to the Basque emergency road service, DYA, at 7:30 a.m. (0600 GMT). The agency often receives calls from ETA before its attacks. ETA is listed as terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union. It is blamed for more than 800 deaths in its 37-year fight for Basque independence. But ETA has not been blamed for any deaths in the past two years and there has been intense speculation in recent months that the group is preparing to call a cease-fire. The Socialist government won backing in Parliament last summer to hold talks with ETA if it would first renounce violence and lay down its arms. Recently, ETA has taken responsibility for a series of mostly small bombings around Spain.

French to Create Police Force for Rails AP Wed Jan 4, 10:34 PM ET PARIS - France will create a special police force to ensure security for railway passengers after a band of marauding youths robbed and sexually assaulted train travelers in southeast France, the interior minister said Wednesday. Nicolas Sarkozy, responding to concerns about the Jan. 1 rampage, told TF1 television that a national railway police force will be in place this year, with 1,000 to 1,500 officers. Authorities estimated that up to 40 youths took part in the rampage on the Nice-Lyon route, echoing the car burnings, vandalism and other violence that rocked France in a three-week wave of rioting in depressed French suburbs in the autumn. Two 19-year-olds were being held on charges of theft and sexual assault in the Jan. 1 spree and were scheduled to appear in court in March, authorities said. Sarkozy said he wanted France to reflect on whether it should toughen punishments for minors. Of nine people rounded up the day after the train episode, seven were quickly released from custody because they were minors, he said. "When someone is a minor and does serious things, he must be punished and convicted," Sarkozy told TF1. Earlier Wednesday, French President Jacques Chirac called the episode "totally unacceptable" and promised that those responsible would be punished. Comment: Isn't it amazing how the "racaille" keep playing right into Sarkozy's hand?

France accused of covering up train gang attack By John Lichfield in Paris The Independent 05 January 2006 Opposition politicians have accused the French government of covering up a sustained attack by a gang of 20 young people on a crowded train near Nice on New Year's Day. The group robbed and sexually assaulted passengers at knifepoint, smashed windows and slashed seats. No information on the incident was released by the authorities, who announced that he New Year festivities had passed off without a widely feared resumption of the violence seen in deprived suburbs in November. The Socialist former education and culture minister, Jack Lang, accused the government of "disinformation", and the Socialist Party said the Interior Minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, had imposed a "stupefying silence" on the attack. Details of the incident emerged only when two people appeared in court three days later, accused of robbery and sexual assault. It was reported yesterday that more than 100 young people from deprived districts of Marseilles and Avignon had been escorted on to the train by police at Nice early on New Year's Day. The group, some of Arab or African origin and others white, had taken advantage of an offer from the French railways, the SNCF, to travel to Riviera resorts for New Year's Eve for only €1.20 (80p) return. After SNCF security officers left the train at St-Raphael, a gang of 20 terrorised passengers, stealing their wallets and phones and sexually assaulting two women. The train, bound for Marseilles and Lyon, was stopped at Les Arcs sur Argens while gendarmerie reinforcements were called. Six people were arrested. M. Sarkozy blamed the SNCF yesterday, saying police had not been warned the bargain fares might attract trouble-makers. After meeting SNCF officials to discuss the incident, the Interior Minister said he hoped to create a national railway police force with 1,000-1,500 officers. He added that he would host a meeting next week with officials from the country's train, tram and subway systems to talk about ways to better co-ordinate transport security. Comment: First Sarkozy hushes up the attacks, and then he blames the SNCF!

