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NSA Whistleblower Alleges Illegal Spying More Widespread than Claimed By BRIAN ROSS ABC News January 10, 2006 Former Employee Admits to Being a Source for The New York Times Russell Tice, a longtime insider at the National Security Agency, is now a whistleblower the agency would like to keep quiet. For 20 years, Tice worked in the shadows as he helped the United States spy on other people's conversations around the world. "I specialized in what's called special access programs," Tice said of his job. "We called them 'black world' programs and operations." But now, Tice tells ABC News that some of those secret "black world" operations run by the NSA were operated in ways that he believes violated the law. He is prepared to tell Congress all he knows about the alleged wrongdoing in these programs run by the Defense Department and the NSA in the post-9/11 efforts to go after terrorists. "The mentality was we need to get these guys, and we're going to do whatever it takes to get them," he said. Tracking Calls Tice says the technology exists to track and sort through every domestic and international phone call as they are switched through centers, such as one in New York, and to search for key words or phrases that a terrorist might use. "If you picked the word 'jihad' out of a conversation," Tice said, "the technology exists that you focus in on that conversation, and you pull it out of the system for processing." According to Tice, intelligence analysts use the information to develop graphs that resemble spiderwebs linking one suspect's phone number to hundreds or even thousands more. Tice Admits Being a Source for The New York Times President Bush has admitted that he gave orders that allowed the NSA to eavesdrop on a small number of Americans without the usual requisite warrants. Comment: So, the NSA tracks every domestic and international phone call and creates huge "spiderwebs" of thousands of linked calls, and yet we are supposed to believe that only "a small number" of Americans were involved?! Riiight! But Tice disagrees. He says the number of Americans subject to eavesdropping by the NSA could be in the millions if the full range of secret NSA programs is used. "That would mean for most Americans that if they conducted, or you know, placed an overseas communication, more than likely they were sucked into that vacuum," Tice said. The same day The New York Times broke the story of the NSA eavesdropping without warrants, Tice surfaced as a whistleblower in the agency. He told ABC News that he was a source for the Times' reporters. But Tice maintains that his conscience is clear. "As far as I'm concerned, as long as I don't say anything that's classified, I'm not worried," he said. "We need to clean up the intelligence community. We've had abuses, and they need to be addressed." The NSA revoked Tice's security clearance in May of last year based on what it called psychological concerns and later dismissed him. Tice calls that bunk and says that's the way the NSA deals with troublemakers and whistleblowers. Today the NSA said it had "no information to provide."

National Security Agency mounted massive spy op on Baltimore peace group, documents show Kevin Zeese Raw Story 10 January 2006 The National Security Agency has been spying on a Baltimore anti-war group, according to documents released during litigation, going so far as to document the inflating of protesters' balloons, and intended to deploy units trained to detect weapons of mass destruction, RAW STORY has learned. According to the documents, the Pledge of Resistance-Baltimore, a Quaker-linked peace group, has been monitored by the NSA working with the Baltimore Intelligence Unit of the Baltimore City Police Department. The documents came as a result of litigation in the August 2003 trial of Marilyn Carlisle and Cindy Farquhar. An NSA security official provided the defendants with a redacted Action Plan and a redacted copy of a Joint Terrorism Task Force email about the activities of the Pledge of Resistance activities. The NSA, established in 1952 by President Truman, is the largest and most secret of U.S. intelligence agencies. Headquartered between Baltimore and Washington, DC, the agency has two principal functions: to protect U.S. government communications and intercept foreign transmissions. However, the NSA's United States Signals Intelligence Directive 18 strictly prohibits the interception or collection of information about "U.S. persons, entities, corporations or organizations" without explicit written permission from the Attorney General. The revelation that a Baltimore peace group was spied upon comes in the wake of a news reports that the agency has also been eavesdropping on Americans' international calls and raises new questions about the legality of NSA activities. The agency did not immediately return a request for comment. The Baltimore Pledge of Resistance is part of the national Iraq Pledge of Resistance, which works with the Baltimore Emergency Response Network and the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) -- part of a national group committed to nonviolent civil resistance to stop the war in Iraq. The Pledge lobbies Maryland congressmembers via letters, phone calls, faxes, emails and face-to-face meetings; members of the group are periodically arrested for peaceable protests. Documents turned over by the NSA indicate that the group was closely monitored. In one instance, the agency filed reports approximately every 15 minutes from 9:30 AM to 3:18 PM on the day of a demonstration at the National Vigilance Airplane Memorial on the NSA Campus in Maryland. According to an NSA email dated July 4, 2004, the agency collected license numbers and descriptions and the number of people in each car and filed a report about them gathering in a church parking lot for the demonstration. NSA agents also logged their travel to the demonstration, including stopping as a gas station along the way. A canine dog unit was used to search a minivan when it was stopped on the way to the demonstration - nothing was found. NSA officials even reported on the balloons being inflated for the demonstration and the content of their signs. An entry made at 1300 hours on July 4. reads, "The Soc. was advised the protestors were proceeding to the airplane memorial with three helium balloons attached to a banner that stated, 'Those Who Exchange Freedom for Security Deserve Neither, Will Ultimately Lose Both.'" On the day of the demonstration three protesters were cited for "disturbances on government property" and released. A federal judge eventually dismissed the case before trial. Two of those demonstrators, Max Obuszewiski and Ellen Barfield, are still scheduled for trial in Baltimore federal court Jan. 25. The defendants have filed a motion for discovery and included the letter from the NSA acknowledging spying on the Pledge. The prosecutor has refused to release this information as part of discovery. The defendants plan to argue that the information is necessary for their defense. "The NSA confirmed, because of a FOIA request I filed, that indeed it has files on peace and justice groups," Obuszewiski said. "However, the Agency is refusing to release the information unless I pay $1,915. What might be in these files?" A second NSA document on the letterhead of the National Security Agency Police and authored by NSA Police Major Michael E. Talbert is dated Oct. 3, 2004. It is an action plan for the "threat of a demonstration hosted by a group known as Pledge of Resistance - Baltimore." They note the demonstration is part of the "Keep Space for Peace Week." The NSA action plan includes plans for four days, but six activities being planned by the NSA before the day of the demonstration have been redacted. Extensive plans are described for the day of the Oct. 4, 2004 demonstration. The letter shows that the NSA planned to have their Weapons of Mass Destruction Rapid Response Team on site, an officer with a shotgun, an increase in the number of officers, mobile units monitoring the highway and parking lot, roving patrols on bicycles in various areas, four K9 handlers, agents to provide counter-surveillance, aerial observations by the Anne Arundel, Maryland police and photography/video surveillance of the activities. "The NSA Weapons of Mass Destruction Rapid Response Team will have a limited staffing on hand to support the event," Talbert's memo reads. "...Anne Arundel County Police will be requested to provide aerial observations." "Shocking appalling and unnecessary," is how the Chair of the DC Chapter of the National Lawyer's Guild Demonstration Support Committee Mark Goldstone describes the NSA actions. Goldstone, who often represents activists who engage in non-violent civil disobedience, is not counsel in this litigation. "This surveillance is completely unrelated to even an expansive definition of 'national security.'" Maria Allwine, a protester arrested Oct. 4, 2004, recently described the events in an interview on Democracy Rising. "The NSA must be spying on us from the federal post office right across a small street from the AFSC," Allwine said. "It's the only place that gives them enough of a view to see our cars/license plate numbers." Allwine also discussed how the Pledge has been infiltrated. She described a March 20, 2003 demonstration in downtown Baltimore where "a provocateur (whom we had identified at our planning meeting the previous night) joined us. We'd never seen him before. . . during the die-in at the federal courthouse, he was taunting the police in a violent manner. We had to quiet him down, he then disappeared and we never saw him again - and, of course, he wasn't arrested with the other 49 of us." The monitoring is ongoing. Allwine says that at demonstrations the police "have had cookies and drinks set up for us (we don't partake!) and tell us they knew we were coming." Goldstone says the impact of NSA surveillance is worrisome. "People should not be afraid to speak out, and unfortunately evidence of domestic spying tends to chill people's interest in speaking out- thus chilling and limiting our precious First Amendment rights," he told RAW STORY. "Nothing that the Pledge does, either by their public advocacy against the war or their non-violent civil disobedience/resistance to war can be plausibly seen as a threat to United States national security, as the group is pledged to non-violence and non-property destruction guidelines." David Rocah, a staff attorney with the Maryland ACLU, adds, "There is obviously a well-founded concern of law enforcement monitoring of First Amendment activities. The ACLU and others have exposed such activities all over the country resulting in law suits." Goldstone says Congress must rein in the NSA. "Congress must investigate this, and get a handle on the issue of domestic spying by the NSA and other agencies against people exercising political speech," he said. Kevin Zeese is director of Democracy Rising and a candidate for the U.S. Senate in Maryland.

George Bush: Master Spy: Unilateral president exposed in his ignorance of Constitution he's sworn to protect by Nat Hentoff January 6th, 2006 The pursuit of terrorism does not authorize the president to make up new laws. Thomas G. Donlan , "Unwarranted Executive Power," Barron's, page 1, December 26 William Kristol, usually a reasonable conservative—staunchly defending the president's authorization of the National Security Agency's warrantless spying on telephone calls and e-mails into and out of the United States—declared in the January 2 Weekly Standard, of which he is the editor: "Was the president to ignore the obvious incapacity of any court [including the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court] to judge surveillance decisions involving the sweeping of massive numbers of cell phone and e-mails by high-speed computers . . . [during] the threat of imminent new attacks?" Kristol ignored the fact—as the president continually has—that the law creating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court permits the NSA to conduct its massive searches without first going to the FISA court in an emergency. The NSA then has 72 hours to go to the secret FISA court and get the warrant. Moreover, as John Riley reported in the best single analysis of this action by the master-spy president ( Newsday, "Eavesdropping Tests Legal Limits," December 26), "Even longer periods [than 72 hours] are permitted in wartime." I do appreciate, however, William Kristol's making clear that this unilateral, pervasive attack on what is left of Americans' privacy rights under the Fourth Amendment involves a huge, ever expanding data bank—the data mining of which was indicated by Washington Post columnist William Arkin: "Massive amounts of collected data-—actual intercepts of phone calls, e-mails, etc.—together with 'transaction' data—travel or credit card records or telephone or Internet service provider logs—are mixed through a mind-boggling array of government and private sector software programs to look for potential matches." (Emphasis added.) For more on how far and deep this data mining continues, though not acknowledged by Bush when he denounced The New York Times for its "shameful" breaking of the story of how he had let the NSA loose, see "Spy Agency Mined Vast Data Trove . . . Actions Without Warrants Are Called Wider Than Acknowledged" (The New York Times, page 1, December 24). From that Times story: "A former technology manager at a major telecommunications company said that since the Sept. 11 attacks, the leading companies in the industry have been storing information on calling patterns and giving it to the federal government to aid in tracking possible terrorists. " (Emphasis added.) Abraham Lincoln publicly suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War and was told posthumously by the Supreme Court (Ex parte Milligan, 1866) that he had acted unconstitutionally. George W. Bush, in the war on terrorism, has secretly suspended the Fourth Amendment, with the complicity of private telecommunications companies. With John Roberts on the Supreme Court and Samuel Alito likely to be confirmed, it may be a long time before this administration is held accountable for this and other pillaging of the Bill of Rights. If the next administration continues in this vein, more of our liberties will turn into relics. First Choice Movie Club The Democratic Party has a huge responsibility in its choice of a candidate for the presidency in 2008. As Bruce Schneier, chief technology officer of Counterpane Internet Security—and the author of Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly About Security in an Uncertain World—wrote in the December 21 Minneapolis Star Tribune: "Unchecked presidential power has nothing to do with how much you either love or hate George W. Bush. You have to imagine this power in the hands of the person you most don't want to be president, whether it be Dick Cheney or Hillary Rodham Clinton . . . " Meanwhile, the president and his apologists keep insisting that Bush had the approval of Congress for this omnivorous spying--—even though his "inherent executive power" as commander in chief presumably didn't require that courtesy. After all, right after 9-11, Bush claimed, Congress gave him the authority to use military force against the terrorists. But as Democratic senator Russ Feingold, of Wisconsin, instructed him, and us, in a letter in the December 29 Wall Street Journal: "Members of Congress, even in the shadow of Sept. 11, did not think that the military force resolution was giving the president blanket authority to order warrantless wiretaps of American citizens on American soil. Congress has not granted the president that power, nor has he requested it [of Congress]." But, says Bush—in due respect to the separation of powers—he did consult certain members of Congress about unfettered NSA spying. Answers Russ Feingold: "Informing a handful of congressional leaders who are prohibited from discussing what they have been told is not oversight, and congressional inaction under these extraordinary circumstances is not approval." How about Russ Feingold for president? Or if that seems too precipitous a step, it would be very useful for the Democratic Party and the nation to have a debate on the extent of constitutional executive powers— between Russ Feingold and Hillary Rodham Clinton! As for our lawless president, Arlen Specter, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, pledges penetrating hearings on the president's allowing—and blessing-—the NSA's watching over all of us. The White House will mightily resist this investigation in the name, of course, of national security, and there will be resistance from the congressional Republican leadership. Specter needs to hear from you. In this war on terrorism with no definite end, the mettle of this democracy and its Constitution will be tested severely as to how far this or any future president can go in asserting his "inherent" powers.

Senator Frank Church: The NSA could enable a dictator to impose total tyranny Ben Frank January 10, 2006 Senator Frank Church chaired the Senate Hearings on the FBI’s Cointelpro operation, which spied upon & attempted to INFILTRATE, DISRUPT & DISCREDIT the peace movement, even Martin Luther King Jr. if a dictator ever took over, the NSA "could enable [him] to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back." From James Bamford’s NSA, the agency that could be Big Brother, Senator Church: "That capability at any time could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide." He added that if a dictator ever took over, the NSA "could enable [him] to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back." At the time, the agency had the ability to listen to only what people said over the telephone or wrote in an occasional telegram; they had no access to private letters. But today, with people expressing their innermost thoughts in e-mail messages, exposing their medical and financial records to the Internet, and chatting constantly on cellphones, the agency virtually has the ability to get inside a person’s mind… "I don’t want to see this country ever go across the bridge," Senator Church said. "I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return." MLK had informants on his staff. I wonder who has informants on their staff, travelling with them today…

The Messenger Takes a Beating: Don't blame the Times. Save some anger for the government that's spying on us by Sydney H. Schanberg January 10th, 2006 President Bush has said many times that news stories that reveal his administration's secrets are helping the nation's sworn enemies and must be stopped. He has ordered up yet another investigation, this time into a New York Times story about how he skirted the law to widen the government's eavesdropping on Americans. The story revealed that the president, in a secret directive soon after 9-11, circumvented the special federal court that is supposed to weigh and decide such requests for privacy invasions. Those judges, unaware until the Times story appeared, are now protesting that the White House has abused its power. Most Americans, including reporters, agree that security must be enhanced when the nation is threatened, as in times of war. But in Bush's response to terrorism, he has imposed more secrecy on all government information, not just security data, than any president before him. This presidency has left no doubt that it wants to label as un-American anyone who publishes information that challenges official pronouncements. The Times story about government eavesdropping is still unfolding. Its authors are reporters Eric Lichtblau and James Risen. Their first story ran on December 16, and they have since added fresh articles with new information showing that the eavesdropping was more extensive than previously imagined. Their work is an example of superior investigative reporting about sensitive security and intelligence matters. But their work has also drawn attention for a quite different reason: The Times acknowledged in the first story that it had held the piece for a year because the White House had asked it to keep the story secret for security reasons. But after gathering more information and leaving out some details to accommodate government concerns, the decision was made to publish, notwithstanding another request to withhold the story made by the president in a White House meeting December 5 with the Times publisher, top editor, and Washington bureau chief. Also, Risen had been working on a book about national intelligence operations, titled State of War. It was published a week ago and has revealed other embarrassing stories about failed intelligence gathering by the Bush administration in the run-up to the Iraq war. So though the Times' news stories continue to provide valuable information to an American public grown uneasy about the war, critics have arisen from both ends of the political spectrum. On the right, Bush allies are calling the Times dishonorable for publishing the stories, while on the left and from some in the journalism community, a number of voices have turned on the Times for keeping the story under wraps for a year. And there's yet another journalism issue in play—the same one that has enveloped Bob Woodward of The Washington Post in the Plamegate investigation. The question is: When a reporter for a newspaper or any news organization is working on a book, especially a book that involves grave government decisions, such as going to war, should that reporter write news stories immediately for the public as he comes across the information or should he save some revelations for the book to improve its chances of success? There are many opinions. My belief is that when you learn something newsworthy, you should write it, not hold it. You can write more stories later, incrementally, as you learn more about the subject. Books are certainly valuable too, for they allow for greater research and reflection. But in a world that moves at higher and higher speeds, I think the public needs to receive principled, confirmed information as soon as possible. Waging war is not school yard Frisbee. GothamUncovered.com The Times' own ombudsman, Byron Calame, jumped hard on Bill Keller, the paper's executive editor, and Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the publisher, for refusing to respond to 28 questions he had sent them by e-mail to get a more detailed explanation of the story's evolution. In his January 1 column, Calame called Keller's initial and only explanations "woefully inadequate" and used a very loaded word—"stonewalling"—to describe the behavior toward him "despite the paper's repeated pledges of greater transparency." I have been arguing for greater press transparency for many years and for including within important stories better explanations of our news-gathering processes. Also, as a Times alumnus aware of its impact on the wider journalism community, I have not been shy about critiquing the paper. But in my judgment, I felt the Times ombudsman went overboard and also did a good deal of nit-picking that wasn't useful. Further, coming as it did after so many political blowhards and their op-ed and Internet henchmen had attacked the paper, some of them calling for Sulzberger's and Keller's dismissals, Calame's dissertation had the sound, intended or not, of piling on. Like Calame, I certainly want to know more about the story's history—and I think that at some point we will learn more details. But the public interest is primary and, by that measure, the big picture has to be the strong, valuable reporting of Lichtblau and Risen. The other issues, though surely significant for the profession of journalism, are sidebars. Being the nation's flagship newspaper, the Times, like all front-runners, will always be a target —sometimes justifiably, often not—especially now that the Internet has given birth to a level of scrutiny that the press has never experienced before. And then add to that a presidency that seems happiest when reporters are being subpoenaed or jailed for revealing vital public information that Bush minions have stamped "secret." History gives us evidence of more responsible presidencies. From 1945 to 1952, Harry Truman, a World War I combat veteran, was in the Oval Of fice. The nation, still recovering from World War II, suddenly found itself at war with North Korea. Truman tightened controls on military intelligence and other security matters, but he never raised secrecy to its current level nor did he appropriate to himself—as this president has—powers that the Constitution and national tradition have conferred instead upon Congress and the courts. To understand what this White House is about, one has to accept that the path George W. Bush has chosen isn't really about secrecy. And it isn't about an unruly or "left-wing" press. It's about power, presidential power. This president would like to establish a permanent rulership by his particular imperialist wing of the Republican Party. Even his father, George H.W. Bush, doesn't endorse his global overreaching. He thought his son's Iraq war was foolhardy and reckless. The father and son apparently don't confer anymore on policy matters. The son says he now consults a "higher father." He has brought religion full-force into the White House and mixed it with an imperial ideology. Describing this volatile soup, Bill Moyers, a man of religion, recently observed that while it may not make you wrong, it will surely make you "blind." And it cannot work as a template for a democracy, for in order to implement such a doctrine, the leader has to try, in effect, to make the public blind as well. The religion of the press, contrarily, must be to give the public sight—and insight. And that is why this White House has declared war on the press.

Where Spying Starts and Stops: Tracking an Embattled C.I.A. and a President at War By JAMES BAMFORD NY Times 9 Jan 2006 Shortly before Christmas, The New York Times disclosed an enormous domestic spying operation. More revelations followed almost daily, including reports of the National Security Agency's widespread eavesdropping on the phone calls and electronic messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands of American citizens. The justification given was that it was a time of war and that we were facing a ruthless enemy and that rules had to be broken. The public was outraged, and Congress vowed to begin an investigation. That was three decades ago, in December 1974. Then, in December 2005, Americans again woke to a New York Times headline about domestic spying. This time the article was written by Eric Lichtblau and James Risen. The operation is also covered in Mr. Risen's new book, "State of War: The Secret History of the C.I.A. and the Bush Administration," published Tuesday. "For the first time since the Watergate-era abuses, the N.S.A. is spying on Americans again, and on a large scale," Mr. Risen writes in his book. "The Bush administration has swept aside nearly 30 years of rules and regulations and has secretly brought the N.S.A. back into the business of domestic espionage." While Mr. Risen's revelations about the N.S.A. take up only a chapter in "State of War," they are the dramatic high point in an illuminating and disturbing book focusing on the Bush administration's use - and perhaps misuse - of power over the past four years. It is a record, Mr. Risen says, that has even caused protests by Mr. Bush's father, former President George H. W. Bush. Mr. Risen writes of a conversation between the two in 2003 in which the current president "angrily hung up the telephone." "George Herbert Walker Bush," Mr. Risen writes, "was disturbed that his son was allowing Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and a cadre of neoconservative ideologues to exert broad influence over foreign policy, particularly concerning Iraq." Among the unanswered questions concerning the domestic spying story is why, if Mr. Risen and The Times had first come upon the explosive information a year earlier, the paper waited until just a few weeks before release of the book to inform its readers. But in the end, the news articles largely scooped the book's N.S.A. chapter, leaving little that had not already been published. Nevertheless, the book has much more to offer. In looking at the C.I.A.'s possible involvement in torture, Mr. Risen found evidence of "a secret agreement among very senior administration officials to insulate Bush and to give him deniability" regarding the harsh new interrogation tactics. And despite the critical need for intelligence on Iran, Mr. Risen says, a C.I.A. communications officer accidentally sent detailed information to the wrong indigenous agent in Tehran that outlined the agency's entire network. "The Iranian who received the download was actually a double agent," Mr. Risen writes. The mistake enabled the Iranians "to 'roll up' the C.I.A.'s agent network throughout Iran," says Mr. Risen, although the details are disputed by the C.I.A. But while "State of War" has interesting and important new details, it also has almost no named sources - not even the comments of former intelligence or government officials, who might provide perspective, context and credibility. It is an unusual move for someone writing about such an important subject. Nevertheless, obtaining details on an eavesdropping program as secret as the one discussed in "State of War" is a monumental job of reporting - especially when it is later confirmed by the president himself. The book also provides a close look at how George J. Tenet, then the tough-talking, cigar-chomping C.I.A. director, had to decide between the counsel of many of his middle-level analysts and station chiefs who advised caution when it came to Iraq, and the Pentagon's hawks and neoconservatives who were hungry for war. "George Tenet liked to talk about how he was a tough Greek from Queens," Mr. Risen quotes a former Tenet lieutenant as saying. But the former official added that in reality, "he just wanted people to like him." With regard to Iraq, Mr. Risen writes, it was the hard-line Israelis that Mr. Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul D. Wolfowitz, were listening to, not the cautious C.I.A. "Israeli intelligence officials frequently traveled to Washington to brief top American officials," he writes, "but C.I.A. analysts were often skeptical of Israeli intelligence reports, knowing that Mossad had very strong - even transparent - biases about the Arab world." After their visits, C.I.A. officials would often discount much of what the Israelis had provided. "Wolfowitz and other conservatives at the Pentagon became enraged by this practice," Mr. Risen writes. With Mr. Tenet now on their side, and no more roadblocks in the way, Mr. Risen says, the path was clear for the Bush hard-liners to press ahead with their plans for a form of kidnapping known as extraordinary renditions, alleged torture, hidden foreign prisons, widespread N.S.A. eavesdropping and numerous other practices, many of which Mr. Risen outlines in subsequent chapters. But the N.S.A. is at the heart of "State of War." Founded in 1952, the N.S.A. for many years considered itself above the law, controlled not by federal statutes but by top-secret presidential orders known as National Security Council Intelligence Directives. One directive even said the N.S.A. could disregard the law when it came to its powerful and highly secret form of eavesdropping, known as signals intelligence - a vacuum-cleaner approach that sucks in millions of communications an hour. Later, during the Watergate period, President Richard M. Nixon ordered the N.S.A. to turn its giant ear inward and begin eavesdropping on thousands of Americans, like Vietnam War protesters. What makes the N.S.A.'s current secret domestic eavesdropping program far more of a threat, in Mr. Risen's view, is the explosion in digital telecommunications. In the 1970's, most written communication took the form of letters dropped in mailboxes, to which the N.S.A. had no access. There were no e-mail messages or cellphones. "Today, industry experts estimate that approximately nine trillion e-mails are sent in the United States each year," Mr. Risen writes. "Americans make nearly a billion cellphone calls and well over a billion landline calls each day." Remembering the bad old days, a number of officials with knowledge of the new N.S.A. operation told Mr. Risen they were deeply troubled by it and believed "that an investigation should be launched into the way the Bush administration has turned the intelligence community's most powerful tools against the American people." But so far, rather than investigate the possible violations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the Justice Department has opened an investigation into who leaked news of the operation to Mr. Risen. Faced with similar charges against the N.S.A. 30 years ago, the Justice Department began an extraordinarily secret criminal investigation that lasted more than a year. Although the Justice lawyers uncovered 23 different categories of questionable activities, in the end, because of the extreme secrecy of the agency's activities and the lack of established law, they declined to prosecute. Instead they recommended that Congress explore the creation of new legislation outlawing this type of abuse. A year later, Congress enacted the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Now, if it has been violated by the Bush administration, the question is what will happen this time around. James Bamford is the author of two books on the National Security Agency, "The Puzzle Palace" and "Body of Secrets." His most recent book is "A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq and the Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies." * Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

CIA document 'must be followed up' Scotsman.com 11 Jan 06 The head of a European investigation into alleged CIA prisons in Europe said the purported Egyptian government document naming countries where such prisons existed is a new lead which must be followed up. But Dick Marty, a Swiss senator leading the probe on behalf of the Council of Europe, said it was still not clear the document - a fax reportedly sent by satellite transmission from Egypt's Foreign Ministry to its embassy in London - was genuine. The document's existence was reported on Sunday by the Swiss weekly SonnstagsBlick. The fax, intercepted on November 15 by Swiss intelligence, reportedly said Egypt had confirmed through its own sources that the US intelligence agency had held 23 terror suspects from Iraq and Afghanistan at a military base in Romania. It also said there were similar US detention centres in Ukraine, Kosovo, Macedonia and Bulgaria, according to the Swiss newspaper, which printed a copy of a Swiss summary of the fax. Marty also said he wondered how Swiss intelligence intercepted a fax allegedly sent from Egypt to London. "It's the first time these allegations come directly from an Arab country," he said. The Strasbourg, France-based Council of Europe began its investigation after allegations surfaced in November that US agents interrogated key al Qaida suspects at clandestine prisons in Eastern Europe and transported some suspects to other countries via Europe. New York-based Human Rights Watch identified Romania and Poland as possible sites of secret US-run detention facilities. Both countries have denied involvement. European officials say secret prisons would violate the continent's human rights laws. Marty is to present his findings to the council's parliamentary assembly later this month. In Bern, The Swiss Federal Prosecutor's Office opened an investigation into the leak. © Copyright Press Association Ltd 2006, All Rights Reserved.

