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"You get America out of Iraq and
Israel out of Palestine and you'll stop the terrorism."
- Cindy Sheehan |
P I C T U R E
O F T H E D A Y |
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©Pierre-Paul Feyte |
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SOTT Editorial
09/01/2006
Sharon was recognised as a hawk by all. He was
secretly proud of his reputation as a cold-blooded murderer of Palestinian
civilians, as were many of his colleagues. In recent months however,
Sharon was criticised by the hard right, lead by Netanyahu, for pushing
through with the demolition of Israeli settlements in the Gaza strip.
These hard right-wingers accused Sharon of offering a sop to "Palestinian
terrorists". For his part, Sharon claimed that the Gaza withdrawal
was necessary to secure Israel's security and to move the peace process
forward.
Both claims were, of course, entirely untrue.
The Gaza withdrawal, far from being a concession, or a gesture of peace and
goodwill, to the Palestinians, was a carefully planned maneuver by Sharon to
try to persuade international public opinion that Israel was the real peacemaker
in the Middle East conflict, despite all of the concealed evidence to the contrary.
The reality of the Gaza withdrawal is that the Gaza settlements were illegal from the beginning and their removal was simply a long overdue adherence to international law and the Geneva convention. The 8,000 settlers that were removed were compensated to the tune of $200,000 per family, despite the endless news footage of tearful settlers and 'poor Israeli soldiers' who could hardly bear to do their duty.
Anywhere else in the world, the return of stolen property to its rightful owners does not result in the thief being lauded as a righteous person, particularly when there is a long list of offences yet to be answered. Yet this was the result of the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.
In addition, the world was told that, following the Israeli withdrawal, the beleaguered Gazans would now enjoy freedom of movement, self-government and a slice of land to call their own. Not surprisingly, nothing has really changed in Gaza. Coincidence? Gaza's Palestinian inhabitants (women and children included) continue to suffer regular Israeli air raids, military incursions, lock downs and periodic assassination.
Sharon hated the Palestinians, and had the opportunity presented itself, he would
not have hesitated to ethnically cleanse or expel the Palestinians from all of
the land that Israel claims as its divine right. Yet Sharon was foolish enough
to believe himself as somewhat of a realist and held to the idea that, at some
point, Israel was going to have to live alongside the Palestinians. He reasoned
that, at most, he could probably stomach a future with a Palestinian slave state
next door to "greater Israel".
Sharon, however, was not on the same page as the real Middle East policy planners, who see no need to 'face reality' since they believe themselves to be its creators. The disturbing conclusion then is that, despite his years of dedicated service in establishing the nation of Israel on the blood of innocent Middle Eastern Arabs, Sharon's thirst for blood-letting was not 'pure' enough to make him eligible to direct the final phase in the Middle East "peace process".
Realising that a mutiny was in the offing and that he could not rely on the support of a majority of the Likud party, Sharon resigned as its head and formed the 'moderate' (in terms of Israeli politics where all significant parties are right wing) Kadima Party. Parliament was dissolved and new elections are scheduled for March 2006.
Benjamin Netanyahu, finance minister under Sharon, has since taken over the Likud leadership.
We are told that Sharon fell ill on Wednesday January 4th while resting at his ranch in the Negev. He was scheduled for a medical procedure on Thursday to close a small hole in his heart that was identified after his minor heart attack on December 18th. There are suggestions that Sharon's condition may have been complicated (worsened) by blood thinners he was given after his mild stroke on December 18th. Several neurologists are perplexed at the treatment that Sharon was given. The NY Times reported:
"The decision to treat the hole in Mr. Sharon's heart - with all the attendant
risks of blood thinners - surprised many neurologists, because recent studies
have concluded that such holes are not likely to cause strokes in the elderly. "We've
been scratching our heads about the care, since we would not recommend closure
of the hole" Dr. Fink said, noting that, at 77, Mr. Sharon presumably had many
other risks for stroke.
After "falling ill" on 6th Jan, doctors rushed Sharon to Jerusalem from his
home in the Negev desert. He suffered the stroke during the hour-long drive.
We will never know what really occurred during that hour-long drive, or why
Sharon was treated in a way that increased his chances of suffering a massive
brain haemorrhage. We do, however, know the result.
We should also make mention
of the obvious attempt at emotional manipulation of the Israeli population
through the release of conflicting reports about Sharon's condition. On the
6th Jan, the Guardian reported that
Israeli doctors had claimed that Sharon's chances of survival were "slim".
One day later, Reuters reported that
doctors had claimed that he had a "very high" chance of survival. Just what
is being achieved by this, other than to confuse the public about the real
state of Sharon's health and the real cause of his condition, is anyone's guess.
Recent poll results suggested that Sharon would have defeated Netanyahu in
the upcoming elections. With Sharon's 'demise' however, it seems inevitable
that Netanyahu will now be Israel's next Prime Minister. 'Bibi' has made it
clear that, at his earliest convenience, he will attack Iran, and in doing
so, nonchalantly ignite the fuse that will blow the Middle East back to the
stone age, and bring to the wider world the realisation of America's Israel-inspired
never-ending war on terror, which, by then, will be recognisable for what it
always was - a war of terror on the human race.
In this context, and in the context of the reality of political power plays
and the apparent desire by the power elite to bring the world to the brink
of destruction and beyond, it seems reasonable then to suggest that Sharon,
like his nemesis Arafat, was the victim of a stealth assassination.
Meanwhile, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad continues to play his appointed
role of bogeyman, following up his call for Israel to be wiped off the map
with an expression of his fervent wish that Sharon's condition prove fatal.
Ahmadinejad's comment stands
in stark contrast to the concern shown by the Palestinian leadership over Sharon's
exit from the stage of Israeli-Palestinian politics.
PA Chairman Abbas knows only too well that, as cruel and ruthless as Sharon
was, Netanyahu is a much worse prospect for the Palestinian people. Is it the
case then that the Iranian PM is unaware that, with Sharon's departure, the
destruction of his country and countless Iranian civilians has drawn one step
closer? Or is it simply the case that Ahmadinejad is part of the setup?
Of course, the picture would not be complete without a word from the third
member of the trio of organised religions - the fundie Christian corner - they
that eagerly await the trumpet blast that will herald the beginning of Armageddon
(or rather the fabled "rapture" that their bible tells them must precede it).
"Christian evangelical broadcaster Pat Robertson linked Sharon's stroke to God's "enmity against those who 'divide my land,'" and added on his television program, "I would say woe unto any prime minister of Israel who takes a similar course."
We are not sure who should receive the award for the "MOST THRILLED" by Sharon's
exit, but Ahmadinejad and Robertson appear as strange bedfellows indeed; but
only until we realise that all three major organised religions were established
with one ultimate goal in mind – to manipulate the human race to walk blindly
down the road to its own destruction.
And from that perspective, things seem to be progressing quite nicely here on planet earth. |
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Monday, 9 January 2006, 08:59 GMT
Ariel Sharon is able to breathe independently, report doctors who have started to bring the Israeli prime minister out of a coma.
While stressing that his condition remained critical, the Hadassah hospital said the development indicated "some sort of activity in his brain".
Doctors are currently reducing the amount of anaesthetic Mr Sharon is being given, in an effort to wake him.
He has been in an induced coma since being operated on for a major stroke. The process of weaning him off the sedation is likely to be slow, doctors have said, and a full assessment of any brain damage he has suffered can only be made once it is completed.
However, the fact that he is able to breathe is encouraging, Hadassah Hospital director Dr Shlomo Mor-Yosef said.
"This is the first sign of some sort of activity in his brain," he said.
Nonetheless, the prime minister remains hooked up to a ventilator.
The neurosurgeon who operated on the 77-year-old prime minister, Jose Cohen, has said that although his chances of survival are "very high", Mr Sharon will not be able to continue as prime minister.
Damage assessment
Once Mr Sharon is out of the coma, induced to allow him to rest and heal, his doctors will begin testing his responses.
The medics will then pass their assessment of brain damage to Attorney General Meni Mazuz.
"They will inform us the moment they wake him up from the sedation and they will know what systems were damaged and what his situation is," justice ministry spokesman Jacob Galanti said.
As Mr Sharon lay sedated, acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert chaired his first full cabinet meeting on Sunday morning.
Seated beside Mr Sharon's empty chair, Mr Olmert said Israel would weather the crisis.
"Israel's democracy is strong and its institutions are functioning seriously and as they should," he said.
"If I could talk to [Mr Sharon] today, I am sure Arik would tell me: 'Thanks for your wishes, but you must work to safeguard the safety and economy of Israel', and that is what we will do."
One of Mr Olmert's first decisions will be whether to allow Palestinians in East Jerusalem to vote in Palestinian elections on 25 January.
Israel had earlier said it would ban them from voting in protest at the participation in the poll of Hamas, the largest and most popular Palestinian militant group.
The Palestinian Authority has threatened to cancel the poll if Israel refuses.
Israeli police have already told Palestinian candidates planning to campaign there they can do so, reports say.
Israel's own general election is to go ahead as planned on 28 March. |
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Mitch Prothero in Beirut
Sunday January 8, 2006
The Observer
Hamad Shamus remembers the morning in September 1982 when the right-wing Lebanese forces and their Israeli advisers sealed the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps on the outskirts of Beirut and began to massacre the Palestinians inside.
His home was nearest to the camp entrance and he was one of the first to hear shots as the Phalangist militia, in uniforms adorned with the Cedar Tree insignia, arrived. The Phalange had been fighting the PLO and its Lebanese allies since 1975 and were seeking revenge for the killing of their leader, Bashir Gemayel, in a car bombing.
'They put all of us against the wall by our home and shot us,' says Shamus, who was 20 at the time. 'Me, my father, my brother and a family from next door. I was shot three times. One man lived for an hour before he gave up and died. I lay there for three days listening to them kill the others. I prayed to God for myself and for my family. I don't know how I lived.' He rises and limps to a wall of pictures showing piles of dead. He points to a body. 'That is my father,' he points again, 'and that leg is my brother.'
As Israel's top military official in the 1982 invasion of Lebanon and backer of the Phalangists, Ariel Sharon is here thought of as a butcher of innocents. 'He is the King Kong of massacres,' says Abu Khalil, 46, another survivor.
The Israeli Kahan Commission found Sharon indirectly responsible for the massacre - he was dismissed as Israel's Defence Minister. 'I want to see him recover so that we can charge him with crimes,' Hamad says. 'But it seems maybe God has decided to charge him instead.' Abu Mohammed, 55, looks down the street he helped defend. He had sensed something bad was coming and hid his family. He then returned to his home as the Phalangists and Israelis arrived. He ran to the nearby football stadium, used as a weapons depot before the PLO withdrawal, and found rifles and grenades.
'It was our right to resist, we are not terrorists. It was easier to kill the unarmed, so they left us alone. My neighbour was worried the Israelis would send jets to bomb us, so he walked out of the camp with a white flag to tell them we were just civilians defending our homes. They shot him in the street.'
Of Sharon, he says: 'Like all Palestinians, we pray he does not die [as he would] not suffer like he caused the Palestinian people to suffer at his hand.'
Abu Khalil added: 'I wanted him to die until I heard he would be handicapped. Now I pray for him to suffer as a cripple, as he crippled the people of Sabra and Shatila.' |
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Sun Jan 8, 2006
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A U.S. UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter crashed in northern Iraq on Saturday night, killing all 12 aboard in one of the worst incidents of its kind since the war began in 2003, the U.S. military said on Sunday.
Four crew and eight passengers were listed as being aboard, the military said in a statement, adding that the cause of the crash was under investigation.
The helicopter went down in a sparsely populated area 12 km (7.5 miles) east of the town of Tal Afar shortly before midnight on Saturday. It had been flying between bases in northern Iraq when communications were lost with the aircraft, the statement said.
An immediate search and rescue operation was launched from nearby military bases and the helicopter was located at midday on Sunday.
It was the worst helicopter crash since January 2005, when a U.S. transport helicopter crashed close to the Jordanian border in Anbar province, western Iraq, killing 30 Marines and one sailor.
Eleven people, including six U.S. civilians, were killed last April when their commercial helicopter was shot down.
Dozens of U.S.-led forces have been killed in helicopter crashes since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, some in accidents and some after being fired on by insurgents with shoulder-fired missiles or small arms.
Faced with dangerous roads and vast tracts of desert, the military uses helicopters as its main means of transport to move troops and supplies between bases dotted around the country.
In some of the worst incidents, two U.S. Black Hawk helicopters collided under fire in Mosul in November 2003, killing 17 soldiers, a week after another Black Hawk was shot down killing six.
A Black Hawk was shot down near Falluja in January 2004, killing all nine on board.
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www.chinaview.cn 2006-01-09 13:02:35
GENEVA, Jan. 8 (Xinhuanet) -- An Egyptian government fax intercepted by the Swiss secret services said that the United States had detained 23 terror suspects in a detention center in Romania, a Swiss weekly reported on Sunday.
The fax said the Egyptian embassy in London learned from its own sources that 23 Iraqi and Afghan citizens had been questioned at the Mikhail Kogalniceanu base in the Romanian town of Constanzaon the Black Sea coast, the Zurich-based weekly Sonntags Blick reported.
Egypt believed there were similar centers in Ukraine, Kosovo, Macedonia and Bulgaria, the paper quoted a report written by the Swiss Defense Ministry. The newspaper said the fax, which was signed by Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit, was the firmest evidence yet of the alleged secret CIA detention centers in Eastern Europe that were first reported on Nov. 2 in The Washington Post.
"For the first time a state confirms that it knows of the existence of secret CIA prisons in Europe," the newspaper said.
Amid protests from European countries that their airports are being used by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to transport suspects, the United States has not denied the existence of alleged prisons in eastern and central Europe and elsewhere, but has refuted allegations that it uses torture to obtain information.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has said the United States acts within the law.
During a stopover in Bucharest, Rice signed an agreement with Romania to establish permanent U.S. military bases in the country.The new U.S. military presence will have its headquarters at Mikhail Kogalniceanu. |
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AFP
Sun Jan 8, 1:56 PM ET
BERN - A fax sent by the Egyptian foreign ministry to its embassy in London stated that more than 20 Iraqis and Afghans had been questioned at a US-run base in Romania, a Swiss newspaper reported. SonntagsBlick said the Swiss secret services obtained a copy of the fax which said that the Egyptian embassy in London "learned from its own sources that 23 Iraqi and Afghan citizens had been questioned at the Mikhail Kogalniceanu base in the town of Constanza on the Black Sea coast".
The newspaper quoted a report written by the Swiss defence ministry which said Egypt believed there were "similar centres in Ukraine, Kosovo, Macedonia and Bulgaria".
The Swiss ministry reacted to the report with a statement saying it would open an investigation into how the information was leaked.
However, because the report is supposed to be secret, the ministry refused to comment on its contents.
A senior officer at the Mikhail Kogalniceanu base told AFP on Sunday that he categorically denied the report.
"I have been working at this base since 1995 and I have never been aware of such an operation," the officer, Dan Buciuman, said.
He added that the base was open to "anyone who wants to carry out an investigation".
Amid protests from European governments that their airports are being used by the Central Intelligence Agency to transport suspects, the United States has not denied the existence of alleged prisons in eastern and central Europe and elsewhere, but has refuted allegations that it uses torture to obtain information.
US television network ABC reported in December that the US had held 11 senior members of the Al-Qaeda network in Poland but that they were evacuated to north Africa shortly before US Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice toured Europe that month.
During a stop in Bucharest, Rice signed an agreement with Romania to establish permanent US military bases in the country, the first ever in a former Warsaw Pact nation.
The new US military presence will have its headquarters at Mikhail Kogalniceanu. |
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Layla A. Asamarai, MA Doctoral Candidate in Clinical Psychology – January 7, 2005
I received an e-mail today from a dear friend in Minnesota who is grieving the death of her uncle in Iraq. Her heartrending personal account of his murder deeply saddened me and I include it for all those who wish to read it. Afterwards, please read a passionate appeal to the American people by Cindy Sheehan, a tireless crusader to bring an end to the war in Iraq. God Bless.
I wanted to share some really sad family news that we were just stricken with yesterday. My uncle Abdulrazaq (my father's younger brother who is 50 years old) was in Iraq (in our local city of Samarra Iraq) on Thursday January 5th, 2006 and at 8pm went to go meet with his business partners to finish financial exchanges and on his way back he was killed by American troops.
Upon stealing the $10,000 that were in his coat pocket the troops that the Americans are so proud of and support, found that he did not have any weapons or explosives and then they dumped his body at the local hospital and walked away with his money. My cousin is a resident physician at the local hospital. The Americans had notified them that they were bringing in a dead body and to come and receive it. Upon going to receive the body from the Americans outside of the hospital he was shocked to find that this is his uncle. At home his wife was very worried as he was extraordinarily late for dinner. She called other family members who called the hospital (which is something people typically due since so many people are dying since the U.S. invation) to see if he had an accident at which point my cousin answered informing them that his body was just dumped at the hospital.
Our family was contacted and they came to receive his body. He was shot in the head, abdomen, and in one of his kidneys and it is believed that he died immediately, though the details of whether they robbed him before or after they killed him and when decided to dump his body are unknown. He left behind a wife and two daughters age 4 and 5. They are still not sure how to break the news to his daughters.
My uncle had spent 16 years as a prisoner of war in Iran. He was freed on April 9th, 1998 (even though the Iran/Iraq war ended in the late 80's). Upon starting his life again in 1998 he married and had two beautiful daughters. Although it was always hard for him to talk about the torture in the Iranian prisons, his daughters Shayma (5 yrs old) and Yamama (4 years old) always had a way of transcending words such they seeped into his heart in the most natural and miraculous way and when he played with them he was free from his tortured thoughts and pains.
My uncle Abdulrazak is not the only one, there are thousands that have died in this way. This is the face of American terrorism. Our family is so numb. Our hearts are swollen with grief, resentment, and sorrow.
American soldiers sign up to risk life and death and when one of them dies it is though the earth stops its rotation, but when an Iraqi civilian who is working hard to support his family and is forced to live his life in the midst of an American occupation is murdered and robbed by sweet American boys, he is dumped like road kill.