France crafts plan to retain leadership in atomic energy AFP January 5, 2005 PARIS - French President Jacques Chirac announced on Thursday plans to build a prototype fourth-generation nuclear reactor, reinforcing France's determination to remain a world leader in atomic energy. In a New Year address to business leaders and unions, Chirac said he had "decided to immediately launch work by the French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) on a prototype fourth-generation reactor, to go into service in 2020". He said that "we will join forces with the industrial or international partners who wish to commit" to the project. Chirac said that France needed to "stay ahead in nuclear energy", as he outlined elements of the country's long-term energy strategy. He stressed that France was a key partner in both the third-generation EPR reactor and in ITER, an international experimental fusion reactor to be based in southern France. One French industrialist indicated a link between the statement and disruption last weekend to gas supplies from Russia to several European countries over a pricing dispute between Russia and Ukraine. The European Pressurised Water Reactor (EPR), a Franco-German project being developed in northern France, is set to be operational by 2012. But Chirac emphasised that the seven-country International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) was an experimental, long-term project, and that France also needed to focus on meeting its medium-term energy needs. "What is at stake (through the ITER project) is the ability to harness the energy of the sun by the end of the century," he said. "Until then, we need to take new initiatives," Chirac said, adding that the fourth generation of reactors, "those of the 2030s and 2040s, will produce less waste and make better use of resources." Most reactors currently in service in the world are generally referred to as second- or third-generation reactors. France is one of 10 countries in the Generation IV International Forum, which was launched four years ago following a US initiative and is conducting research into new types of nuclear reactor. There are currently six design models for the reactors of the future, which aim to improve safety and minimise waste and cut construction and operating costs. Chirac did not specify which type of reactor, using different cooling methods ranging from gas to sodium or lead, France would seek to develop. Business leaders in the French energy sector welcomed the announcement, saying they were mobilised to help develop the next generation of reactors. At Areva, the world's largest civilian nuclear-power group, chief executive Anne Lauvergeon said that Chirac's announcement "is absolutely in line with our own plans". The chairman of the utilities group Suez, Gérard Mestrallet, said he was "glad to see France making the most of its assets". He said that "for Europe, nuclear energy is a response to the gas crisis", drawing a link with the Russia-Ukraine gas dispute which has fuelled debate about energy dependency. Pierre Gadonneix, the chairman of Electricité de France which manages 58 nuclear power plants across the country, also welcomed the news. "France's nuclear programme has earned the respect and admiration of the United States and the entire world," he said. EDF, which produces 74 percent of its electricity from nuclear power stations, generates about a quarter of all Europe's electricity. A number of countries in Europe have rejected nuclear energy or have backed away from their own nuclear generation. The president also pledged to improve transparency through the creation of an independent nuclear safety agency and the adoption by parliament this year of a new law on the storage of radioactive waste.

Past gives clue to climate impact Thursday, 5 January 2006, 09:04 GMT A rapid rise in global temperature 55 million years ago caused major disruption to ocean currents, new research shows. Scientists found that the disruption took 140,000 years to reverse. Writing in the journal Nature, the scientists say the phenomenon may be important for understanding the impact of present day climate warming. Recent research suggests north Atlantic currents which bring heat to northern Europe may be weakening. The new study, by Flavia Nunes and Richard Norris from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California, looked at tiny fossil animals called foraminifera in marine sediments from 14 ocean-floor locations around the world. Analysing the ratios of two isotopes of carbon in the shells of these foraminifera allowed them to determine ocean current patterns at the time the creatures died. Time of change The time in question was an extraordinary epoch in Earth history - the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), when the global average temperature rose by anything between four and seven Celsius in a few thousand years. It has been cited as the reason for the spread of mammals around the world, and for the evolution of bats. Computer models of modern climate suggest that temperature changes could affect ocean currents, and recent research has found indications that it is happening now in the north Atlantic. But the disruption 55 million years ago took in more than a single ocean; the entire global system appears to have altered course. Before the PETM, Nunes and Norris found, surface waters sank principally in the southern hemisphere, with deep currents then flowing north. As temperatures rose, this pattern abruptly reversed. The new north-to-south system endured for 40,000 years, and currents took a further 100,000 to return to their previous polarity. The reason why temperatures shot up during the PETM are unclear; but carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere appear to have been extremely high, about a thousand times higher than currently. The suspicion is that some kind of feedback mechanism may have been involved. One theory is that an initial warming changed the distribution of heat in the oceans so that deposits of gas hydrates on the sea floor were released, with carbon dioxide and methane rising to the surface and entering the atmosphere, causing further greenhouse warming. The new research provides some support for this theory, as well as demonstrating that abrupt temperature changes can have a long-term impact on ocean currents which are, as the Gulf Stream demonstrates, intimately tied to weather systems. Some researchers have raised concern that release of gas hydrates could contribute to present-day global warming.