Investigations? We can't do no stinkin' investigations By Staff and Wire Reports Jan 11, 2006 It seems no one expected to investigate spying on Americans by the National Security Agency or the Pentagon feels it has the power to do so. First, the Justice Department's independent watchdog says it does not have jurisdiction to open an investigation into the legality of the Bush administration's domestic eavesdropping program. Also on Tuesday, the Pentagon referred a Democratic request for an internal review on the subject to the National Security Agency's inspector general. In a three-paragraph letter, Justice's Inspector General Glenn Fine forwarded the request to the department's Office of Professional Responsibility, which reviews allegations of misconduct involving employees' actions when providing legal advice. President Bush's decision to authorize the NSA to monitor _ without warrants _ people inside the United States has sparked a flurry of questions about the program's legal justification. Bush and his top aides say the activities of the nation's largest spy agency were narrowly targeted to intercept calls and e-mails of Americans and others inside the United States with suspected ties to al-Qaida. But a growing chorus of legal experts from both parties are raising doubts about Bush's authority to order such monitoring on U.S. soil and questioning whether the White House should have sought changes in law. Congress also plans to investigate. As part of its work, the House and Senate intelligence committees will soon hear from former NSA officer Russell T. Tice. The whistleblower told lawmakers in Dec. 16 letter that he had information about "probable unlawful and unconstitutional acts" involving the NSA director, the defense secretary and other officials as part of highly classified government operations. ABC News reported Tuesday night that Tice claims to be one of the dozen sources who spoke to The New York Times about monitoring programs. The newspaper declined to comment, spokeswoman Catherine Mathis said. Over three dozen House Democrats _ led by Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., a member of the Judiciary and Homeland Security committees _ have also requested separate investigations by Justice's inspector general, the Pentagon's inspector general and Congress' watchdogs at the Government Accountability Office. A senior Defense Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the information was not yet public, said the Pentagon's watchdog will not do a review because the NSA's inspector general is "actively reviewing aspects of that program." Lofgren said she thought the Pentagon's watchdog was best suited for the work. She and a number of her colleagues also wrote to Fine on Monday, saying his decision not to open an inquiry was wrong. Under the Patriot Act, the Democrats said, his office is designated as the "one entity responsible for the review of information and complaints regarding civil rights and civil liberties violations" by Justice officials. Deputy Inspector General Paul Martin said neither the Patriot Act nor the law that governs all inspectors general gives Fine jurisdiction to look into the attorney general's actions concerning the electronic surveillance program. Issues dealing with that legal authority are "jurisdiction of the department's Office of Professional Responsibility," Martin said. Comment: Time for readers to start drowning their reps in paper demanding an investigation.

Bush nominee 'believes in an all-powerful presidency' By Rupert Cornwell in Washington 11 January 2006 Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee accused President Bush's latest Supreme Court nominee of being far too deferential to executive power and invariably favouring the state over the rights of the individual. Edward Kennedy, the party's liberal standard bearer, told Judge Samuel Alito as the committee got down to serious questioning yesterday: "Your record shows you believe in the supremacy of the executive branch and an almost all-powerful presidency." To make his argument, Senator Kennedy cited several cases from Judge Alito's 15-year stint on the federal appeals bench in which, he claimed, the judge had sided with the state even when some of his conservative colleagues disagreed. Along with abortion, the issue of abuse of executive power and the judiciary's role as the last line of defence against such abuse, have emerged as a potential stumbling blocks to Judge Alito's confirmation. The row has been propelled on to the front pages by last month's revelation that President Bush has allowed the National Security Agency to conduct wiretapping without warrants against US citizens, bypassing a special domestic court that normally authorises such procedures. The White House, Mr Kennedy charged, was "abusing power, excusing and authorising torture and spying on American citizens." Judge Alito, he said, "has to speak out on his commitment to constitutional values and liberties". On abortion, Judge Alito sought to pacify his critics by indicating he would be in no rush to rule against the 1973 Roe v Wade decision upholding a woman's right to have an abortion. He had "an open mind" on the issue. These Supreme Court hearings are arguably the most important in a generation. Judge Alito would replace Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, frequently the key swing vote on the nine-member court. Democrats and civil liberties groups say his confirmation would tilt the body decisively to the right.

Congress and Executive Power: Playing with Fire By BRIAN J. FOLEY Counterpunch.org January 10, 2006 If the pundits are right, during this week's confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Samuel A. Alito, Jr., we'll hear much about "Executive power." Senators will express concern that the Bush Administration has, over the past four years, expanded Executive power to include the power to torture people and imprison them indefinitely. These are powers that most Americans would denounce as dictatorial if another country's government claimed them, much less exercised them. Senators will ask Judge Alito for assurance that he shares these concerns. The questions, however, will seem moot and even hypocritical. Late last year, the Senate overwhelmingly passed an amendment (by Senators Lindsey O. Graham (R-SC) and Carl M. Levin (D-MI)) to the 2006 defense appropriations bill that has resulted in legalizing the Executive's powers to imprison people indefinitely and torture them. The Graham-Levin Amendment The new law repudiates the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Rasul v. Bush, 124 S. Ct. 2686 (2004), which held that non-U.S. prisoners at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanano Bay, Cuba (GTMO) could access the federal courts via claims based in habeas corpus, 28 U.S.C. 2241, federal questions, 28 U.S.C. 1331, and the Alien Tort Statute, 28 U.S.C. 1350. Now, the prisoners' only access to U.S. courts is limited to appeals of the outcome of GTMO proceedings, and limited to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. The new law also specifically states that the military officers who sit in judgment may use evidence obtained by coercion, if they decide it has "probative value." Some Members of Congress may have believed they were simply enacting a law to reduce the number of cases going to federal court, or to streamline what may be seen as a messy process for GTMO cases, or as "tort reform" for GTMO. But the effect of the law is to give the Executive unreviewable power. Here's how: A person can be captured, shackled and sent to GTMO and never given a CSRT hearing. He has no right to the hearing, because he cannot enforce that right in a court. He can be tortured, because he cannot go to court to enforce a right not to be tortured. (This law renders the McCain anti-torture amendment to the same defense appropriations bill a dead letter.) The avenues that the Supreme Court in Rasul said were open have been cut off. Let's assume a prisoner is given a CSRT hearing and is deemed an "enemy combatant." If he appeals under this new law, review will be limited: the Court of Appeals will not engage in fact-finding. Review will be deferential to the government: the new law states that the CSRT process itself requires a rebuttable presumption in favor of the government's evidence, and that the burden of proof is by the preponderance of the evidence. Review likewise will be limited for those found to be "enemy combatants" who go on to be tried and convicted for specific crimes by a military commission. Any sentence that is not a capital sentence, or is less than 10 years imprisonment, will be reviewed only at the court's discretion. Review is not likely to be granted, nor is the appeal likely to succeed, if the Administration continues stacking the D.C. Circuit and Supreme Court with "Executive-friendly" judges. There is one possible saving grace to prevent the Court of Appeals from turning into a kangaroo court: the new law states that the court's appellate jurisdiction includes, "to the extent the Constitution and laws of the United States are applicable, whether the use of such standards and procedures to make the determination [of enemy combatant status or a guilty finding by a military commission] is consistent with the Constitution and laws of the United States." However, the court simply might decide that the Constitution doesn't apply to GTMO proceedings. And such challenges may be raised only by prisoners who are given a hearing in the first place. The court lacks jurisdiction to address any other sorts of claims. Constitutional? Perhaps. Unwise? Definitely. Congress may not have exceeded its own powers in stripping the courts of jurisdiction and eliminating habeas corpus. Under Article III, Congress can control the appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court and can "ordain and establish" lower federal courts (and abolish them if it wished). Under Article I (9), Congress can suspend the right to habeas corpus, "when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it." But Congress has acted unwisely. The law violates the wisdom that has informed our democracy since its inception. It disables the system of checks and balances, because now, the judiciary cannot conduct meaningful reviews of the military proceedings at GTMO. Politicians from the Executive branch might assure us that they're convicting the real terrorists and protecting us from harm when in fact the convictions are based on unreliable evidence, including hearsay and coerced testimony. These politicians can tell us they are developing investigative skills, but without more rigorous requirements concerning evidence of guilt, they will most likely just be creating goon squads. The law unwisely limits the longstanding right to habeas corpus forged in England. Habeas corpus requires than the Executive can be forced to justify its detention of any person. It is a check for preventing the Executive from becoming too powerful. After all, an Executive that can jail anyone it dislikes, for as long as it likes, is a formidable power indeed. Also, the law is an overreaction to 9/11. Fear is understandable, but Congress should recognize that we are not really in a state of "rebellion or invasion," as the Constitution requires for the suspension of habeas corpus; nor is public safety clearly threatened. Repeated fears of "dirty bombs" and remote-controlled planes spraying anthrax make it easy to overlook that there have been no Al Qaeda attacks on U.S. soil since 9/11 ­ not a single bomb, not a single jihadist shooting up a shopping mall, not a single zealot ramming his car into a busy, pedestrian-crammed crosswalk. No major political, sporting or entertainment event has been cancelled due to the threat of terrorism. The government has not required owners of dangerous facilities such as chemical plants to step up security. Even if we were attacked today, we should keep in mind that the peaceful period between 9/11 and now ­ more than four years ­ exceeds the entire length of the U.S. involvement in World War II, as well as the Civil War. One might argue that the new law doesn't decrease our civil liberties, as it applies only to foreigners, and the Executive thus cannot use it to squelch political dissent or crush political enemies. The distinction between U.S. citizens and non-citizens is an arbitrary one, however, where national security is concerned, and it's not likely to stand. If a man wants to nuke New York, does it really make a difference that he was born in Detroit, and not Dubai? Indeed, a terrorist with U.S. citizenship is more dangerous than a foreign one in that he can move freely in and out of our borders, and blend in as he plots and plans. It won't take long for both Congress and the Executive to realize this. Playing With Fire Granting the Executive the power to torture people and jail them indefinitely, without meaningful judicial review, is like playing with fire. The flames can quickly spread out of control. One person who now knows how swiftly this fire spreads is Senator Carl Levin, who helped start it by brokering the Senate amendment. Now that a revised version has been signed into law, the Administration has announced that it will file motions to dismiss 186 "enemy combatant" cases from federal courts this week. On January 4, Senator Levin released a press statement condemning the Administration's move. Levin said, "As I pointed out when we passed the bill, the provision says that it 'shall take effect on the date of the enactment of this Act.' The meaning of these words is clear: the provision is prospective in its application, and does not apply to pending cases. The Administration is just plain wrong when it says otherwise." Plain wrong? As much as I'd like to agree with the good Senator, I'm not so sure. The language is vague at best. And for whatever its worth, Senator Levin's coauthor, Senator Lindsey Graham, told the Washington Post that he disagrees with him. The courts will have to decide. Senator Levin should know ­ as, indeed, every Member of Congress should know ­that when drafting laws to increase the Executive's power, he should be excruciatingly clear about any limits that he thinks might exist. To be any less vigilant is not just wrong. It's dangerous. BRIAN J. FOLEY is an assistant professor of law at Florida Coastal School of Law. Email him at brian_j_foley@yahoo.com.

Senators Consider Alito's Record, Judgment By JESSE J. HOLLAND Associated Press Writer Jan 10 5:58 PM US/Eastern WASHINGTON - Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito said Tuesday he would deal with the issue of abortion with an open mind as a justice, though he defended his 1991 judicial vote saying women seeking abortions must notify their husbands. In the second day of Senate hearings, Alito also said no president or court is above the law _ even in time of war _ as he addressed questions on presidential powers. The issue has been at the forefront since the revelation that President Bush had secretly ordered the National Security Agency to conduct wiretaps of Americans in the terror war. The federal judge also faced tough questions about his decisions during 15 years on an appeals court, his writings on wiretaps and his membership in a college organization opposed to the admission of women and minorities. Alito's answers and his demeanor at the hearings could be critical to his prospects of winning Senate confirmation as the 110th Supreme Court justice. The White House expressed confidence that he would prevail in the Republican-controlled Senate. Asked why he wanted the lifetime job, Alito said, "This is a way for me to make a contribution to the country and society." Bush's choice for the high court said his Reagan-era writings opposing abortion reflected an attorney representing a client's interests and, if confirmed and faced with an abortion case, "I would approach the question with an open mind." The conservative jurist gave no indication how he would vote if faced with the question of whether to overturn the Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade decision establishing a woman's right to an abortion. While citing the importance of precedent, Alito also said several times it was not an "inexorable command" for justices. The judge defended his dissent in the 1991 case of Casey v. Planned Parenthood, in which the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down a Pennsylvania law that included a provision requiring women seeking abortions to notify their spouses. The Supreme Court also rejected the spousal notification, but Chief Justice William Rehnquist quoted from Alito's opinion in his own dissent. The high court, on a 5-4 vote, upheld a woman's right to the procedure but was divided on other elements of the case. Alito told the Senate Judiciary Committee: "I did it because that's what I thought the law required." In a 1985 memo as an official of the Reagan administration, Alito described a legal strategy for chipping away at abortion rights. Questioned about the document, he told the committee, "That was a statement that I made at a prior period of time when I was performing a different role and, as I said yesterday, when someone becomes a judge you really have to put aside the things that you did as a lawyer at prior points in your legal career." Bush's pick to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor told the Judiciary Committee that courts in general should follow their earlier decisions and avoid being moved by public opinion on controversial issues. "I think that the legitimacy of the court would be undermined in any case if the court made a decision based on its perception of public opinion," Alito said. Alito, who has been criticized by opponents for advocating broad presidential powers, said he did not believe war allowed the president to bypass the Constitution. "No person is above the law, and that means the president and that means the Supreme Court," the judge said. Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy told Alito that his judicial opinions suggest otherwise. "Time and again, even in routine matters involving average Americans, you give enormous, almost total deference to the exercise of governmental powers," said the Massachusetts senator. Later, asked to respond to the criticism, Alito said that he has tried to decide each case on its merits: "Sometimes that means siding with the government, sometimes it means siding with the party that's claiming a violation of rights." Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., questioned Alito about abortion and privacy rights, divisive issues that loom large as the Senate decides whether to confirm the conservative jurist. Alito told the panel that he agrees "with the underlying thought that when a precedent is reaffirmed, that strengthens the precedent." Alito said he doesn't believe in the idea of a super precedent - or, he added, in a moment of levity, "super-duper" precedents either. O'Connor, whom Alito would replace, wrote in 2004 that "a state of war is not a blank check for the president when it comes to the rights of the nation's citizens." Specter asked Alito his view on her comments, and Alito said he endorsed them. "That's a very important principle," Alito said. "Our Constitution applies in times of peace and in times of war. And it protects American citizens under all circumstances." Alito didn't answer directly when Specter asked whether the November 2001 act of Congress authorizing use of force against terrorists responsible for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks gave the president the authority to order warrantless wiretaps, as the administration contends. "These questions are obviously very difficult and important ... and likely to arise in litigation even before my own court or before the Supreme Court," he said. Like Chief Justice John Roberts at his confirmation hearings in September, Alito repeatedly explained his writings as a lawyer in Republican Justice Departments as examples of an attorney representing a client. In a 1984 memo, Alito suggested that the attorney general should be immune from lawsuits when acting to protect national security _ even if it included illegal wiretapping of U.S. citizens. At issue was a lawsuit against President Nixon's attorney general, John Mitchell. Asked if he believes now that an attorney general should be immune from civil liability, Alito said, "No, he would not. That was settled in that case." In a 1985 application for a job in the Reagan Justice Department, Alito cited his membership in the Concerned Alumni of Princeton, a conservative group known for its opposition to opening the school to women and bringing in more minorities. "I have no specific recollection of that organization," Alito told the panel. Asked if he opposed the admission of women and minorities in colleges, Alito said, "Absolutely not," and added that after a short time at the school, "I realized the benefits of attending a coeducational school." On other issues: - Alito pledged in 1990 that he would recuse himself from cases involving the Vanguard companies. Some Alito opponents say his participation in a 2002 Vanguard case raises doubts about his fitness for the Supreme Court. Alito holds six-figure investments with Vanguard. "If I had to do it over again there are things that I would do differently," said Alito, although he also said he did nothing wrong. - He defended his 2004 dissent in which he supported the strip search of a 10-year-old girl, explaining that his interpretation was based on "common sense" that a warrant included searches of anyone on the premises of a drug suspect. - Alito distanced himself from several positions of Robert Bork, the conservative whose Supreme Court nomination failed in 1987. In a 1988 television interview, Alito called Bork "one of the most outstanding nominees of this century." Questioned about Bork's statements on abortion and executive power - and whether he concurred - Alito said, "I was an appointee in the Reagan administration and Judge Bork had been a nominee of the administration and I had been a supporter of the nomination." He added that he didn't agree with Bork on a number of issues. - Asked repeatedly about whether the Supreme Court should have decided Bush v. Gore, the case that settled the 2000 election, Alito declined to answer, saying he hadn't studied the case.

Democrats Must Filibuster The Lying Alito by Andy Ostroy 11 Jan 2006 How come I can remember that I was in the Cub Scouts when I was nine, and that Wayne Burte's mom was our devoted Den Mother, but Bush's slippery Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito Jr. can't remember if as a 35-year-old he belonged to the Concerned Alumni of Princeton, an organization that allegedly tried to limit admission to women and minorities? How is it possible, I ask, that someone who expects to be appointed to a lifetime position to the highest court in the land can't remember something so critical to the process of assessing his overall character? Alito's memory at 55 is apparently much weaker than what it was at 35, when in 1985 he was seeking appointment to the Reagan administration, and stated on his job application letter, among other things, that he was currently a member of the conservative alumni group. Jump to 2005, when Alito wrote the following to the Senate as it prepared to hold hearings: "A document I recently reviewed reflects that I was a member of the group in the 1980s. Apart from that document, I have no recollection of being a member, of attending meetings or otherwise participating in the activities of the group." And at Tuesday's hearings, in response to Sen. Patrick Leahy's (D-VT) questioning: "Senator, I have racked my memory about this issue, and I really have no specific recollection of that organization." He also claimed to be unaware of the criticism of the group when he included it on his 1985 job application. Isn't that a bit odd though? If he cannot remember the group, how can he remember what he didn't know about it 20 years ago? Am I missing something here? In any event, if Alito's outright lying about the alumni group isn't enough to justify a filibuster, the Democrats would still have a laundry list of disturbing positions the judge has made in his 15 years on the bench on key issues including abortion, privacy, executive and legislative power, affirmative action and religion. The key question is whether Democrats will fight this fight till the end, or, as many Senators on both sides have privately said, Alito's confirmation is inevitable. Listening to people like Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) blather on incessantly Tuesday only further proves that the Democrats have a lot to learn about fighting the powerful right-wing machine. The over-intellectualizing and pontificating from Biden and Leahy was mind-numbing. Rather than hit Alito with a barrage of rapid-fire questions, the Democrats were hellbent on hearing the sound of their own voices, and in the process missing an opportunity to draw out Alito's true character, not the well-rehearsed automaton we saw Tuesday. Incredulously, Biden spoke almost four times as much as Alito. A Supreme Court with Alito, Roberts, Scalia, Thomas and Kennedy is a frightening proposition. The Democrats must pull out all stops to prevent this from becoming reality. If Monday's and Tuesday's hearings are any indication of the Dem's capacity to fight, and fight to win, then we're in big trouble. Andy Ostroy, theostroyreport@aol.com, a NYC-based 45-year-old entrepreneur and political commentator, is an aggressive counter to the Bush administration, the Republican Party and the powerful right wing media machine. Our mission is to do whatever possible to help Democrats take back the House and Senate in 2006 and win back the White House in '08. http://www.ostroyreport.blogspot.com/

Connecting the Dots: Abramoff and Rove Rolling Stone Jan 09, 2006 Did you know that Jack Abramoff and Karl Rove shared an executive assistant? In 2001, Karl Rove needed a Gal Friday, someone to help oversee the "strategic planning, political affairs, public liaison, and intergovernmental affairs efforts of the White House." He chose Susan Ralston, who came highly recommended from a friend: Jack Abramoff. Ralston performed similar duties for the Don of K Street -- that is until Abramoff realized she'd be far more useful embedded in the West Wing. (Ralston had also previous worked for Abramoff and Rove's fellow College Republican crony Ralph Reed.) Installing his top assistant as Rove's gatekeeper appeared to pay dividends. In 2003, Abramoff was hired by scandal-ridden Tyco to help the corporation secure lucrative federal contracts despite its being incorporated -- for tax-evasion purposes -- in Bermuda. According to the Washington Post, Abramoff later bragged that he'd been able to lobby Rove directly on the issue. The article targets Ralston as the only likely conduit. Of course, such Abramoffian entanglements are now radioactive. According to Time, Bush has ordered his aides to round up all pictures of him and Abramoff to head off any bad press. Perhaps Bush should instruct them to widen the search to include photos like this buddy-buddy pic of him with Ralston.