What makes their lives more worth living?? Is it the blue eyes and blond hair? or is it the cross that hangs on their necks?? I wonder what defense they have for this one. Did he part his hair on the wrong side? Did he wear the wrong color? Was he driving "suspiciously"? What would they say he did to deserve being murdered? How about robbing him? It must not have been a robbery. Maybe they were afraid that a doctor would steal his money so they kept if for safe keeping.
Maybe they wanted to take the money and buy a gift for his daughters. Whatever it is it must be good because they are Americans! In fact as they provide this hypothetical justification (assuming they would be prompted to do so- which wouldn't happen because Americans answer to no one) I can just hear the national anthem playing in the background.
My uncle's murderers will come home to their families one day to tell of the heroic stories but humbly refuse to be called heroes and instead insist that they were merely doing their duty, but in their soiled hearts they will carry the ugliness of what they have done and who they became and it will eat at them until it destroys their lives and the lives around them.
This email will not have an end-just as these killings do not....... |
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By Zbigniew Brzezinski
Sunday, January 8, 2006; Page B07
"Bring 'em on."
-- President Bush on Iraqi insurgents, summer 2003
The insurgency is "in its last throes."
-- Vice President Cheney, summer 2005
" . . . there are only two options before our country: victory or defeat."
-- President Bush, Christmas 2005
The administration's rhetorical devolution speaks for itself. Yet, with some luck and with a more open decision-making process in the White House, greater political courage on the part of Democratic leaders and even some encouragement from authentic Iraqi leaders, the U.S. war in Iraq could (and should) come to an end within a year.
"Victory or defeat" is, in fact, a false strategic choice. In using this formulation, the president would have the American people believe that their only options are either "hang in and win" or "quit and lose." But the real, practical choice is this: "persist but not win" or "desist but not lose."
Victory, as defined by the administration and its supporters -- i.e., a stable and secular democracy in a unified Iraqi state, with the insurgency crushed by the American military assisted by a disciplined, U.S.-trained Iraqi national army -- is unlikely. The U.S. force required to achieve it would have to be significantly larger than the present one, and the Iraqi support for a U.S.-led counterinsurgency would have to be more motivated. The current U.S. forces (soon to be reduced) are not large enough to crush the anti-American insurgency or stop the sectarian Sunni-Shiite strife. Both problems continue to percolate under an inconclusive but increasingly hated foreign occupation.
Moreover, neither the Shiites nor the Kurds are likely to subordinate their specific interests to a unified Iraq with a genuine, single national army. As the haggling over the new government has already shown, the two dominant forces in Iraq -- the religious Shiite alliance and the separatist Kurds -- share a common interest in preventing a restoration of Sunni domination, with each determined to retain a separate military capacity for asserting its own specific interests, largely at the cost of the Sunnis. A truly national army in that context is a delusion. Continuing doggedly to seek "a victory" in that fashion dooms America to rising costs in blood and money, not to mention the intensifying Muslim hostility and massive erosion of America's international legitimacy, credibility and moral reputation.
The administration's definition of "defeat" is similarly misleading. Official and unofficial spokesmen often speak in terms that recall the apocalyptic predictions made earlier regarding the consequences of American failure to win in Vietnam: dominoes falling, the region exploding and U.S. power discredited. An added touch is the notion that the Iraqi insurgents will then navigate the Atlantic and wage terrorism on the American homeland.
The real choice that needs to be faced is between:
An acceptance of the complex post-Hussein Iraqi realities through a relatively prompt military disengagement -- which would include a period of transitional and initially even intensified political strife as the dust settled and as authentic Iraqi majorities fashioned their own political arrangements.
An inconclusive but prolonged military occupation lasting for years while an elusive goal is pursued.
It is doubtful, to say the least, that America's domestic political support for such a futile effort could long be sustained by slogans about Iraq's being "the central front in the global war on terrorism."
In contrast, a military disengagement by the end of 2006, derived from a more realistic definition of an adequate outcome, could ensure that desisting is not tantamount to losing. In an Iraq dominated by the Shiites and the Kurds -- who together account for close to 75 percent of the population -- the two peoples would share a common interest in Iraq's independence as a state. The Kurds, with their autonomy already amounting in effect to quasi-sovereignty, would otherwise be threatened by the Turks. And the Iraqi Shiites are first of all Arabs; they have no desire to be Iran's satellites. Some Sunnis, once they were aware that the U.S. occupation was drawing to a close and that soon they would be facing an overwhelming Shiite-Kurdish coalition, would be more inclined to accommodate the new political realities, especially when deprived of the rallying cry of resistance to a foreign occupier.
In addition, it is likely that both Kuwait and the Kurdish regions of Iraq would be amenable to some residual U.S. military presence as a guarantee against a sudden upheaval. Once the United States terminated its military occupation, some form of participation by Muslim states in peacekeeping in Iraq would be easier to contrive, and their involvement could also help to cool anti-American passions in the region.
In any case, as Iraqi politics gradually become more competitive, it is almost certain that the more authentic Iraqi leaders ( not handpicked by the United States) -- to legitimate their claim to power -- will begin to demand publicly a firm date for U.S. withdrawal. That is all to the good. In fact, they should be quietly encouraged to do so, because that would increase their popular support while allowing the United States to claim a soberly redefined "Mission Accomplished."
The requisite first step to that end is for the president to break out of his political cocoon. His policymaking and his speeches are the products of the true believers around him who are largely responsible for the mess in Iraq. They have a special stake in their definition of victory, and they reinforce his convictions instead of refining his judgments. The president badly needs to widen his circle of advisers. Why not consult some esteemed Republicans and Democrats not seeking public office -- say, Warren Rudman or Colin Powell or Lee Hamilton or George Mitchell -- regarding the definition of an attainable yet tolerable outcome in Iraq?
Finally, Democratic leaders should stop equivocating while carping. Those who want to lead in 2008 are particularly unwilling to state clearly that ending the war soon is both desirable and feasible. They fear being labeled as unpatriotic. Yet defining a practical alternative would provide a politically effective rebuttal to those who mindlessly seek an unattainable "victory." America needs a real choice regarding its tragic misadventure in Iraq. |
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James Sturcke and agencies
Monday January 9, 2006
More than two million Muslim pilgrims from almost 180 countries today arrived at Mount Arafat following an eight-mile hike on the second day of the hajj.
Many worshippers, exhausted after the overnight walk from Mena, near Mecca, rested on the roadside or prayed. Saudi television showed a sea of devotees dressed in white converging on the holy site. Speaking to the gathered masses, Saudi Arabia's leading cleric, Sheikh Abdul-Aziz al-Sheik, said the west was conducting a "war against our creed".
Pilgrims at Mount Arafat stood in the open under the burning sun and begged Allah for forgiveness. The heat of Arabia at midday is seen as emblematic of the day of judgment.
Later, pilgrims will collect stones from the desert to be hurled at the pillars of Jamarat, which represent the devil, tomorrow.
The gruelling six-day hajj is one of the five pillars of Islam. Every able-bodied Muslim who can afford the trip must make it at least once in their lifetime. The pilgrimage ends with a four-day feast called the Eid al-Adha.
Amid heightened safety fears, Saudi Arabian authorities deployed 60,000 security staff in an effort to avoid deadly stampedes or attacks by Islamist militants fighting the Saudi royals.
The hajj has been marred by tragedies in recent years. Around 250 pilgrims died in a stampede during the stoning of Jamarat in 2004, and 1,426 pilgrims were killed in a tunnel leading to holy sites in 1990.
Many of the pilgrims prayed for Muslims in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and in Iraq, and also remembered the 76 people who died when a hostel in Mecca collapsed on Thursday.
Muslims believe God will hear their prayers if they are made within the sacred zone of Mount Arafat, the site of the Prophet Mohammad's last sermon in AD632.
Speaking at a mosque on the plain of Mount Arafat, Sheikh al-Sheik, the kingdom's grand mufti, said Muslims were facing critical challenges, among them accusations of terrorism and human rights abuses. "Oh Muslim nation, there is a war against of our creed, against our culture under the pretext of fighting terrorism," he said.
"We should stand firm and united in protecting our religion. Islam's enemies want to empty our religion from its contents and its meaning. But the soldiers of God will be victorious." The faithful responded: "Amen."
Last night, pilgrims chanted: "Labaik Alluhumma Labaik" - which translates as we are coming answering your call, God - as they walked through the valley from Mena.
"I feel healthy, I feel strong, I feel young," Zakariya Chadawri, a Pakistani pilgrim who was helped along the dusty road by friends, said.
"Allah is everywhere, but here I feel he is much closer to me," Soumai Trabulsi, a Syrian pilgrim said.
The number of foreign pilgrims rose 1.2% to 1,557,447, from 177 nations this year, the Saudi news agency SPA quoted the deputy interior minister, Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, as saying.
Under a quota system worked out with the Jeddah-based Organisation of Islamic Conference, each Muslim country is allowed to send 1,000 pilgrims for every million of its population.
Tomorrow, pilgrims will walk down to nearby Muzdalafah, which has become a notorious bottleneck, for the stoning.
Saudi television repeatedly broadcast instructions to the pilgrims to avoid forming into crowds and not to camp along the pathway. Authorities have widened the walkways to nearly 80 metres in an attempt to reduce congestion this year.
The most dramatic move to improve access has seen the three pillars representing the devil rebuilt.
In previous years, they were tall obelisks but are now stone walls 26 metres long, allowing a much larger number of people to pelt them with pebbles at one time. A religious fatwa has also extended the hours permitted for the ritual.
The rituals began with the circling of the Kaaba, the huge black cube in the centre of Mecca's grand mosque, towards which Muslims around the world face when they offer prayers in their home countries five times daily.
At the conclusion of the required rituals, some pilgrims stay on in Saudi Arabia to visit other holy sites in Mecca and in Medina, around 280 miles to the north. |
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22:16:04 EST Jan 8, 2006
IAN JAMES
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) - American singer and activist Harry Belafonte called U.S. President George W. Bush "the greatest terrorist in the world" Sunday and said millions of Americans support the socialist revolution of Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez.
Belafonte led a delegation of Americans including actor Danny Glover, Princeton University scholar Cornel West and farmworker advocate Dolores Huerta that met with the Venezuelan president for more than six hours late Saturday. Some in the group attended Chavez's television and radio broadcast Sunday.
"No matter what the greatest tyrant in the world, the greatest terrorist in the world, George W. Bush says, we're here to tell you: Not hundreds, not thousands, but millions of the American people . . . support your revolution," Belafonte told Chavez during the broadcast. "We respect you, admire you, and we are expressing our full solidarity with the Venezuelan people and your revolution," he added.
The 78-year-old Belafonte, famous for his calypso-inspired music, including the Day-O song, was a close collaborator of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and is now a UNICEF goodwill ambassador. He also has been outspoken in criticizing the U.S. embargo of communist Cuba.
Attending the live Hello President program under a canopy at a farming co-operative southwest of Caracas, Belafonte said he had come to learn about Chavez's Bolivarian Revolution, which includes a wide range of social programs for the poor and is named after South American independence hero Simon Bolivar.
He accused U.S. news media of falsely painting Chavez as a "dictator," when in fact, he said, there is democracy and citizens are "optimistic about their future."
The Americans toured a prison, spoke with people in the street and heard praise as well as criticism, Belafonte said. To be able to criticize, he said, "is the greatest truth of a democracy."
Huerta, a pioneer of the United Farm Workers labour union, called the visit a "very deep experience." Glover and West, who both expressed admiration for Chavez's ideals, ended their visit Saturday, officials said.
Chavez called Belafonte "my brother" and noted he championed civil rights for black Americans alongside King.
The president said he believes deeply in the struggle for justice by blacks, both in the United States and Venezuela.
"Although we may not believe it, there continues to be great discrimination here against black people," Chavez said, urging his government to redouble its efforts to prevent it.
Belafonte suggested setting up a youth exchange for Venezuelans and Americans to learn from each other. He finished by shouting in Spanish: "Viva la revolucion!"
He and Chavez embraced as Belafonte's song Matilda blared over the speakers.
Chavez accuses Bush of trying to overthrow him, pointing to intelligence documents released by the U.S. indicating that the CIA knew beforehand that dissident officers planned a short-lived 2002 coup. The U.S. denies involvement, but Chavez says Venezuela must be on guard.
"We have to defeat imperialism to save ourselves - and not only ourselves, to save the world," said Chavez, calling Bush "Mr. Danger."
Chavez said if the U.S. were to imprison Venezuela's ambassador for some reason, friends like Belafonte "would take care of freeing him with our support."
As usual, Chavez's show was eclectic, as he took calls, hugged children and laughed heartily over an astrologist's prediction that the divorced leader would find an "intense romance" this year. |
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www.chinaview.cn 2006-01-09 16:33:40
TEHRAN, Jan. 9 (Xinhuanet) -- A senior Iranian official confirmed on Monday that Iran will resume nuclear fuel research in the day,the official IRNA news agency reported.
"As announced, nuclear research will be resumed in Iran today in the presence of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)representatives," government spokesman Gholam-Hossein Elham was quoted as saying.
"Resumption of research is not subject to legal prohibitions. It was suspended voluntarily," Elham added. Elham also said that general outlines of a Russian proposal over Iran's uranium enrichment have been announced but announcement of details will be revealed after further negotiations.
A Russian delegation, headed by Security Council Deputy Secretary Valentin Sobolev, arrived in Tehran Thursday evening and held discussions from Friday to Sunday with Iranian officials on a recent compromise proposal made by Moscow that the two sides establish a joint venture in Russia to enrich uranium for Iran.
Iran said on Tuesday that it had informed the IAEA of a decision to resume nuclear fuel research, which had been suspended for nearly two and a half years, on Jan. 9, a move that the European Union warns will jeopardize bilateral nuclear talks.
IAEA Director General Mohamed Elbaradei on Tuesday reiterated the agency's position that it was important for Tehran to keep all work related to uranium enrichment suspended in order to disperse suspicions of the international community over its nuclear program.
A group of IAEA inspectors arrived here on Friday to supervise Tehran's resumption of nuclear research activities after the agency's dissuasion failed.
Tehran's nuclear fuel research was suspended in Oct. 2003, so was its uranium enrichment, a key step to build nuclear fuel cycle.Iran has ruled out the suggestion to move its uranium enrichment to Russia.
The United States accuses Iran of developing nuclear weapons secretly, a charge rejected by Tehran as politically motivated. |
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AFP
PARIS, Jan 8 (AFP) - Ségolčne Royal, the 52 year-old president of the Poitou regional council and partner of Socialist leader François Hollande, is the clear front-runner to become the party's candidate in next year's French presidential election, according to two polls Sunday.
Some 42 percent of the public want her as the Socialist contender in the May 2007 vote, as against 24 percent for former prime minister Lionel Jospin and 20 percent for former culture minister Jack Lang, a CSA poll for Le Parisien found.
Royal also easily topped the list with 48 percent when only Socialist Party (PS) supporters were consulted. Meanwhile 53 percent of those questioned by an IFOP poll in Le Journal du Dimanche newspaper said that she has the "stature to be a president of the republic", ahead of former finance minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn on 39 percent and Lang on 36 percent.
Hollande, who is nominally the senior PS member, had only 12 percent support in the first poll and 21 percent in the second.
Royal's growing popularity was confirmed by a third poll earlier in the week which for the first time placed her as the most popular political figure in the country, on both left and right.
Royal scored 49 percent in the Le Figaro magazine survey, surpassing the two most likely presidential candidates from the ruling UMP party, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin on 46 percent and Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy on 45 percent.
France's Socialists were badly divided over the referendum on an EU constitution last May, but papered over their differences at a party congress in November. They will designate their candidate for the elections at the end of this year.
Hollande said last week that he did not mind being eclipsed by his partner, who is the mother of their four children.
"I am not going to hold it against Ségolčne because she is popular. She has assets which all the French can recognise: courage, sincerity and the capacity to govern," he said.
The daughter of a soldier, Royal was elected to the National Assembly in 1988. She was environment minister for less than a year in 1992, and later in the government of Lionel Jospin held only junior posts, in charge of teaching and then family affairs. |
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Doug Ireland
The daily news-bulletin of the weekly Nouvel Observateur reports today on two new public opinion polls that confirm the mounting popularity of Segolene Royal for the French Socialist Party's presidential nomination in 2007. Royal likes to say she considers Tony Blair -- Bush's mendacious partner in the war on Iraq and the man who has put the British welfare state on Slimfast -- as her model. In a CSA poll published by the daily Le Parisien, 42% of all French voters, and 48% of Socialist voters, want to see her as the Socialist candidate (a rise of six points over last month's poll).
Royal does even better in an IFOP poll for the Journal du Dimanche: 53% of all voters judge she has the stature of a president, as opposed to only 39% for her nearest rival, Dominique Strauss Kahn. Among Socialist sympathrizers in the electorate, Royal's "presidential stature" figure rises to 67%, with Jack Lang her nearest rival at 45%, with Strauss-Kahn getting 41%. Given the continuing media barrage pushing her candidacy, the rise in her popularity over just 4 weeks isn't surprising.
But the popularity of the centrist, "family values" moralizer Segolene Royal -- who's loudly proclaimed she's against gay marriage and gay adoptions-- is a sad reflection of the Socialists' political and programmatic bankruptcy (to understand why, see my previous post, "A Woman for France's Socialists? The Rapid Rise of Segolene Royal".) Previous polls showed that over two-thirds of Socialist voters don't think their party's candidate can win in '07 anyway because the party is seen as not much different from the conservatives on key issues. Meanwhile, the decision by party boss Francois Hollande -- Royal's domestic partner and the father of her children -- not to have a primary for the presidential nomination open to all Socialist voters, but instead to have the nomination decided only by the party's 127,000 dues-paying members -- who are part of the apparatus over which Hollande reasserted his firm control at the November Socialist Party congress -- is another way to try insure that at least one of the couple will be annointed as the party's '07 standard-bearer (for the uncharismatic Hollande's presidential ambitions burn just as bright as his lady's -- although his popularity is infinitely less.)