Deep-sea fish in Atlantic at brink of extinction: study Last Updated Wed, 04 Jan 2006 12:57:45 EST CBC News Overfishing has driven several species of deep-water fish in the Atlantic to the brink of extinction in a single generation, Canadian biologists have found. Populations have plummeted so rapidly that two commercially fished species, the roundnose grenadier and onion-eye grenadier, and three other species, should be classified as critically endangered – a higher rating than for the giant panda and Bengal tiger. Between 1978 and 1984, catch data from research trawl surveys showed the relative abundance of the five species declined between 87 per cent and 98 per cent in Canadian waters, the researchers found. "They meet the IUCN [World Conservation Union] criteria for being critically endangered," Jennifer Devine of Memorial University in St. John's, N. L., and her colleagues wrote in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature. "Conservation measures are necessary and lack of knowledge must not delay appropriate initiatives, including the establishment of deep-sea protected areas," the study's authors conclude. During the federal election campaign, the Conservatives and Liberals have promised to extend protection to fish stocks beyond Canada's 200-mile limit, although other countries have warned the federal government to forget the idea. Time running out to save fish After the collapse of easy-to-catch species such as cod and tuna in the 1960s and 1970s, trawlers turned to the deep-sea grenadiers. The roundnose and onion-eye grenadiers declined 99.6 and 93.3 per cent respectively over the 26-year survey. Despite growing evidence of collapses, fish are caught between financial, political and environmental interests, said the study's lead author, Richard Haedrich of Memorial. "The real concern is that you alter these productive fishery ecosystems to such an extent that they no longer produce what you're interested in." Richard Haedrich The species, which also include the blue hake, spiny eel, and spinttail skate, live on or near the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean, on the continental slope, a downward ridge between the coastal shelf and the extreme ocean. The three other species were "bycatch" scooped up in the hunt for Greenland halibut and redfish. The declines occurred in about one generation, the data suggest. The fish can live up to 60 years, grow to more than one metre in length and mature in their late teens, all traits that increase the vulnerability of the deep sea fish, the biologists said. Some species spawn in clusters on the sea floor, increasing their susceptibility to overtrawling.

Indonesia Red Cross fears big landslide death toll By Dwi Prasetyo Reuters Thu Jan 5, 2006 6:25 AM ET SIJERUK, Indonesia - Rescuers on Thursday searched for possibly hundreds of victims buried under a massive landslide that crashed into a mountainous village in Indonesia's Central Java province. Under blue skies after days of rain, four excavators were clearing debris and rescuers found several more mud-covered bodies, including a mother tightly hugging her child. Surviving family members clustered near the partially destroyed village of Sijeruk wailed in grief over those pulled out or still missing and feared dead. So far, rescuers have recovered 34 bodies from the debris after Wednesday's pre-dawn disaster, local Metro television reported. Hundreds of rescuers from the military, police and aid groups have joined the search. The Red Cross said the death toll could soar. "There were more than 100 families living at the buried area and if we say each family has three members, 300 could be buried if all of them were there," Irman Rachman, head of disaster management at the Indonesian Red Cross, told Reuters. "Hopefully, some were out of the village when it happened." The disaster followed landslides in neighboring East Java province earlier this week that killed at least 77 people. Local media said flooding and small landslides had damaged roads and bridges in other parts of densely populated Java island, where 130 million of Indonesia 220 million people live. Wednesday's landslide crashed into hundreds of houses in Sijeruk, home to around 700 people. Mud up to 6 meters (20 feet) high encased the remains of many homes, although not all were hit by the debris. The landslide erupted from a thickly forested hill, indicating that excessive logging was not the cause of the tragedy. [...]

Falling Rocks Kill 3 on Mount Kilimanjaro By SUKHDEV CHHATBAR Associated Press January 6, 2005 MOUNT KILIMANJARO NATIONAL PARK, Tanzania - Rocks and boulders tumbled down Mount Kilimanjaro and crashed into tents where tourists were sleeping, killing three American climbers and seriously injuring two, officials said Thursday. The climbers were on Kilimanjaro's treacherous Western Breach before beginning their final ascent of Africa's highest mountain. The regional police commander, Mohamed Chico, identified the dead as Kristian Ferguson, 37, of Colorado; Mary Lou Sammis, 58, of California, and Betty Orrik Sapp, 63, of Tennessee. Some Tanzanian guides were initially reported killed in the Wednesday morning rock fall, but Chico said no Tanzanians have been found among the dead. He said experts were on the 19,443-foot mountain investigating exactly what caused the slide. A rescue team finished evacuating more than 50 climbers early Thursday from the Umbwe route and the camp site, near Arrow Glacier at about 15,800 feet between Kibo Peak and Gilman's Point, said James Wakibara, acting spokesman for Mount Kilimanjaro National Park. Climbers on other routes were allowed to continue. Wakibara said the injured were flown to Nairobi, Kenya, for treatment. The rock slide hit a large group of climbers from various tours while they were in their tents. They had set out Saturday to ascend Kilimanjaro along its most dangerous route. There had been a change in the weather at the peak before the rock fall, officials said, without elaborating on how that could have contributed to the accident. "The possible explanation I hear on this could be earth movement or vibration," Wakibara said. "It has never happened like this in the past." Warmer temperatures recently had melted some of Mount Kilimanjaro's glaciers, causing them to retreat, which had loosened rocks once held in place by the ice. Tens of thousands of people climb Mount Kilimanjaro every year. Comment: "The possible explanation I hear on this could be earth movement or vibration." There seems to be an awful lot of seismic activity around the world lately...