Abramoff fallout: Government for sale at all levels San Bernardino County Sun Editorial Now that lobbyist has admitted corruption, those corrupted wait for the other shoe to drop. There's a lot of unconvincing contrition rolling out of Washington, D.C., of late. Most recently from super-Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who pleaded guilty to three felony counts of fraud, bribery and tax evasion Tuesday and then, in a whisper-quiet voice, said he was sorry for the mistakes he'd made. Then on Wednesday, he went to Miami and pleaded guilty to conspiracy and wire fraud stemming from his purchase of a gambling boat fleet. Abramoff's apology after spending years as a high-rolling power broker, fleecing clients out of millions and paying off anyone who might help his cause rang about as sincere as that of San Diego Republican Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham in November. Cunningham broke out the waterworks after he was outed for accepting gifts worth millions of dollars from a defense contractor with federal contracts. More crocodile tears are sure to come. As many as a dozen lawmakers could be exposed as corrupt as the federal influence-peddling investigation widens. Part of Abramoff's deal was to cooperate with the feds as they make a case against lawmakers with whom he did business. They ought to be very afraid. What's really making the politicians misty-eyed and sorry is not the sudden realization that, "Hey, it's wrong to take illegal gifts from those who seek to influence my public policy." What's most upsetting for them is that it didn't used to be that way. It must be truly jarring for Washington's power elite to find that the rules have changed, and that what was once noted with a wink and a nod might now get them prison time. As dirty as Abramoff appears to be, his crimes will never rise to the level of the politicians who accepted bribes. Abramoff's wrongdoings were crimes of opportunity. He was just doing what so many have been doing for so long buying the souls of the greedy pols with yachts, golf trips to Scotland or bundles of campaign contributions that keep them in positions of power and importance. It was expected behavior. No one could do business in Washington without greasing the wheels. When was the last time a politician blew the whistle Advertisement Click Here! and called a press conference to declare: "Look what crazy offer this lobbyist just made me to buy my vote. For shame." For too long, government has been for sale at all levels. The result is a disaffected public that knows that big money moves politicians, not grass-roots organization, or even the sense of doing right by the people. It can't go on; this abuse of power is destroying our democracy in Washington, in Sacramento and in San Bernardino County. Even our local congressman, Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Redlands, has accepted money from Abramoff, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan watchdog group that analyzed political contributions from 1999 to 2005. Lewis received $10,000 from tribes represented by the lobbyist, according to the report. They include the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians and the Saginaw Chippewa Indian tribe. And as concerned taxpayers, we wait to see how Lewis will dispose of those funds. If lawmakers want to restore a measure of integrity to the federal government, they particularly the Republicans who are disproportionately represented in the investigations can't just wait for the ax to fall, then apologize. They must take a pro-active approach to root out corruption and clean up their own houses, and take a clear and unequivocal stand that they are in office to serve the public interest and not private ones

Abramoff and the Israeli Connection Justin Raimondo 11 Jan 2006 Washington sleazebag funneled money to Israel's "settler" movement The snakepit of corruption that is Washington, D.C., is writhing and roiling these days with the news that super-lobbyist and Republican fundraiser Jack Abramoff has pleaded guilty to bribery, fraud, and other charges that could embroil Capitol Hill in the biggest corruption scandal in recent memory. As many as 60 members of Congress may be implicated in the massive network of payoffs, phony nonprofit foundations, and other criminal activities up to and including murder. None of this is especially surprising, and certainly libertarians, such as myself, are hardly shocked at the sight of public officials and private deal-makers enmeshed in a Dionysian orgy of brazen greed. There is one aspect of all this, however, that is especially interesting to foreign policy aficionados, and that is Abramoff's connections to the far right wing of Israel's Likud Party, the "settler" movement, and, here in America, Israel's amen corner in the conservative movement. According to a report by Michael Isikoff in Newsweek, Abramoff was soliciting funds on behalf of a shady organization known as the Capital Athletic Foundation (CAF), which was supposed to be funding sports programs and imparting "leadership skills" to inner-city youth. Instead, CAF funneled millions scarfed up from Indian tribes not only into Abramoff's own pockets and the pockets of his cronies, but also to ultra-right-wing Israeli "settlers." Isikoff reports: "More than $140,000 of foundation funds were actually sent to the Israeli West Bank where they were used by a Jewish settler to mobilize against the Palestinian uprising. Among the expenditures: purchases of camouflage suits, sniper scopes, night-vision binoculars, a thermal imager, and other material described in foundation records as 'security' equipment. The FBI, sources tell Newsweek, is now examining these payments as part of a larger investigation to determine if Abramoff defrauded his Indian tribe clients." The fraudulently obtained money funded a paramilitary outfit based in the ultra-Orthodox settlement of Beitar Illit, a large community annexed after the '67 war and the site of renewed building in open violation of the American-sponsored "road map." The conduit for the money was one Schmuel Ben-Zvi, an old buddy of Abramoff's who, like so many Americans, was recruited into the rabidly expansionist Israeli "settler" movement. A series of e-mails between Ben-Zvi and Abramoff illustrate the agenda that energized and inspired the Abramoff crime family. While Newsweek reports Ben-Zvi "heatedly denied" that he had any connection to Abramoff, other than being a high school bud from Abramoff's Hollywood days, the e-mails, featured as exhibits in a Senate Indian Affairs committee hearing, tell a different story. In a missive of thanks from Ben-Zvi to Abramoff, the former writes: "I feel like the tank commanders in the Yom Kippur war, who when hearing over the radio that reinforcements were coming, felt so great that they raised their seats higher out of the tank hatch and went forward." Abramoff replied: "If only there were another dozen of you the dirty rats would be finished." The "dirty rats" are Palestinians: according to fanatical Zionist ideologues like Abramoff, Ben-Zvi, and the "Christian" dispensationalists who make up the activist wing of the neoconized Republican Party – e.g., Abramoff associate and former Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed – the Palestinian people are a subhuman species who must be ethnically cleansed from the Biblically defined land of Israel. Greed greased the wheels of the Abramoff money machine, but ideology played a role, too. It is characteristic of the neoconservatives that they often manage to combine their policy proposals with profit-making activities that invariably accrue to their own accounts. Abramoff clearly sees himself not as a scandalous figure who will come to embody the naked avarice and power lust that motivates the "official" conservative movement, but as a misunderstood idealist. In an interview with the New York Times Magazine last year, he tried to give his empire a gloss of religiosity: "I have spent years giving away virtually everything I made. Frankly, I didn't need to have a kosher delicatessen. That was money I could have bought a yacht with. I don't live an extravagant lifestyle. I felt that the resources coming into my hands were the consequence of God putting them there." While blaming it all on God may satisfy his most ardent defenders, and may even be a precursor to an insanity plea, Abramoff was clearly a believer in the principle of "In God we trust, all others pay cash": he sought to write off his contributions to Ben-Zvi's Palestinian-elimination program as "charitable" donations. This put a scare into his accountant, and Abramoff sought suggestions from Ben-Zvi as to how to make this write-off credible. An Abramoff assistant forwarded some of Ben-Zvi's more creative advice: "He did suggest that he could write some kind of letter with his Sniper Workshop Logo and letter head. It is an 'educational entity of sorts.'" "No, don't do that," replied Abramoff. "I don't want a sniper letterhead." Abramoff, although partially motivated by ideology, isn't crazy like his fellow "super-Zionist" Ben-Zvi: a sniper letterhead would have been a dead giveaway. Yet the links between the War Party and Abramoff are there, for any enterprising journalists who care to look into them: the connection is not very well-hidden, either. One investigator, eager to obtain information about the neocon-sponsored "Reform Party of Syria," led by one Farid Ghadry, the Syrian version of Ahmed Chalabi, stumbled on the Abramoff connection: "When repeated calls to [Ghadry's] organization went unanswered, I visited the Washington, D.C., headquarters of the RFP. Reform Party of Syria is [in] the office of 'super-Zionist' lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Middle Gate Ventures, Abramoff's 'political advisory company' partners with RFP." The Reform Party of Syria is a front organization for Israeli interests in the Levant, and is supported by an impressive constellation of neoconservative stars. Regime change, effected by a U.S. invasion and occupation of Syria and Lebanon, is the one and only item at the top of this gang's agenda, and it comes as no surprise that Abramoff's ill-gotten gains went to funding it. In response to the news that money fraudulently obtained from Indian tribes went to subsidize fanatical Zionists from Brooklyn out to grab more Palestinian land, tribal lawyer Henry Buffalo opined: "This is almost like outer-limits bizarre. The tribe would never have given money for this." Welcome to the Bizarro World of 2006, where the laws of morality are inverted and the political atmosphere has reverted back to, say, 1986 – the year of Iran-Contra. That was the scandal that rocked the Reagan administration, in which money that went to buy missiles for the Iranians in exchange for the release of American hostages was diverted to fund the Nicaraguan contras – yet another neocon act of adventurism, where personal profit, interventionist ideology, and clandestine government rogue operations converged in a nexus of criminality. No, "the tribe would never have given money for this." And, no, the country would never have gone to war if Americans hadn't been convinced – by a pack of lies – that those "weapons of mass destruction" existed. In any case, the Israeli connection to the Abramoff scandal is potentially much more extensive than related here. By way of deception thou shalt make war – the slogan of Israel's Mossad is worth recalling, in this context, as key to understanding the neocons' modus operandi.

Abram"off" His Rocker Countdown Volume VI, No. 18 July 1, 2005 Fallen lobbyist Jack Abramoff has been the focus of hearings of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, chaired by Senator John McCain (R-AZ). Investigations into Abramoff’s shady practices have resulted in the posting of hundreds of incriminating e-mail exchanges on the committee’s website. Among the more bizarre exchanges, Abramoff refers to his clients, the Choctaw Indian tribe, as “monkeys” and implores Rabbi Daniel Lapin to appoint him a “Scholar of Talmudic Studies” to gain entrance into a Washington, DC social club. Even more troubling are e-mails concerning Abramoff’s funding of a sniper school for West Bank settlers. Settler leader Shmuel Ben Zvi writes, “I will fax you a letter stating that I am purchasing this equipment for the IDF…then we just need “end user” clearance from the State Department.” Upon hearing of Ben Zvi’s “progress” Abramoff later gloats, “If only there were another dozen of you the dirty rats would be finished.”

Narcissism, the public, and the President by Stephen Soldz OpEdNews.com January 10, 2006 President Bush spoke last week to wounded soldiers at Brooke Army Medical Center and uttered these immortal words indicating a lack of true appreciation for the suffering of the gravely wounded, often permanently disabled soldiers he was speaking to: "As you can possibly see, I have an injury myself -- not here at the hospital, but in combat with a Cedar. I eventually won. The Cedar gave me a little scratch. As a matter of fact, the Colonel asked if I needed first aid when she first saw me. I was able to avoid any major surgical operations here, but thanks for your compassion, Colonel." At a time when the number of severely wounded soldiers is rising, this lack of appreciation is disturbing and portends badly for adequate resources being made available to care for damaged soldiers and veterans over the coming months, years, and decades. This episode was far from the first time Bush uttered bizarre sounding comments in response to the injuries of others. Who can forget his emarkable message to the hundreds of thousands of people, many poor and black, whose lives were devastated by Hurricane Katrina: "Out of the rubbles of Trent Lott's house -- he's lost his entire house -- there's going to be a fantastic house. And I'm looking forward to sitting on the porch." While Bush's comments to wounded GIs were uttered together with the usual platitudes expected on such occasions, these quotes illustrate Bush's greatest strength and also his greatest weakness, his narcissism. Narcissism At an observable level, narcissism involves a self-centeredness that makes one oblivious to the emotional existence of others. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (IVth edition: DSM-IV) defines its pathological extreme (narcissistic personality disorder) as: "A pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy." In the odd DSM manner, this condition is diagnosed by having a threshold number of the following symptoms (5 out of 9), regardless of which five symptoms they are. (To be diagnostic of a clinical condition each symptom should be possessed to the extent that it interferes with functioning or causes distress): "Has a grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements) "Is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love "Believes that he or she is "'special"' and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions) "Requires excessive admiration "Has a sense of entitlement, i.e., unreasonable expectations of especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations "Is interpersonally exploitative, i.e., takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends "Lacks empathy: is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others "Is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him or her "Shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes" I am very leery of making diagnoses via long-distance of people I have never met. Additionally, I am well aware that one must be skeptical of much "information" publicly available about major political leaders as this information is carefully filtered through the lens of PR manipulation designed to create desired images among the public. Furthermore, one must remember that a large degree of narcissism is common, perhaps even necessary in leaders who rise to presidential level. It is certainly hard for someone who is not convinced of their special qualities to have the drive, determination, and desire to undergo all that is required to get the position. Despite these caveats, it is striking to compare what we apparently know about President Bush's character with these criteria. This exercise is not undertaken to assign a clinical diagnosis to the President or to assign labels as a sophisticated form of character assassination. Rather, it can be used as an indicator of his personality, of long-standing tendencies to think, feel, and behave in characteristic ways, regardless of whether such a personality is a clinical problem. And President Bush's personality, because of its potential effects on many Americans and much of humankind, is an important object of study. Without denying the importance of national and class interests in the formulation of policy or endorsing the great man theory of history, understanding George W. Bush's personality may shine light on certain aspects of his administration's actions and on his appeal to the American public at this moment in history. Whatever material and strategic goals undergird this administration's foreign policies, it seems incontestable that these goals have been pursued in a manner that prevented their realization, indeed, in a manner that, as predicted by many mainstream commentators and former policy-makers sharing similar goals, had catastrophic results. When a former National Security Agency director describes the Iraq war as the greatest strategic blunder in American history, consideration of psychological factors contributing to the blunder hardly seems out of place. And when much of the public follows the blundering leader over the precipice, it seems appropriate to examine the attractions of that leader. Given President Bush's quite modest prior achievements, including his numerous failures at business opportunities that were handed to him on a silver plate, there is little to suggest that he is outstanding in any characteristic other than ability to get elected. He certainly lacks much knowledge of international relations that would seem to be an essential perquisite for taking risky major decisions that modify long-standing American and international policies and alliances. Yet he appears to view himself as a Commander-In Chief for the ages. Given the private nature of the fantasies described in the second criterion, it is hard to know if he is "preoccupied" with these grandiose fantasies. Yet, his apparent messianic mission to bring "democracy" to the Middle East, an area where wiser heads, however imperial their desires, have feared to tread, along with his reported comments suggesting that God speaks to him directly, suggest that Bush does indeed harbor grandiose fantasies of virtually unlimited success. One also might wonder about Bush's repeated admiration for the ease of dictatorship, expressed, according to Wikiquote, on at least three occasions [July 1998, December 18, 2000, and July 26, 2001] years apart. A typical quote is this one from December 18, 2000: "If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier... just so long as I'm the dictator." One certainly could infer a wish for the unlimited power of the dictator. Of course this was said in jest, but humor oft repeated often provides illumination into the character and desires of the teller. Bush's behavior has often suggested that he has a sense of entitlement and feels that he is special and that he should be treated special. He got out of exposure to combat in Vietnam by having his family pull strings -- something about which he even boasted -- while steadfastly supporting the war in which tens of thousands of other less privileged Americans and countless Vietnamese died. He apparently sees himself as uniquely endowed to make decisions of life and death, of which laws he will obey and which he will ignore, of which congressional representatives or journalists he will deign to acknowledge and which he will ignore. The extraordinary lack of accountability of his administration is due, in part, to Bush's sense that he is accountable to no one. The Presidential attitude toward torture, of publicly proclaiming his right to order it whenever he feels like it (as opposed to authorizing it in shameful secrecy like past presidents) also suggests a sense of divine destiny of proportions extreme even for presidents. The recent NSA eavesdropping scandal also, unusually, involves a deliberate public boasting of his right to break laws (over 30 times) with a sense of total impunity. The extent to which his administration has gone to protect the President from any exposure, however fleeting, to protesters and dissidents suggests a Presidential antipathy to any challenge to his authority. As for his need for excessive admiration, his surrounding himself with sycophants like Harriet Miers, who evidently once claimed that Bush was "was the most brilliant man she had ever met." and Condoleezza Rice, who is known for never challenging Bush, is certainly suggestive evidence. In considering empathy, or its lack, Bush's career is full of illustrations, like the comments above to wounded vets, or his complete uninterest in the suffering caused by Hurricane Katrina until it became a potential political liability. And who can forget his mocking of Karla Faye Tucker's plea for Bush to commute her death sentence: "Please," Bush whimpered, his lips pursed in mock desperation, "please, don't kill me." Envy is the one symptom for which I am aware of no obvious evidence. When it comes to arrogance, I don't need to even mention the evidence, though those horrid sneers he routinely exhibits in public cannot go unnoted. We thus have extensive evidence of narcissistic tendencies in the President. [I want to state again that I am not assigning a diagnosis to him, but am claiming he exhibits certain personality characteristics.] To a degree, much of what is said of this president could be said about many others, and other top leaders as well. Grandiosity, arrogance, and, to a degree, a sense of entitlement, seem to pretty much go with the territory. Evident to an unusual degree for a top American leader, however, is Bush's lack of empathy. He seems, to an extreme degree, to genuinely not have a clue what other people, especially those less fortunate in life, are experiencing, nor does he have any interest. There is no evidence that the potential inappropriateness of his joking about his scratches to severely injured veterans might be insensitive, just as there is no evidence that he has ever cared about the tens of thousands of those wounded as a result of his commands. No one has ever claimed that Bush called in Secretary Rumsfeld and said "What are you doing to reduce the casualties. Where the hell is that armor?" [I concentrate on President Bush's obliviousness to American casualties not because I don't value equally the tens to hundreds of thousands of dead and injured Iraqis, but because it is a sad fact of statecraft that "enemy" casualties seldom weigh on any leader in wartime. But many wartime leaders do feel the weight of casualties on their own side.] Similarly, there is no evidence that Bush weighed his role or gave even a moment's thought as Karla Faye Tucker awaited execution. He made not even a pretense of wrestling with the decision, perhaps because he could not imagine that others might expect him to exhibit an awareness of the magnitude of this life-and-death decision, regardless of whether he ultimately went ahead with the execution. Bush's Narcissism and the Public For President Bush, his narcissism has been a source of political strength. A large fraction of the American public has been attracted to a leader who appeared to genuinely not care what others think. Who among us never wished we could say "the others be damned" and do whatever we wanted? While most of us don't dare act on these wishes, a narcissistic leader can provide us with vicarious satisfaction. As a nation, we won't let others impede us, not the weak untrustworthy French nor the United Nations that always wants to negotiate and compromise rather than just act. People perceive Bush's narcissism as a source of strength when strength is conceived as the ability to impose his/our will on others. This dynamic is in addition to, in fact may even be in conflict with, the oft commented upon sense of safety provided by a strong leader. For, at least one version of a strong leader is modeled on the caring father who will do anything that needs to be done to protect the family/nation. The narcissistic leader, however, does not care about the needs or desires of others, of the nation's public, but only of his own. Just as with an abusive self-absorbed parent, citizens can defensively delude themselves into believing that a narcissistic leader cares about them. The defensive nature of this belief lends it a fragility and hence a rigidity requiring active defense from potential criticism. At the same time, the potential for conflict between identification with the narcissistic leader and wish for a strong caring leader can pose a danger for such a leader as it may provide an opening for recognition of the self-serving nature of the leader's' actions. Recent polls showing a decline in Bush's rating on items like "the President cares about people like me" may indicate such a process is underway. Once this process starts, it can be hard to reverse. Bush, for example, as he runs around the country trying to restore public support, continually puts foot in mouth as he cannot view the world from the perspective of others. He doesn't pander, not only because of his arrogance, leading to a sense that he must be right, that he is incapable of making mistakes, but also because he is to a large degree incapable of pandering; it appears that, to a great extent, he simply cannot imagine what others think or want when it differs from his own thoughts and wishes, so he cannot promise to give people what they want when they fail to identify with his desires. To complement the descriptive features of narcissism involved in the DSM-IV diagnostic criteria, psychoanalysts have learned that narcissism is intimately connected with fear of one's weakness and vulnerability, and with aggression toward the other whose individuality is obliterated by the narcissism. As the weakness and vulnerability needs to be kept out of awareness, narcissism contributes to another process that poses dangers for narcissistic leaders like President Bush in that their narcissism contributes to an ignoring of reality, of possibility of error or other indicators of potential weakness. Bush doesn't appear to seriously consider that what he thinks may not accurately represent reality. Iraq will welcome his legions with flowers so there is no need for contingency planning just in case that assumption is wrong. Iraqis are valiantly struggling for pro-American "democracy" [whatever that means to him], so there is no need to consider that, just possibly, rival Iran is the big winner from Bush's Iraqi intervention. Harriet Miers is a convenient choice for Bush so there is no need to consider what others may think of her appointment. And Bush, like other tragic leaders throughout history, may actually believe the incredibly dangerous notion that there is no alternative to victory in an Iraqi conflict which, in all likelihood, has already been lost. Bush's narcissism, thus, has provided the backbone of certainty which makes him appear as a strong leader to those so predisposed. But it also contributes to those character flaws that may ultimately lead to his undoing. http://soldzresearch.com/stephensoldz Stephen Soldz is psychoanalyst, psychologist, public health researcher, and faculty member at the Institute for the Study of Violence of the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis. He is a member of Roslindale Neighbors for Peace and Justice and founder of Psychoanalysts for Peace and Justice. He maintains the Iraq Occupation and Resistance Report web page and the Psyche, Science, and Society blog.