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Matthew Tempest and agencies
Monday January 9, 2006
Tony Blair should be impeached over the Iraq war, according
to one of Britain's most senior former soldiers.
General Sir Michael Rose, who commanded UN forces in Bosnia, accused
the prime minister of taking the country to war on what turned out
to be "false grounds", saying it is something "no
one should be allowed to walk away from".
Despite publicly insisting that his aim was to rid Iraq of weapons
of mass destruction, Mr Blair "probably had some other strategy
in mind", said Gen Rose.
He makes the call for Mr Blair's impeachment in a documentary by
the former BBC correspondent and former independent MP Martin Bell.
Gen Rose told Bell he would have resigned his commission rather than
take troops to war on the flimsy basis offered by Mr Blair.
And he said: "The politicians should be held to account, and
my own view is that Blair should be impeached.
"That would prevent politicians treating quite so carelessly
the subject of taking a country into war."
He added to that criticism on the Today programme, saying: "Certainly
from a soldier's perspective there can't be any more serious decision
taken by a prime minister than declaring war.
"And then to go to war on what turns out to be false grounds
is something that no one should be allowed to walk away from."
The general described Mr Blair's actions in the run-up to war as "somewhere
in between" getting the politics wrong and actually acting illegally.
"The politics was wrong, that he rarely declared what his ultimate
aims were, as far as we can see, in terms of harping continually
on weapons of mass destruction when actually he probably had some
other strategy in mind," he said.
"And secondly, the consequences of that war have been quite
disastrous both for the people of Iraq and also for the west in terms
of our wider interests in the war against global terror."
Gen Rose is one of a number of retired soldiers taking part in a
documentary by the former war correspondent Bell, entitled Iraq:
The Failure Of War.
In his documentary, Bell denounces the war as an "ill-considered
adventure" and suggests it may prove more damaging to those
who launched it even than America's involvement in Vietnam.
Bell wrote yesterday: "In March it will be three years since
the invasion, yet Iraq remains in the unshakeable grip of sectarian
violence and may be on the brink of civil war.
"In just two bloody days last week, more than 170 people were
butchered by insurgents.
"We have entered a tunnel with no light at the end of it. The
mission has not been accomplished.
"Instead we face the prospect of war without end. Even Vietnam
offered a less disastrous outcome."
There has already been an attempt by MPs, led by Plaid Cymru's Adam
Price, to impeach Mr Blair for "high crimes and misdemeanours" in
taking Britain to war against Iraq. The campaign had backing from
Tory MPs such as Boris Johnson, as well as Lib Dem, Plaid and SNP
members.
Gen Rose accepted parliament had endorsed the decision to commit
British troops to military action, but he said that was because the
PM had stressed the argument that dictator Saddam Hussein must be
stripped of the power to deploy weapons of mass destruction.
The weapons of mass destruction (WMD) argument used to persuade MPs
that war was justified had turned out to be wholly wrong, he told
Today.
The intelligence relied upon by Mr Blair should have been tested
properly by giving UN weapons inspectors more time to see if Saddam
did have WMD.
Gen Rose said he would not have been prepared to lead the army into
a war that he believed was wrong and on such weak grounds.
"You cannot put people in harm's way if you don't believe the
cause is right or sufficient," he said. Senior soldiers should
point out strategic failures, he went on.
He said most people thought the continuing presence of troops in
Iraq was achieving little, but he said it would be wrong to just
walk away.
Responding to Gen Rose's accusation at this morning's lobby briefing,
Mr Blair's official spokesman said: "General Rose is entitled
to his view. Equally, the government is entitled to point out that
we have had free democratic elections in Iraq for the first time
in well over a generation.
"In the last of these elections, 69% of the population of Iraq
expressed their view.
"In terms of the reasons why we went to war, that has been investigated
by four inquiries, including two select committees of the Houses
of Parliament.
"The matter has been gone well over and in terms of the outcome
- which is what matters - of course there have been difficulties,
but we have in process the creation of a democratically elected government
in Iraq and that speaks for itself."
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AFP
Jan 09 12:16 AM US/Eastern
Al-Qaeda's leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, said in an audio tape put onto the Internet that rockets had been fired at Israel from Lebanon last month "on the instructions" of the network's overall chief Osama bin Laden.
"The rocket firing at the ancestors of monkeys and pigs from the south of Lebanon was only the start of a blessed in-depth strike against the Zionist enemy (...). All that was on the instructions of the sheikh of the mujahedeen, Osama bin laden, may God preserve him," said the voice attributed to the Jordanian extremist. The tape was placed on the site normally used by his group, the Organization of Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia, which had claimed responsibility for the rockets in an on-line statement on December 29.
"This commendable feat came in application by the mujahedeen of the oath by fighter sheikh Osama bin Laden, emir of the Al-Qaeda network, may God preserve him," added the recording referring to repeated statements by Bin Laden that the Israelis should not enjoy security as long as Muslims were not safe.
Israel the previous day had carried out an air strike against a base of a Syrian-backed Palestinian group on the southern outskirts of Beirut in retaliation for cross-border Katyusha rocket attacks on northern Israel.
Zarqawi also said the guerrillas had carried out nearly 800 operations against "the crusader forces" since the occupation of Iraq, putting "crusader" casualties at around 40,000 soldiers.
"Since the start of mujahedeen operations after the fall of the Baathist regime and until today, nearly 800 martyr operations aimed at crusader targets and military convoys have been carried out (...). We estimate casualties among the adorers of the Cross in Iraq at no less than 40,000 soldiers," he declared.
"That's why they (the Americans) asked for help from the Arab League, represented by its secretary-general Amr Mussa, and called for the Cairo meeting," said Zarqawi, hitting out at member countries that took part in the November meeting dedicated to Iraq under Arab League auspices.
The Iraqi leaders who participated in the Cairo meeting agreed on a "road map" for national conciliation, calling for a calendar for withdrawal of foreign forces and the release of detainees who had not been charged.
Zarqawi hit out at the Sunni Muslim Iraqi Islamic Party for having taken part in the December 15 general elections, and called on it to renounce such actions.
"We call on the Islamic Party to abandon the road to perdition on which it has embarked and which threatened to cause the loss of the Sunni community," Zarqawi said, adding that the party "should have called the people to jihad (holy war)."
The Iraqi Al-Qaeda leader then laid down two conditions for giving up the jihad.
"First, chase out the invaders from our territory in Palestine, in Iraq and everywhere in Islamic land.
"Second, instal sharia (Islamic law) on the entire Earth and spread Islamic justice there (...). The attacks will not cease until after the victory of Islam and the setting up of sharia," he swore.
Zarqawi concluded: "O young Muslims everywhere in the world, and in particular in the neighbouring countries (of Iraq) and in Yemen, I recommend jihad to you (...). O nation of Islam, America is today drawing its last breath." |
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By Héctor Tobar, Times Staff Writer
NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico — The most popular instruments of robbery, torture, homicide and assassination in this violence-racked border city are imported from the United States.
"Warning," reads the sign greeting motorists on the U.S. side as they approach the Rio Grande that separates the two countries here. "Illegal to carry firearms/ammunition into Mexico. Penalty, prison."
The signs have done little to stop what U.S. and Mexican officials say is a steady and growing commerce of illicit firearms in Mexico — 9-millimeter pistols, shotguns, AK-47s, grenade launchers. An estimated 95% of weapons confiscated from suspected criminals in Mexico were first sold legally in the United States, officials in both countries say.
Guns are the essential tools of a war among underworld crime syndicates that claimed between 1,400 and 2,500 lives in 2005, according to tallies by various newspapers and magazines. The biggest criminals in Mexico are engaged in an arms race, with an armor-piercing machine gun as the new must-have weapon for the cartels fighting one another for control of the lucrative trade in narcotics, U.S. and Mexican officials say.
In 2005, Nuevo Laredo residents endured the specter of more than 100 suspected drug-cartel executions in their city, and the release of a horrific videotape in which a suspected drug-cartel gunman executes a "prisoner." The city has become a tragic symbol of the gun violence sweeping through the entire country.
"It's obvious where all the arms are coming from," said Higenio Ibarra Murillo, a Nuevo Laredo business owner in the city's historic downtown district. "We don't make any guns or rifles here" in Mexico.
Buying a weapon legally is extremely difficult in Mexico. The country's defense secretary issues all gun licenses — the wait is a year or more, and the cost about $1,900. Licenses must be renewed every two years.
There are fewer than 2,500 registered gun owners in the entire country. Yet Mexican police confiscate an average of 256 weapons every day from suspects, officials from the attorney general's office said recently.
Javier Ortiz Campos of Mexico's Federal Preventive Police says traces by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives on weapons confiscated in Mexico often lead to the gun shops, gun shows and flea markets of Texas. The U.S. state has some of the most liberal gun laws in the country and a porous, 1,240-mile-long border with Mexico.
"Over there they even sell guns at Wal-Mart," Ortiz Campos said. The weapons confiscated in Mexico come mostly from U.S. border cities such as Laredo, El Paso and Brownsville, he said. But many come also from Houston and San Antonio.
"We're finding a lot of weapons from Houston, because the buyers get a better price there than at the border," Ortiz Campos said.
Organized-crime groups in Mexico often buy their weapons in bulk via "straw purchasers" in Texas, where there is no limit on the number of firearms a resident can purchase, said a U.S. official who asked not to be named.
Typically, the Mexican buyer will pay a Texas resident $50 to $100 to acquire the weapons, the official said.
In one case, Mexican and U.S. authorities working together traced 80 confiscated firearms to a Mexican national who paid Texas residents to buy weapons on his behalf, the official said.
Police recovered one 9-millimeter handgun last year at the scene of a shootout between officers and suspected drug-cartel hit men outside the Mexican border town of Reynosa. A trace of the weapon by ATF agents led to another Texas man who had bought 160 weapons. That man is facing gun-trafficking charges in the U.S.
Last year, ATF officials in Arizona arrested a man trying to buy 30 U.S. military hand grenades. The man told undercover agents the grenades were intended for drug traffickers in the northern Mexican state of Sonora. In August, a Tucson man was charged with smuggling AK-47s and AK-47 parts into Mexico.
Large caches of weapons routinely turn up here and in other border communities. Twenty assault rifles were seized in Tijuana on Dec. 20; that same day, Mexican army troops in the state of Sinaloa detained a group of men who were armed with five AK-47 rifles and one AR-15 rifle.
In Nuevo Laredo last month, Mexican police stumbled upon an arsenal in the hands of suspected organized crime members that included grenades, semiautomatic handguns and seven AR-15 assault rifles.
No store in Nuevo Laredo sells handguns or rifles over the counter. But if you take a 15-minute walk over the border to Laredo, you'll find the Bushmaster AR-15 rifle on sale at one gun store for $1,199.
The salespeople at the store speak Spanish, but the sign over a display case of semiautomatic handguns is in English: "If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns."
The slogan, popular with U.S. gun-rights activists, certainly seems to apply on the other side of the border. Only one person has a private gun permit in the entire Mexican state of Tamaulipas, which includes Nuevo Laredo. Yet guns seem to be everywhere.
On the impoverished edges of the city, small-time drug dealers protect their investments with semiautomatics. And many law-abiding citizens can tell of an encounter with armed bandits.
Businessman Jose Luis Ortiz Cardenas witnessed an attempted carjacking by armed robbers last year outside a grocery store he owns. And he'll never forget the notorious 2003 shootout a few blocks from the cantina he operates downtown — the shooting spread to the bridge leading to the United States.
"It was a hail of bullets, federal agents firing at other federal agents, hit men firing at other hit men, with bazookas and everything," the cantina owner said.
Mexican police have, in recent years, confiscated a handful of bazookas from organized-crime groups. Mexican and U.S. officials say a very small amount of military surplus from recent wars in Central America has found its way into Mexico. But U.S. officials say a bazooka recovered recently from suspected drug cartel hit men in Mexico was traced to an Army depot in Arkansas — the weapon had been deposited there and last accounted for in 1967.
Assault rifles such as the AR-15 and the AK-47 are by far the most popular weapons imported into Mexico by the drug cartels, police official Ortiz Campos said.
The AR-15 is the civilian, semiautomatic equivalent of the M-16 used by U.S. troops since the Vietnam War. The AK-47 was designed by Mikhail Kalashnikov for the Soviet army in 1947. In Mexican street slang both are known as "el cuerno de chivo" — "the goat's horn" — for the distinctive shape of their bullet clips.
"For the narco-traffickers, it's like their good-luck charm," Ortiz Campos said. The drug cartels favor the AK-47 for the same reason the Soviet army did: its ruggedness and versatility.
"With that weapon, you can do incredible things," Ortiz Campos said. The AK-47 is not only powerful, it's also idiot-proof, he added. "It will fire underwater. It will fire when it's covered with mud."
The AK-47 appears in several narcocorrido songs about bad men and their adventures. The song "The Terrifying Cuerno de Chivo" by the group Los Incomparables de Tijuana was made into a movie of the same name.
"Its barrel is decorated, the butt and the trigger too," the lyrics say. "Inlaid with silver all around, it's a weapon fit for a man of courage…. It's an instrument of death."
Assault rifles that are sold legally in the U.S. are not fully automated. But officials say that there are gunsmiths in Mexico who are adapting the weapons to make them fully automatic.
"We have found a few in Mexico that have been converted by a machinist," the U.S. official said. "This tells us someone with vast experience in weaponry is working here."
U.S. and Mexican officials say they are also concerned by the presence of .50-caliber machine guns in Mexico. Originally designed as antiaircraft weapons, the guns are used by cartels because they can penetrate armor.
"We think these weapons are used by the cartels to attack each other" rather than the police, Ortiz Campos said.
"Ten or 15 years ago, you rarely saw a .50-caliber weapon" in Mexico, the U.S. official said. "Now they're popping up everywhere."
U.S. officials say their Mexican counterparts are working harder than ever to fight the weapons trafficking. Mexican federal officials cooperate extensively with the ATF in tracing illicit weapons.
"The Mexicans are eager to see prosecutions for gun trafficking go forward in the U.S.," the American official said. "It's a different attitude than in the past."
Still, the gun violence continues to take on new, disturbing dimensions. Television viewers across Mexico were horrified last month by the airing of a video in which members of the one cartel competing for control of the drug trade in Nuevo Laredo torture hit men from another cartel. The video, obtained by the Dallas Morning News, ends with one of the hit men being executed with a shot to the head from a 9-millimeter pistol.
As Nuevo Laredo becomes a war zone, its streets are increasingly empty. For the most part, tourists are avoiding the city, frightened by the kidnapping and disappearance of several Americans here.
"The one consolation we have is that we know it can't get any worse than it is right now," business owner Ortiz Cardenas said. "We've hit rock bottom." |
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09/01/2006
A jury due to try Muslim cleric Abu Hamza on race hate allegations – including soliciting murder – was sworn in at the Old Bailey today.
A jury due to try Muslim cleric Abu Hamza on race hate allegations – including soliciting murder – was sworn in at the Old Bailey today. Potential jurors were first asked by the judge, Mr Justice Hughes, to declare if they or members of their immediate families were members of the security services or connected with investigations into terrorist activities in the UK.
They were also told that Hamza had “received a certain amount of media coverage” in the past.
“If you or members of your immediate family had any part in any of the media coverage in relation to this defendant, you should say so.”
Afterwards eight men and four women took the oath. They will return to court on Wednesday when the case is expected to open.
Hamza, who has no hands and only one eye, sat flanked by three dock officers.
The bearded, bespectacled former imam of Finsbury Park mosque in north London wore a light blue shirt and trousers. His grey hair was closely cut.
Hamza, 47, from west London, faces nine charges under the Offences Against the Person Act of 1861 alleging he solicited others at public meetings to murder Jews and other non-Muslims.
He also faces four charges under the Public Order Act 1986 of “using threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour with the intention of stirring up racial hatred”.
A further charge alleges Hamza was in possession of video and audio recordings, which he intended to distribute to stir up racial hatred.
The final charge under section 58 of the Terrorism Act accuses him of possession of a document, the Encyclopaedia of the Afghani Jihad, which contained information “of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism”.
He denies the charges. The offences are alleged to have been committed before May 2004. |
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By James Sturcke and Hugh Dougherty
Evening Standard
20 February 2003
Radical Muslim Abu Hamza has astonishingly claimed that a Jewish conspiracy destroyed the Twin Towers.
The Egyptian-born preacher made the bizarre claim in the wake of the conviction of a student in Germany for acting as the 11 September attackers' banker.
Hamza claimed Moroccan student Mounir al-Motassadek, jailed for the maximum 15 years for being an accessory to 3,000 murders, had been framed by German police trying to meet performance targets.
The outburst came at a public appearance in Bethnal Green last night by Hamza, who has been barred from preaching at Finsbury Park mosque.
Hamza also claimed that the US was prepared to "invade Turkey" as part of its alleged attempt to seize control of the Middle East's oil, and accused "Zionists" and American fundamentalist Christians of worshipping the Antichrist.
He told how he he believed the World Trade Center was not brought down by planes hijacked by al Qaeda but by Jewish extremists packing the buildings with explosives.
"We are sure it was a Zionist plot," he said. "From the way the building collapsed you could see the building has been demolished from the inside because there is no way the whole building would just collapse like that."
And the hook-handed cleric, who is being investigated over allegations of housing benefit fraud, accused Jews and Christians of a wider conspiracy to bring an end to Islam. |
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January 7, 2006
by Rodrigue Tremblay
A few years ago, two French writers (Pierre Accoce and Dr Pierre Rentchtick) wrote a book titled "These Sick People who are in Charge". In fact, it happens quite often that circumstances or political cabals bring to power persons of small intellect or worse, people whose state of mind is unstable, and sometimes truly deranged.
In the case of George W. Bush, president of the USA since January 20, 2001, his mental stability or instability has been the topic of Washington speculation for several years, even though American corporate media (ACM) have done their utmost to conceal the fact. In 2004, Dr. Justin Frank wrote a devastating book on Bush's mental state entitled "Bush on the Couch". Frank's conclusion: Bush Administration policies are not only a "great catastrophe" but the products of a disturbed mind. Even for the casual observer, Bush's public statements raise serious questions about his mental stability. He seems to hear voices and to suffer from mental delusions.