Blizzards force evacuation of 97,000 people in Muslim part of China AFP Thursday January 5, 11:57 PM Violent blizzards have forced the evacuation of 97,000 people in a largely Muslim region of western China, as the nation braced for its worst winter in 20 years. Sixty centimeters (two feet) of snow covered large parts of Xinjiang, a vast desert territory near China's border with Central Asia, said Wang Zhenyao, a disaster relief official with the civil affairs ministry. "The most urgent issue right now is to ensure traffic and transportation," Wang told a briefing in Beijing. "Two other difficulties include ensuring that the evacuees are warm and have enough to eat." An official with the Xinjiang civil affairs bureau, surnamed Zhang, told AFP by telephone the nearly 100,000 evacuees had been moved mostly because their homes had collapsed under the heavy blanket of snow. He warned that the crisis was far from over, saying: "It's still snowing." Winds blowing in from Siberia had caused the temperature to drop precipitously to minus 36 degrees Celsius (minus 33 degrees Fahrenheit) in some spots, the state-run Xinjiang News website said. The blizzards had affected mainly the Altay area in the north of Xinjiang, home to 25,000 of the evacuees, according to reports in the state media. While no people were reported dead or injured in Xinjiang as of late Thursday, the region's livestock had started dying amid fears of much worse to come. "Nine thousand head of livestock have died so far," a civil affairs ministry official in Beijing surnamed Fang told AFP on Thursday. That number could soon multiply, as the Xinjiang News website said altogether 300,000 head of cattle and sheep were unable to graze because of the thick snow cover. Winter is usually a harsh season for Xinjiang's 19.6 million people. Last year in March floods caused by melting snow destroyed 10,000 houses in the region. In early 2001, devastating blizzards killed 130,000 livestock, and hundreds of people suffered from frostbite with some having to have limbs amputated. To prevent new tragedies, the ministry of civil affairs was Thursday struggling to send enough tents and blankets to the affected area, Fang said. The snowstorms in Xinjiang were just the most dramatic result of a cold front descending over China this week. Most provinces in the north of the country were impacted, and heavy fog caused a series of cancellations and delays at major airports, including in Beijing. Three more "winter freezes" were expected to affect China during January, usually the coldest month of the year, state-employed meteorologists warned this week. The Central Meteorological Office has predicted that China will experience its coldest winter since 1986. This was based partly on the fact that temperatures in December were 1.5 degrees Celsius below the historical average. "China is experiencing the coldest winter in 20 years," Wang Bangzhong, a deputy director with the China Meteorological Administration, said in comments carried by the state press this week. The cold snap over north China happened as the government said 2,475 people were killed in blizzards and other natural disasters around the nation last year, the highest casualty figure since 2001. The death toll, representing an increase of 10 percent over 2004, was made public by Deputy Civil Affairs Minister Li Liguo at a briefing in Beijing Thursday. "China saw relatively severe natural disasters in 2005," Li said. "We had floods, typhoons, droughts, hail storms, earthquakes, blizzards and mudslides."

Second Turkish teenager dies of suspected case of bird flu Last Updated Thu, 05 Jan 2006 05:29:16 EST CBC News Turkey confirmed on Thursday that a second teenager there has died of a suspected case of bird flu – in what could be the first human cases outside of China and southeast Asia. The 15-year-old girl who died is from the same family whose 14-year old son died over the weekend, officials said. A third child in the family is also suspected of having bird flu. It isn't known definitively if both teens died of the deadly H5N1 strain, but Turkey has sent samples to a lab in Britain for further tests. "We are pretty confident that unfortunately it is a human case of H5N1," Guenael Rodier, special adviser on communicable diseases at the World Health Organisation's European office, told Reuters news on Thursday. Turkey lies on the path of migratory birds and has suffered two outbreaks of bird flu among its poultry in the last three months. The deadly H5N1 strain has killed more than 70 people in Asia since 2003.

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