Citizen's Tribunal Indicts Bush Administration for War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity; Indictments to be Delivered to White House USNewswire 9 Jan 2006 An unprecedented series of indictments alleging war crimes and crimes against humanity, in five separate areas, on moral, political, and legal grounds, will be delivered by a citizens' tribunal to President Bush at the front gate of the White House this Tuesday, January 10th. Named in the indictments are: President of the United States George W. Bush, Vice President Richard Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, U.S. Army Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, U.S. Army Major General Geoffrey Miller, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, et al. The indictments will be delivered to the White House by: Retired CIA analyst Ray McGovern, authors William Blum and Larry Everest, Code Pink, Mike Hersh (Progressive Democrats of America/After Downing Street), Kevin Zeese (Director, Democracy Rising; candidate for U.S. Senate in Maryland), Travis Morales (World Can't Wait -- Drive Out the Bush Regime) and others TBA. A press conference will follow delivery of indictments, which will also be delivered to the Department of Justice. The indictments result from preparatory work and testimony presented in New York City in October 2005, before the International Commission of Inquiry on Crimes Against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration which featured former UN envoy to Iraq Denis Halliday, Guantanamo prisoners' lawyer Michael Ratner, and former State Department officer Ann Wright. The Commission's second tribunal will be held at Riverside Church and the Columbia University Law School in New York, January 20- 22. Witnesses will include Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, former British ambassador Craig Murray, and former arms inspector Scott Ritter, among many more. The indictments allege war crimes and crimes against humanity authorized by the Bush Administration in relation to: 1) Wars of Aggression, particular reference to Iraq and Afghanistan; 2) Torture and Indefinite Detention; 3) Destruction of the Global Environment, particular reference to distortion of science and obstruction of international efforts to stem global warming; 4) Attacks on Global Public Health and Reproductive Rights, particular reference to the potentially genocidal effects of enforcing abstinence only, global gag rule, distortion of science, and restriction of generic drugs; and 5) Failure of Bush administration, despite foreknowledge, to protect life during and after Hurricane Katrina. Appended to these indictments will be the demand for investigation of the war crimes of Tony Blair and George Bush submitted by prominent British citizens to the UN Secretary General and the UK Attorney General. The commission was organized by the Not in Our Name Statement of Conscience and is endorsed by: Center for Constitutional Rights, National Lawyers Guild, After Downing Street.org and others, including Former Sen. James Abourezk, former British MP Tony Benn, authors Gore Vidal and Howard Zinn, poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and actor Edward Asner. Charter, full indictments, standards for judgment, and audio and video coverage of the first session: http://www.bushcommission.org

Time to clean House By MARTIN SCHRAM Jan 11, 2006 It is not enough that The Hammer was nailed, evicted without being convicted. It is not enough that a tangle of overlapping scandals now clearly links ex-Republican leader Tom DeLay, his close lobbyist pal, Jack Abramoff, former DeLay aides and associates, and as-yet-uncounted members of Congress. It is not enough that, along with many Republicans, a few Democrats also got Abramoff-tainted money. None of this is enough _ because the real corruption of Congress isn't centered upon the stylish lobbyist who costumed himself for his perp walk as Central Casting's idea of a Hasidic Soprano. The real corruption scandal is not even the relative handful of members who may someday be convicted for taking Abramoff's money and turning political tricks in return. The real congressional corruption scandal is the lack of outrage from all who are members of what was once a Grand Old Party. It is a corruption of standards and decency _ yes, even a corruption of conservative values (including balanced budgets and safeguarding liberties). And at the center of it is the moral, ethical and even political bankruptcy of the House Republican leadership. House Speaker Dennis Hastert and the old guard of the Grand Old Party countenanced a culture of corruption, claiming not to see it, in the hopes that maybe the rest of us never would. Now the speaker is performing a Capitol kabuki that would be comic, except for the fact that all who care deeply about our democracy know that it is quite tragic. Hastert recently gave back $69,000 in Abramoff-tainted political money that he thought was just fine when he accepted it, and still thought was just fine all the time he kept it, despite the revelations about Abramoff and DeLay. The most recent: Hastert this week announced that the House will draft new rules to tighten the rules for lobbyists' contacts with representatives. "Now is the time for action," Hastert said in a written statement, as though he were the vanguard of ethical urgency. Don't expect any action, though, in the way these contacts really happen: Republican and Democratic members alike initiate these contacts when they dial for dollars each day. They call lobbyists who represent special interests that are regulated by the committees on which the members sit. Senators and representatives ask the lobbyists for money for their campaigns ($5,000 for a primary election, another $5,000 for the general election). The lobbyists say they know they must ante up if they want to guarantee that they will have access to the lawmaker when an issue affecting this special interest comes up. This is perfectly legal _ even though it can be seen as a legal solicitation of a bribe. DeLay made Hastert what he is today. Hastert, ever grateful, permitted and even facilitated the undoing of the House ethics committee, beginning with the time it admonished DeLay for an earlier transgression. Hastert oversaw the Republican chairman's removal and replacement with a chairman who has longstanding ties to a law firm at the center of the DeLay-Abramoff controversy. You will be shocked to learn that the committee has been paralyzed ever since. House Republicans will soon meet to elect a new leader to fill DeLay's vacancy. The two leading candidates so far, acting leader Roy Blunt of Missouri and John Boehner of Ohio, have much in common: They are the old guard; both accepted money from Abramoff clients. But there are a number of well-respected Republican House members who have demonstrated leadership abilities and were never Abramoffered. This should be their time. What is needed most of all is a thorough House cleaning. New leaders, some new chairmen. Especially for a new, revitalized ethics committee. But even that won't be enough. A thorough House cleaning demands a new House speaker. The good news here is that this has occurred to at least one of the new guard of the Grand Old Party. The Washington Post reported Monday: "In the first sign that even Hastert could be in trouble, Rep. John E. Sweeney, R-N.Y., said Republicans should consider whether to replace the speaker. 'The time is right for us to do some soul-searching and have an open dialogue about the direction of the House.' " It is not likely to happen. But it should. House Republicans need to jettison all of the old leaders who have become the poster-persons for the culture of corruption _ a corruption not just of money and politics, but of standards and decency. They need to not just reform, but re-form. They need to become the Grand New Party. (Martin Schram writes political analysis for Scripps Howard News Service. E-mail him at martin.schram(at)gmail.com.)

Different Republican, same corruption By Staff and Wire Reports Jan 11, 2006 The man who wants to replace scandal-scarred Tom DeLay as majority leader in the House of Representatives shares the same connections to corrupt lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Blunt, R-Mo., wrote at least three letters helpful to Abramoff clients while collecting money from them. He swapped donations between his and DeLay's political groups, ultimately enriching the Missouri political campaign of his son Matt. And Blunt's wife and another son, Andrew, lobby for many of the same companies that donate to the lawmaker's political efforts. With House Republicans worried about a budding corruption scandal tied to Abramoff's favors to lawmakers, DeLay, R-Texas, announced Saturday he would not try to regain his majority leader's post in upcoming party elections. DeLay was forced to step down last year under party rules, after he was charged with Texas felonies in a state money laundering investigation. Blunt has temporarily filled the position and now is competing to be DeLay's permanent replacement. Blunt's own connections to Abramoff or his clients could complicate GOP plans to distance its leadership from the corruption investigation before the fall elections for control of Congress. Abramoff pleaded guilty last week to felony charges and is cooperating with investigators whose bribery probe is now focusing on several members of Congress and their aides. As the Abramoff investigation has developed, many lawmakers have said they will donate to charity campaign contributions related to the disgraced lobbyist. The board of Blunt's Rely On Your Beliefs Fund has voted to contribute to charity an amount equivalent to Abramoff's personal contributions, $8,500, according to Blunt spokeswoman Burson Taylor. Blunt and DeLay and their aides frequently met with Abramoff's lobbying team and even jointly signed a letter supportive of an Indian tribe client at the heart of the Abramoff criminal investigation, according to records published by The Associated Press over the past year. Blunt's office says all of his dealings were proper. "Mr. Blunt has never been accused of engaging in any legislative activities on Jack Abramoff's behalf," Taylor said. Blunt's main competitor for the House majority leader's post is Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, chairman of the House committee that oversees education and labor. Boehner in 1996 admitted he distributed a tobacco political action committee's campaign checks on the House floor, but said at the time he would never do it again. He served in the House leadership in the 1990s, but lost his post after the party suffered losses in the 1998 elections. Thomas Mann, who studies congressional issues for the Brookings Institution think tank, said Republican leaders' hardball tactics in getting legislation passed and their alliances with special interests during a decade of congressional rule are now being scrutinized by voters. "It's been smash-mouth politics," Mann said in an interview. "They've been tough and effective in enacting their polices and they're paying a price right now for it." Larry Sabato, a University of Virginia political scientist and author, said Blunt's name doesn't have the same nationwide recognition as other GOP leaders, and one way he could shed any ethical questions would be to support lobbying reforms. Blunt, in a written statement, pledged to do just that. He said that if elected leader, he would "move swiftly to enact new lobbying reforms and enhanced penalties for those who break the public trust." Texas prosecutors recently subpoenaed records of a series of financial transactions in 2000 between DeLay and Blunt that were highlighted in a recent AP story. DeLay raised more money than he needed to throw parties at the 2000 Republican National Convention and sent some of the excess to Blunt through a series of donations that benefited the causes of both men. After transfers between political organizations, some of the money went to the campaign of Blunt's son, Matt, in his successful 2000 campaign for secretary of state. Now the Republican governor of Missouri, Matt Blunt eventually received more than $160,000 in 2000. Taylor, the Blunt spokeswoman, denied that DeLay raised excess money for the purpose of transferring it to Blunt. Rather, she said, the convention fundraising was a joint effort between DeLay and Blunt all along. She said Blunt's Rely On Your Beliefs Fund contributes annually to the Missouri Republican Party, but doesn't specify how the money should be spent. "It stands to reason that the party committee would contribute to a Republican candidate for statewide office, in this case, Matt Blunt," Taylor said. Both DeLay and Blunt forged strong connections with corporate lobbyists, raising questions of whether the lobbyists influenced legislation in return for their contributions. DeLay was admonished in 2004 by the House ethics committee for creating the appearance of connecting energy industry donations with legislation. Blunt's wife, Abigail Perlman, is a lobbyist for Kraft Foods, part of Altria, the company that also includes Philip Morris. The parent firm and its companies have contributed nearly $224,000 to Blunt's political organizations since 2001, according to figures compiled by a campaign finance tracking firm, Political MoneyLine. Blunt's supporters also included companies that have been clients of another of Blunt's sons, Andrew. He lobbies the Missouri legislature. "He and Mr. Blunt have no contact on legislative issues," Taylor said of the father-son relationship. She added, "Mrs. Blunt does not lobby the House of Representatives, and Mr. Blunt would recuse himself from voting or working on any issue that would impact Altria specifically." Shortly after Blunt became the party whip in 2002, he tried to quietly insert a provision benefiting Philip Morris USA into the bill creating the Homeland Security Department. Taylor said the provision would have cracked down on the illegal sale of contraband cigarettes, a documented source of funding for terrorist organizations. Bipartisan legislation to achieve the same result has passed as part of the USA Patriot Act, she said. In his ties to Abramoff, Blunt was among nearly three dozen members of Congress, including leaders from both parties, who pressed the government to block a Louisiana Indian tribe from opening a casino. The lawmakers received donations from rival tribes and their lobbyist, Abramoff, around the same time. Blunt received a $1,000 donation from Abramoff and $2,000 from his lobbying firm around the time of a May 2003 letter he wrote to Interior Secretary Gale Norton on the casino matter. A month later he signed another letter on the issue along with DeLay and House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill. Taylor responded that Blunt "has a long history of opposition to Indian gaming. His district, which includes Branson, Missouri, is fundamentally opposed to the expansion of gaming, and he reflects that broad opinion." She said Blunt signed the letters to Norton at the request of Rep. Jim McCrery, R-La., not Abramoff. "It is also very important to note that Mr. Blunt does not accept campaign contributions from Indian gaming interests, so any 'quid pro quo' argument is baseless here," Taylor added. In spring 2000, an Abramoff client accused of running a sweatshop garment factory in the Northern Mariana Islands donated $3,000 to Blunt's political organization. The company, Concorde Garment Manufacturing, paid a $9 million penalty to the U.S. government in the 1990s for failing to pay workers overtime. The company was visited by DeLay.

Dr. Rumsfeld or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb by Down The Middle Having been a child of the sixties, one might think that I should be so used to wars and rumors of wars that it would all seem quite passe'...but no, I'm apparently not politically sedated to the point of many of my pre-programmed brethren, who's first and only thought on 9/11 was, "Hell! We'll kick their ass.....and then, it's Miller time". Maybe, I'm just one of the pessimistic few who never quit worrying about “best laid plans” running amuck and events out-running logical thought (a great fear of the Cold War)…but there can be nothing positive with this administration's purposeful intent to order a “pre-emptive” strike on Iran…or at least, a pre-emptive strike with ………”the bomb”. I was born of the Korean War, was still a child during the Dominican action and came of age with Viet Nam. To me, there are no memories of a time without war, conflict or “police action” and I have drawn every single breath of my entire life under the “nuclear umbrella". After all these years, I still vividly remember watching black and white TV news coverage of U.S. soldiers stringing wire on Florida beaches, convoys of U.S. armor and infantry rapidly moving south-east across the country and surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) rearing their ugly shark-like noses towards the southern skies of Cuba. It seemed like Viet Nam was barely over when I saw the charred bodies of our pilots from the failed US Embassy rescue attempt, in Tehran and my daughter was only a toddler, when we were all over some little island called Grenada. Before you could say, “Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition", we kicked the "Jack" out of Panama. Not long after that, we sent a major expeditionary force halfway around the world to save an allied, Arab, oil kingdom (Dictatorship) from an allied, Arab, oil dictator (King) and now, we're back there to stay...well, I guess, forever.....or at least the next thirty years, as Dr. Rumsfeld predicted. Whichever comes first, I suppose. The reality is, the responsibility of this failed, post-invasion strategy (or the lack, there of) lies not only with the Defense Department but also within the Administration, itself. The desire to take Iraq may have been politically questionable...but their efforts to do it with less than half the number of troops needed for such an operation was a tragic display of this administration's military ineptitude and a huge failure in judgment by our top commanders who “went along”. Had our military assaulted with a force of 350,000, saturating the Sunni triangle and immediately disarming the populace (Armor on every corner and squads of riflemen searching house-to-house), this insurgency would have been crushed before it ever began. This doesn't mean there would have been no resistance movement. Obviously, when you invade and occupy any country, some home-boy's gonna' “pop-a-cap” in your ass...but the resistance would have taken much longer to organize and even more time to gain any real strength, all the while giving our forces more time to effectively learn "the ground" and shape it to our advantage. Now, the American people find themselves replaying sad memories of Viet Nam and asking the question, “If we can't handle the Sunni insurgency in a limited area of Iraq, how can this administration possibly believe that we can take on another major action with Iraq's geographic and political neighbor, Syria, much less go to war with a nation as large and powerful as Iran?” The simple answer is yes, the neo-con strategy was foolishly arrogant to underestimate the impending Sunni rebellion and our soldiers have paid the price, leaving Mr. Bush and his Defense Department with a big PR problem…but at the same time, they have taken some advantage of our mounting losses by associating the guilt with the Syrians (for allowing Jihadists to cross their border)…and with the Iranians (for supplying “shaped charges” used in roadside ambushes) which further serves their rationale to expand the war. The definitive answer brings us back to the original goal of the Neo-con's extended, Middle Eastern campaign to dominate the greater oil reserves and their belief that we possess and should use all of our martial capabilities to obtain this goal. No longer restricted by the politics of the past (and having no intention of acting, as such) they know that this is for the whole “bucket of oil", as it were…and they will use whatever force their arsenal will bear, up to and including the first use of nuclear weapons in anger, since World War II. There is no doubt that we can defeat Syria and yes, Iran, too…and we can do it by conventional means (given the cost of war is always too great)…but to strike Iran with thermonuclear weapons, risking a global war with the other nuclear powers is sheer madness, reminiscent of General Jack D. Ripper in Stanley Kubrick's 1964 satire, “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb”. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057012/ In fact, the “not to worry”, rationalizing attitude of Dr. Rumsfeld (not to mention, those beady eyes) has me anxiously waiting for his arm to uncontrollably swing upright, as he blurts out “Mien Fuhrer!” to the President, during a complacent recitation of the casualty predictions. Yes, I have always feared that it would someday come down to this (pretty much, since Cain whacked Able). After all, I was only a mere child when first instructed to “duck and cover” beneath my school desk, during a nuclear attack…and not truly, yet, a man when Peter Sellers, playing three different characters including the bizarre Nazi-American scientist, Dr. Strangelove, taught me to laugh in the face of nuclear annihilation. Of course, I was young and immortal, then and I couldn't help but crack up at the thought of the President having to call up a drunken, Soviet Premier Kissoff and say, “You know how we've always talked about something going wrong with the bomb……………..the bomb, Demetri……...the hydrogen bomb”. Then, going on to explain to the Premier that one of our generals went “a little funny in the head” and ordered his squadron of B-52s to nuke Russia. For me, “Strangelove” was the best movie that Kubrick ever made. Everything about it seemed perfect. The cast, the effects (black and white, btw), the script…you name it…truly, one of the best movies ever made. After all, if they've got you laughing your ass off at the thought of nuclear holocaust, it's got to be really, really funny! What's not funny is the reality that these neo-cons who are running our country really think this way. To them, it is a brave new world where control is everything and real people are reduced to nothing more than Dr. Strangelove “casualty predictions”. Having survived all those cold war years and the fears they brought with them, I was almost ready to believe that I had been wrong about mankind…and that I could actually end up dying a natural death, after all…but “NOooooo!” Just when you begin to believe that you might really make it…..your leaders go “a little funny in the head”. I suppose, there's only one proper way to end this article…and that's with the lyrics from the closing song of Dr. Strangelove, played as mushroom cloud after mushroom cloud burst across the screen. “We will meet again. Don't know where. Don't know when.”

Bremer claims he was used as Iraq ‘fall guy’ By Edward Alden and Guy Dinmore in Washington Financial Times January 9 2006 20:17 Paul Bremer, former head of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, says that senior US military officials tried to make him a scapegoat for postwar setbacks, including the decision to disband the Iraqi army following the US invasion in 2003. In a memoir published on Monday that broke a more than year-long silence, Mr Bremer portrays himself in a constant struggle with Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, and military leaders who were determined to reduce the US troop presence as quickly as possible in 2004 despite the escalating insurgency. He also writes how Mr Rumsfeld was “clearly unhappy” that Condoleezza Rice, then national security adviser, had taken control of Iraq policy from the Pentagon in late 2003. A Pentagon spokesman on Monday confirmed that Mr Bremer had sent Mr Rumsfeld a memo based on a report by the Rand Corporation consultancy that recommended 500,000 US troops would be needed to pacify Iraq – far more than were sent. But Mr Bremer’s advice was rejected by military leaders and Mr Rumsfeld. Mr Bremer’s account of his 13 months as Iraq’s governor is at times vituperative – scathing of the Iraqi exiles who formed the initial Iraqi Governing Council, resentful of Democrats in Congress who sniped at his efforts, the press for focusing on the negative and feeding on leaks, and bureaucrats in Washington who obfuscated when he was trying to rebuild an entire country. “They couldn’t organise a parade, let alone run a country,” Mr Bremer writes of the Iraqi politicians. Even allies come in for some criticism, including Britain for being “weak-kneed” in avoiding a showdown with a militant Shia cleric. What emerges clearly from the diary is that there was no detailed postwar reconstruction plan, that the US lacked decent intelligence to deal with an insurgency it failed to predict, and the naivety of Americans who were shocked at the dismal state of Iraq’s economy and infrastructure after years of sanctions. Mr Bremer accuses Pentagon officials of setting him up to take the fall for the postwar failures in Iraq, even though the decision to disband the army was personally approved by Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy defence secretary, and cleared by Mr Rumsfeld and President George W. Bush. Mr Bremer – who headed the CPA during the crucial period from May 2003 until transferring sovereignty in June 2004 – has been widely blamed for acting precipitously in disbanding the army. Critics say that decision fuelled the insurgency by leaving the army’s Sunni leadership unemployed and hostile to the US occupation. But he defends the decision, insisting that reconstituting a Sunni-led Iraqi army would have plunged the country into civil war. He says that military leaders, including the commanding US general John Abizaid, exaggerated the readiness of Iraqi police and military forces in an effort to justify reducing the US troop presence. At the same time, Pentagon civilians, led by Mr Wolfowitz and Doug Feith, were urging him to transfer Iraqi sovereignty quickly. In one particularly bleak moment in October 2003, Mr Bremer pleaded with the president to back him in this internal struggle. “I’m concerned that a lot of the Pentagon’s frenetic push on the political stuff is meant to set me up as a fall guy,” he told Mr Bush at the White House. When the president looked puzzled, he added: “In effect the DoD position would be that they’d recommended a quick end to ‘occupation’, but I had resisted so any problems from here on out were my fault.” Mr Bremer lauds the president for backing him in most of these battles. He concludes by saying the continuing war is a noble enterprise that the US must complete. Comment: How interesting that Bremer claims Bush backed him as he fought valiantly against the evil Pentagon and US military. Bremer's memoir will serve as a nice distraction from the spygate scandal in which Bush currently finds himself.

Satire: Fear, the Future & the Other F-Word by Bernard Weiner The Crisis Papers January 10, 2006 WASHINGTON -- President George W. Bush today applauded the decision by the House of Representatives and the Senate to disband. "Everything changed on 9/11," said the President. "The American people join me in thanking Congress for finally having the wisdom and patriotism to recognize this changed situation in the country and the world. Although these legislators have served our nation well over the years, now all that bickering, partisan sniping, and obstructionism blocking my programs are gone. "In a word, I know what needs to be done. And now we can reach those goals with aggressive speed and determination, knowing that all our citizens are united under one leader. Those seeking to throw the American government into chaos and anarchy with their talk of impeachment and cutting-and-running from our battles abroad have been silenced." A joint statement from Republican and Democratic leaders in both branches of Congress was issued late last night: "It appears that the Executive Branch has made the Legislative branch redundant, by outsourcing our law-making functions to itself. They are deciding which laws to obey, and have the Justice Department and the courts under their control. So, rather than waste taxpayers money in spinning our wheels, we're simply going out of business." Most members said they have been offered lucrative contracts by lobbying organizations, to use their access to contacts in the White House and the military services. Others said they would be going to work for the expanded Pentagon and Homeland Security Department, which today announced that they would be taking over the functions of the Department of State and all the intelligence agencies. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld said one of his first priorities will be to re-organize Amtrak as a "national security asset" and "make sure that the trains run on time." The Departments of Labor and Housing & Urban Development will be disbanded, said new White House Press Secretary Ann Coulter, as will the various regulatory bodies such as the Environmental Protection Agency, Federal Communications Commission, Securities & Exchange Commission, OSHA, Mine Safety Administration, and the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department. The new Secretary of Education, Rev. Pat Robertson, announced that a national history and civics curriculum would be written by Under Secretaries Bill Bennett and Lynn Cheney, and the Biology Curriculum by Rev. Jerry Falwell and James Dobson. ALWAYS "WITHIN THE LAW" As for the Judicial Branch, Coulter said: "Now that the Congress is no longer an impediment in getting patriotic judges onto the Supreme Court, we would anticipate that the Judiciary will remain in business to validate the decisions taken by President Bush. Citizens should feel comforted that therefore our Administration will always be seen as working 'within the law.' But should the Judiciary attempt to interfere with the orderly workings of this administration, we will re-evaluate its role and function." Not all members of the House and Senate went quietly into new establishment jobs or retirement. Several Senators and Representatives, mainly Democrats and a few moderate Republicans, said they would move to the Western Coastal states (California, Oregon and Washington), or to the Northeast region (Massachusetts, New York, Maine, Vermont), where they will work for referenda on the possibility of joint secession. Reportedly, the Bush Administration, which has nullified the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution, thus permitting President Bush to continue to serve in perpetuity, has said it has no problem with the attempts of the "traitorous regions" to sever themselves from the "patriotic mainstream" of America. "They are doing this to gain attention for their demands for more inclusion in policy-making. But surely they realize that if they do leave the United States, that would make them foreign countries, and thus potential recipients of our shock & awe policies," said Vice President Dick Cheney. "I don't think they're going anywhere. They'll come around -- or will devoutly wish that they had." SEND THESE KIDS TO CAMP We attempted for this story to contact various anti-Bush activists and progressive website editors, to get their reactions to the extraordinary political events of the past few days, but all our inquiries were forwarded to the Department of Homeland Security. Robert Novak, press secretary for the Department's newly-created Security Services, which was set up to deal with "recalcitrants" and "malcontents," said all those we inquired about were "unavailable for comment." Other sources, who have chosen to remain anonymous, report that under the leadership of Richard Perle thousands have been moved to "re-education" camps in the Nevada desert, Northern Alaska oil refuge and other undisclosed locations, or were "rendered" to special camps in allied countries. (Note: Novak said the S.S. wants to make clear that these "malcontents" will not be sent to the "relocation centers reserved for homosexuals, winners of National Endowment for the Arts grants, and other deviants.") The offending websites have been taken over or shut down, said Deputy S.S. spokesman Bill O'Reilly, "because they have been spreading slanderous lies and unsubstantiated charges against our Leader and his policies. Anger and rebellion have no place in our new order; when those troublemakers return from the re-education centers, we expect they will have new, positive attitudes about the value of Bush Administration initiatives." O'Reilly said that no action would be taken against the editors and publishers of the country's major newspapers, networks and cable TV and radio news outlets. "They established their patriotic credentials long ago, and are either supportive of the Bush agenda or know when to keep their traps shut," said O'Reilly. Rush Limbaugh has been appointed director of the National Institutes of Health's pharmacy, and Jeff Gannon is now Protocol Chief in charge of entertainment and overnight stays at the White House. President Bush announced today that he would fill the seats of three retiring Supreme Court justices -- John Paul Stevens, Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginzburg -- with Michael Brown, Alberto Gonzales and Harriet Miers. "These new appointees are three of our finest public servants, who have demonstrated great loyalty to my person and policies," said President Bush. "They know that everything changed on 9/11 and that me and my Administration are working hard for the American people. They will serve the nation well in making sure that our Administration's actions always will remain 'within the law' -- by validating with their unanimous opinions those decisions I take in the service of protecting the American people from threats to our national security. Everything changed on 9/11; the terrorists hate us for our freedoms, you know." THE PRESIDENT'S MERCY Finally, President Bush today issued a full amnesty and/or pardon for those felons from his Administration and Congress currently serving time in prison or those under federal indictment or grand jury investigation. Included among those hundreds are the Cabinet, Karl Rove, I. Lewis Libby, Tom DeLay, John Ashcroft, Bill Frist, Duke Cunningham, and such stalwart Administration backers as Jack Abramoff, Ralph Reed and Kenneth Lay. "These are loyal Americans all, who have worked tirelessly for me and thus for the good of our nation, and were hounded by over-zealous prosecutors with hidden agendas," said President Bush. "These pardons and amnesties will ensure that they return to their good work in the public and private sectors, and will continue advising me well." Switching places with the pardoned felons are such "over-zealous prosecuters" as Patrick Fitzgerald, James Comey, Ronnie Earle, and Elliot Spitzer. Among notables known to have been rounded up and sent for re-education, based on their harsh critiques of Bush policy: Lawrence Tribe, Anthony Lewis, Richard Clarke, Paul O'Neill, Lawrence Wilkerson, Paul Krugman, Molly Ivins, Noam Chomsky, Frank Rich and Seymour Hersh. Numerous other notables reportedly have fled to France. President Bush said he issued the amnesties now to "have our full and best team in place as we prepare for whatever foreign and domestic actions may come in the immediate future." It is believed he is referring to the impending military action against Syria, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba and Bolivia. More secret prisons are being built to accomodate the expected thousands of detainees from those conflicts. But, said Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, "there will be fewer prisoners than in past wars because we fully intend to exercise our dominance in the nuclear-weaponry field. The advantage in using such WMDs is that it reduces the number of prisoners to care for and also keeps other foreign countries from even thinking about criticizing our policies. In short, it's a win-win for America and for the expansion of freedom around the globe." Bernard Weiner, Ph.D., a playwright-poet, has written numerous satires and parodies. He has taught at numerous universities, worked as a writer/editor with the San Francisco Chronicle, and currently co-edits The Crisis Papers (www.crisispapers.org). Comment: Weiner's satirical piece might be a lot more amusing if it wasn't exactly the sort of thing that the psychopathic Bush gang will probably try to pull off.