Consider these quotes from GWB and tell me if they are from a normal person:
"I believe God wants me to be president."
[I was] "chosen by the grace of God to lead at that moment."
"God told me to strike at al-Qaeda and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East."
"We will export death and violence to the four corners of the earth in defense of this great country and rid the world of evil."
"International law? I better call my lawyer; he didn't bring that up to me."
Are these declarations really the sign of a balanced person?
Judging from his utterances, George W. Bush seems to suffer from some form of megalomania in which the victim believes himself to be endowed with god-like powers. Armed with this metaphysical certitude, he is absolutely convinced he's right, doesn't want to hear any dissent, and thinks people who disagree with him are disloyal enemies. He also seems to be unstable and incapable of discerning reality from his own lies or propaganda. -A very dangerous man indeed.
In Bush's case, as I wrote in The New American Empire (p. 18), "The world should take notice when someone...with a fanatic mind and with powerful means, receives his marching orders from Heaven." It is a frightening fact that George Bush believes that his military invasion and occupation of Iraq has been sanctioned by a Christian God, with whom he claims to be in personal daily communication.
My conclusion is clear: A man in Bush's state of mind should not be in control of a huge stock of weapons of mass destruction, for his country's sake but also for the sake of world peace.
As if the world could afford more deranged leaders, the Islamic-run country of Iran has elected a president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who seems to be afflicted with the same signs of delusion as George W. Bush.
Ahmadinejad, Iran's so-called "hard-line president" since June 2005, is another religious zealot who bases decisions on "heavenly affairs" and who hears voices. He is known to have an obsession with the Mahdaviat [belief in the second coming of Imam Zaman (Mahdi)] and has introduced religion square and center into Iranian politics. In Ahmadinejad's case, he is actively developing nuclear weapons and has stated publicly that Israel should be wiped off the map. Nice guy! And to make matters worse, this fanatic will oppose another right-wing fanatic in the person of Benjamin Netanyahu, whose mental fitness has also been questioned but who is nevertheless poised to succeed Ariel Sharon as prime minister of Israel.
Amazingly, G.W. Bush and M. Ahmadinejad have the same troubled beady eyes and the same avowed desire to mix politics and mystical religion. Both politicians think a Christian God or a Muslim Allah tells them what to do. Both think they have a "mission" from Heaven. Both are convinced that they are 100 percent right and the other is 100 percent wrong. No compromise is then possible. —These are very dangerous politicians indeed.
Of course, another dangerous person who receives his marching orders from Heaven is the chief Islamist terrorist Osama bin Laden. For him, terrorism is good and it is sanctioned by God or Allah: "Yes, we kill their innocents and this is legal, religiously and logically...There are two types of terror, good and bad. What we are practicing is good terror." Then, he adds: "I ask God to help us champion His religion and continue jihad for His sake until we meet Him and He is satisfied with us. And He can do so. Praise be to Almighty God."
When the mad dream of political quest for power is couched in religious terms and is advanced by religious demagogues, things can become very dangerous. Deranged politicians may easily plunge the world into chaos and bloodshed through miscalculations or delusions of grandeur. One has to remember that Adolf Hitler had been duly elected in Germany, before he turned mad and began attacking other countries. As a consequence, more than 50 million people died in World War II.
It may be asked why virtually all these dangerous "leaders" are profoundly religious. To answer such a question would require a much longer analysis. (I am presently writing a book tentatively entitled "The Code for Global Ethics" that deals with precisely such questions).
In particular, a war between the United States and Iran, a country of 75 million people, would have economic consequences even more disastrous than the illegal and immoral war against Iraq. Such a war would most likely close the Strait of Hormuz, preventing a good proportion of Middle East oil from reaching world markets. The resulting world oil crisis could be extremely severe. The price of oil could surge above $100 a barrel, resulting in a worldwide economic depression.
At no time since the 1930's has the world been confronted with such ominous risks to its stability and prosperity. In particular, the lack of political leadership has succeeded in stopping in its tracks the trade liberalization process under the World Trade Organization. In the future, there is a clear possibility that the process of globalization itself could start to unravel, just as the era of globalization in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was reversed by a catastrophic war and a global depression. Only an enlightened political leadership in the major countries could prevent the forces of disintegration and instability from taking hold.
To conclude, all the rosy economic scenarios for 2006 and beyond that one hears frequently mentioned in the media could easily be turned upside down, if the deranged personalities who happen to occupy presently the positions of president in the United States and in Iran are allowed to play out their missionary war games. |
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January 9 1863
Monday January 9, 2006
The Guardian
Our errors of taste and judgment, like our greater sins, have an inconvenient habit of finding us out, Several years ago, a number of ladies of high rank did what general opinion, or at least the intelligent portion of the country, pronounced to be a very foolish thing.
Under the temporary disturbance of feeling produced by a glowing work of fiction, they addressed to the "women of the United States" a memorial denouncing negro slavery, and urging its immediate extinction. The authoress of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," and her set were, of course, delighted. Outside that little coterie, however, we fear, it did not obtain a more grateful reception than is given to good advice offered from an assumed standpoint of great moral superiority.
We need scarcely add that [Harriet Beecher Stowe's reply to the address] would never have come at all if the gifted writer had not desired to chastise her correspondents for their presumed defection from the abolitionist zeal which she succeeded in awakening. If it does not show that English society has gone back, it shows how far Mrs. Stowe and the political faction to which she belongs have gone forward.
These people have actually come to believe that it is the duty of those who hold slavery to be an indefensible institution to put it down with fire and sword wherever it exists; and on the strength of our often-expressed anti-slavery sympathies, they have the effrontery to claim the moral support of England for this monstrous doctrine.
It clearly has never occurred to Mrs. Stowe that a nation may have a right to do wrong - wrong, that is to say, not in the sense of being injurious to its neighbours, but of being condemned by their moral code. One who cannot see this understands nothing of the true nature of political liberty. What is a nation's freedom to uphold its own institutions when limited by the condition that they shall be reduced to harmony with principles approved by another and bigger nation by its side?
It makes one's blood boil to think that Englishmen should be rated, scoffed at, and abused for refusing to sanction a doctrine which might be pleaded in defence of every excess of international cruelty and wrong.
The decline in apparent, if not real moral worth which her country has so rapidly undergone cannot be more forcibly shown than in the transformation of the authoress of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" into a raving priestess of havoc and destruction, vowing to reach success, though at the cost of family and friendship, and gloating over battlefields by which not one object dear to humanity has been promoted.
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By Philip Watts
01/08/06 "revcom.us" -- -- John Yoo publicly argued there is no law that could prevent the President from ordering the torture of a child of a suspect in custody – including by crushing that child’s testicles. This came out in response to a question in a December 1st debate in Chicago with Notre Dame professor and international human rights scholar Doug Cassel.
What is particularly chilling and revealing about this is that John Yoo was a key architect post-9/11 Bush Administration legal policy. As a deputy assistant to then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, John Yoo authored a number of legal memos arguing for unlimited presidential powers to order torture of captive suspects, and to declare war anytime, any where, and on anyone the President deemed a threat.
It has now come out Yoo also had a hand in providing legal reasoning for the President to conduct unauthorized wiretaps of U.S. citizens. Georgetown Law Professor David Cole wrote, "Few lawyers have had more influence on President Bush’s legal policies in the 'war on terror’ than John Yoo."
This part of the exchange during the debate with Doug Cassel, reveals the logic of Yoo’s theories, adopted by the Administration as bedrock principles, in the real world.
Cassel: If the President deems that he’s got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person’s child, there is no law that can stop him?
Yoo: No treaty.
Cassel: Also no law by Congress. That is what you wrote in the August 2002 memo.
Yoo: I think it depends on why the President thinks he needs to do that.
The audio of this exchange is available online at revcom.us
Yoo argues presidential powers on Constitutional grounds, but where in the Constitution does it say the President can order the torture of children ? As David Cole puts it, "Yoo reasoned that because the Constitution makes the President the 'Commander-in-Chief,’ no law can restrict the actions he may take in pursuit of war. On this reasoning, the President would be entitled by the Constitution to resort to genocide if he wished."
What is the position of the Bush Administration on the torture of children, since one of its most influential legal architects is advocating the President’s right to order the crushing of a child’s testicles?
This fascist logic has nothing to do with "getting information" as Yoo has argued. The legal theory developed by Yoo and a few others and adopted by the Administration has resulted in thousands being abducted from their homes in Afghanistan, Iraq or other parts of the world, mostly at random. People have been raped, electrocuted, nearly drowned and tortured literally to death in U.S.-run torture centers in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantánamo Bay. And there is much still to come out. What about the secret centers in Europe or the many still-suppressed photos from Abu Ghraib? What can explain this sadistic, indiscriminate, barbaric brutality except a need to instill widespread fear among people all over the world?
It is ironic that just prior to arguing the President's legal right to torture children, John Yoo was defensive about the Bush administration policies, based on his legal memo’s, being equated to those during Nazi Germany.
Yoo said, "If you are trying to draw a moral equivalence between the Nazis and what the United States is trying to do in defending themselves against Al Qauueda and the 9/11 attacks, I fully reject that. Second, if you’re trying to equate the Bush Administration to Nazi officials who committed atrocities in the holocaust, I completely reject that too…I think to equate Nazi Germany to the Bush Administration is irresponsible."
If open promotion of unmitigated executive power, including the right to order the torture of innocent children, isn’t sufficient basis for drawing such a "moral equivalence," then I don’t know what is. What would be irresponsible is to sit by and allow the Bush regime to radically remake society in a fascist way, with repercussions for generations to come. We must act now because the future is in the balance. The world cannot wait. While Bush gives his State of the Union on January 31st, I’ll find myself along with many thousands across the country declaring "Bush Step Down And take your program with you." |
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BY RON HUTCHESON AND JAMES KUHNHENN
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
WASHINGTON — President Bush agreed with great fanfare last month to accept a ban on torture, but he later quietly reserved the right to ignore it, even as he signed it into law.
Acting from the seclusion of his Texas ranch at the start of New Year’s weekend, Bush said he would interpret the new law in keeping with his expansive view of presidential power. He did it by issuing a bill-signing statement — a little-noticed device that has become a favorite tool of presidential power in the Bush White House. In fact, Bush has used signing statements to reject, revise or put his spin on more than 500 legislative provisions. Experts say he has been far more aggressive than any previous president in using the statements to claim sweeping executive power — and not just on national security issues. “It’s nothing short of breathtaking,” said Phillip Cooper, a professor of public administration at Portland State University. “In every case, the White House has interpreted presidential authority as broadly as possible, interpreted legislative authority as narrowly as possible, and pre-empted the judiciary.”
Signing statements don’t have the force of law, but they can influence judicial interpretations of a statute. They also send a powerful signal to executive branch agencies on how the White House wants them to implement new federal laws.
In some cases, Bush bluntly informs Congress that he has no intention of carrying out provisions that he considers an unconstitutional encroachment on his authority.
“They don’t like some of the things Congress has done so they assert the power to ignore it,” said Martin Lederman, a visiting professor at the Georgetown University Law Center. “The categorical nature of their opposition is unprecedented and alarming.”
In the case of the torture ban, Bush said he would interpret the law “in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the president,” with the goal of “protecting the American people from further terrorist attacks.”
Because Bush already has claimed broad powers in the war on terror — including the right to bypass existing laws restricting domestic surveillance — legal experts and some members of Congress interpreted the statement to mean that he would ignore the torture ban if he felt it would harm national security.
Opponents of the ban say torture should not be ruled out in a case where abusive interrogation might prevent an imminent terrorist attack.
White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said Bush was defending a principle, not signaling his intention to ignore the torture prohibition. “The president has said that we follow the law. Of course we will follow this law as well,” she said.
Some members of Congress aren’t so sure. “He issues a signing statement that says he retains all of the inherent power that will permit him to go out and torture just the way they’ve gone ahead and tortured before,” said Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass. “That process is an arrogance of power.” |
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By Eric Margolis
01/08/06
Toronto
Sun
-- -- WASHINGTON -- China's Taoists philosophers warned that you become what you hate. We see this paradox in Washington, where the current administration increasingly reminds one of the old Soviet Union.
The U.S.S.R. went bankrupt after spending 40% of national income on the military. President George Bush's administration will spend a staggering $419.3 billion US on the military this fiscal year. An additional $130 billion US has been budgeted in 2006 for the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.
That's $10.8 billion a month -- 40% above previous estimates -- and somewhat more than the monthly cost of the Vietnam War at its height. Add to this huge sum an estimated $1.5 billion in monthly secret expenditures in Iraq and Afghanistan by CIA and Pentagon intelligence.
Astoundingly, U.S. military spending in 2006 will equal the rest of the world's total combined military expenditures. I just saw an ad for the new, $115-million F-22 Raptor stealth fighter, trumpeting how its radar can "intercept communications of insurgents." Using a $115-million aircraft to listen to cellphone calls by a bunch of jihadis in Waziristan staggers the imagination.
Meanwhile, Moscow on the Potomac is in an uproar over government spying on citizens, torture, and what appears to be the mother of all influence-peddling scandals. Revelations that the super-secret National Security Agency and FBI have been monitoring domestic as well as international telecommunications have roused even the deadheads in Congress and the lapdog media. FBI agents are reportely spying on such nefarious "terrorists" as vegetarians and animal rights activists.
Bush (shades of Leonid Brezhnev) claims the right to override any laws because the U.S. is at war. "Terrorists" ("enemies of the state" in Soviet talk) threaten the U.S., so anything goes. What next -- cancelling next fall's elections because of the threat of the phantom al-Qaida?
Meanwhile, a scandal bursts right out of the last days of the corrupt Soviet Union. A sinister Republican apparatchik named Jack Abramoff has admitted dishing out $4.4 million in bribes to senators, congressmen and political aides. Bigwigs like Bush, House Speaker Dennis Hastert, Republican grand poobah Tom DeLay, Bible-thumping crusader Ralph Reed, Hillary Clinton and a bevy of venal legislators have been implicated in this culture of corruption.
Abramoff got over $30 million from various Indian tribes promoting their casino businesses. He and cronies scalped their Indian clients, pocketing $11 million in kickbacks. Where, one wonders with awe, did those persecuted native Americans find so much cash?
Republicans (and also some Democrats) are scared silly by the scandal. Many legislators may be headed for the big house.
All parties that stay in power too long become deeply corrupt. Wise voters need to kick out incumbents regularly. Longevity in office ensures bad government. The Republicans, buoyed by faked-up war fever, became deeply corrupted more quickly than usual.
The Achilles heel
Money is the Achilles heel of democracy. In America, winning and keeping office demands spending huge sums on TV advertising. The Washington lobbyists and bagmen who produce millions to fund politicians have become more powerful than elected legislators. This is how parasites like Abramoff flourish.
A smell of "fin du regime" hangs over Washington, just as it did over the last days of decaying Soviet oligarchy. An out-of-touch leader presides over a lost foreign war and a morass of influence peddling and bribery, as the secret police struggle to keep a lid on growing dissent. |
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By Brock N. Meeks
MSNBC
5:55 p.m. ET Jan. 6, 2006
WASHINGTON - In the 50 years that Grant Goodman has known and corresponded with a colleague in the Philippines he never had any reason to suspect that their friendship was anything but spectacularly ordinary.
But now he believes that the relationship has somehow sparked the interest of the Department of Homeland Security and led the agency to place him under surveillance. Last month Goodman, an 81-year-old retired University of Kansas history professor, received a letter from his friend in the Philippines that had been opened and resealed with a strip of dark green tape bearing the words “by Border Protection” and carrying the official Homeland Security seal.
“I had no idea (Homeland Security) would open personal letters,” Goodman told MSNBC.com in a phone interview. “That’s why I alerted the media. I thought it should be known publicly that this is going on,” he said. Goodman originally showed the letter to his own local newspaper, the Kansas-based Lawrence Journal-World.
“I was shocked and there was a certain degree of disbelief in the beginning,” Goodman said when he noticed the letter had been tampered with, adding that he felt his privacy had been invaded. “I think I must be under some kind of surveillance.”
Goodman is no stranger to mail snooping; as an officer during World War II he was responsible for reading all outgoing mail of the men in his command and censoring any passages that might provide clues as to his unit’s position. “But we didn’t do it as clumsily as they’ve done it, I can tell you that,” Goodman noted, with no small amount of irony in his voice. “Isn’t it funny that this doesn’t appear to be any kind of surreptitious effort here,” he said.
The letter comes from a retired Filipino history professor; Goodman declined to identify her. And although the Philippines is on the U.S. government’s radar screen as a potential spawning ground for Muslim-related terrorism, Goodman said his friend is a devout Catholic and not given to supporting such causes.
A spokesman for the Customs and Border Protection division said he couldn’t speak directly to Goodman’s case but acknowledged that the agency can, will and does open mail coming to U.S. citizens that originates from a foreign country whenever it’s deemed necessary.
“All mail originating outside the United States Customs territory that is to be delivered inside the U.S. Customs territory is subject to Customs examination,” says the CBP Web site. That includes personal correspondence. “All mail means ‘all mail,’” said John Mohan, a CBP spokesman, emphasizing the point.
“This process isn’t something we’re trying to hide,” Mohan said, noting the wording on the agency’s Web site. “We’ve had this authority since before the Department of Homeland Security was created,” Mohan said.
However, Mohan declined to outline what criteria are used to determine when a piece of personal correspondence should be opened, but said, “obviously it’s a security-related criteria.”
Mohan also declined to say how often or in what volume CBP might be opening mail. “All I can really say is that Customs and Border Protection does undertake [opening mail] when it is determined to be necessary,” he said. |
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Monday, 9 January 2006, 11:48 GMT
US Vice-President Dick Cheney has been rushed to hospital in Washington after suffering shortness of breath and apparent fluid retention. Mr Cheney was retaining fluids because of medication he was taking for a foot complaint, a hospital spokeswoman said.