Conservatives call for return to core Republican principles By Edward Alden in Washington Financial Times January 10 2006 19:45 With Republicans embroiled in an influence-peddling scandal that could threaten their control of Congress, the biggest pressure for reform is coming from lawmakers who charge that the party’s woes have come from abandoning its core conservative principles. Jeff Flake, an Arizona Republican congressman who co-led the petition drive that helped oust Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, said in an interview yesterday: “We don’t just need a new majority leader, we need a course correction. “A lobbyist can’t be corrupt unless he has somebody to bribe, and we’ve created a culture that just breeds corruption,” he charged. While the Republicans captured the House of Representatives in 1994 following a popular backlash against perceived corruption in the Democratic party, the party’s conservative critics say it has now fallen prey to the same Washington culture. A group of more than 100 members organised as the Republican Study Committee is hoping to use the leadership race to rein in what they see as runaway government spending championed by Mr DeLay and his allies. At the top of the conservative reform agenda is an end to the practice of earmarking, in which members can secretly insert into huge spending bills billions of dollars in projects for favoured companies or other constituents – many of whom in turn donate to the lawmakers’ re-election funds. While the practice is not new, it has mushroomed since Republicans captured Congress. Last year 15,000 earmarks were added into various spending bills. Legislators are facing growing pressure over the practice. Jerry Lewis, the Republican who chairs the House appropriations committee, is under fire after the San Diego Union-Tribune reported he had earmarked hundreds of millions of dollars to clients of a former colleague and lobbyist, Bill Lowery. Mr Flake predicted the fallout over earmarking “would be ugly, and if we haven’t addressed it prospectively, we’re in deeper trouble than we know”. The conservatives are also hoping to reform the congressional budgeting process by sharply reducing the use of “emergency” spending bills, such as those that have paid for the war in Iraq and rebuilding following Hurricane Katrina. They would also reform House rules to allow more challenges to spending bills that exceed agreed budget targets, and to ensure that such bills can be carefully reviewed by lawmakers before votes are held. Mr Flake and other conservatives have yet to find a leadership candidate who stands clearly for their cause, however. Mike Pence, who chairs the Republican Study Committee, has said he will not seek the leadership. Conservatives are hoping to draft John Shadegg, another Arizona Republican. Neither of the frontrunners, John Boehner of Ohio or the acting majority leader, Roy Blunt, appears an obvious champion for the conservatives. In a letter this week announcing his candidacy, Mr Boehner did not sketch out an aggressive reform plan, saying instead: “I think we need to engage in a bit of renewal.” Mr Blunt, an ally of Mr DeLay, is part of the Republican leadership. But Mr Flake said that on the issue of earmarking “there’s a stark difference between the two. John Boehner has never put an earmark in an appropriation bill.” Mr Blunt, in contrast, “is an unapologetic champion of earmarks”, he said. Comment: So let's see if we have this straight: the conservative Republicans - who have gone along with pretty much every plan the Bush Reich has come up with since 9/11 - are now supposed to be the ones who will save Americans from the conservative Republicans??? Of course, the Democrats have hardly done any better.

Why Is It Christians Need So Gawd Damn Much Saving? by Amanda Lang 10 Jan 06 Every other article about Supreme Court nominee Sam Alito mentions how he is saving something or America ideals, in general, for the Religious Right. If the Right is so Gawd damn right and RELIGIOUS, why does it need so much saving? Raised among these holy rollers -- who seem never happier than when condemning someone else to hell, damnation, and misery -- one would think that eventually the 'avid' among them would reach some security in their exalted place, position, and views -- gladly leaving the rest of us alone to our sinning ways without having had forced us to join "the gang." I mean, with all their brow-beating and blood-thrust, how different are these extremist Christians and their demands for total submission than the "Cripps" and "Bloods" who are considered menaces to society? More humans have entered mortal combat in the name of Christianity that any other earthly collective, and traditionally rely largely on conscription and intimidation to fill their army's ranks. I see little difference from these "believers" and all the bully-gangs (Mafia, KGB, Nazis, etc.) who demand life-time devotion to their cause of violence, because they are so sure they are RIGHT to do so to ensure their survival and ours. (Can we sign someplace to get you eternally off our asses? Seriously...I don't want you to worry no more, no more...) As the scandal in Congress and our GOP, fundamentalist, right-wing "Christian" government unfolds, US citizens will come to learn that those in the highest offices of the "holier-of-thou" jet set resorted to any means -- un-Constitutional (buying and selling politicians), unethical (buying and selling politicians and lobbyists), or down-right un-American (buying and selling politicians, lobbyists, and taking tax-payers dollars as "faith-based" support to do it) -- to commit a wide variety of activities that can only be described as anti-Christian, immoral, and damning...if such a thing exists...to fill the void that is their constant empty, false security. Why. if the Lord is so on the side of the RIGHT, does it need so much saving and why has the pursuit and outcome thus far left it so empty, and seemingly hungry? Is it their Lord who is insatiable or is it the people who use him as a club? Anyway you look it, this religion and its followers do little for RIGHT as an organized action mechanism or mouth-piece for good. Never has...probably never will. Amanda Lang, PhD is a retired organizational and technological innovation researcher and teacher. Now living in Georgia she helps restore and fabricate replicas of vintage, classic, antique wooden boats with her husband, Tom. She serves as a news editor at www.opednews.com. You can read her regular blog at www.opednews.com/blogamandalang.htm. Amanda is a US Army Veteran, honorably discharged in '79.

Of the Evil Empire: Imperialist Devastation of Peoples and the Evils Done in our Names by Manuel Valenzuela 11 Jan 2006 Let us for a few moments put aside our lavish lifestyles of fortuitous endowment and providence that have made us blind to the realities of billions of our fellow humans. Let us ignore our plasma televisions, our DVDs, our two-story cookie cutter homes and gas-guzzling SUVs. Let us promise to not open our overstocked pantries and refrigerators, or to go out and eat at one of many corporate controlled franchise restaurants offering vast assortments of gargantuan meals. We should ignore the opulence of our society that dwells permanently in our minds that makes us forget the severe indigence and suffering that transpires beyond our shores and borders. In short, we should come out of our luxurious bubble that has shielded us from the evils inflicted on billions of humans that have not been as privy to a life of safety and security. Let us traverse the road of reality, sojourning through history and through mirages of hidden truths. Let us dive into the making of the Evil Empire so that we may see what our government has and continues to do in our name. The road ahead will not be easy to swallow or comprehend, yet we must open our minds to the possibility that what has happened is real and what is occurring is not fiction. Only then will we understand why our hands are smeared in the blood of tens of millions of human cadavers and countless more whose lives and futures have been devastated at the hands of the United States of America. Only by knowing who and what we are can we correct ourselves. Our society is ingrained with an appetite for violence. It is apparent in the over 11,000 murders by firearm per year. It is apparent in Hollywood’s gratuitous assembly-line of blood and gore, violence, devastation and death. It is visible in the ever-growing number of video games sold to our children depicting egregious violence, killings and bloodletting. Our society celebrates violence, be it through football, hockey or boxing, television, cartoons and music. Even Disney cartoon movies have as a main theme battles of good versus evil and the plethora of violence, destruction and death associated with them. The US military industrial complex supplies the world with 50 percent of all weapons for sale on the market. Yet without public demand for violence none of the above would exist. It is the citizenry – with complicit help from government and corporate media – that drives the engine that conditions us toward accepting and participating in our violent society. Violence in America is today a manifestation of our society and history, of a never ending thirst for blood, conquest, oppression and death that sprung from the first moment of Puritan arrival. Before and after the Revolutionary war Americans participated in one of the greatest acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing the world has ever witnessed. Millions upon millions of native Indians were slaughtered, raped and cleansed from the lands of North America. Manifest destiny ransacked from Atlantic to Pacific like a devastating hurricane, destroying everything native people thought precious and sacred. Wars against native populations extinguishing the energies of men, women, children and elderly alike. The American thirst for violence had been born. The addiction for blood would become insatiable and never ending. Native peoples’ lands were taken from them; lies, manipulations and betrayals erased their tribes from the homes they once knew and cherished. Replanted into hellholes called reservations, Indians were left to rot away their existence, given only the evil of Firewater to wash away their inner demons and scars in a land both alien and inhospitable. Hidden from the voracious Anglo onslaught, Indians of talent and ability were left to dwell on a future lost through the disappearance of opportunity. Disease, depression, lack of education and incessant poverty soon followed. Demons of a life wasted and opportunity lost consumed those who escaped the barrel of a gun and the virus of the white man. Entire ethnicities, tribes, languages and cultures were eviscerated from the face of the Earth by those whose importance of property and ownership superceded the respect for human life. Beautiful peoples took with them to the grave lives living free, roaming pristine and untouched forests, deserts and prairies, being one with nature, respecting everything that breathed and a spirituality that has much to offer our capitalistic civilization. Advanced civilizations in wisdom and spirituality, yet seen as savages to the “more sophisticated” European people, native peoples’ way of life was vanished, never to fully flourish again. Millions ethnically cleansed, millions whose lives were made barren, all making way for the destructive bulldozer ravaging land and man. The Evil Empire had sprung to life, a trail of victims visible everywhere the giant walked. Not satisfied with the killing of millions of native peoples, the citizens of America next decided to unleash hell onto each other. As a result the American Civil War of the latter part of the 19th century killed more than 600,000 people, leaving the United States mourning for brothers and sons, fathers and grandfathers. Graveyards littered the landscape; battlefields were transformed into fields of death and devastation. Divided a prospering nation stood, soaked in blood and agony, splitting apart families, creating widows and orphans. In the end, hundreds of thousands lay dead, many more maimed and wounded, all to quench the voracious appetite for violence, death and destruction. The Evil Empire’s cannibalism was only the beginning of a much greater disease. Lands and People of Asia As the Empire grew stronger so too did its addiction for expansion. War with Spain commencing in 1898 brought forth new lands, colonies and treasure. Yet it also brought forth death and destruction. American violence had not dissipated; it had only evolved, with new forms of warfare and destruction arising with the passage of time. Tens of thousands died on both sides. In the end, the United States had conquered both man and land, thereby increasing its power and prestige. The Empire was growing, prospering and learning that force was the means by which to achieve its ends. Force was weapons, intimidation, violence and war. It was victory and imperialism. It was the means to becoming the most powerful nation on the planet. The Evil Empire had grown up, as the Philippines would soon learn. In 1899 Filipino forces seeking independence from Spain confronted in armed struggle American forces intent on maintaining the colonization of the nation. A ruthless war of attrition between the two forces began. For the next three years tens of thousands of native resistance fighters died at the hands of the much more technologically sophisticated and economically powerful American military. Numerous war crimes were committed by American soldiers. Destruction and looting of property, shooting of captives, rapes of women, torture of prisoners and civilians, devastation of the environment and the forced social engineering of the people were thrust upon the nation in an orgy of occupier lawlessness. In addition, over 200,000 civilians perished due to the brutal scorched earth policy implemented by the US military that destroyed agriculture, fertile land and villages. In addition, many thousands died from cholera arising out of economic devastation of infrastructure. The harsh subjugation of the Filipino people was a form of collective punishment that America used as a weapon of war in order to pacify the independently minded population. The American intervention in the Philippines indiscriminately erased from the face of the Earth hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. This is called genocide, and the Evil Empire got exceedingly good at it. The reality of what happened over 100 years ago is comfortably hidden away from us today. The American war in the Philippines is today but an asterisk in our history books, yet the gravity of the malevolence cannot be forgotten. It certainly is not included in the educational material of our children, or in those of our own childhood, however. Why is this? What the US government does in our name cannot be made known lest the population rage in anger at the wickedness that America exports abroad. Genocide, collective punishment, scorched earth policy and ethnic cleansing leading to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of human beings is not something to be proud of. Not when Stalin, Hitler and the Nazis did the exact same thing. In the Philippines the Evil Empire was only getting warmed up. For the next 100 years it controlled all aspects of the Philippine government. The US installed minions and puppets that kept the populace in dire poverty, robbing the nation blind and fostering an era of inept and corrupt leaders handpicked by America. Ferdinand Marcos, who ruled as dictator of the beleaguered nation from 1965 until his ouster in 1986, is the best example of American complicity in the utter devastation of both the people and economy of the Philippines. Marcos ruled with extreme harshness, subverting democracy, robbing the nation blind (some estimates have him stealing anywhere from $3 to $30 billion dollars) and killing thousands of dissenters and opposition members who dared speak out against the injustices and inequalities. He brought onto the nation’s masses untold suffering, indigence and slave labor, wages and conditions. Hundreds of thousands have died form malnourishment, disease, poverty and exploitation. The nation’s debt amassed under Marcos is today responsible for the dire circumstances of the population, and is a reason for the growth of Muslim and Marxist revolutionary groups prospering and threatening the government. The beneficiary of the evil spawned by Marcos you may ask? The Evil Empire, which established military bases that helped expand the Empire geopolitically, collected hundreds of millions of dollars in debt, exploited slave labor for the manufacture of cheap products sold back in the US and controlled a subjugated populace through neo-liberal economic policies that privatized and made available to American corporations national industries and utilities. The Evil Empire and the Corporate Leviathan are one and the same, after all, their interests not mutually exclusive. The Evil Empire’s claws of incessant violence soon expanded to other nations of Southeast Asia. When its addiction for destruction was not satisfied with the firebombing of Tokyo that killed hundreds of thousands of civilians, it turned to that most evil of human creations: the atomic bomb. After becoming the only nation to ever use atomic weapons on innocent populated areas, killing hundreds of thousands and unleashing utter devastation on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, America soon launched its appetite for blood in the Korean Peninsula after it entered the war, creating vast killing fields of both soldiers and civilians. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers on all sides perished along with upwards of three million Koreans (North and South) who were caught in the crossfire of ideologies and human wickedness. Following the Korean War America soon found itself immersed in yet another war, this time in Vietnam. Decades of war led to the death of 58,000 American soldiers, over 100,000 South Vietnamese soldiers and close to one million North Vietnamese soldiers. Estimates place the number of civilian deaths at anywhere from 400,000 to two million. If the illegal American bombing of Cambodia and Laos orchestrated by Henry Kissinger is considered, in which civilian targets were selected and bombed, upwards of two million more Southeast Asians can be added to the Evil Empire’s macabre statistics. Furthermore, many more died as a result of the total devastation of land and infrastructure the bombings and war created, including the continued death and disease of land and man due to the lingering effects of Agent Orange and through the enormous amount of unexploded bombs and ordinance still littering the ground. Indonesia is another nation that, through the American imposed and supported dictator Mohamed Suharto, suffered tremendously thanks to the meddling by the Evil Empire. Under Suharto’s watch, anywhere from 500,000 to two million people were killed in a 1965 alleged coup attempt, most of them dissenters, leftists, communists or opposition members. In 1975, with American blessings and weaponry, Suharto invaded East Timor in order to stop an insurrection by the native people, killing 250,000 people out of a population of 650,000. During Suharto’s stay in power he detained and executed hundreds of thousands of Indonesian opposition members. His reign ended in 1998. During this time corruption was endemic, as was the subversion of democracy, freedoms and rights. In 1999 it was found that the Suharto family fortune totaled $15 billion, most of it coming from those government funds created thanks to international loans and the labor of the masses. Lands and People of Latin America The Evil Empire’s omnipotent reach has had devastating effects in Latin America as well. The US government has interfered with the internal governance of several Central and South American nations in its quest to maintain its form of democracy and capitalism. The US has meddled in Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, Colombia, Venezuela, Bolivia, Argentina, Chile, Peru and Brazil, not to mention Cuba, Haiti and the Dominican Republic in the Caribbean. The Evil Empire has imposed coups and US friendly dictatorships and leaders in many of the above mentioned nations. In Central America it supplied death squads with military support and logistics. In Chile, Argentina and Brazil, dictators, with the consent of their American masters, initiated a war against leftist dissenters and opponents, leading to the disappearance of thousands of men and women. In Panama, Manuel Noriega, a former CIA puppet, betrayed his American masters and hell was unleashed on Panama City by the US military. Anywhere from 3,000 to 10,000 civilians died as the Evil Empire pursued the capture of one man. Today, the Evil Empire is once more interfering in the destabilization of Latin American nations. Haiti is but the latest but by no means the last country to be burned by the searing claws of America’s might. President Aristide, a champion of the poor and a seeker of equality and justice, stepped on US shoes with his defiance of neo-liberal threats imposed on him by Haiti’s elite and the Bush administration. In essence, he sealed his own fate, and the clandestine coup sponsored by the US removed Aristide from office. As a result, Haiti, which has been the slave shop for US corporations for decades, will remain poor and exploited, a cesspool of poverty and hopelessness for its citizens. Colombia has, thanks to the US, become a militarized zone where hundreds of people are killed on a yearly basis. Civil war has ensnarled the nation, instability runs amok and the livelihood of rural peasants has been destroyed by the coca eradication program enacted the America that has ruined arable land. With the potential of large oil reserves present under the nation’s lands and the already discovered exploitable natural resources prevalent throughout the countryside, Colombia has become a target for US interests. Oil and energy companies, along with their growing infrastructure, are already protected by the US military as they continue their exploitation of the nation. Meanwhile, the Evil Empire already has its sites set on destabilizing Venezuela and a harsh critic of the US, Hugo Chavez. Forces now at work, supported and maintained by the US, are slowly setting in motion mechanisms that, it is hoped, will unseat Chavez from office, whether by force or other means, thereby installing a friendly US pro-neo-liberal puppet that will allow for the pilfering of Venezuelan oil by the Evil Empire. A coup, assassination and or invasion are not out of the realm of possibilities, especially when the Devil's excrement is involved. What the Evil Empire has done to Latin America and its hundreds of millions of people is the imposition – by its proctors in high office and its bullying threats involving capital – of market colonialism that has had the effect of imprisoning and enslaving the masses. Neo-liberal ideology has indebted most “third-world” nations, not simply those of Latin America, and it has furthered indigence, lack of education, the corrosive caste system upon which millions are born into, inequality, injustice, hunger, disease, suffering, loss of opportunity and death. Latin American nations have been made worse off since the inception of neo-liberal economic models forcefully imposed by the Evil Empire. As a result, labor has been made cheaper for US corporations, translating into cheaper goods for its citizens. Through the back-breaking slave labor, conditions and wages Latin Americans are exploited so that we in the rich north can consume to our hearts content. Yet millions upon millions live in squalor, surviving day to day, usually earning less than two dollars a day, living in feeble conditions and without the chance of ever improving their lives due to the non-existence of opportunity. The Evil Empire’s domination of Latin America (for more detail please see my January 12th article, Not in Our Backyard) has resulted in the mass migration towards our borders. When mechanisms such as NAFTA and neo-liberal tools are put in place in countries such as Mexico, only the elite benefit and profit. Everyone else is made worse off; jobs are meager, scarce and dehumanizing. US subsidies to agriculture have devastated rural farmers and workers in Latin America. When these people leave for the cities they find that employment is non-existent and life unbearable. The push to migrate north, where natives no longer perform the jobs of hard labor, is tremendous. Thus, today we see millions of undocumented workers living in the US. It is the Evil Empire’s imposed economic models and trade mechanisms that have created the eruption of Latin slave labor in our nation. Is it any coincidence that the mass migration north began after NAFTA was imposed on the region? The only entities that have benefited from NAFTA, both in the US and Mexico, are the corporations and the few ruling elite. Everyone else has been thrust into the realm of exploitation and failure. The near enslavement of Latin America for the benefit of the Evil Empire has devastated millions of lives, talent and ability. It has created colonized economies, based on US crony capitalism that has exploited both man and land. Public companies and utilities have been privatized and subjugated to fit the Leviathan’s goals. The rich have become richer while the poor poorer, and this has led to the greatest disparity in wealth the region has ever seen. The Evil Empire has created a region that has for the last fifty years been subservient to the US. Its many puppets and proctors have helped devastate lives and subjugate the masses. Democracy has historically been an illusion. Fraud, coups, assassinations, destabilization, dictatorships and a state of perpetual wretchedness have been used by the Evil Empire as tools to control Latin America. When the will of the people triumphs, such as in Chile with Allende, Venezuela with Chavez or Haiti with Aristide, the Evil Empire imposes its will in order to decimate democracy and maintain a system that benefits the US, its corporations and the elite. Social democracy and economic models that benefit the masses are not allowed to flourish lest they become a threat to the US. Systems of governance that benefit the people are never allowed to prosper, lest the “pestilence” gain momentum and traverse like a virus beyond borders, giving millions of destitute people hope. Only US style crony capitalism that makes serfs and slaves of the masses for the greater benefit of the Leviathan and the elite oligarchs can exist. Only US style debauched democracy can stand, where the will of the people is silenced and their incredible ability quashed. The Evil Empire has in the last fifty years devastated hundreds of millions of lives and we are all complicit, thanks to the work of our government, in the ruination of lives and exploitation of human energies. Lands and People of the Middle East With wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Evil Empire has killed tens of thousands of Arabs in the last two years. The remnants of cluster bombs and depleted uranium used by the American war machine have and will continue to kill and maim thousands more in the coming decades. US sponsored sanctions on Iraq, in essence nothing more than a cruel form of economic genocide that was imposed in the aftermath of Gulf War I, unleashed its inherent evils for the next decade, resulting in the death of up to a million men, women and children who were denied basic necessities needed for survival. This form of crime against humanity enforced by the Evil Empire was in essence a quasi-concentration camp in which a million humans perished due to the American government’s collective punishment on an entire population. Iraq, needless to say, has suffered tremendously both by the one-time American lackey whose tyrannical dictatorship led to the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians and by US wars and sanctions. The Evil Empire has made the Cradle of Civilization a walking wasteland of death, suffering and destruction, a barren desert whose fertility has been eroded. For years the people of Iran were forced to endure the horrors and despotism of the shah, an American proctor and puppet that subjected his people to tyranny, oppression and exploitation. Democracy was subverted, many innocent civilians were killed or disappeared and the nation fell into decay while the shah and his cronies basked in the splendor of oil’s rewards. When the masses finally revolted, the American embassy was attacked and destroyed, a clear symbol of who the people thought was responsible for their misery. The Great Satan was purged from the lands of Persia and to this day has not returned. Today, Saudi Arabia is controlled by a US-protected monarchy loyal to its masters. Meanwhile, the people linger in growing poverty and desperation. Democracy is non-existent, as are freedoms and liberties. As a result, many living below human dignity are turning toward resistance and resentment that is manifesting itself in a growing hatred of both the Saud monarchy and American “Crusaders” despoiling sacred Muslim lands. In Turkey, the Kurdish minority has for years been ethnically cleansed by the Turkish government. Hundreds of thousands of people have died and many more maimed and injured thanks to the vast, modern and sophisticated array of weapons and military hardware provided by the Evil Empire, who has turned a blind eye to the genocide and repression that has brought misery and suffering to the Kurds of Turkey. The Empire’s failure to act in the face of such crimes against humanity and its approval of arms sales to the Turkish military makes it complicit in the systemic annihilation and plight of the Kurdish people. Through one-sided political support for the crimes against humanity being perpetrated by Israel against the occupied and oppressed Palestinian people, the Evil Empire’s hands are smeared in the blood of a people robbed of their land, raped of their livelihood and dehumanized of their existence. It is American Apache helicopters, Abrams tanks, Caterpillar bulldozers, fast missiles, smart bombs, weapons and bullets that are decimating an entire population, making prisoners of millions who now live in Bantustans and ghettos. This, along with billions of dollars in financial and military aid to the Israeli government has morphed the crimes of the IDF with the interests of the Evil Empire, forming a Molotov cocktail of destruction, dehumanization and death. The apartheid wall being built today that is usurping Palestinian land, crops, water, homes and lives is in large part possible thanks to American taxpayer money. The Evil Empire’s role in Israel’s treatment of the native Palestinian people is apparent in the geopolitical protection afforded the country by the US and its role in vetoing UN condemnations of Israeli behavior and by its tacit support for Israeli actions in the occupied territories. The Evil Empire is once more involved in the devastation of millions of people who have been robbed of their lands and lives, live in utter decay and dehumanization, suffer severe forms of collective punishment and are being ethnically cleansed in a most meticulous and abhorrent way. Palestinians are today living in a state of apartheid, in ghettos resembling large concentration camps, under the watchful eyes of a trigger-happy occupying force, struggling to survive on the measly crumbs Israel throws their way and with the knowledge that their endemic and ruinous plight is endorsed by the greatest “purveyor of democracy” and “defender of human rights” the world has ever seen. In Central Asia, the Evil Empire is systematically forging alliances with a new group of tyrannical dictators that have subjugated their people to despotism. In these nations, democracy is dwindling, freedoms are hardly existent and the decay of liberties is being exacerbated. Torture, death, misery and poverty are hallmarks of the new group of dictators now entrenched in the pockets of the US government. It seems that when vast oil wealth is involved the US altruistic fight for democracy is a principle that is easily disposed of and forgotten. The struggle for human rights and dignity the US so boldly declares as a priority is erased and ignored. The Evils Done in our Name The devastation of peoples throughout the planet directly or indirectly sponsored by the Evil Empire, who through no fault of their own are denied rights, freedoms and democracy, are subjected to gross human rights violations and persecutions and face death or disappearance is a crime against humanity. It is state sponsored terrorism and genocide. Market colonialism has decimated both countries and the lives of their inhabitants. Economic genocide has wrought suffering and increased indigence, robbing millions of education, healthcare, opportunity and livable wages. The world’s people have in many instances been enslaved to cater to the interests of the Evil Empire and its minions. The evils done in our name have created worldwide animosity and hatred. They have given rise to desperation and humiliation that is today manifested by the growing number of humans fighting the system that has been imposed onto them. From Al-Qaeda to Iraqi freedom fighters to the Venezuelan poor to enlightened Europeans to the growing number of sprouting “terror” groups franchising around the world, the people of the world are growing frustrated at the Evil Empire’s devastation of peoples in order to suit its interests, both corporate and governmental. Billions are searing in anger at the US government and by indirect complicity at its citizens as well. We are no longer welcome neighbors in the community of nations. To be American is to be scorned and castigated, to be unwelcome in the lands of the exploited and subjugated. The evils done in our name are beginning to have karmic repercussions throughout the globe, and the danger now present will affect us all who have been made blind to the crimes against humanity and the planet being committed by the Evil Empire. In the last 200 years the United States has killed, directly or indirectly, tens of millions of human beings, surpassing the horrors of evildoers past and present. It has created untold levels of suffering and depravity, sending untold millions to the sewers of poverty and dehumanization. These truths are not easy to swallow, or to accept, yet they are as real as the air we breathe. It is time we accept the evils done in our name. George W. Bush is but the latest in a long line of presidents who have continued the cycle of violence our nation has such a propensity towards. America, it seems, gravitates naturally towards violence and destruction, perhaps due to the fact that besides 9/11, we have never seen the true horrors of what man is capable of unleashing onto his fellow man. The reality that afflicts billions is to us a distant haze of blurriness. We have not been made privy to the suffering and misery, the death, disease and maiming of a land in war, an environment in flames and a people in battle. Our luck has been the world’s misfortune. Our society has been made blind to endemic and ceaseless worldwide suffering at the hands of our government. Through years of conditioning we now fail to blink at the carnage our military engenders around the world. From the cradle to the grave we are subjected to incessant violence, whether real or fictional, that makes us immune to the torment prevalent in the rest of the world. Through careful manipulation we are made to believe that war is peace, destruction is prosperity and murder is life. The world burns while we live lives of consumption and production, happy worker bees stuck in hour long commutes working most of our productive lives. We live in peace and harmony at home, distracted from reality by our television screens and movie theatres, by our lavish lifestyles and wasteful society. In the land of the individual the communality of peoples is an alien principle. Content, conformist and passive thanks to our nation of plenty, we care not for peoples outside our borders. We have everything we need, after all, and a plethora of distractions in our daily lives prevents us from even considering that a larger world exists beyond our shores. The impenetrable bubble we live in protects us from empathizing with billions whose lives have been made worse since the birth of the Evil Empire. We have been made ignorant to that which has been unleashed onto the world and that owes its existence to our continued lifestyle and complicity by acquiescence and failure to act. The Evil Empire runs rampant through the planet, devouring all in its path, enslaving millions and conquering and despoiling lands. Meanwhile, inside the belly of the beast we sit, basking in extravagance and splendor, complacent in life and circumstance, unwilling to open our eyes and minds to the evils done in our name. Originally published 10 March 2004 www.valenzuelasveritas.blogspot.com Manuel Valenzuela is a social critic and commentator, international affairs analyst and Internet columnist. His articles as well as his archive can be found at his blog, http://www.valenzuelasveritas.blogspot.com as well as at other alternative news websites from around the globe. Mr. Valenzuela welcomes comments and can be reached at manuel@valenzuelas.net. Mr. Valenzuela is also author of Echoes in the Wind, a novel made available at most online book sellers.