His office said he was taken to hospital at 0300 (0800 GMT) but is expected to go home later on Monday.
Mr Cheney, 64, has a history of heart trouble. He suffered his fourth heart attack in 2000.
He was fitted with a pacemaker in 2001.
He also had an operation to remove blood clots in his knees last year. |
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By MICHAEL R. BLOOD
Associated Press
Sat Jan 7, 11:40 PM ET
LOS ANGELES - Illegal immigration protests organized across the country Saturday drew small numbers, and some were outnumbered and out-shouted by those who support immigrant rights. The so-called "Stop the Invasion" protests were organized in 19 states, demanding the government increase border security and penalize employers who hire illegal workers.
"We are keeping the debate on illegal immigration in the forefront of the American consciousness," said Joseph Turner of Save Our State, who was among about two dozen protesters who waved American flags outside a home-supply store in a Los Angeles suburb.
But Turner's group in Glendale was surrounded by more than 100 drum-beating supporters who chanted, "Racists go home." The two groups traded shouts and obscene gestures for more than an hour. One man was arrested for assault, police said.
In Farmingville, N.Y., where immigration-related violence erupted several times in recent years, only about a dozen protesters showed up and argued against the growing number of day laborers on eastern Long Island.
Paul Streitz, who organized the demonstrations, said members believe illegal immigrants are taking jobs from citizens while driving down property values.
"This is not a racist thing," said Daniel Anastasia, 46, a construction worker from Westchester, N.Y. "We pay taxes, they don't. I get paid what the union says. The contractor pays them cash. It's not fair to me."
In Framingham, Mass., near Boston, a small group protesting illegal immigration was met by a much larger group of counter-demonstrators, some of whom surrounded them and temporarily disrupted the protest.
"What they are doing is just harassing people who are out here to go to work every day, and they're doing it in a hateful manner, which is against everything this country stands for," said Manuel Olivera, pastor of the nearby New Life Presbyterian Community Church.
In Danbury, Conn., about 50 people calling themselves the Connecticut Citizens for Immigration Control spent about two hours chanting and holding signs that read "Arrest Illegal Employers." Several dozen people held a counterprotest across the street.
In Las Vegas, John Holiday, 43, and his son, Conner, 9, held signs near a convenience store where undocumented workers are picked up by employers. The boy, who held a sign that read "Our lawmakers encourage lawbreaking," said illegal immigration has divided the country.
"Do you think the problem will be over when I grow up?" Conner asked. |
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AP
Jan 08 10:46 PM US/Eastern
LOS ANGELES - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger received 15 stitches in his lip Sunday after he and his 12-year-old son were involved in a motorcycle accident near their Los Angeles home, his spokeswoman said. Schwarzenegger was riding a Harley Davidson motorcycle with his son Patrick in the sidecar when another driver backed into the street, spokeswoman Margita Thompson said in a statement.
"The governor was unable to avoid the vehicle in his path and collided with it at a low speed," she said.
Both Schwarzenegger and his son were treated for cuts and bruises at St. John's Hospital in Santa Monica and released, Thompson said. Both were wearing helmets at the time, she said.
The other driver was uninjured.
The governor was expected to keep his appointments Monday. No further details were immediately released. |
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by Missy Comley Beattie
OpEdNews.com
January 8, 2006
Just think. All of you. If the Marines had been provided proper upper-body armor, perhaps 80 percent who died from chest wounds would be alive today.
This is criminally unconscionable. It is a lock-them-up-with-no-possibility-of-parole criminal charge. Murder in the first degree. And it is not a figment of left-wing imaginings. Rather, it is in a report, a secret study by the Pentagon. And it demands a wave of revulsion--an indictment--not only from the public but also from Congress. Add this to the list of reasons why the Bush Administration is the worst in the history of our country. George W. sends our troops to war without adequate equipment and talks about the "noble cause" and the "sacrifice." Recently, he told us to expect more loss. And now we hear that the issue of less than state of the art armor is even worse than we thought.
My family's soldier is dead. Certainly, enlarging the plates of his protection would not have saved him because the explosion that took his life blew off his face. But this study says that so many of our men and women would have survived with "improved body armor."
Meanwhile, other branches of the military are still deciding what sizes of "plates" to buy. Still deciding? I wonder how often they're meeting to discuss this. How much time do they need? Maybe, they should ask the parents and spouses of the troops to join this brainstorming session. Something this critical would have been at the top of the to do list if the president really valued human life. No, I apologize. I remember vividly that he rushed from his Crawford ranch where he was (gasp) vacationing to sign a measure to review Terri Schiavo's case so that her feeding tube would be restored. Seems there's no hurry though to sign measures to save the lives of our troops.
Furthermore, the Pentagon report revealed that problems were a result partly from "years of cost-cutting that left some armoring companies on the brink of collapse as they waited for new orders."
"Years of cost-cutting? Picture Bush's extravagant inauguration. Yes, yes, I know that this expense was picked up by wealthy supporters, but with all his stammering about sacrifice and noble actions, wouldn't it have occurred to him to have a simple gathering of family and to tell all those big spenders to donate instead to something as necessary as proper life-saving equipment for those he's sent to defend us because "we're fightin' 'em over there so we won't have to fight 'em over here."
And, then, think about the bat mitzvah of the daughter of super-rich defense contractor David H. Brooks who made his fortune selling vests to the US military. Defective vests. Brooks' rite-of-passage party for his child-on-her-way-to-womanhood was held in New York's Rainbow Room where she and her friends were entertained by a cast including Aerosmith and 50 Cent to the tune of $10 million dollars. That's right. Ten million. No cost-cutting in the Brooks' household. This sure sets a high bar for the wedding down the road--you know, the social event of the decade. "Heckuva good job, Brooks."
How many more horrors of Bush Inc. can we endure?
Missy Beattie lives in New York City. She's written for National Public Radio and Nashville Life Magazine. An outspoken critic of the Bush Administration and the war in Iraq, she has participated in many peace marches, including the Cindy Sheehan rally in DC. She completed a novel last year, but since the death of her nephew, Marine Lance Cpl. Chase J. Comley, in Iraq on August 6,'05, she has been writing political articles. |
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Arianna Huffington
Huffington Post
01.08.2006
Here's the next Abramoff blockbuster coming soon to a newspaper, cable TV station, and blog near you. What makes this particularly tantalizing is that it puts the White House squarely in the middle of a 2002 corruption investigation of a sleazy arrangement between Abramoff and Guam Superior Court officials. The chief prosecutor in the investigation was acting U.S. Atty. for Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands, Frederick A. Black. As the LA Times wrote back in August 2005, in more innocent times when Abramoff's shenanigans did not make front page news, Black was removed from his position as acting U.S. Attorney in November 2002. It was a position he had held for over a decade, and which he lost one day after a subpoena was issued demanding the release of records involving the Guam court's lobbying contract with Abramoff -- including bills and payments. And if this is not a bizarre enough coincidence for you, Black's replacement, Leonardo Rapadas, was a cousin of "one of the main targets" of the Guam investigation. Rapadas, who had been recommended to Karl Rove for the U.S. Attorney position by a lobbyist under contract with Guam's Gutierrez Administration, whom Black had also been investigating, promptly recused himself, and the investigation was very conveniently ended.
Look for more news on this very soon. And this next Abramoff storm will be gathering momentum just as the White House is desperately trying to distance itself from Abramoff, and Scott McClellan insists that "the President does not know [Abramoff], nor does the President recall ever meeting him." Possibly true. But what's more scandalous -- shaking hands with the man or unethically jury-rigging a corruption investigation so he'd never have to see a jail cell? But it turns out that even the president could not stop the inevitable.
Unfolding... |
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Donald Hunt
SOTT
January 9, 2006
Gold closed at 542.20 dollars an ounce on Friday, up 4.3% (and more than 7% for the past two weeks) from $519.70 at the end of the week before. The dollar closed at 0.8239 euros on Friday, down 2.4% from 0.8440 the week before. That puts the euro at 1.2137, compared to 1.1849 at the previous Friday's close. Gold in euros would be 446.73 euros an ounce, up 1.9% from the previous week's 438.60. Oil closed at 64.31 dollars a barrel on Friday, up 5.4% from $61.04 the week before. Oil in euros would be 52.99 euros a barrel, up 3.0% from 51.43 for the week. The gold/oil ratio was 8.43 down 1.0% from 8.51 the week before. In the U.S. stock market, the Dow closed at 10,959.31, up 2.3% from 10,717.50 the week before (down when denominated in gold and oil, though). The NASDAQ closed at 2,305.62 on Friday, up 4.5% from 2,205.32 at the previous week's close. The yield on the ten-year U.S. Treasury note was 4.37%, down two basis points from 4.39 the week before.
Another odd week where the Mainstream Media in the U.S. are trying to push their rosy economic scenario while gold and oil are up sharply, and the U.S. seems to be careening from two disastrous and expensive military defeats while planning several more. Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba? Which will it be? And it is doing this planning with a major constitutional crisis looming (that is, if there is any constitution left to have a crisis).
Speaking of Iraq, lost in the bad news for the U.S. on the battlefield was the news that the International Monetary Fund’s prescription for Iraq is working like a charm in producing the classic "IMF Riot": IMF Occupies Iraq, Riots Follow
By Matthew Rothschild
The Progressive
Tuesday 03 January 2006
Bad enough that the US military is occupying Iraq.
Now the IMF is occupying the country.
In December, the International Monetary Fund, in exchange for giving a loan of $685 million to the Iraqi government, insisted that the Iraqis lift subsidies on the price of oil and open the economy to more private investment.
As the IMF said in a press release of December 23, the Iraqi government must be committed to "controlling the wage and pensions bill, reducing subsidies on petroleum products, and expanding the participation of the private sector in the domestic market for petroleum products."
The impact of the IMF extortion was swift and brutal.
"Since the Dec. 15 parliamentary election, fuel prices have increased five-fold, mostly because the outgoing government of Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari has cut subsidies as part of a debt-forgiveness deal it signed with the International Monetary Fund," the Los Angeles Times reported on December 28.
"The move has shocked Iraqis long accustomed to hefty subsidies of gasoline, kerosene, cooking gas, and other fuels."
Iraqis are getting a nasty taste of the IMF's medicine. "Over the summer, gas was selling for about five cents a gallon," the LA Times noted. "Now it's about 65 cents, and at the end of the price increases, gasoline will cost about the same in Iraq as it does in other countries in the Persian Gulf, about $1 per gallon. The prices of kerosene, diesel, and cooking gas have seen similar or steeper increases." The price of public transportation has also gone up significantly.
Not surprisingly, these enormous price hikes have led to riots around the country, with police firing on 3,000 protesters in Nassiryeh, according to an account on Daily Kos, Iraq's oil minister quit to protest the government's capitulation to the IMF. According to Daily Kos, Oil Minister Ibrahim Bahr al-Uloum asked, "Is this how we repay the Iraq citizens who risked their lives to participate in the elections, by raising fuel prices in this way?"
The indestructible Ahmad Chalabi, a longtime favorite of Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, replaced al-Uloum.
The Bush Administration is four-square behind the IMF deal.
"This arrangement will underpin economic stability and help lay the foundation for an open and prosperous economy in Iraq," said US Treasury Secretary John Snow.
What it is actually underpinning is economic instability. "It's crazy, socially and politically," Robert Mabro, former chairman of the Oxford Institute of Energy Studies, told the LA Times.
Even the Pentagon's "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq" recognized the need for "balancing the need for economic reform - particularly of bloated fuel and food subsidies - with political realities."
But "political realities" on the ground - such as inciting riots and increasing discontent - don't appear to concern Bush.
For the Bush Administration, the endorsement of the IMF price increase represents a schizophrenia that's almost clinical.
Bush is desperate to rescue his floundering Iraq policy, and yet backing the IMF plan is like throwing a drowning patient both ends of a lifeline.
The Iraqi people are sick and tired of the US occupation already, to put it mildly.
Now that they are seeing their standard of living plummet, thanks to the IMF, they are going to be even more irate at the United States, which they know controls the IMF.
Caught between deciding whether to try to win hearts and minds or whether to cling to free market fantasies, Bush has once again chosen to live in fantasyland. Again, no shortage of storm clouds on the horizon, but those of us who have been predicting a collapse in 2005 have had to explain why one didn't happen. In some ways predicting the timing of a crash is even more difficult than predicting the exact timing of an earthquake. As with an earthquake, we can observe and measure the buildup of pressures at fault lines, and so forth, but we do not know exactly which event will release the pressure. There are, however, many potential triggers to choose from, both endogenous (coming from within the economic system) and exogenous (from outside the system). Unlike with earthquakes (we hope), with the economy we have the added complexity that many of the most markets are fixed, for all practical purposes. That being the case, the timing of a crash - a fact of great value financially to whoever knows this in advance - becomes even less linear and predictable.
For those of us who did predict a crash in 2005 and are predicting one in 2006, the fact that it has not yet happened is no cause for joy, since those of us who believe that reality cannot be ignored forever, or, to put it more accurately, that reality won't ignore us forever, believe that the longer the "rebalancing," as some put it delicately, is postponed the worse it will be.
Leaving aside the deluded position that all is well with the U.S. economy, there seem to be two opinions as to what will happen: a gradual crash or a sudden crash. Ran Prieur posted a good summary of the gradual scenario for 2006 on his web site: January 5. Predictions for 2006 ...
Tensions will increase between China and Taiwan, Russia and Europe, Israel and its neighbors, and the USA and everyone, especially Latin America, but I don't see any big wars this year. The Bush gang will continue to make threats and spread rumors about attacking Iran, but I'll be shocked if they do it. Also, there's no way they'll pull out of Iraq.
Meanwhile, Republicans and Neocons will endure more and bigger scandals, which will not affect their ability to keep passing laws to strengthen the central control of corporations and the federal government. Democrats will make gains in and only in states with paper trail voting, and the dominant media will continue to ignore that issue.
Housing prices will fall, more Americans will slide into permanent debt, and the price of almost everything will rise, but the effects on daily life will be subtle -- boarded up neighborhoods here and there, and more people living with friends and family. I don't know how they're doing it, but somehow they'll keep airline prices cheap, and traffic will not get noticeably better. Gas prices could go above $3 a gallon, but will not hit $3.50.
As in recent years:- Something big will happen that nobody guessed, and then they'll look closer and see that someone did guess it.
- Global warming will manifest locally as extreme and unusual weather, including extreme cold.
- Some big disease will make a lot of headlines and motivate more laws to strengthen central control, but 99.99% of humans will not die from it.
- Some disaster will lead people to learn to get along with each other and be more autonomous, until they are crushed by the military, and the dominant media will report it as horrifying "chaos" made "peaceful."
In general, I see 2006 as a year of words, not action, the year the TV starts talking about the stuff that's been happening all along as if it's new -- a little year disguised as a big year. We should be so lucky. Prieur's analysis to too linear, I think. The "balance" of recent years (between inflation and deflation, for example, or between the deficits of the U.S. government and the lending of asian governments) has been increasingly unstable, since the balance is achieved by balancing extreme opposing forces, like an arm wrestling match or a tug of war that ends with a rapid unbalancing. More likely, then, to my mind, is the scenario summarized by a QFG member: Yes it could get pretty ugly. Governments will topple, I would be surprised to see the US survive in any recognizable form. Most people would have no incentive to go to work since the only pay would be worthless paper money. A lot of confusion much like the aftermath we saw in New Orleans would become commonplace.
It's hard to imagine how they could manage to enforce any property rights; everyone would be defaulting on their mortgages and credit cards. They could use martial law to try and suppress violence but are there really enough soldiers to evict virtually everyone out of their homes? Can we really have millions of people roaming around homeless while millions of homes sit vacant? It doesn't make sense.
There is probably more to this picture we are missing and no doubt the PTB have some plan for the masses based on wishful thinking. I hope I am wrong, we'll have to wait and see, meanwhile I'm looking to get a hold of some organic seeds and get serious about a kitchen garden. There are two scenarios of collapse: one with decentralized anarchy with no centrally-maintained rule of law and one with autocratic control, complete with labor camps, rationing and the like. Judging from their behavior and from the passage of Patriot Act legislation, it seems that the PTB, the powers that be, having milked most all the wealth out of the majority of us for the past three decades, are putting measures in place to be able to control the post-collapse environment with the rule of law in an iron-fisted autocracy. Al Martin explains the milking this way: The year 2005 has been another stellar year for the top 20% of the United States of America. It can also be reported that the goal, or the "magic number" has finally been reached. That number relates to what George Bush Senior said in 1992 – the goal of having the top 1% of the nation controlling 70% of all the private wealth in the nation... Bushonomics should be lauded for accomplishing its agenda.
...The original Reagan-Bush Regime started the mechanism of wealth transfer through disproportionate tax cuts. The Bush-Cheney Regime increased the tempo by making tax cuts as disproportionate as they have ever been in the history of taxation in the United States. As such, all Bushonian tax cuts, individual so as to separate them from corporate, proffered under the Bush-Cheney Regime, including the most recent 70 billion, 68% (or more than 2/3rds) of the economic value of those tax cuts have inured to citizens earning more than $250,000 per annum, or with a net worth exceeding $5 million.
...Furthermore, under this regime, of course, the Federal Reserve has cooperated marvelously (there is no other way to put it) by maintaining, and still maintaining, despite 13 Fed rate increases, what is known as an easy-money policy, which allows plenty of liquidity in the system, so that asset values rise, even though the demand, or the number of people being able to afford an appreciating asset is declining. The value of the assets, nonetheless, can continue to rise even though the number of people who can afford to purchase them can fall.
The reason why that can happen is that the ability to finance the purchase of the item has been made easier.
...Essentially the same theorem works with almost any tangible item of value. It could be securities, debt instruments, commodities, or real estate. However this is due to the combination of disproportionate tax cuts combined with an easy-money policy -- the maintenance of an easy or liquid money policy combined with exceptionally low interest rates relative to the underlying rate of inflation, i.e., exceptionally low real interest rates or interest rates minus inflation.
This is what Bushonomics I under Bush Senior started to do in 1988. This was a very similar type of period. When they saw the end of the asset boom coming, they began to squeeze the lower 80% even harder by fostering even more disproportionate tax cuts and more restrictive bankruptcy laws. This having been done in 1988 was also done again in 2005.
To further facilitate the transfer of wealth, the Bush-Cheney Regime, as of October 17, 2005, had the bankruptcy laws changed, which the banking industry had been repeatedly asking for. In return the banks were forced to give nothing back. War spending, particularly with all the outsourcing to private contractors the Pentagon has done recently, provides excellent opportunites for upward wealth transfers.
As wealth was transferred upwards, wages fell for those who have to work for a living. Politically this can be a problem, since Bushonomics could never sell itself based on what it really is, a way to loot the public treasury for the benefit of a gang-like super-elite. Instead, the Bush regime has been able to stay in power by maintaining a base of around 30-40% of the voters, those with fascist sympathies, to keep them within vote-stealing distance of 50%. Martin again: As of December 2005, year over year, real wages (wages net of inflation) have been absolutely zero. In other words, zero-percent growth rate in wages over the past 12 months. The regime has done a remarkable job in keeping down wage growth, wherein, now, over the past 5 years, real aggregate, 5-year real wage growth, is now a minus number.
And that's a remarkable job for a regime to stay in power and be able to do that: to diminish wages of the bottom 50%, to increase the net aggregate tax burden of the bottom 50%.
That can be explained by understanding that Bushonian regimes have always been kept in power by the continuous creation of foreign diversions, like wars.
It should be noted that American author Sinclair Lewis said that fascism would come to the United States wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross. And isn't that what we've seen under this regime? As George Bush Sr. used to say -- We should thank God for our flag. Oh, how many Bushonian sins it hides!
...They have taken voters that constitute about 30% of the nation, which we call the Fippies, Nifwics and Rens. To explain that again, the Fippies are the fear, ignorance and prejudice brigades. And their erstwhile cousins, the Nifwics, are the naive flag-waving crowd, supported by their chums, the Rens, right-wing religious nuts. They're about 30% of the vote.
The Republican Party has formulated control over this new little bloc by using the flag. That's how they were able to get the PATRIOT Acts passed despite the fact it is within this working class that Republicans have suffered because of Bushonomics. However, the regime is able to maintain the line: "We are at war. We must expect sacrifices." There is still a third of the population, the flag-wavers, that are prepared to accept that.
Combined with the Rens, the right-wing religious nuts, which, nationally, can deliver perhaps, maybe 6 to 8% of the vote and you add onto that the traditional corporate vote combined with the top 20%, which is what I would call the Republican money vote, whose ranks have swelled under this regime, and you find out that what the regime is consistently able to deliver is between 50 and 53% of the vote. Forget the polls. I'm just saying what they can deliver in the voting booths.
It is after all a moot point that the Republicans run the voting machine companies. The conspiracy theorists like to say the Republicans run the voting machines and thus the voting process. That's true. That's a true conspiracy.
What I'm saying is they need that. They can actually only deliver in the voting booths 50 to 53%. And that's on a good day. They need the ability to control voting machines, to control the voting process, to be able to manipulate potentially up to 3% of the vote nationwide to ensure that they could maintain majority.
The politics of the nation have certainly changed under Bushonomics. The PATRIOT Acts have turned the Constitution on its head, turned it upside down, inside out, whatever words you want to use. Now what we have is a regime that, public support notwithstanding, doesn't have to really concern itself anymore with political opinion polls or even, or as Henry Kissinger once put it, "the inconvenience of a vote."
...Thus, armed with the power, the regime no longer has to be concerned about public opinion polls. You would note that, despite public opinion polls showing support for the regime at less than 40%, the regime has not caved in. The regime has not come to any compromise with the Democrats or moderate Republicans on any of its economic agenda. It claims that it will continue to prosecute war in Iraq forever, or until such time as it deems otherwise, despite the $100 billion per annum expenditure. It also maintains that it will continue to proffer tax cuts for the Republican Rich. Such is the plan, perhaps, but wishful thinking is the Achilles heel of the power-hungry crowd. Maybe those who think they are in control of the process have less control than they think.
In any case, something has to give soon. |
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Associated Press
Friday, December 30, 2005
WASHINGTON — Treasury Secretary John Snow said yesterday the United States could face the prospect of not being able to pay its bills early next year unless Congress raises the government’s borrowing authority, now capped at $8.18 trillion.
Snow, in a letter to lawmakers, estimated that the government is expected to bump into the statutory debt limit around the middle of February.
“At that time, unless the debt limit is raised or the Treasury Department takes authorized extraordinary actions, we will be unable to continue to finance government operations,” Snow wrote. If the department were to carry out various accounting maneuvers — as it has done in the past to avoid breaching the limit — that would free up finances and allow the government to keep paying its bills “no longer than mid-March,” Snow wrote.
Boosting the debt limit is more a matter of politics than economics.
Economists doubt Congress will refuse to raise the limit. A federal default is considered unimaginable because it would rattle bond markets, force interest rates higher and shake the economy.
The last time Congress agreed to boost the debt limit was in November 2004 — from $7.38 trillion to the current $8.18 trillion. The government’s statutory borrowing authority also was pushed up in 2002 and in 2003.
Snow’s letter did not say how much of a boost to the current debt limit the department would like to see this time.
Instead, Snow implored: "I am writing to request that Congress raise the statutory debt limit as soon as possible.” |
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by Mike Whitney
January 9, 2006
“It's the death blow to the US dollar,” said Peter Grandich, editor of the Grandich Letter.
On Thursday, The People’s Republic of China fired off the first volley in what could turn out to be economic Armageddon. China announced that it would begin to diversify its foreign-exchange reserves away from US dollar.
Gulp!
The only thing keeping the dollar atop its fragile perch is the fact that other countries have been willing to lap up the $600 billion of American red ink every year via the trade deficit. That amounts to roughly $2 billion per day or nearly 7% GDP. Currently, China is holding $769 billion, the vast majority of its foreign exchange reserves. This is a humongous sum by any measurement and represents approximately 30% of China’s gross domestic product. Regrettably, the Bush administration’s wasteful spending makes the dollar look like a bad long term investment, so China will either have to change its strategy or face a huge loss on its reserves. It’s a thorny predicament and one that China needs to handle delicately. If they move too aggressively it could trigger a sell-off and send the dollar plummeting.
It is unlikely that China will act recklessly, but even the mere suggestion of change has put the markets on edge.
Gold futures already jumped 4% in one week as large institutional buyers are voting with their feet that the dollar is headed for the dumpster. In fact, since Bush took office, gold has gone from the $200 range to $540 on Friday; a sure sign that investors have lost confidence in Washington’s ability to curb spending.
Even if China does not begin to cash in its greenbacks, we can expect to see considerable market volatility on Monday.
The Federal Reserve had anticipated China’s action for some time. That’s why the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve announced earlier this year that they would cease to publish the M3 monetary aggregate (including the following components: large-denomination time deposits, repurchase agreements, and Eurodollars.) That way the Fed can print enough money to absorb the shock waves of a massive sell-off without the nosy public knowing what’s going on. It’s a clever ruse, and an effective way of bilking the American people out of their hard-earned savings while the dollar continues to burrow into its earthen grave.
Greenspan knew this day was coming, that’s probably why he chose to take an early retirement; splashing around in the Barbados while the dog-dung hits the fan. Here’s what he said in April before the Senate Budget Committee:
“The federal budget is on an unsustainable path, in which large deficits result in rising interest rates and ever-growing interest payments that augment deficits in future years. Unless that trend is reversed, at some point these deficits would cause the economy to stagnate or worse.”
“Unsustainable path”?!?
It was Greenspan and Bush who engineered that “unsustainable path”. He enthusiastically supported the president’s $450 billion per year tax cuts that redistributed America’s wealth to the 1% of the people that he represents. The tax cuts alone set the country on the road to catastrophe. The national debt has increased an unbelievable $3 trillion under the Bush-Greenspan cabal. He also endorsed the shaky lending practices (ARMs; adjustable rate mortgages, interest-only loans; $0 down payments) that inflated the housing bubble and caused an unprecedented wave of speculative buying. As the Fed continues to raise rates and tighten loan-requirements, the bubble is slowly limping towards the abyss carrying America’s economic future with it.
Greenspan anesthetized the country with low-interest rates while Bush and Co. maxed out the national credit card and loaded the boats with everything in the public till. Meanwhile, the economy kept sputtering along while Greenspan concealed the long-range effects of massive deficits behind a mountain of cheap money. Now, the well is running dry, and Americans will be facing rising interest rates, a stagnant economy, and a falling dollar.
China’s action signals that we are entering a period of economic instability, where America’s future is largely in the hands of its creditors. Economic policy in China will now determine the interest rates on mortgages in America.
Welcome to the new world order, comrade.
The Fed believes it can finesse the problem by manipulating the money supply beyond the public view.
We’ll see.
The last time Greenspan tried that trick he ended up dropping rates 12 times in a year and a half as the steam whooshed from the stock market bubble leaving the economy on life support.
Greenspan knows that low interest rates (“cheap money”) cannot always forestall disaster. If China starts a sell-off, its doomsday for the greenback. Japan would be forced to sell, with Germany close behind. The smaller nations would join the feeding frenzy, followed by the hedge and pension funds. It would be like a stroll through the Weimar Republic in the early 1930s.
So, what’s next?
On Monday, the Fed will “preemptively” sluice zillions into the system to increase liquidity and stave off a possible run on the dollar. That way they can maintain the appearance of normalcy while what little is left of American middle class wealth is shifted into the flannel pockets of the central bankers via inflation. This will put the American economy on a long downward trajectory to third-world penury.
America is on the road towards hyperinflation; designed to savage the middle class, undermine popular social programs, crush organized labor, privatize all areas of the federal government, and “flatten” the workplace (to use the language of globalization guru, Tom Friedman) so that Americans will be forced to compete with the poorest paid workers in the world.
The effects of massive deficits are entirely understood. Eventually, the chickens come home to roost and the poor and middle class suffer horribly. It won’t be any different this time. |
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Reuters
Mon Jan 9, 2006 1:23 AM ET
SINGAPORE - Billionaire investor George Soros said on Monday he thinks the U.S. Federal Reserve's monetary tightening could tip the economy into recession in 2007 and he expects a sharp dollar decline.
Soros said he expects the federal funds rate, now at 4.25 percent, to peak at 4.75 percent and that the Fed would try to achieve a soft landing for the economy.
Nevertheless, the Fed could overshoot, he told a seminar in Singapore.
"If housing continues to cool while rates are slowing then it could turn into a hard landing," Soros said.
"That's why I expect a recession to happen in 2007, not 2006." |
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By Peter Bohan
Reuters
January 8, 2006
DETROIT - Irate U.S. auto workers picketing in the streets and bright prospects for competing Asian automakers cast a damper over struggling U.S. giants General Motors Corp and Ford Motor Co. as the global auto industry's biggest annual show opened on Sunday. The North American International Auto Show, at the massive Cobo Hall on Detroit's riverfront, showcases the world's latest cars and trucks, including new models from GM and Ford accompanied by optimism from their executives about a rebound in demand from U.S. consumers.
But auto industry analysts still expect GM, which has lost nearly $4 billion in the first three quarters of 2005, to post its fifth straight quarterly loss later this month.
Crosstown rival Ford is expected to eke out a small quarterly profit. But Ford's Chairman and Chief Executive Bill Ford has said Ford's turnaround plan, due on January 23, will include "significant plant closings" and job losses.
Ford Americas President Mark Fields, who is crafting the turnaround strategy, said on Sunday the plan is "not about fiddling around the edges" in terms of cost cuts.
GM has already announced it will slash 30,000 jobs and close 12 plants in North America. Both Ford and GM have had their credit ratings slashed to junk, and GM executives on Sunday again parried persistent questions about bankruptcy.
"I don't know what leads them to bandy it about. From our standpoint we don't think it's in any way, shape or form a good or viable or reasonable approach," embattled GM Chief Executive Rick Wagoner told reporters at the show.
But the implosion in the U.S. auto industry, long a bedrock of U.S. manufacturing and source of middle-class wealth for blue-collar workers, has not been lost on the United Auto Workers union. The UAW gave up its biggest concessions in years to GM and Ford in the last year, fearful the companies would face bankruptcy without the savings.
Those concessions drew the wrath of angry UAW members outside Cobo Hall on the first day of the show on Sunday.
The protesters were orderly but held signs targeted at Delphi Corp, a spin-off from GM a few years ago that demanded steep wage and benefit cuts after it filed the biggest ever U.S. automotive bankruptcy last October.
"Corporate America and Labor Leaders: Traitors of the People" and "Blue Collar Runs Companies/White Collar Ruins Companies" read two signs among the picketers.
Doug Hanscom, who has worked for GM in Baltimore for more than 29 years, said he joined the picketing outside Cobo Hall to support Delphi workers who face steep wage and benefit cuts under that company's bankruptcy filing.
"The struggle that Delphi is having, I think it is going to domino into GM," Hanscom said.
Karie Huntley, a 23-year-old Delphi electrician at the company's Flint, Michigan, operation, was out campaigning for political action to enforce the company's pension guarantees. "This is a middle class issue, this is not just a Delphi issue," she said.
Wagoner said on Sunday the agreement struck with the UAW in October was "historic" and would save GM, the largest private provider of health care in the world, about $15 billion of its $60 billion in long-term health-care costs.
But UAW's master contract comes up for renegotiation in 2007. Prospects for more concessions without signals that white collar workers and Wall Street investors are bearing a share of the burden casts a shadow over GM and Ford operations.
INSIDE - MORE GOOD NEWS FOR JAPAN
It is a different story for Japan's aggressive automakers led by Toyota Motor Corp. and Honda Motor Co. Ltd. Asian brands in 2005 won 36.5 percent of the U.S. market for cars and trucks, up 1.9 percentage points. U.S. automakers, including German-owned Chrysler Corp., won 57 percent, down another 1.7 percentage points.
On Sunday, in another blow for GM and Ford, Honda swept the top honors at the Detroit show as its all-new Civic and first-ever pickup, the Ridgeline, were voted car and truck of the year by a panel of automotive writers.
Both models were developed and built in the United States.
"Words can't express the excitement," said John Mandel, senior vice president at American Honda.
Toyota plans to make a record 9.06 million vehicles in 2006, just shy of the 9.15 million analysts see GM building.
Analysts last year lambasted GM especially for its reliance on large gas-guzzling SUV's and trucks, contrasting these with Toyota's pioneering gas-electric hybrids like the Prius sedan, the Detroit show's car of the year two years ago.
But on Sunday, Wagoner stood firm.
"Large SUV's? I have a hard time feeling bad about bringing out an all-new line of products in a 750,000 unit segment, to be conservative, that we run 60 percent of. It's the most profitable segment in the industry," Wagoner told reporters. |
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by William D. Hartung
The Nation magazine
February 23, 2004
We all know that Halliburton is raking in billions from the Bush Administration's occupation and rebuilding of Iraq. But in the long run, the biggest beneficiaries of the Administration's "war on terror" may be the "destroyers," not the rebuilders. The nation's "Big Three" weapons makers- Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Northrop Grumman-are cashing in on the Bush policies of regime change abroad and surveillance at home. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman was on target when he suggested that rather than "leave no child behind," the slogan Bush stole from the Children's Defense Fund, his Administration's true motto appears to be "leave no defense contractor behind." In fiscal year 2002, the Big Three received a total of more than $42 billion in Pentagon contracts, of which Lockheed Martin got $17 billion, Boeing $16.6 billion and Northrop Grumman $8.7 billion. This is an increase of nearly one-third from 2000, Clinton's final year. These firms get one out of every four dollars the Pentagon doles out for everything from rifles to rockets. In contrast, Bush's No Child Left Behind Act is underfunded by $8 billion a year, with the additional assistance promised to school districts swallowed up by war costs and tax cuts.
The bread and butter for the Big Three are weapons systems like the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (Lockheed Martin), the F/A-18 E/F combat aircraft (Boeing/Northrop Grumman), the F-22 Raptor (Lockheed Martin/Boeing) and the C- 17 transport aircraft (Boeing). Northrop Grumman is also a major player in the area of combat ships, through its ownership of the Newport News, Virginia and Pascagoula, Mississippi, shipyards. All three firms are also well placed in the design and production of targeting devices, electronic warfare equipment, long-range strike systems and precision munitions. For example, Boeing makes the Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM), a kit that can be used to make "dumb" bombs "smart." The JDAM was used in such large quantities in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that the company has had to run double shifts to keep up with Air Force ~ demand.
The Bush nuclear buildup-large parts of which are funded out of the Energy Department budget, not the Pentagon-is particularly good news for Lockheed Martin. The company has a $2 billion-a-year contract to run Sandia National Laboratories, a nuclear weapons design and engineering facility based in Albuquerque. Lockheed Martin also works in partnership with Bechtel to run the Nevada Test Site, where new nuclear weapons are tested either via underground explosions-currently on hold due to US adherence to a moratorium on nuclear testing-or computer simulations. Late last year, Congress lifted a long-standing ban on research into so-called "mini-nukes"- nuclear weapons of less than five kilotons, about one-third the size of the Hiroshima bomb. It also authorized funds for studies on a nuclear "bunker buster" and seed money for a multibillion dollar factory to build plutonium triggers for a new generation of nuclear weapons. These new investments will be presided over by Everet Beckner, a former Lockheed Martin executive who now heads the National Nuclear Security Administration's nuclear weapons complex.