I.R.S. Move Said to Hurt the Poor January 11, 2006 By DAVID CAY JOHNSTON Tax refunds sought by 1.6 million poor Americans over the last five years were frozen and their returns labeled fraudulent, although the vast majority appear to have done nothing wrong, the Internal Revenue Service's taxpayer advocate told Congress yesterday. A computer program identified the refund requests as suspect and automatically flagged the taxpayers for extra scrutiny for years to come, the advocate said in her annual report to Congress. These taxpayers were not told that the I.R.S. criminal investigation division suspected fraud. The advocate, Nina Olson, said the I.R.S. devoted vastly more resources to pursuing questionable refunds sought by the poor - which under the highest estimate is $9 billion - than to the $100 billion in taxes not paid each year by people who work for cash and either fail to file tax returns or understate their income. As for the suspected fraud in refund requests, Ms. Olson said her staff sampled the suspect returns and found that 66 percent were entitled to the amount sought or more. Another 14 percent were due a partial refund. She expressed doubt that many among the remaining 20 percent had committed fraud. Unless taxpayers press for their refunds, Ms. Olson said, they "are not given an opportunity to substantiate their claims or to show that any overclaims identified were due to honest error rather than fraud." The I.R.S. criminal division defended its program as a successful effort to protect against refund fraud, saying it "has stopped literally billions of dollars of false refunds to criminals." It said the program was intended to be fair to all taxpayers while efficiently using limited law enforcement resources. Ms. Olson also said in her report that the I.R.S. is answering far fewer telephone calls, spending far less to teach small businesses how to comply with the tax laws and, in general, is cutting back on services to help taxpayers comply with the law. She said cutting taxpayer assistance would probably result in more costly tax collection. Senator Charles E. Grassley, the Iowa Republican who is chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said, "We've seen a significant increase in refund abuse in recent years." "However," he said, "I'm concerned by the advocate's findings that thousands and thousands of taxpayers are having their refunds frozen by the criminal investigation division, yet the taxpayers often do not know their refund has been frozen and can't effectively challenge the I.R.S.'s actions." Ms. Olson said the criminal investigators' efforts, known within the I.R.S. as the Questionable Refund Program, were unfair and might be illegal. "At a minimum, this procedure constitutes an extraordinary violation of fundamental taxpayer rights and fairness," Ms. Olson wrote, adding that it "may also constitute a violation of due process of law." Her staff's sample of frozen returns found that the average reported income was about $13,000 and the refund due was about $3,500. About three-quarters of those affected were employed parents who applied for the earned-income tax credit, under which all income and Social Security taxes can be returned and, in some cases, a payment made. The credit is a kind of negative income tax, first advocated by Milton Friedman, the Nobel-winning economist, and championed by President Ronald Reagan as the government's best program to encourage the poor to improve their circumstances through work. Ms. Olson's report noted that in recent years, Congress has given the I.R.S. more than $875 million to investigate suspected fraud in the $32 billion tax credit program. Ms. Olson has repeatedly said that Congressional estimates of rampant fraud appear to have little or no basis in fact. She said that in cases where frozen refunds were later issued, the delay was typically more than eight months, which she said was a hardship on the poor taxpayers who had filed proper tax returns. The criminal investigators defended the program, writing to Ms. Olson that they had blocked $2.1 billion in questionable refunds. Ms. Olson said that statement was misleading because just two refunds, from a scheme run by prison inmates, accounted for $1.8 billion of the total. These refunds, she said, almost certainly would have been stopped anyway because tax experts at the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation must review all refunds of $2 million or more. She said the balance of the criminal division's refund fraud estimate appeared to be significantly inflated. The criminal investigators also criticized the advocate's finding that 80 percent of taxpayers whose refunds were frozen were entitled to all or part of the money. They said that "innocent taxpayers" were the most likely to press for refunds. Ms. Olson, in replying to the investigators, noted that they put suspect returns into three categories, the most serious labeled "conclusively" shown to be fraudulent. Ms. Olson's staff studied a sample of these returns and found that 46 percent of refund requests were proper, an estimate that the criminal investigators now agree is accurate. Congress created the taxpayer advocate as part of a 1998 law intended to give individual taxpayers greater protections from perceived abuses by overzealous tax collectors and auditors. Ms. Olson, who ran a tax clinic for the poor before her appointment in 2001 as taxpayer advocate, told Congress that the biggest need was a simplification of the tax system. "Our tax code has grown so complex," she wrote, that "it creates opportunities for taxpayers to make inadvertent mistakes as well as to game the system." The Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan research group that favors lower taxes, said in a separate report on Tuesday that complying with the tax code cost individuals, businesses and others $265 billion last year. Ms. Olson cited the growing number of returns considered questionable in her 2003 report to Congress, but it drew little attention because she did not raise any of the fairness, effectiveness and efficiency questions that are in her latest report. Professor Leslie M. Book of Villanova University, who runs a tax clinic for the poor and has studied how well the poor comply with the tax laws, said the computer program was a blunt and unfair tool for fighting fraud. "Surely there are taxpayers who are ineligible claiming the credit," Professor Book said. "But freezing refunds without giving taxpayers due process is an extremely dangerous way to administer the earned-income tax credit," he said. "These taxpayers often need more rather than less protection because they are not sophisticated, are afraid of government involvement." Comment: It seems that, as far as the IRS is concerned, the poor are the real cheats and frauds in the US tax system. The reality however is that the abuse of the system by large corporation and the super-rich makes anything the poor could achieve pale into insignificance. But, the corporations and the super-rich have lawyers and more to meet their ends and both structure what they do so well that it would take much more than a computer programme to find the abuse in the first place and then a lot of money on IRS lawyers to win in court. So rather than do all that work, the decision has been made to just dispense with due process (the courts) and screw the poor instead - which of course is much easier and avoids having those New York lawyers fighting you all the way through the courts. Pathocracy anyone?

Toys "R" Us to close 75 stores, cut 3,000 jobs Reuters 9 Jan 2006 NEW YORK - Toy retailer Toys R Us Inc. on Monday said it will close 75 Toys "R" Us stores in the United States and convert 12 others into Babies "R" Us stores, eliminating about 3,000 jobs. The company said in a regulatory filing that it will record restructuring and other charges of about $155 million, with about $99 million taken in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2005 and the remaining $56 million in the first quarter of 2006. Most of the stores will close in the spring of 2006, Toys "R" Us said.

15 pct of workforce affected by alcohol: study Tue Jan 10, 2006 By Jamie McGeever NEW YORK (Reuters) - There may be an alcohol problem brewing in American offices, shops and factories. An estimated 15 percent of the U.S. workforce consumes alcohol on the job, has a drink before going to work or otherwise is under the influence of alcohol, according to a study by the University of Buffalo's Research Institute on Addictions. That equates to some 19.2 million workers impaired during the workday via intoxication, withdrawal or hangover. "Clear policies should be in place regarding alcohol impairment and impairment at work," wrote Doctor Michael Frone, principal investigator of the study. "But despite management's responsibility for the development and enforcement of such policies, managers report elevated rates of consuming alcohol during the workday, working under the influence of alcohol, and working with a hangover," he said. The institute said that the study, the first of workplace alcohol use to utilize a representative sample of the U.S. workforce, surveyed 2,805 employed adults across the United States from January 2002 through June 2003. Young, single men figured prominently among those who were affected by alcohol, the results showed. Drinking on the job, being under the influence or working with a hangover was more prevalent among men than women, more common among younger workers than older staff, and among unmarried workers than married workers, the study found. Coming into work with a hangover was the most common finding. The highest levels of alcohol use and impairment were in management, sales, catering and construction. "Of all psychoactive substances with the potential to impair cognitive and behavioral performance, alcohol is the most widely used and misused substance in the general population and the workforce," Frone said. "The misuse of alcohol by employed adults is an important social policy issue with the potential to undermine employee productivity and safety," he added. The institute said that 10.8 percent admitted they either drank at work, before work or turned up with a hangover but that it happened less than once a month, while 2.9 percent said it was a monthly occurrence and 1.65 percent said weekly. Comment: We are glad to see the good doctor has got his priorities straight: "the misuse of alcohol by employed adults is an important social policy issue with the potential to undermine employee productivity" [...] No mention of the possible reasons why there should be such a high percentage of people that drink too much. Could it possibly have anything to do with the fact that, in the modern Western workplace, profits are not only placed before people, profits are everything, and, as the doctor in the above article describes, employees are little more than machines that "produce" profits. Of course, we should also include the pressure exerted on many Americans to conform to a general, official culture that is essentially psychopathic in nature. Such a culture, being the product of an elite few who themselves lack any tendency towards creativity, actively denigrates the finer aspects of human nature in favor of mindless consumption and selfishness. Those people that do possess the creative spark and live and work under the influence of such a system, yet who remain unaware that the system even exists, are denied the protection that such awareness would afford them. The result is a person that is torn by the pressure to conform to official culture and the subconscious awareness that, in doing so, he or she is slowly extinguishing an essential part of themselves. It is not surprising then that more and more people are seeking respite from such pressures in alcohol, or another similar reality-warping drug.

EPA plans to issue real-world vehicle fuel ratings Micheline Maynard New York Times Wednesday, January 11, 2006 Detroit -- The Environmental Protection Agency proposed Tuesday the first major overhaul in 20 years in the way it calculates fuel economy ratings for cars and trucks, a shift the agency said would reduce mileage estimates by 5 to 30 percent, depending on the type of driving and kind of vehicle. The new testing method, according to Stephen Johnson, EPA's administrator, would come much closer to bridging "the gap between what the window sticker says and what consumers can expect in their fuel economy." The EPA expects to introduce the changes starting with 2008 models, which will go on sale as early as a year from now. Consumer groups have long complained that the EPA's ratings are far too optimistic, compared with fuel economy that drivers achieve under real-world conditions. Recent tests by Consumer Reports magazine, for example, found that EPA window stickers could be off by up to 50 percent. The new EPA calculations will have the greatest impact on hybrid-electric vehicles, the agency said, cutting estimated fuel economy sharply on some of the industry's most sought-after models now that gasoline prices have soared. For all vehicles, the EPA said its new testing methods would result in a 10 to 20 percent drop in fuel economy estimates in city driving, and a 5 to 15 percent decline in highway performance. But for hybrids, which run off both a gasoline engine and an electric battery, city driving estimates could drop by 20 to 30 percent. The decline in their highway ratings would be 5 to 15 percent, the same as for regular cars. Buyers are willingly paying thousands of dollars above the price of conventional vehicles, and waiting up to a year in the case of Toyota's most popular hybrid, the Prius, all in the belief that they yield much better gas mileage. Although hybrids are almost always more fuel efficient than conventional vehicles, EPA officials said their estimates for city driving would shrink more because their engines are more sensitive to changes in road conditions, as well as the use of fuel-draining features, such as air conditioning systems and electronic controls. Johnson said the proposed standards, which will be open to public comment for 60 days, were meant to more accurately depict what consumers could expect from new cars and trucks. In its report in October, Consumers Report said it found shortfalls in as many as 90 percent of the 203 vehicles it tested, which were built between the 2000 and 2006 model years. Currently, EPA relies on data from two lab tests for the city and highway estimates. They're done in mild conditions, at 75 degrees Fahrenheit, using top highway speeds of 60 mph and average speeds of 48 mph. Those conditions, EPA acknowledges, are "generally lower than those experienced by drivers in the real world." EPA proposed a new testing regime to develop more accurate mileage estimates from vehicle-specific data. Automakers starting in 2011 would have to perform extra driving tests to reflect high-speed driving, rapid acceleration, use of air conditioning and cold weather not now part of the agency's laboratory tests. The new, lower ratings, however, will not be used to gauge compliance with government regulations requiring automakers to produce fleets averaging at least 27.5 mpg for cars and 21 mpg for light trucks. Comment: So, overall, the fuel economy of all cars made by a given manufacturer will not have to increase at all. That's good news for the oil industry, at least... The corporate Average Fuel Economy program run by the Transportation Department uses separate requirements for determining fuel economy, Johnson said. Detroit's two biggest auto companies, General Motors and Ford Motor, said Tuesday that they were in favor of more accurate information, but they did not say whether they would embrace the new calculations. "GM supports providing consumers with more accurate fuel economy data for comparative purposes, and we appreciate the opportunity to provide comments on this rulemaking," the company said in a statement. Ford, in its statement, said it backed changes "that will help provide consumers with more meaningful information for their purchasing decisions." Other companies did not comment. Environmental groups said the move was a much-needed first step to make the standards reflect drivers' experience. But it did little to deal with the fundamental issue of improving fuel economy itself, they said. "The current fuel economy labeling system is broken," Don MacKenzie, an engineer with the Union of Concerned Scientists, said in a statement. MacKenzie went on, "EPA's proposal is a long overdue tune-up that better reflects the growing diversity of vehicle technologies and today's driving conditions."

US tells Iran this time it may have gone too far AFP January 11, 2006 WASHINGTON - The United States has warned Iran that it will not escape being referred to the UN Security Council if it proceeds with its plan to conduct sensitive nuclear work. The administration of President George W. Bush said Tuesday it was "in close contact" with its partners, including Britain, Germany and France, discussing a response to Iran's removal of UN seals from equipment that is being used to enrich uranium. "If the regime in Iran continues on the current course ... there is no other choice but to refer the matter to the Security Council," White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters. At present, he added, the United States is "in close contacts with the Europeans and others about how to move forward" at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). McClellan said Bush for now has no intention of launching an attack against Iran to prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons, adding that, however, the military option remained on the table. McClellan also reminded reporters of numerous statements issued on the subject by Bush. For the time being, the spokesman pointed out, the Bush administration is working with the international community to resolve the issue by peaceful and diplomatic means and intends to continue doing so. The US administration did not say if the talks focused on convening an emergency meeting of the IAEA, the UN nuclear watchdog group. Nor did it say if the US will throw all its weight behind attempts to persuade the Security Council to take up the measure after two fruitless years of European-led negotiations to persuade Iran to abandon uranium enrichment. "I think we are entering a period of intense diplomatic activity on this question," said a senior State Department official who spoke on condition of anonymity. "There are intense discussions at the political director level, and I will expect we will see more and more discussions at the minister level." By removing seals on equipment inside the Natanz nuclear plant located in central Iran, Tehran showed its determination to at least partly resume its uranium enrichment activities. However, the West may now believe Iran has crossed the line. That is how Westerners who for months have been pressing Iran to end its enrichment activities were interpreting the decision to remove the seals. Gregory Schulte, the US ambassador to the IAEA, said earlier that Iran was "taking another deliberate step towards uranium enrichment, the process for creating nuclear bomb material. "By cutting the seals, the Iranian leadership shows its disdain for international concern and its rejection of international diplomacy," Schulte said in a statement. Both White House and State Department spokesmen mentioned "a serious escalation" on the part of Iran on the nuclear issue. The United States, which has repeatedly made clear it has no doubt Iran wants to acquire nuclear weapons, has been a long and active advocate of referring the matter to the UN Security Council. Since 2003, Washington has reluctantly allowed the European Union's bid to persuade Iran to provide guarantees that its nuclear program is of a purely civilian nature. The question now is whether Washington has really concluded that Tehran has gone too far and whether it will be able to convince Moscow and Beijing to support it in the Security Council.

Blair threatens UN action on Iran BBC News 11/01/2006 UK Prime Minister Tony Blair says Iran's decision to resume its nuclear activities is likely to result in a referral to the UN Security Council. He said Tehran's move had caused real and serious alarm across the world. Speaking in parliament, Mr Blair said European ministers meeting in Berlin on Thursday would decide how to proceed. But Iran's leader dismissed the threat. He said the research, which some fear is aimed at producing weapons, would go on despite the Western "fuss". 'Spoiling for a fight' Tehran says it broke the United Nations seals on the Natanz nuclear research facility on Tuesday because it wants to produce electricity, not because it is pursuing nuclear weapons. The UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), has said Tehran is about to start small-scale nuclear enrichment. Addressing MPs in the House of Commons, Mr Blair described the current situation as "very serious indeed". "I don't think there is any point in us hiding our deep dismay at what Iran has decided to do," he said. "When taken in conjunction with their other comments about the state of Israel they cause real and serious alarm right across the world." Russian Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov said it was a personal disappointment giving him cause for alarm. On Thursday UK Foreign Minister Jack Straw will meet French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy, Frank-Walter Steinmeier of Germany and Javier Solana, the EU foreign policy chief to discuss the crisis. The EU talks could trigger an emergency meeting of the IAEA's board of governors which could refer the matter to the UN Security Council and lead to full-scale sanctions. But President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Iran would not be intimidated by "all of the fuss created by the big powers". The BBC's Frances Harrison in Tehran says that Iran's conservative president seems almost to be relishing the sense of looming confrontation - and that those who had suggested Iran was just testing the waters look set to be disappointed. Iran is banking on divisions within the international community, our correspondent says. Its parliament has passed a law obliging the Iranian government to stop short notice visits of its nuclear sites by UN inspectors if it is referred to the UN Security Council. Comment: The only "evidence", as quoted by Blair, that Iran is planning to make a nuke is the "wipe Israel off the map" comments that were so generously made late last year by the Iranian PM. Even so, Ahmadinejad claims that Iran will use their nuclear facilities only to make electricity. Regardless, it seems that Iran will now be attacked in the next few months, and the fact that just three years ago the American government made very similar claims about Iraq - claims that have since been outted as lies - will be but a distant memory. How is that the lessons about the nature of the U.S. government that should have been learned as result of the illegal invasion of Iraq can be so quickly forgotten? Does no one see that this is exactly the same thing happening all over again? Will no one question the "evidence" that the U.S. and British governments presents to the world this time? What hope can there be for a world when the population is so completely incapable of recognising clear truth from fiction??

EU-3 foreign ministers to meet over Iran nuclear crisis AFP Jan 11, 2006 BERLIN - The foreign ministers of Germany, France and Britain will gather in Berlin Thursday to determine how to move forward in the escalating crisis over Iran's nuclear program, Germany's chief diplomat Frank-Walter Steinmeier said. Steinmeier told reporters Wednesday that EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana would also take part in the meeting, after which the participants would consult with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice by telephone. He said the purpose of the meeting, which will include Britain's Jack Straw and Philippe Douste-Blazy of France, was to decide whether there was still "political room to manoeuvre" between the so-called EU-3 and Tehran over Iran's controversial nuclear program. Steinmeier said an alternative included handing the matter over to the UN's nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). He said the ministers and Solana could issue a "recommendation" on how to proceed on the issue, or file an official report to the UN Security Council. Foreign ministry spokesman Martin Jaeger told reporters later that the issue of possible UN sanctions would not be discussed before Thursday's meeting. Jaeger said that Steinmeier had spoken with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov on the issue Tuesday and that Berlin and Washington were in "constant consultations". Iran on Tuesday removed IAEA seals from its Natanz nuclear plant, which will allow it to resume sensitive nuclear research. Tehran argues its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only but many countries fear it is seeking to develop nuclear weapons. Straw first mentioned the possibility of a EU-3 foreign ministers' meeting this week on Tuesday and said that referring Iran to the UN Security Council -- a potential prelude to sanctions -- would be "top of the agenda". "We'll make a decision then ... but I think it's clear the direction in which we're thinking," he told reporters in London. Straw said Tehran's move amounted to "yet another breach" of IAEA resolutions and a November 2004 agreement that the Islamic republic signed with London, Paris and Berlin. Steinmeier said Tuesday that Germany had asked the IAEA to review Iran's nuclear activities and would determine with its European partners whether "the EU-3's negotiations still have a foundation". Meanwhile the United States called Iran's move to resume atomic research a "serious escalation" of their nuclear row and threatened referral to the Security Council if Iran failed to keep its international obligations and did not show a willingness to negotiate with the EU-3. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said Wednesday that Iran's decision to resume sensitive nuclear research was "cause for alarm".

Army Begins Discharging Reservists Who Disobeyed Orders By ROBERT BURNS AP 10 Jan 06 WASHINGTON - The Army took initial steps Monday to expel dozens of reservists who failed to report for active duty, in effect warning hundreds of others that they too could be penalized if they don't heed orders to return to active service. The proceedings mark a turning point in the Army's struggle to deploy thousands of soldiers from the Individual Ready Reserve, a rarely mobilized group of reservists, to war zones in which some have resisted serving. These are soldiers who had previously served on active duty but not completed their eight-year service obligation. Unlike those in the National Guard or Army Reserve, they are not required to stay in training. Many have requested a delay in returning to service, have asked to be exempted or have ignored their orders. The Army began mobilizing them in the summer of 2004, reflecting the enormous strain it felt in providing enough soldiers for Iraq at a time when it was becoming apparent that no early withdrawal was likely. Since mid-2004, more than 5,700 IRR soldiers have been issued mobilization orders, while another 1,600 were excused from duty. Of those soldiers who were sent orders, 3,954 reported for duty as of Dec. 11, while at least 1,283 others have asked for a delay or are in some stage of negotiations as to their callup, the Army said. There are 463 IRR soldiers, who had been sent orders but have not reported, including 80 that now face discharge and 383 who have yet to be located. The Army announced that the 80 soldiers will face review panels, known as separation boards, although the number may grow if more are located. If the panels conclude they intentionally did not obey a mobilization order, they would face one of three levels of discharge from the service: honorable, general or other-than-honorable. They do not face criminal charges. When the Army initially found that it was facing resistance from some IRR soldiers who did not want to get back in uniform, there was talk of declaring them AWOL and pursuing criminal charges against them. But that was deemed too harsh and the Army spent many months trying to contact those who were ignoring their orders. In its announcement Monday, the Army said that in addition to those who have openly refused to report for duty, those who do not respond to repeated communications from the Army may face discharge proceedings. All of the 80 who now face discharge proceedings are enlisted soldiers, according to Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty, an Army spokesman. It was not immediately clear, he said, how long it had been since the Army took discharge action against IRR soldiers who refused to be mobilized, but it probably has been more than 15 years. Of the three possible types of discharge that an IRR soldier may face in these proceedings, the most severe is "other than honorable." While a soldier given an honorable or general discharge would continue to be eligible for payment for accrued leave, and for health benefits and burial in an Army national cemetery, those given an "other than honorable" discharge would not be. Two even more severe types of discharge - bad conduct and dishonorable - will not be considered in the IRR cases, the Army said. Last November the Army started a new policy that ended the practice of involuntary callups of officers in the IRR. The policy change affects 15,000 officers who completed their eight-year military service obligation but chose to stay in the IRR. These officers can now avoid being forced to serve on active duty, but only if they resign their commission. Previously, an officer could not resign once ordered to active duty. The last time members of the IRR were called to active duty was 1990, when nearly 20,000 were mobilized for the Gulf War against Iraq. In recent years, most in the IRR had come to assume they would never be called up. But the strains of simultaneous conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have forced the Army to mobilize IRR to fill certain vacancies. Copyright 2006 The Associated Press.

Army Meets December Recruiting Goal By LOLITA C. BALDOR Associated Press Writer January 11, 2006 WASHINGTON - The Army exceeded its monthly recruiting goal in December but must still pick up the pace to meet its target of 80,000 for the budget year ending Sept. 30. December was the seventh consecutive month that the Army met its goal. Army officials have said they expect this to be an extremely difficult year for recruiting, in part because of the Iraq war. Last year, the service fell 6,600 troops short of its goal of 80,000. So far, in the first three months of this budget year, the Army has recruited just 11,500 soldiers and will need to do better in coming months to meet the target for the year. Part of the problem with the first quarter is that the December goal is just a fraction of the other monthly targets. It only required the Army to recruit 700 soldiers last month, compared to the November target of 5,600. According to Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty, the December goal is low because no recruits are sent to basic training during that month. So only soldiers who have previously served in the Army — and don't have to go to boot camp — are recruited in December. A year ago, the goal for December was just 400. The Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps also exceeded their monthly recruiting goals — which were all two to three times the Army's number. All four military services also met or exceeded their reenlistment goals for the month. According to the Pentagon, the Army recruited 741 soldiers in December, 6 percent more than its goal. The Navy recruited 2,022, just 1 percent more than its goal; the Air Force recruited 2,209, also 1 percent more than its goal; and the Marine Corps recruited 1,717, 6 percent more than its goal. Four of the military reserves met or exceeded their recruitment goals. The Navy Reserve and the Air National Guard have been routinely falling short of their targets in recent months. Comment: It wasn't too hard for the Army to meet its December recruiting goal, since the target was 700 soldiers - compared to November's target of 5600 soldiers.

Ex-Guantanamo prisoner freed by authorities AFP Jan 11, 2006 PARIS - A Frenchman held in detention since being returned to France after his release from the US base in Guantanamo 18 months ago was freed this week, officials said. Nizar Sassi was freed on Monday following a request lodged this month by his lawyers and a decision by France's top anti-terrorist judge, Jean-Louis Bruguiere, that Sassi's incarceration was no longer necessary, they said. Sassi was taken into custody in France in July 2004 after spending two years in Guantanamo, a US detention facility holding hundreds of men of various nationalities deemed terrorist suspects. He was released from the US base with three other French citizens, one of whom was freed from French custody last July after his lawyers, too, pushed his case. Two other Frenchmen repatriated from Guantanamo in March 2005 remain in detention, while a third, also returned the same month, was freed.

Hamza preached hatred, court told Staff and agencies Wednesday January 11, 2006 The Muslim cleric Abu Hamza encouraged his followers to murder "non-believers", the Old Bailey heard today at the start of his trial. Opening the prosecution case, barrister David Perry told the jury they would hear tapes and watch video of the 47-year-old cleric "preaching hatred". Mr Perry said that Mr Hamza told his followers that that "as part of the religious duty to fight in the cause of Allah, it was part of the religious duty to kill". Mr Hamza, 47, from west London, faces a total of 15 race hate charges, including nine charges under the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 alleging he solicited others at public meetings to murder Jews and other non-Muslims. Mr Perry said that Mr Hamza was a well-known preacher or speaker in the Muslim community who frequently gave talks at meetings and delivered sermons at the Finsbury Park mosque in north London before it closed in 2003. The barrister said the "prosecution's case, in a sentence, was that that the defendant ... was preaching murder and hatred in these talks". He said that as a spiritual leader it might have been expected that Mr Hamza would regularly give his listeners a "message of charity and compassion". But Mr Perry told the jury the speeches with which the court would be concerned contained "very little of these matters". Mr Perry said Mr Hamza possessed a book called the Encyclopaedia of Afghani Jihad, which ran to 10 volumes and described how to make explosives. The prosecuting counsel said the book also "explained assassination methods and ... how a terrorist unit, or a military unit, can most effectively operate." Mr Perry said: "What the prosecution say about that encyclopaedia is that it was a manual for terrorism. It was a manual that would assist and be designed to assist any person who is likely to be engaged in preparing or actually carrying out a terrorist act." The prosecutor said that, for example, the book explained how to make explosives and how a terrorist unit or a military unit can most effectively operate. Mr Hamza faces a charge relating to the encyclopaedia under section 58 of the Terrorism Act, which accuses him of possession of a document, which contained information "of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism". 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 Mr Hamza was in possession of video and audio recordings, which he intended to distribute to stir up racial hatred. It was some of those cassettes that formed the basis of the prosecution's case, Mr Perry said. The lawyer said: "You will hear the tapes and we will hear that the defendant, Sheik Abu Hamza, encouraged his listeners, whether they were an audience at a private meeting or a congregation at the mosque, to believe that it was part of a religious duty to fight in the cause of Allah, God, and as part of the religious duty to fight in the cause of Allah, it was part of the religious duty to kill." Mr Perry continued: "The people they were being encouraged to kill, put shortly, were non-believers - those who did not believe in, or who were not a follower or even a true follower of Islam." The counsel said Mr Hamza was born in Egypt in 1958 but had lived in the UK for a number of years and was now a British citizen. Mr Perry said the defendant had a number of aliases. He was known as Mustafa Kamel Mustafa, Abu Hamza and Abu Hamza Al Masri. "There is nothing sinister or improper about that, but I will call him either Sheik or Mr Hamza," Mr Perry said, explaining that a Sheik was a religious leader in the Muslim world. Before Mr Perry began to open the prosecution's case, the judge warned the jury to ignore what they had read or heard about Mr Hamza in the media. "This man is someone who has been the object of a fair amount of press coverage - much of it critical," said Mr Justice Hughes. "You are not interested in what anyone has accurately or inaccurately said about him in the past." Mr Hamza denies all of the charges. The offences are alleged to have been committed before May 2004. Today Mr Hamza, who has no hands and only one eye, sat flanked by three police officers in the dock. The bearded, bespectacled cleric wore a light blue shirt and trousers. The trial continues.

Osama and the odd Israelis xymphora 10 Jan 2006 From the 'Conspiracy Theories' section of Aljazeera.com, an article entitled "FBI evidence of Mossad involvement in September 11 attacks on the U.S.?!": "An article by reporter Jim Galloway, published on The Austin American-Statesman on Nov. 25, 2001, stated that the FBI had evidence suggesting that the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence, along with some rogue American and foreign spy agencies, may be deeply involved in or even entirely responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks as well as other acts of terrorism against the United States." The Galloway article doesn't actually go that far, but is carefully written so you can draw your own conclusions about why the New Jersey moving industry is such an attractive career prospect for recent Israeli military veterans (and you might also wonder why the anthrax attacks were mailed from an area in New Jersey near where an Israeli intelligence unit is allegedly stationed). The Al Jazeera article goes on to discuss the first post-9-11 interview with Osama bin Laden, in which he unambiguously stated: "I have already said that I am not involved in the 11 September attacks in the United States. As a Muslim, I try my best to avoid telling a lie. I had no knowledge of these attacks, nor do I consider the killing of innocent women, children and other humans as an appreciable act. Islam strictly forbids causing harm to innocent women, children and other people. Such a practice is forbidden even in the course of a battle." and: "The United States should try to trace the perpetrators of these attacks within itself; the people who are a part of the U.S. system, but are dissenting against it. Or those who are working for some other system; persons who want to make the present century as a century of conflict between Islam and Christianity so that their own civilization, nation, country, or ideology could survive." and: "Then there are intelligence agencies in the U.S., which require billions of dollars worth of funds from the Congress and the government every year. This [funding issue] was not a big problem till the existence of the former Soviet Union but after that the budget of these agencies has been in danger. They needed an enemy. So, they first started propaganda against Usama and Taleban and then this incident happened. You see, the Bush Administration approved a budget of 40 billion dollars. Where will this huge amount go? It will be provided to the same agencies, which need huge funds and want to exert their importance. Now they will spend the money for their expansion and for increasing their importance. I will give you an example. Drug smugglers from all over the world are in contact with the U.S. secret agencies. These agencies do not want to eradicate narcotics cultivation and trafficking because their importance will be diminished. The people in the U.S. Drug Enforcement Department are encouraging drug trade so that they could show performance and get millions of dollars worth of budget. General Noriega was made a drug baron by the CIA and, in need, he was made a scapegoat. In the same way, whether it is President Bush or any other U.S. President, they cannot bring Israel to justice for its human rights abuses or to hold it accountable for such crimes. What is this? Is it not that there exists a government within the government in the United Sates? That secret government must be asked as to who carried out the attacks." Anyone looking at the matter objectively has to reach much the same conclusion as the Al Jazeera article: "U.S. intelligence analysts believe that Israel benefited most from the September 11 attacks. Israel has been widely criticized by the West for its aggression against the Palestinians. Israeli occupation soldiers were, and still are, shown on international TV news in heated exchanges with Palestinian youths armed with nothing more than stones. Israeli tanks bulldoze Palestinian farms and homes, and human rights groups complain that Palestinian detainees are tortured and abused in Israeli jails. But after 9/11, things changed dramatically. Sympathy for the Palestinians vanished. The Arabs were universally portrayed as the 'bad guys.'" The beneficiaries of September 11 were the Bush Administration itself, the Pentagon and the military-industrial complex, various intelligence agencies, and Israel. With every day of Bush misrule we learn of more corruption and deception. Is it all that difficult to contemplate that the whole Official Story of 9-11 is just another lie?

Ukraine Denies Existence of Secret CIA Prisons Created: 10.01.2006 17:28 MSK (GMT 3), Updated: 17:28 MSK MosNews The Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) has denied the existence of secret CIA prisons on the country’s territory, local media reported. A recently leaked Swiss intelligence report says the CIA kept 23 people in a secret prison in Romania and maintained similar facilities in Bulgaria, Ukraine, Macedonia and Kosovo. A spokesperson for the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry also said the very raising of the issue is absurd. The Council of Europe and several European Union countries have been investigating reports of secret CIA-prisons in Ukraine and several other countries. The leak to Switzerland’s SonntagsBlick newspaper was based on an intercepted fax sent by Egypt’s foreign ministry to Egypt’s embassy in London in November. Swiss officials said the report was genuine and that its publication had led to an internal inquiry. The news comes after months of controversy over the U.S.’s use of intensive interrogation techniques and extra-judicial abductions, and allegations that it operated secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe. Poland and Romania have also denied that they have hosted any such facilities. NATO, which has a 16,000-strong force in Kosovo, also denies that it has run any secret prisons in the province. Comment: Well, they would deny it, wouldn't they? As they would deny that the whole Orange revolution was backed, planned, orchestrated, and financed by Washington.

Ukraine parliament votes to sack gov't over Russia gas deal AFP Tue Jan 10, 11:40 AM ET KIEV - The Ukrainian parliament has voted to sack the government following criticism of its deal with Russia on natural gas pricing. Lawmakers approved a resolution of no confidence in the government of Prime Minister Yury Yekhanurov by a comfortable margin with 250 in favor, well in excess of the 226 threshold needed. The immediately binding resolution came as a surprise even if it was expected that Yekhanurov would face angry criticism in the parliamentary session over the gas price deal. Two former prime ministers and erstwhile political foes, Yulia Tymoshenko and Viktor Yanukovich, had both criticized the deal which under which Ukraine agreed to pay Russia twice as much for natural gas. But the speaker of the parliament, Volodymyr Litvin, indicated earlier Tuesday that a vote of no confidence had been virtually ruled out. President Viktor Yushchenko was en route to the Kazakh capital Astana to attend an inauguration ceremony for President Nursultan Nazarbayev when the vote occurred. There was no immediate comment from his press office. Yushchenko had been expected to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in Astana, and the gas price issue was thought to have been among the subjects to be discussed. Earlier in Tuesday's session, Yekhanurov defended his government's deal with Russia, telling an angry parliament that it served Ukraine's national interests. He promised that it would not lead to higher prices for consumers anytime soon. "In its actions, the government was guided, and will continue to be guided, by the national interests of Ukraine," Yekhanurov said in a speech before parliament. He said that under the controversial January 4 deal Ukraine would pay a "far lower" price for gas than other eastern European countries, and that the agreement "makes any sudden increase in the price of gas impossible" without the approval of the Ukrainian government. Under the terms of the accord, reached last Wednesday, Ukraine agreed to buy natural gas from both Russia and Turkmenistan through an intermediary company at a rate of 95 dollars per 1,000 cubic meters. That is nearly double the 50 dollars Ukraine paid for Russian gas until January 1, but taking into account cheap gas from Turkemenistan it is still far less than the 230 dollars the Russian state-run gas giant Gazprom has insisted on for its own gas. Gazprom had justified the increase by saying it was in line with "international market rates," which average 240 dollars per 1,000 cubic meters elsewhere in Europe. Many observers, however, saw the sudden increase as a Kremlin-inspired effort to undermine Yushchenko and his government ahead of parliamentary elections in March by forcing a substantial natural gas price hike onto businesses and households. Yekhanurov assured that this would not happen despite the agreed price increase. "Gas prices for the population will remain at their current level" for the time being, he said. Yekhanurov's defense of the gas price deal followed sharp criticism from a number of top Ukrainian lawmakers.

Putin, Yushchenko Meet in Wake of Russia-Ukraine Gas Crisis Created: 11.01.2006 13:35 MSK (GMT 3), Updated: 13:35 MSK MosNews Russia’s Vladimir Putin met his Ukrainian counterpart Viktor Yuschenko in Kazakhstan Wednesday, for the first time since a dispute over gas between the two countries. At the meeting Vladimir Putin expressed belief that Russia and Ukraine have found a mutually acceptable solution to the gas dispute, the Interfax news agency reported. The two countries “went through a difficult patch, but in the end specialists arrived at a correct and mutually beneficial solution to the issue,” Putin said at the Wednesday meeting. “Russia and Ukraine have gone through a difficult and turbulent period in the past couple of months, which, however, has proved mutually advantageous.” We have developed clear and understandable principles. Perhaps it was one of the most complicated periods in our relations, but I would like to congratulate all on resolving these complicated problems through strenuous effort,“ Yushchenko said. Putin said he would be happy to meet with Yushchenko to discuss ”the gas issue and other serious aspects of cooperation.“ Earlier on Wednesday, Yushchenko met Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev. After the meeting Ukraine’s president said the Ukrainian parliament’s decision to sack the government was ”illegitimate“ and aimed at destabilizing the country, AFP reported. ”This decision is incomprehensible and illegitimate,“ Yushchenko told reporters after a meeting with Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev on Wednesday. Yuschenko and Vladimir Putin were attending Nazarbayev’s inauguration ”This decision means only one thing: the destabilization of the situation“ in the country, Yushchenko continued. The Ukrainian leader said the decision was ”fairly destructive“ but added: ”I don’t see a tragedy in it. Ukrainian voters deserve stability. This experience will increase the quality of political life in Ukraine.“ ”Ukraine does not deserve this 80 days ahead of the elections,“ Yushchenko said, but added that the vote came as no surprise since the parliament had been elected under Ukraine’s former pro-Moscow president, Leonid Kuchma. Tuesday’s parliamentary rebellion was led by former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko and Viktor Yanukovich, the Ukrainian leader’s Moscow-backed rival from the peaceful Orange Revolution in 2004 and also a former head of the government. Observers say both Tymoshenko and Yanukovich will make major gains in March parliamentary elections that could make or break Yushchenko’s leadership. Ukraine last week agreed to pay a higher price for gas imports from Russia, though not as much as had been demanded by Russia’s state-owned energy giant Gazprom in a bitter price dispute between the two neighbouring countries that led Russia to cut supplies on Jan. 1.

MPs given free vote on smoking Matthew Tempest, political correspondent Wednesday January 11, 2006 A complete ban on smoking in all English pubs became a near certainty this morning, as the government executed a major U-turn, granting MPs a free vote on a smoking ban in all pubs. That effectively abandons the government's initial position from just last year of a partial ban depending on whether the pub served food. After rebel MPs, headed by the Labour chair of the health select committee, Keith Barron, last night tabled an amendment to the health bill, Downing Street today announced it would allow all Labour MPs, including minsters, a free vote on the issue. Although some libertarian Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs are likely to vote against a full ban, that concession and the strength of feeling on Labour benches, means a total ban is now almost inevitable. The Scottish parliament has already legislated for its own complete ban, following the example of Ireland, and the health bill allows for the Welsh assembly to decide for itself whether or not to implement the ban in Wales - which it is certain to do. But after the prime minister, Tony Blair, signalled at the weekend in an Observer interview that smoking was "not a core issue" in terms of principle, it was always likely Number 10 would allow a free vote, rather than force a confrontation when other more contentious items - such as the education bill - are on the horizon. A major cabinet row, principally between Patricia Hewitt and John Reid, broke out last year over the smoking ban, with Mr Reid's position prevailing. That meant that, although the smoking ban would include all public enclosed spaces, pubs which served prepared food would be exempt. Ms Hewitt later made it clear that a review of the legislation in two years' time was likely to entail a full ban. The prime minister's official spokesman announced the backtrack today, but said the PM would not be disclosing in advance if, or how, he would vote when MPs debate the issue next month. Earlier today, parliament's joint committee on human rights said the exemption could also be incompatible with human rights legislation because it discriminated against staff in different areas. Critics also argued that partial ban would further exacerbate health problems between rich and poor, with working-class, saloon-style bars continuing to allow smoking, whilst upmarket gastropubs or family-orientated public houses banned it. Last year the health select committee branded a partial ban as "unfair, unjust, inefficient and unworkable". The government's chief medical officer, Sir Liam Donaldson, revealed last year he had considered quitting over the watering down of the ban. The 10 MPs who have tabled the amendment come from all three main parties, as well as the independent GP MP, Dr Richard Taylor. The cross-party amendment will now be considered in a couple of weeks when it returns for its report stage in the Commons. Last month, 64 Labour MPs signed a motion calling for a free vote. Yesterday a Guardian survey of Labour backbenchers found almost 70% wanted a total ban. The government has agreed to stop smoking in all pubs and clubs in Northern Ireland, and the Scottish Executive has ordered a ban. The health bill gives the Welsh assembly the right to decide for itself whether to implement a ban it has already twice approved in principle. The shadow health secretary, Andrew Lansley, welcomed the government's U-turn. He said: "We are delighted the government has followed the Conservative party's lead and allowed its MPs a free vote on smoking in public places. We now look forward to debating this issue freely in parliament, and to a workable, fair and effective outcome which protects children, staff and the public from the clear dangers of second-hand tobacco smoke." Comment: A complete ban. No one even suggests that maybe some pubs could be designated smoking pubs, allowing both non-smoking and smoking pubs so that there was a choice. Certainly, people who do wish to avoid tobacco smoke should have that option. But why the need to ban it outright and prevent smokers from being able to congregate? No! We have to ban it outright! It's for your own good! Stomp, stomp, stomp.