The Big Three are also poised to profit from President Bush's plan to colonize the moon and send a manned mission to Mars, both of which are stalking horses for launching an arms race in space. Boeing and Lockheed Martin were already well positioned in the military-space field through major contracts in space launch, satellite and missile defense work, plus a partnership to run the United Space Alliance, the joint venture in charge of launches of the space shuttle. Northrop Grumman bought into the field through its acquisition of TRW, a major space and Star Wars contractor. The new presidential commission charged with fleshing out Bush's space vision is being chaired by Edward "Pete" Aldridge, the Pentagon's former Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and a current member of Lockheed Martin's board of directors. Meanwhile, over at the Air Force, the under secretary in charge of acquiring space assets is Peter Teets, a former chief operating officer at Lockheed Martin. His position was created in accordance with the recommendations of the Commission to Assess US National Security Space Management and Organization, an advisory panel that published its blueprint for the militarization of space just as Bush was taking office. The group, which included representatives of eight Pentagon contractors, was presided over by Donald Rumsfeld until he left to take up his current post as Bush's Defense Secretary. Rumsfeld has been dutifully implementing the commission's recommendations ever since.
The Big Three are also wired into numerous other sources of federal contracts for everything from airport security to domestic surveillance, all in the name of fighting what the White House now calls the GWOT (Global War on Terrorism). The $20 billion-plus total that Lockheed Martin receives annually is more than is spent in an average year on the largest federal welfare program, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, a program that is meant to provide income support to several million women and children living below the poverty line. Under Bush and company, corporate welfare trumps human well-being every time.
One would think that with the military budget at $400 billion and counting-up from $300 billion when Bush took office- all would be well in the land of the military-industrial behemoths, especially since the Pentagon budget is only one opportunity among many. (The budget of the Department of Homeland Security is $40 billion and counting, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have racked up $200 billion in emergency spending to date, over and above normal Pentagon appropriations.)Yet in my discussions with industry representatives at the June 2003 Paris Air Show as well as in their recent behavior, I have detected an unmistakable sense of desperation, a sense that even this embarrassment of riches may not be enough to stabilize these massive companies.
On the desperation front, Boeing is head and shoulders above its rivals. After losing the highly touted "deal of the century''-the $300 billion F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program- to its rival Lockheed Martin in 2001, the company took a huge hit to its commercial-airliner business when a* travel plummeted in the wake of the September 11 attacks. A bailout was in order, and the company pulled out all the stops to create one in the form of a deal that would have required the Air Force to lease 100 Boeing 767s for use as aerial refueling tankers. As initially crafted, the deal would have cost $26 billion over a decade, $5 billion more than it would have cost to buy the planes outright. Behind it was a group that included Senator Ted Stevens, who used his clout as chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee to insert an amendment into the Pentagon's budget specifically requiring the lease arrangement; Secretary of the Air Force James Roche, a former VP at Boeing's sometime partner Northrop Grumman, Boeing senior vice president of Washington operations Rudy deLeon, a former top official in Bill Clinton's Pentagon; and House Speaker Dennis Hastert. Like most pork-barrel projects, the deal was a mix of strategic thinking and self-interest. Roche made no bones about the fact that part of the point was to throw some money Boeing's way so that it would remain healthy. What you and I might call a "bailout," folks in the Pentagon call "maintaining the defense industrial base."
Boeing used every possible lever to get the deal done. It hosted a fundraiser in Seattle for Stevens at which Boeing executives threw $22,000 into his campaign coffers. It enlisted Hastert, who had wooed the company to move its headquarters to his home state of Illinois, to weigh in directly with President Bush. Representative Todd Tiahrt, whose Wichita district includes the Boeing plant that would retrofit the 767s for use as tankers, raised the issue so often with Bush that the President nicknamed him "Tanker Tiahrt." Members from Washington State, home of Boeing's main production complex, also lobbied vigorously. Defense Policy Board member and Rumsfeld pal Richard Perle wrote an op-ed in favor of the deal for the Wall Street Journal- but only after Boeing had invested $20 million in Trireme, a Perle investment firm. Boeing sponsored the 2001 annual dinner of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, a neocon redoubt with which Under Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith was closely associated before joining the Administration. The honorees were the secretaries of the three military services: The Air Force's Roche, Navy Secretary Gordon England (formerly of General Dynamics) and Army Secretary Thomas White (formerly of Enron). The host for the evening was Boeing Washington office head Rudy deLeon.
For once all this influence-peddling may go for naught. The deal is on hold thanks to relentless questioning by Senator John McCain, who has denounced it from the beginning as "war profiteering," and persistent public pressure by good-government groups. The last straw was the revelation that Boeing offered Air Force acquisition official Darleen Druyun a job while she was negotiating the lease deal with the company.
Boeing isn't the only corrupt weapons company; it's just the one that was too desperate for a short-term payoff to cover its tracks. Rumsfeld's preference for industry executives and ideologues of the Perle/Feith variety has created an ethically challenged, politically tone-deaf environment that needs to be opened up to public scrutiny and reform. Some steps are under way. The Pentagon's Inspector General is investigating all Boeing contracts that Druyun was involved in. The Senate Armed Services Committee will hold hearings on the Boeing deal, and McCain has promised hearings on the Pentagon-industry "revolving door."
Much more needs to be done. At the height of World War II, Senator Harry Truman made a name for himself by uncovering profiteering and fraud at companies providing supplies for the war effort. Given the high political and economic stakes in the war on terror, a comparable investigation is in order now. Whether the work is being done in Iraq, Washington or points in between, contracts involving US national security should be opened to true competitive bidding. Profits should be limited and the books of contractors doing the public's business should be open and available for inspection. Politicians and bureaucrats who are lining their pockets under the guise of fighting terrorism should face criminal penalties, not symbolic fines. The public should demand that all candidates for the presidency and Congress renounce campaign contributions from companies involved in the rebuilding of Iraq, the war in Afghanistan or any of the other far-flung outposts of Bush's war on terrorism.
The culture of cronyism that allows arms-industry executives to pull down multimillion-dollar compensation packages while wounded veterans are shunted into makeshift medical wards has to end. Getting rid of George W. Bush and his gang of neocon profiteers is an excellent place to start. But it's only a start.
William D. Hartung a senior research fellow at the World Policy Institute at the New School, is the author of How Much Are You Making on the War, Daddy? A Quick and Dirty Guide to War Profiteering in the Bush Administration (Nation Books), from which this article is adapted. |
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BBC News
07/01/2006
Bolivia's President-elect Evo Morales has met French President Jacques Chirac in Paris on the latest stage of an international tour.
The two leaders discussed proposals by Mr Morales to partially nationalise Bolivia's gas and oil reserves.
The French energy firm, Total, is one of several foreign companies involved in Bolivia's natural gas industry.
Mr Morales, wearing his trademark jeans and shirt,thanked Mr Chirac for supporting Bolivia's indigenous people. French officials said the Bolivian leader told Mr Chirac that he wants foreign firms, including Total, to continue to invest in his country, which has the second largest gas reserves in South America after Venezuela.
Mr Chirac told Mr Morales it was important to provide legal security for foreign investors in its gas and oil supplies.
Mr Morales, a former union leader, said he had received "unconditional solidarity and support" from Mr Chirac.
"I want to express my respect and admiration for the president of France and his government for defending the rights of the indigenous peoples of America," he said.
He said Mr Chirac expressed his "admiration for the profound changes we are undertaking" and pledged social and financial support to Bolivia.
The French president made no comment to reporters following his 45-minute meeting with the Latin American leader.
'Happy'
Earlier, his office said Mr Chirac was "very happy to see the first representative of an Indian nation assume the responsibilities of the president of Bolivia".
Mr Morales, an Aymara Indian from a poor region in the Bolivian highlands, will become Bolivia's first indigenous leader in its 180-year history when he takes office on 22 January.
Mr Morales visited the French president's ornate 18th century Elysee Palace wearing black jeans and an open-collar shirt under a leather jacket.
Over the past four days, Mr Morales has also visited Venezuela, Spain, Belgium and Holland and France. He heads next to China, South Africa and Brazil. |
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Last Updated Sun, 08 Jan 2006 21:31:08 EST
CBC News
Two children and an adult in Ankara have tested positive for the H5N1 strain of bird flu, Turkish officials say.
The Turkish Ministry of Health announced three cases in Ankara and two others in eastern Turkey near Iran on Sunday. They have not yet been confirmed by the World Health Organization.
The diagnoses sparked fear among many people in Turkey, because only a week had passed since the country's first cases were confirmed more than 800 kilometres away in the eastern Turkish city of Van. The virulent H5N1 strain of avian influenza has killed more than 70 people and led to a cull of millions of birds in East Asia, but has not been reported in humans elsewhere until the Turkish cases arose.
Turkish authorities say they have confirmed nine human cases, while the UN health agency counts four confirmed cases and is conducting further tests on the rest.
All of them are believed to have got the flu from poultry.
Several dozen other people have been treated in Turkish hospitals on suspicion of having bird flu.
The first two confirmed cases, two teenage siblings, died in Van during the week. Another sister died but the cause has not been positively identified as the H5N1 strain, and a fourth sibling, a brother, is in hospital.
On Sunday, Ankara's governor Kemal Onal said two more children, brothers 5 and 2, and a 60-year-old adult had been diagnosed with the infection in the capital.
Meanwhile, a British laboratory confirmed the strain in a boy, and preliminary tests in Turkey found it in a girl. Both are in hospital in Van.
The virus has been found in birds in Turkey and nearby countries, triggering mass culls.
The World Health Organization is investigating to see whether the Turkish cases contracted the virus from other humans, but said there is no evidence this has happened so far.
Experts fear the virus could mutate so it could be transmitted between humans, which could lead to a pandemic.
Russia's chief epidemiologist on Sunday warned Russians to avoid eastern Turkey. |
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Luke Harding in Berlin
Monday January 9, 2006
The Guardian
It is a mystery that has gone on for more than a century: did the old skull lodged in an Austrian basement really belong to the greatest composer of all time, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart?
The results of DNA tests seeking to solve the mystery were broadcast on Austrian TV to coincide with the 250th anniversary this month of the composer's birth. And the answer is: we still don't know.
Last night researchers revealed that Mozart's "skull" - which has been in the possession of the Mozart Foundation since 1902 - had a different DNA result from that of his two "relatives". This could mean either that the skull is a 200-year-old fake or that it is indeed genuine but that the two "relatives" dug up from the Mozart family plot in Salzburg are not from his family at all. The samples from the skeletons of his supposed relatives had different DNA results from each other, leading to suspicions that neither was related to Mozart. "We got wonderful results from Mozart's skull. Unfortunately the results from Mozart's niece and grandmother don't match with the skull, or with each other," Franz Grabner, from Austria's state ORF television, said last night. "It's still an open question whether we have the right skull."
It is the latest chapter in a story which began in 1801 when a gravedigger, Joseph Rothmayer, purportedly dug up Mozart's skull from a cemetery in Vienna. The composer was buried there in an unmarked grave following his death in 1791 at the age of 35. His skeleton subsequently went missing. But his presumed skull - minus the lower jaw - was handed down to his descendants and eventually given to the Mozarteum Foundation in Salzburg, the town where the prodigy spent most of his life.
In late 2004 researchers from Innsbruck's institute of forensic medicine got permission to dig up Mozart's relatives. They opened the family vault in Salzburg's Sebastian cemetery, discovering nine skeletons and numerous bones, including those of Mozart's father, Leopold, and wife, Constanze.
In the end, though, the hottest leads came from two dusty female skeletons apparently belonging to Mozart's 16-year-old niece, Jeanette, and maternal grandmother, Euphrosina Pertl. "We needed to test the mitochondrial DNA which is passed down the female line," Walther Parson, the forensic pathologist who carried out the tests on the skull, told the Guardian. "We had full skeletons from both of them. Their bones were in rather good shape. We decided to use the femur."
After taking DNA samples, researchers had the problem of how to get Mozart's "skull" from Salzburg to their lab in Innsbruck. "We tried to insure Mozart. But nobody wanted to insure the skull," Prof Parson said.
The Mozarteum eventually transported the skull in a security van used for bank deliveries. Prof Parson and his team then removed two of Mozart's teeth, one of which was sent to a laboratory in the US for comparative tests.
The other tooth was bleached and chopped in half so DNA could be extracted. A professional glued it back together afterwards and put it back in the head. The result arrived in September but was kept secret until the broadcast.
"It's a bizarre story," Prof Parson said. "The skull is now back in the Mozarteum in a locked safe." Had it been worth it, though? "My personal view is that Mozart was the greatest musician who ever lived on the Earth. But I didn't really care whether the skull was real or not." |
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www.chinaview.cn 2006-01-09 16:20:45
BEIJING, Jan. 9 (Xinhuanet) -- China's database of immortalized cell samples of all Chinese ethnic groups has basically taken shape a decade after scientists' investigation and sampling throughout the country, sources with the Ministry of Health said Monday.
The research team, led by principal investigator Chu Jiayou and jointly supported by the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, has collected a total of 3,119 different strains of everlasting cells, and kept 6,010 DNA samples for further research. The group has also developed a mature and stable technology to transform a lymph cell B into an immortalized cell by making use of Epstein-Barr virus, Chu said, quoted by the Health News newspaper.
Immortalized cells can be kept in labs for research for quite along time.
By observing the genomes of different ethnic groups, the technology helps scientists' study in pathogeneses, diseases-causing genes, genetic diagnoses and therapies, Chu said.
Having the world's largest population and 56 ethnic groups, China is rich in genetic resources. Different ethnic groups have different enzyme systems and human leukocyte antigens.
As a result of inter-marriage and migration among the ethnic groups, Chu said, some comparatively pure genomes are facing the danger of extinction. Preserving these genomes thus becomes an urgent task for maintaining complete and pure genes of different ethnic groups in China.
The Chinese immortalized cell database does not prohibit overseas use for lab research on such cell strains. Some 149 cell strains have been provided to a European human genome research center, according to the newspaper.
The Chinese research group are further studying the genetic diversity of those cell samples, including studies on chondriosome DNA, chromosome Y, and single nucleotide polymorphism, Chu said.
They have done genetic scanning and typing of 28 Chinese ethnic groups, built genetic trees for 32 East Asian peoples, and compared 15 global ethnic groups. Some of the research results have been published in prestigious scientific journals such as Nature and Human Genetics. |
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www.chinaview.cn 2006-01-07 21:51:26
BEIJING, Jan. 7 (Xinhuanet) -- Chinese scientists have claimed nearly 100 intellectual property rights on human functional genes,which have shown great potential in disease prevention and pharmaceutical development.
Sources with the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) said here Saturday that the great progress in human genome research is an important step of the "863" high-technology program, a national project initiated in March 1986 aiming to enhance the country's overall strength. So far, Chinese scientists have established a platform for selecting human functional genes, cloned and identified 1,346 new genes, and carried out large scale examination of genetic functions. Among the 100 human functional genes with Chinese intellectual property rights, 20 or more are now in the initial stage of laboratory research.
In the meantime, the MOST said, progress has also been made in research on genes relevant to tumour and cardiovascular diseases and the causes of the diseases, and a group of genes related to heredity diseases have been cloned and identified, such as cataract and epilepsy among children. These research results have been published in the journals of "Science" and "Nature", laying asound technological foundation for the diagnosis and treatment of heredity diseases.
Besides, Chinese scientists have also scored remarkable achievements in genome research such as on rice, microorganism, silkworm, and schistosome. |
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TOM KIRK
Thisisnorthscotland.co.uk
07 January 2006
A Mystery noise, suspected to have been a sonic boom, sent shock waves through communities along a stretch of Aberdeenshire coastline yesterday.
The sound, described as a loud, two-part bang above ground level, shook windows and tiles and prompted several calls to the police.
People in Cove, Portlethen and Stonehaven heard the noise at about 11.25am, variously describing it as like a quarry blast, gas explosion or firework.
But other people, who in some cases were only in the next room, heard nothing. Police are still unsure what caused the sound.
It is thought it may have been a sonic boom, which is the sound made by the shock wave created when an aircraft or missile passes through the sound barrier.
Sonic booms are often heard as a double-bang, which was reported by some people yesterday.
They also tend to cause windows to shatter. But that did not happen yesterday - and the RAF said there were no military aircraft active nearby.
Harry Roulston, 63, of Stonehaven, was on Portlethen golf course when he heard two very loud noises in quick succession. "I had just come off the 18th green and we were marking our scorecards," he said.
"There was suddenly this terrific noise like something really heavy falling.
"It didn't sound as if it was an earthquake. It was quite a physical noise. [...] |
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Sat Jan 7, 2006
LONDON (Reuters) - The preserved remains of two prehistoric men discovered in an Irish bog have revealed a couple of surprises --- one used hair gel and the other stood 6 foot 6 inches high, the tallest Iron Age body discovered. "He would have been a giant...the other man was quite short, about 5 foot 2 inches," said Ned Kelly, head of antiquities at the National Museum of Ireland.
"The shorter man appeared to attempt to give himself greater stature by a rather curious headdress which was a bit like a Mohican-style with the hair gel, which was a resin imported from France," Kelly told BBC radio.
Bacterial conditions found in the peat bogs preserved the remains so that even fingerprints were clearly visible.
The fashion-conscious gel wearer has been named Clonycavan Man and Kelly said the fact he was able to buy imported cosmetics suggests he was a wealthy member of Irish society about 2,300 years ago. The other was dubbed Oldcroghan Man.
Kelly said both men had murdered.
"Oldcroghan Man was stabbed through the chest. He saw that attack coming because there is a defensive injury on his arm."
He was then decapitated and his body cut in half while Clonycaven Man had his head split open with an axe before he was disemboweled. |
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By HEATHER CLARK
The Associated Press
Jan 6, 2006
ALBUQUERQUE - A panel of linguists has decided the word that best reflects 2005 is "truthiness," defined as the quality of stating concepts one wishes or believes to be true, rather than the facts. [...]
Michael Adams, a professor at North Carolina State University who specializes in lexicology, said "truthiness" means "truthy, not facty."
"The national argument right now is, one, who's got the truth and, two, who's got the facts," he said. "Until we can manage to get the two of them back together again, we're not going make much progress."The group of linguists, editors and academics agreed the most useful word was "podcast" a digital feed containing audio or video files for downloading to an MP3 player.
In a runoff for the most creative word, "whale tail," the appearance of a thong above the waistband, beat out "muffin top," the bulge of flesh hanging over the top of low-riding jeans.
Tom Cruise became the first public figure in the contest's 16 years to be noted for his influence on public discourse. The group coined the term "Cruiselex" to describe such terms as "jump the couch" and "Cruisazy."
"Jump the couch," meaning to exhibit strange or frenetic behavior, won the best Tom Cruise-related word or phrase. It stems from the actor's antics in May on Oprah Winfrey's couch as he talked about his love for fiancee Katie Holmes. "Cruisazy" means to exhibit crazy behavior.
"I don't know any other public figure who has inspired so many words in a single year," said Erin McKean, editor of the New Oxford American Dictionary.
Other winners included "sudoku," a Japanese number puzzle voted the word most likely to succeed, and "pope squatting," the practice of registering an online domain that is the name of the new pope in order to profit from it, as least likely to succeed.
Last year's overall winner was "red, blue and purple states." In the 2004 general election, voters in red states favored Republicans, those in blue states favored Democrats and residents of purple states were undecided. |
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By HUGO KUGIYA
AP National Writer
Sun Jan 8, 12:54 PM ET
It began as a mass e-mail in a certain Seattle office building on December's first day.
A cold front was arriving! Snow! Ice! Untold inches for the city and surrounding area!
Within hours, the e-mail exchange called for an early dismissal and even generated a catchy headline, the kind that television news offers up for every tempest: "Snowstorm Katrina."
A memo went out: "Please be aware that many or all of the staff will be leaving early today as snow and icy road conditions have hit Seattle." A last call was sounded for overnight mail. Copy writers and bookkeepers turned into amateur meteorologists, e-mailing hourly weather updates to colleagues, and sending links to live weather cams.
The cautious drove home after lunch. The brave stayed behind.
And the snow never came. Not even an inch. So goes the drill in an era when weather, however routine, is associated with peril. Be it a historic hurricane like Katrina or a run-of-the-mill snowstorm, weather is news — and not good news.
And it's not just the banner headlines and screaming television graphics that attend each storm. Oil prices rise, the stores are cleared of bottled water and generators, milk and bread, and citizens become gently unglued as they engage in the interactive, televised conflict we used to call ... well, the weather.
"Television in particular has an affinity for action, suspense, drama, and danger, and 'big weather' delivers on all counts," said Carol Wilder, chair of the Media Studies Department at The New School in New York.
"The past year of the tsunami and Katrina were larger than life stories and it was mother nature, not an enemy army, who was calling the shots. Reporters Anderson Cooper and Brian Williams delivered career-making performances. Weather reporting is the new war reporting, because war reporting has become just too dangerous for journalists."
The rise of the weather as societal preoccupation, bogeyman and news-ratings staple is about several things, experts agree: the growing complexity and competitiveness of the media; our greatly improved ability to forecast the weather; the general climate of fear in which we live, which includes everything from terrorism to global warming.
This fear was bolstered by hurricanes Katrina and Rita and even by the Asian tsunami.
"There is a human tendency to generalize from one set of events to another," said Barry Glassner, a professor of sociology at USC and the author of "The Culture of Fear: Why Americans are Afraid of the Wrong Things." "If the recent hurricane season has been deadly, it follows that the winter season is going to be especially deadly even though they're unrelated. There is a natural tendency to extrapolate.
"For example, if there is one heinous crime in a particular neighborhood or region, people imagine there will be more of them. If a friend has been diagnosed with a deadly disease, people imagine their common aches and pains as cancer.
"We are living in a period now when we are just as fearful about common dangers like bad weather as we are about unusually serious dangers like Category 4 hurricanes. We feel the world is out of control in many ways, politically and economically. So it makes sense to imagine the weather is out of control, too."
Our preoccupation with the weather and weather-related adventure is not limited to television news. It is reflected in the myriad of television documentary shows about tornado chasers, Coast Guard rescuers, and even crab-boat fishing off Alaska, which is exciting only because of the weather conditions the fishermen must endure.
But it is not only spectacular weather that gets our attention. While modern conveniences have insulated us from the effects of weather, advances in technology have also deepened our knowledge of it. And the more we can know, the more it seems we want to know.
Five-day forecasts have now become 10-day forecasts, thanks to a sea change in radar, satellite, and computer technology in the 1980s and 1990s.
Until about 15 years ago, weather technology was of World War II vintage. Now more powerful radar can detect not just precipitation but wind speed and circulation, and from twice as far away. Powerful computers can calculate variables and give forecasts that are twice as accurate.
A five-day forecast today is about as reliable as a two-day forecast was in 1980. Weather can be predicted for very specific areas, and for very specific events, giving people the ability to plan their lives in great detail as it relates to the weather.
"I'd say if our depth of knowledge used to be 10 feet deep, now it's 100,000 feet deep," said Dan McCarthy, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service's Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla.
The growth of the Weather Channel is also a reflection of our preoccupation. The network was launched in 1982 with much skepticism as one of cable television's first channels.
"We heard it all the time: 'Weather? Twenty-four hours a day? Who's going to watch that?'" said Ray Ban, a meteorologist with the Weather Channel since its inception. "The sophistication of our programming was modest and I'm being generous. The difference (between now and then) is black and white."
More than ever, weather is also literally money. Weather events shape stock prices and corporate profits, making it all the more newsworthy. Giant financial institutions like Merrill Lynch have their own meteorologists. Paul Janish works in Houston for Merrill Lynch's global commodities unit, preparing weather data that becomes part of the company's business strategies and decisions.
"Weather has gotten a lot more integrated into the overall business environment," said Janish, who used to work for the National Weather Service. "Companies are looking into ways to leverage weather, to better manage their resources. With energy supplies so constrained, the weather is going to become a more integral part of the business world."
In the business world, ice cream manufacturers and beverage companies wish for hot summers. Municipal budgets are made or busted on the number of snowstorms. Dry winters that produce little runoff in the summer can hurt companies that operate hydroelectric plants. The past hurricane season affected about 80 percent of the offshore gas infrastructure in the Gulf of Mexico.
All these events amount to billions of dollars and can be anticipated, in some part, by meteorologists, and dealt with using financial instruments like hedge funds, insurance policies, and energy futures.
For that reason, the demand for information about the weather will only grow — as will our fear and loathing.
One of the next advancements in weather technology, McCarthy said, is a new form of radar called phased array radar. Current Doppler radar scans a storm every five to six minutes. Phased array radar can scan a storm every minute, giving forecasters a sort of live-time view of a storm. This kind of technology translates, among other things, into potentially being able to double the warning time of an approaching tornado.
It could save lives, and will certainly make for great television.
"It's the awe of the weather," Ban said. "It impacts most of what we do It's an awesome event that we try to predict but it's always bigger than we are. It creates inspiration and fascination. And there's a gravitation towards the awe of it all."
Even if sometimes the weather is more bluster than disaster.
In September, 1997, a Pacific hurricane, Nora, made its pass through Tucson, Ariz., in what, at first, promised to be a rare and dramatic event in the desert city but turned out to be a dud. A meteorologist from a local television station and his camera crew set up for a live shot on the third-floor balcony of the National Weather Service building in Tucson. He stood atop a garbage can and leaned away from the building so the wind would toss his hair.
All of this was witnessed by several amused weather service employees.
Their reaction was a mix of eye-rolling and empathy. Empathy because the weather experts all played some part in blowing the call. Eye-rolling because reporting the weather had come to this: standing on garbage cans as a way of attempting to stage and direct the weather as if it were some kind of disaster film.
"My first reaction was 'good grief,'" said another meteorologist who witnessed the live shot. He did not want his name used lest he be viewed as poking fun of a colleague. "But at the same time, I was glad I wasn't the one who had to get in front of the camera and talk about this hurricane we all predicted would be a big storm." |
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Sat Jan 7, 2006
TOKYO (Reuters) - Troops and volunteers in Japan shoveled snow from roads and roofs on Sunday as the death toll from the country's heaviest snowfall on record rose to more than 60.
Teams of troops tried to clear snow that had piled up to more than three meters in some of the worst-hit areas of Niigata prefecture and to re-open blocked roads in Nagano prefecture. Both areas are northwest of Tokyo.
At least 63 people have died and over 1,000 injured since the unusually heavy snowfall began last month, Kyodo news agency said, citing a survey of local governments. Many of the dead were elderly people who fell from their roofs while trying to clear snow, while others have been crushed when their houses collapsed under the weight of the drifts.
"It's frightening," one elderly woman in Akita City in the north of Japan's main island of Honshu told private broadcaster TV Asahi as local government workers began to shovel snow from her roof.
"There were creaking sounds and I couldn't open the doors because of the weight of the snow."
Local governments and volunteer groups were calling for people to help the elderly who were unable to deal with the situation.
Japan's Meteorological Agency warned people to take precautions against possible avalanches as fresh snow fell along the Japan Sea coast. One such avalanche blocked a road in Niigata prefecture, but no one was injured, Kyodo news agency said.
The agency is forecasting more heavy snow for northern areas along the coast, but says snowfall should begin to tail off on Monday. |
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Last Updated Sun, 08 Jan 2006 19:30:09 EST
CBC News
The number of dead from Japan's heaviest snowfall on record has risen to nearly 70 people.
The 68th death linked to the snow occurred on Sunday night, when a 57-year-old man fell into an irrigation ditch in Yamagata prefecture. Earlier the same day, another man who had been missing since Dec. 30 was found under a two-metre-high pile of snow beside his home in the city of Hirakawa.
More than 1,000 others have been injured in accidents related to the snowfall, which began in early December.
It has piled up more than three metres deep in some of the worst-hit areas of Niigata prefecture, northwest of Tokyo.
The Japanese government has deployed teams of soldiers to help clear the snow in Niigata prefecture, one of the country's 47 administrative districts.
Troops are also trying to re-open roads blocked by snow in Nagano prefecture, which is also northwest of the capital.
The government of Akita prefecture on Sunday asked for troops to help out in its region, which has seen the heaviest snowfall in more than 30 years.
Some of the victims were killed as roofs collapsed under the weight of the snow.
Others died in falls while trying to remove the snow from their roofs.
The Japanese Meteorological Agency was predicting more snow in northern and western parts of the country.
The snowfalls are part of of a wider swathe of cold weather that has afflicted several parts of Asia recently.
Among them, India has reported more than 130 deaths linked to the cold wave and others have died in Bangladesh.
In China, thousands of people have been forced to flee their homes after roofs collapsed under heavy snow and some cattle have reportedly frozen to death. |
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Last Updated Sun, 08 Jan 2006 19:21:16 EST
CBC News
The Indian capital, New Delhi, had its first winter frost since 1935 on Monday as a cold snap swept down from the Himalayas.
It's part of a cold wave that has killed more than 130 people in India in the past month and afflicted other areas of Asia.
Meteorological Department officials said the temperature in New Delhi early Monday morning dipped to 0.2 C for the first time in 70 years. The cold prompted officials to order all schools to close for three days.
Frost on power lines caused blackouts in large areas of the city, which is the second largest in the country.
People at bus stops and train stations, as well as some of the city's thousands of homeless people, built bonfires to stay warm.
Forecasters said the cooler weather, which is about eight degrees colder than normal, would likely last another two days.
They said it stemmed from north-westerly winds blowing down from the Himalayas.
Indian authorities have blamed 137 deaths on the cold wave, mostly in the state of Uttar Pradesh.
Japan has seen record snowfalls linked to nearly 70 deaths, while Bangladesh has also linked several deaths to the cold.
In China, officials said thousands of people were forced to flee their homes after roofs collapsed under heavy snow and some cattle froze to death. |
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www.chinaview.cn 2006-01-08 21:28:43
SHENYANG, Jan. 8 (Xinhuanet) -- China's first military laboratory for simulating freezing environment is now in operation. The experiment module can reduce the inside temperature to 60 degrees Celsius below zero in two and a half hours.
According to military sources, the lab, located in northeast China's Shenyang Military Command, was built with human experiment modules, animal experiment modules, small medical equipment modules and temperature control modules. The lab can simulate natural cold meteorological conditions in which the capacities of medical equipment and drugs to resist cold and function effectively will be evaluated.
It will also test the duration limits of military operations in freezing environment, providing theoretical evidence for related research.
Experts believe the lab will further improve medical and logistic research in extreme environmental conditions for the Chinese military. |
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www.chinaview.cn 2006-01-09 20:36:14
WUHAN, Jan. 9 (Xinhuanet) -- After finishing the work on images of China's crustal movements in 2005, Chinese experts said the Himalayas showed the most active crustal movements, while Beijing moved five millimeters eastward.
China experiences various crustal movements every year due to pressure from the Indian Plate, said Yang Shaomin, associate researcher with the China Seismological Bureau.
The movements affect earthquakes, glaciers, biology and climate. For example, the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau movements increased earthquakes in western China, Yang said. According to the 2005 crustal movement figures, western China moved more than eastern China and southern China was more active than northern China.
The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau moved 13 millimeters eastwards and 26 millimeters northwards and the Sichuan-Yunnan Plate moved about 14 millimeters southeastward, according to the figures.
The movement was very slow and would have a little impact on the Chinese plate or people's daily life and the changes would only be apparent in millions of years, Yang acknowledged.
In the past 15 years since 1991, the seismological institute of the China Seismological Bureau has set up 1,056 GPS observation sites across the country for collection of information on crustal movements. |
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08/01/2006
A powerful earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 6.4 shook Greece today, the Athens Geodynamic Institute said.
The quake’s epicentre was located about 125 miles south of Athens near the island of Kythira.
No injuries were immediately reported. Media reports said the quake was also felt in northern Greece. |
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By ROBERT WELLER
Associated Press
January 8, 2005
AGUILAR, Colo. - Wind-whipped wildfires destroyed at least five houses in southern Colorado and forced the evacuation of several hundred residents Sunday, authorities said.
Two fires had burned over 5,400 acres in Huerfano and Las Animas counties, not far from the New Mexico line. One of them had started as a controlled burn earlier in the week that flared up again despite efforts to keep it down. Wind gusting up to 50 mph prevented authorities from using airplanes to drop slurry on the fires, said Pam Martinez of the Huerfano County Sheriff's office.
Firefighters were investigating the extent of the damage, and watching for more flareups. The land around Aguilar, a town of about 1,000 residents, is covered with sagebrush and grass, and the nearby hills are dotted with pinon and ponderosa pine.
"This just points out that we are very dry in Colorado even though it's winter," said Barb Timock, a U.S. Forest Service spokeswoman. "No matter where we are in Colorado, but especially along the Front Range, we ought to be thinking about being extremely careful with fires outdoors."
Drought conditions and gusting wind have spread dozens of wildfires across, Oklahoma, Texas and New Mexico over the past two weeks. At least 475 homes have been destroyed by the winter blazes and five people have been killed.
In Oklahoma, high wind and unseasonably, warm temperatures created prime conditions again Sunday for grass fires.
Firefighters in southern Oklahoma were trying taming one wildfire that had already charred about 900 acres near Coalgate, said Richard Reuse, a spokesman for a state command center.
"The big problem today is going to be an expected wind shift coming in from the north," he said Sunday. "If firefighters aren't aware of the wind shift while they're putting out a fire, it could get really dangerous for them."
In Texas, more than 60 wildfires were reported across the state, but most were only a few dozen acres in size. Burn bans and more firefighting resources, such as aircraft and equipment, have helped firefighters get the blazes under control, said Forest Service fire information officer Jim Caldwell. |
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By ROBERT WELLER
AP
Jan 9, 1:01 AM (ET)
AGUILAR, Colo. - The wildfire danger that has been menacing the parched southern plains spread to Arkansas and Colorado on Sunday, where wind-whipped blazes destroyed at least nine homes and forced hundreds of people to evacuate, authorities said. [...]
In Arkansas, a 3,000-acre wildfire destroyed four homes Sunday east of Hamburg and chased nearby residents from their houses. Four volunteer fire departments were battling the blaze, and Deputy State Forester Larry Nance said it likely would be Monday before they could gain control. "The high temperatures, high winds and low humidities, that's the three big things that brought it more critical for all of Arkansas," Nance said. The cause of the fire, one of at least 43 reported in the state Sunday, was under investigation.
Arson was blamed in Oklahoma City for two small grass fires less than a mile apart Sunday that damaged two homes on the city's northeast side, said battalion chief Kirk Wright.
In Colorado, fire officials believe human activity sparked the large fires near Aguilar, though they declined to provide further details. Residents said there had been some controlled burning in the area, where the open land is largely covered by dry sagebrush and grass, and the hills are dotted with pinon and ponderosa pine.
"This just points out that we are very dry in Colorado even though it's winter," said Barb Timock, a U.S. Forest Service spokeswoman. "No matter where we are in Colorado, but especially along the Front Range, we ought to be thinking about being extremely careful with fires outdoors."
Aguilar's 1,000 residents were warned to be prepared to evacuate in case the flames moved closer.
Pam Dorland, a retiree from Sterling who lost her home in the hills outside Aguilar, discovered the wildfire Saturday night when her screen door blew open.
"I went to shut it and I could see the smoke. There was nothing we could do," said Dorland, who returned with her husband Sunday morning to water down the smoldering remains of their house. They wanted to make sure that the remains didn't cause a flare-up.
Wind gusting up to 50 mph prevented authorities from using airplanes to drop slurry on the blazes Sunday, said Pam Martinez of the Huerfano County Sheriff's office.
Another wildfire broke out in northern Colorado, forcing three to four dozen residents to evacuate homes near Carter Lake.
Drought conditions and gusting wind have spread dozens of wildfires across Oklahoma, Texas and New Mexico over the past two weeks. At least 475 homes have been destroyed by the winter blazes and five people have been killed.
In Texas, more than 60 wildfires were reported Sunday, though most were relatively small. Burn bans and more firefighting resources, such as aircraft and equipment, have helped firefighters get the blazes under control, said Forest Service fire information officer Jim Caldwell.
Across Oklahoma, fire crews responded to more than 30 fires during the day, including a large blaze in southeast Oklahoma that scorched about 6,000 acres, according to the state's incident command center in Shawnee.
"The big problem today is going to be an expected wind shift coming in from the north," said Richard Reuse, a spokesman for the center. "If firefighters aren't aware of the wind shift while they're putting out a fire, it could get really dangerous for them." |
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