Pub bans grandfather's trilby hat Colin Osbourne BBC News 11/01/2006 A trilby-wearing great-grandfather was ordered to remove his hat when he tried to buy a drink in a city centre pub. Colin Osborne, 64, was told by staff at the Monument pub in Hereford he would have to take his hat off as it obscured his face from CCTV cameras. Pub chain Greene King has introduced the policy for security reasons. It applies to all hats and hooded tops. Mr Osborne said: "I was an elderly man having a non-alcoholic drink but I was told there are no exceptions." Coat and hat Mr Osborne told BBC News he had worn a trilby for 20 years. "When I started as a journalist it used to be de-facto to have a belted coat and a trilby and in those days I had both," he said. He had called at the pub after work when he was asked to remove the hat. "I was annoyed, I was put out and I was surprised. I couldn't understand why my poor old trilby should offend anyone," he continued. The manager explained to him it was a pub rule to enable CCTV cameras recording any incident in the pub to see people's faces. Mr Osborne said he had some sympathy for the rule. "But on the other hand I think pubs and breweries should ask themselves who is under the hat - individuality must retain some significance even in this nanny state in which we live," he said. [...]

Britain's Blair calls for respect then admits smacking kids AFP Jan 10 9:02 PM US/Eastern British Prime Minister Tony Blair spent Tuesday promoting respect in British society by tackling problem parents and their unruly offspring -- and then admitted to smacking his older children. Blair's admission came during a BBC television face-the-public session on his "respect agenda" measures, intended to tackle anti-social behaviour -- a core theme of his third and final term in office. The 52-year-old was quizzed by the presenter about his own parental discipline. "Do you smack your kids? Did you?... Did it cause a problem?" he was asked. Blair, who has four children aged five to 21, replied: "No, I think, funnily enough, I'm probably different with my youngest than I was with my older ones." Misunderstanding his reply, the presenter said: "What, you do smack the younger one?" Blair said: "No, no, it was actually the other way round but... I think, look, this smacking... I think everybody knows the difference between smacking a kid and abusing a child." Blair's government stopped short of a total ban on smacking in England and Wales a year ago. Smacks that leave marks are punishable by up to five years in prison. As part of the war on "yobbish" behaviour, problem families could be evicted from their homes in the event of "significant, persistent and serious nuisance" and lose their welfare handouts, under powers now used on drug dens. Loutish families could be forced into rehabilitation courses and moved to a secure local authority "sin bin". The proposals also include a National Parenting Academy where frustrated parents would be given help in dealing with out-of-control offspring. Blair pledged that restoring respect in Britain would be at the heart of his agenda when his Labour Party was re-elected in May last year. He said on the BBC programme: "If you're living in a street where you've got a family that's causing absolute hell for you and the other families in the street, you want something done about it." "It's about saying: 'I'm sorry, if your family is out of control and causing hell for everybody else in the local community we cannot sit there and simply say nothing's going to happen to you." Blair earlier blasted graffiti with a power hose on an estate in Swindon, southwest England. The Daily Telegraph said Wednesday that the measures "will entirely fail to frighten the yobbish fraternity" while The Independent said Blair's "heroic rhetoric" on fighting yobs was little more than "gesture politics". The Guardian said "Blair has launched a dangerous assault on a basic liberty" by plumbing new depths in its "disregard for civil rights". He contrasted life in Britain with that experienced by his father growing up in a poor part of Glasgow in the 1930s, and his grandfather's generation before that. "The one thing that would shock them, where they would say society has changed for the worse is in that loss of respect in local communities and on the street," he said.

Japan fingerprinting plans spark opposition By Isabel Reynolds Reuters Wed Jan 11, 2:59 AM ET TOKYO - Japan's plans to fingerprint foreigners at immigration checkpoints, aimed to prevent terrorism, risk breaching human rights and invading individuals' privacy, a lawyers' group said on Wednesday. Stricter checks at immigration, including the compulsory photographing and fingerprinting of foreigners on arrival, are laid down in a revised immigration bill the Justice Ministry will present to parliament in the next few months, Isao Negishi of the ministry's Immigration Bureau said in an interview. The revised law would allow Japan to deport any arriving foreigner it considers to be a terrorist, Negishi said. A Japanese newspaper reported last month that a member of a radical Islamist group banned in Pakistan had entered Japan two years ago to try to establish a foothold in the country. A police report also released last month said the country was at risk of attack because of its close links with the United States. Japan's Federation of Bar Associations said in a statement on its Web site that the plans should be abandoned because the fingerprinting of foreigners violated a constitutional requirement to treat people with respect. The use of biometrics -- identifying individuals through techniques such as retinal scanning, face recognition and fingerprinting -- raises questions about privacy and control of personal information, the lawyers' group said. "The proposal says the information will be used for criminal investigations as well," said Masashi Ichikawa, the deputy head of the committee on human rights for the lawyers' group. "So the authorities could match footage from CCTV cameras to digitised pictures to work out exactly where an individual had been on a particular day," Ichikawa added. "We don't think that should happen to people just because they are foreign. Japanese people do bad things too." The lawyers' group also expressed concern over the difficulty of defining "terrorism." The Immigration Bureau's Negishi defended the constitutionality of the proposed law. "We are aware that this information must be treated extremely carefully," he said. "But we do not consider the act of taking fingerprints a violation of the constitution in itself." He added that the issue of whether an individual could be labeled a terrorist would likely be decided by discussion between various government agencies. Fingerprinting and photographs were introduced at U.S. immigration checkpoints in 2004. But the issue is a particularly sensitive one in Japan, where local governments were long required to fingerprint all resident foreigners, including "special permanent residents" of Korean and Chinese origin. Many of these residents are descendants of those brought to Japan as forced labor before and during World War Two. Local government fingerprinting was halted in 2000 and special permanent residents are to be excluded from the new rules.

Appeals Court Upholds 55 Year Mandatory Sentence TalkLeft 9 Jan 06 The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals today upheld the gun-nutty 55 year mandatory sentence of 27 year old Weldon Angelos, who had no prior felony convictions. Angelos was in possession of a gun, that he neither brandished, used nor displayed, when he conducted three marijuana sales. The total amount of pot involved was 24 ounces. "Four former U.S. attorneys general and nearly 160 other ex-Justice Department officials and federal judges" filed an amicus brief on his behalf, arguing the sentence was so excessive as to constitute cruel and unusual punishment. In upholding the sentence, .... the appeals court judges said they agreed with prosecutors who said the sentence was appropriate for Angelos' convictions and for other behavior involving drugs, guns and gang activity that prosecutors had evidence of, but did not charge him with. "Although it is true that Angelos had no significant adult criminal history, that appears to have been the result of good fortune rather than Angelos' lack of involvement in criminal activity," said the ruling, written by Judge Mary Beck Briscoe. As for how the sentence was computed, Under the law he was convicted of violating three times, a first offense carries a mandatory minimum five-year sentence, and each subsequent conviction carries a mandatory minimum 25-year sentence that must run back-to-back with any other sentences. Last year's landmark decision in U.S. v. Booker did not affect the case, since it was not about the sentencing guidelines, but mandatory minimum sentences. FAMM (Families Against Mandatory Minimums) has a webpage devoted to Mr. Angelos' case, with links to decisions, briefs and news articles.

Texas River Mysteriously Turns Reddish Orange Local6.com 6:29 pm EST January 10, 2006 Investigators in Dallas are trying to determine what has caused the water in the Trinity River to turn reddish orange twice in one week, according to a Local 6 News report. Authorities said the colored water was first reported the day the University of Texas played for the NCAA National Championship in the Rose Bowl. However, officials cannot determine if the two events are related, Local 6 News reported. The orange water apparently came from treated sewage that was dumped back into the Trinity River. Officials at the Trinity River Authority said they are not sure how it made it into the water supply. The Environmental Agency in Texas has reassured nearby residents that the drinking water is safe. Investigators said contaminating water is illegal and they will continue to search for the cause, according to the report. Comment: What about some sort of outgassing related to seismic activity? Think about the following series of flashbacks and articles; it seems something may be going on underneath the US...

Flashback: Massive Crack Opens In Earth In Texas By First Coast News Staff 22 June 05 CLAUDE, TX -- A massive crack in the earth opened up last week in Claude, Texas and it's creating a stir among geologists. Geologists said Tuesday the crack was a joint in the earth's crust. They believe the opening is the result of a weak point in the joint where one spot slips away from the other. Some parts measure more than 30-feet deep and it drained what used to be a pond. Experts say earth cracks are common but the size of the crack in Claude is not.

Flashback: Fires Burn Hundreds of Thousands of Acres By SHEILA FLYNN Associated Press Writer 3 Jan 2006 Firefighters faced windier, warmer weather Tuesday as they battled fast-moving blazes that have virtually destroyed some small towns and charred hundreds of thousands of acres of drought-stricken Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico. Since Dec. 27, flames racing across grassland and farmland have destroyed more than 250 buildings. Four deaths were reported last week in Texas and Oklahoma. On Monday, authorities went house to house in a search for victims in burned-out Texas towns including Ringgold. A weekend blaze destroyed most of the ranch-and-cattle community of about 100 people near the Oklahoma line. Fifty other homes and 40,000 acres were torched as wind swept the fire 13 miles from Ringgold to Nocona. Coylee Grimsley and her two sons watched their home burn just hours after she had cooked a large meal to celebrate the new year. "We was enjoying it, and here come the flames," she said. "If you'd been there, you'd have thought the world was going to end." One of two major fires near San Angelo in West Texas _ a 40,000-acre blaze in Sterling County _ had been contained, authorities said. Fifteen structures were destroyed and two people suffered minor injuries. The other major blaze in the San Angelo area, a 50,000-acre fire with a 50-mile perimeter in nearby Irion and Reagan counties, was about 70 percent contained Tuesday. No damages or evacuations were reported. A 35,000-acre blaze near the small towns of Carbon, Gorman and Desdemona had been beaten back by late Monday to just a few hundred acres of mostly open ranch land, said Mark Pipkin of the Eastland Fire Department. All major wildfires in Oklahoma were declared under control late Monday thanks to calmer wind and higher humidity, but crews were preparing for the worst. Highs up to 80 were possible Tuesday with only 10 to 20 percent humidity and wind up to 25 mph, the National Weather Service said. "We will make sure that all the hot spots and smoldering areas are put out for the simple fact that if the wind picks up, we'll be in trouble," said Dan Ware, spokesman for New Mexico's state Forestry Division. The weather service issued a "red flag warning" for Texas on Tuesday because of the expected heat, low humidity and wind. Computer models showed no rain soon, said Jesse Moore, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Fort Worth. He said the region's last appreciable rain was about a quarter-inch on Dec. 20. Oklahoma is more than a foot behind its normal rainfall of about 36 inches for this time of year. "We're not out of danger yet," said Oklahoma Gov. Brad Henry. "We can't let our guard down." Since the rash of wildfires began in Texas, more than 200,000 acres of land has been charred, 250 homes destroyed and three people killed, the Texas Forest Service says. Four fires in southeastern New Mexico had blackened more than 53,000 acres of grassland and burned 11 houses and two businesses near Hobbs. The flames forced the evacuation of 200 to 300 people on the city's fringe _ including about 170 from two Hobbs nursing homes. All but about 50 had returned home by midday Monday, authorities said. Since Nov. 1, Oklahoma wildfires have covered more than 331,000 acres and destroyed 220 homes and businesses, said Albert Ashwood, Oklahoma's emergency management director. One person was killed. With his grandparents' Oklahoma City home in smoldering ruins, 10- year-old Cameron Batson found something to be thankful for: He pointed out the basketball goal in the driveway that remained intact after the three-level brick home was turned into ashen rubble. "We had some good times here," the boy said Monday, his voice cracking with emotion. "It was a pretty house." ___

Flashback: Mysterious Hot Spot Sparks Fire July 11, 2005 KRON4news SANTA BARBARA, Calif. -- Scientists are puzzled by a mysterious Los Padres National Forest hot spot where 400-degree ground ignited a wildfire. The hot spot was discovered by fire crews putting out a three-acre fire last summer in the forest's Dick Smith Wilderness. "They saw fissures in the ground where they could feel a lot of heat coming out," Los Padres geologist Allen King said. "It was not characteristic of a normal fire." Fire investigators went back to the canyon days later and stuck a candy thermometer into the ground. It hit the top of the scale, at 400 degrees. A dozen scientists, including University of California, Santa Barbara, mineralogist Jim Boles, have been looking for answers since August. Robert Mariner, a U.S. Geological Survey hydrologist who studies volcanic gas vents at Mt. Shasta, Mt. Hood and Mt. Rainier was also called in. "When I heard about the candy thermometer, I was amazed," Mariner said, noting that the temperature of the volcanic vents he studies is typically 200 degrees, around the boiling point of water. "I thought these guys were pulling my leg." With the help of an air reconnaissance flight and thermal infrared imaging, scientists found that the hot spot covers about three acres. The hottest spot was 11 feet underground, at 584 degrees. They found no oil and gas deposits or vents nearby and no significant deposits of coal. The Geiger counter readings were normal for radioactivity, and there was no evidence of explosions or volcanic activity. One possible explanation still under study is that an earthquake fault may be the source of the heat. "We can't rule out anything definitely yet," King said.

Magnitude 4.9 Earthquake off the Coast of Oregon USGS 2006 January 11 10:02:36 UTC A light earthquake occurred at 10:02:36 (UTC) on Wednesday, January 11, 2006. The magnitude 4.9 event has been located OFF THE COAST OF OREGON. The hypocentral depth was estimated to be 30 km (18 miles). (This event has been reviewed by a seismologist.)

Flashback: Bulge in Oregon shows no signs of bursting Thursday, December 15, 2005 · Last updated 5:04 p.m. PT THE ASSOCIATED PRESS SISTERS, Ore. -- The swelling bulge on the west flank of the South Sister volcano is slowing and geologists say there are no signs that the uplifted region will erupt in the near future. The latest statistics from instruments monitoring the bulge indicate that the uplift has slowed to about half its former rate of an inch or so a year. Geologists think the bulge is being created by magma being pushed into a chamber about four or five miles underground, and its slowing means less of the liquid rock is flowing upward. They don't know why the rate of magma has seemed to ease. "It's possible it's slacking off, but over the coming years the rate will change," said geologist Willie Scott of the at the Cascades Volcano Observatory in Vancouver, Wash. "That's why we want to continue to monitor it as closely as we can, because we're seeing a phenomenon that we haven't been able to study before and we want to see where it goes." Scientists have monitored the Central Oregon volcano since 2001, when a comparison of newly acquired satellite measurements showed that a 10-mile-wide chunk of the mountain had risen more than four inches over the preceding four years. Since then, numerous instruments have been set up around the mountain, and geologists are using three different techniques to measure ground movement. The deformity is centered just west of the mountain, but the affected area stretches as far northwest as Dee Wright Observatory on the Old McKenzie Highway and as far southeast as Devil's Lake on the Cascades Lake Highway. A swarm of more than 300 tiny earthquakes struck the area in March 2004, but the bulge has since been quiet. Only five quakes were recorded this year, none with a magnitude greater than 1.5. By comparison, thousands of earthquakes as strong as magnitude 4 or 5 struck the area around Mount St. Helens in the months leading up to its eruption. "There are times when there's deformation like this that goes on and leads to eruption," Scott said. "And then there's times when the deformation just reverses and goes away. The possibilities are endless."

Flashback: Dam fails in southeast Missouri; situation called 'very dangerous' 14 Dec 05 AP LESTERVILLE, Mo. - The Upper Taum Sauk Lake Dam failed this morning, causing large amounts of water to move rapidly downstream and creating what officials called a "very dangerous situation." The break occurred at 6:24 a.m. at the dam in Reynolds County, about 120 miles southwest of St. Louis. A family of five was rescued, and one person was missing, Reynolds County Sheriff's dispatcher Ginger Bell said. But she said authorities have not yet been able to get to nearby Johnson Shut-Ins State Park. A National Weather Service bulletin warned that the water would move rapidly downstream along the Black River, creating a "dangerous and life-threatening situation." Residents of Lesterville and elsewhere downstream from the dam were urged to move quickly to higher ground. The break occurred after heavy rains overnight. The Weather Service said small creeks and streams, country roads and farmland will be flooded. Reynolds County has a population of about 6,700 and sits in the northwest portion of the Ozark Foothills Region. Comment: This is a dam that was recently cited as follows: International Group Declares AmerenUE's Taum Sauk Plant an Engineering "Milestone" That was in September of 2005. So, why is this dam failing? The article suggests that it is due to heavy rainfall. However, another article, found in the UK Guardian gives the lie to that idea. Person Missing After Missouri Dam Fails This article tells us: "National Weather Service meteorologist Joe Pedigo said rain was not a factor in the break. The region received only about one-tenth of an inch of rain overnight, he said." Well, isn't that curious? Reminds us that the C's once gave a strange prediction: "Seattle buried; Japan buckles; Missouri shakes; California crumbles; Arizona burns." Interesting to speculate, eh? Was Missouri shaking?

Roof Collapses at Ky. Mine, Killing One AP Tue Jan 10, 10:11 PM ET PIKEVILLE, Ky. - Part of the roof collapsed Tuesday at a coal mine in eastern Kentucky, killing one miner, a state official said. The rock fall occurred about 900 feet inside the Maverick Mining Co. LLC mine in Pikeville, near the Virginia line, said Chuck Wolfe, spokesman for the Kentucky Office of Mine Safety and Licensing. Wolfe said that Cornelius Yates, 44, was the only miner harmed. Yates was operating a roof bolting machine at the time, according to the state Environmental and Public Protection Cabinet. The fallen roof section measured approximately 20 feet wide, 4 1/2 feet thick and 10 feet long. Suzy Bohnert, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration, said federal officials were on the scene. Wolfe said a nine-person rescue crew was sent to the mine when the accident was reported shortly after 3 p.m. EST. A person who answered the phone at Maverick Mining in Pikeville declined comment. Last week, 12 miners died after an explosion in a coal mine in West Virginia. Comment: And don't forget the other mine accident that happened just a few days ago in West Virginia...

Flashback: 11 of 12 Miners Reported Alive Are Dead By ALLEN G. BREED Associated Press Writer 4 Jan 2006 TALLMANSVILLE, W.Va. - Jubilant family members celebrated news early Wednesday that 12 miners were pulled alive from the scene of an underground explosion, only to learn nearly three hours later that they had been misled and just one miner actually survived. The chief executive of the mine blamed the stunning error on a misunderstood conversation overheard between rescuers and the command center overseeing rescue efforts. Families learned of the deaths from mine officials more than three hours after Gov. Joe Manchin said he had been told 12 of the miners survived the disaster. The sole survivor of the disaster was hospitalized, a doctor said. International Coal Group Chief Executive Officer Ben Hatfield told the families that only one miner, Randal McCloy, survived the explosion. Hatfield told the families gathered at the Sago Baptist Church that "there had been a lack of communication, that what we were told was wrong and that only one survived," said John Groves, whose brother Jerry Groves was one of the trapped miners. At that point, chaos broke out in the church and a fight started. Hatfield said the erroneous information spread rapidly when people overheard phone calls between rescuers and the rescue command center. In reality, rescuers had confirmed finding 12 miners and were checking their vital signs, he said. "The initial report from the rescue team to the command center indicated multiple survivors," Hatfield said during a news conference. "That information spread like wildfire, because it had come from the command center. It quickly got out of control." Hatfield said the company waited to correct the information until it knew more about the rescue. On Tuesday, mine officials found extremely dangerous levels of carbon monoxide in the part of the mine where the men where believed to have been. The odorless, colorless gas can be lethal at high doses. At lower levels, it can cause headaches, dizziness, disorientation, nausea, fatigue and brain damage. Rescue crews found the body of a 13th miner earlier Tuesday evening and said they were holding out hope that the others were still alive, even as precious time continued to slip away. International Coal Group Inc. never confirmed that the 12 other men were alive. A relative at the church said a mine foreman called relatives there, saying the miners had been found. A few minutes after word came, the throng, several hundred strong, broke into a chorus of the hymn "How Great Thou Art," in a chilly, night air. There were hugs and tears among the crowd outside the Sago Baptist Church near the mine, about 100 miles northeast of Charleston. The miners had been trapped 260 feet below the surface of the mine since an explosion early Monday. The body was found about 700 feet from a mine car, and it appeared the employee was working on a beltline, which brings coal out of the mine, said Ben Hatfield, chief executive officer for ICG of Ashland, Ky. Michelle Mouser of Morgantown said her family believed the dead miner was her uncle, Terry Helms. The mine car was empty, which led rescuers to believe the others may have been safe somewhere else in the mine.

5.1 Magnitude Earthquake in Pakistan By Cihan News Agency, Islamabad Published: Wednesday, January 11, 2006 zaman.com A 5.1 magnitude earthquake has occurred in the north of Pakistan. No official statement has been released about the extent of the damage and the number of deaths or casualties. Meteorology Department authority Malik Tan veer said the epicenter of earthquake was located 200 km northeast of Peshawar. Tan veer stated the earthquake happened at 07:49 local Turkish time. In the latest earthquake in Pakistan that recorded 7.6 on the Richter scale, more than 73,000 people died.

Sharon's party would win vote without him: polls Wed Jan 11, 2006 By Matt Spetalnick Reuters JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Ariel Sharon's party and his likely successor Ehud Olmert received a boost on Wednesday from polls showing they would easily win Israel's March election even without the incapacitated prime minister at the helm. The latest newspaper surveys put Sharon's centrist Kadima party well ahead of its rivals, though campaigning has been frozen since the 77-year-old leader suffered a massive stroke a week ago. Doctors said on Tuesday Sharon had shown further signs of recovery and was out of immediate danger as they tried to revive him from an induced coma, but that it could be days before the extent of brain damage is known. If Sharon lives, medical experts doubt he will ever recover enough to resume his official duties. His absence could throw Middle East peace efforts into disarray. Kadima, which Sharon formed to capitalize on broad public backing for Israel's Gaza withdrawal in September, already had been widely favoured to win a sweeping victory in the March 28 election. But after the January 4 stroke, many political analysts had questioned whether Kadima, largely seen as a product of the force of Sharon's personality and shifting approach to the Palestinians, could survive without him. However, polls in the Haaretz and Maariv dailies found that Kadima led by interim Prime Minister Olmert, Sharon's deputy, would take 44-45 seats in Israel's 120-seat parliament, its strongest showing so far. The polls predicted the centre-left Labour Party under Amir Peretz would get 16-18 seats while the rightist Likud, led by Benjamin Netanyahu after Sharon's defection, would fall to third place with 13-15 seats. Labour secretary-general Eitan Cabel dismissed Kadima's rising position in the polls as "an honest expression of public sympathy" for Sharon and predicted that the effects would wear off by election day. DOUBTS ABOUT OLMERT? Many Israelis doubt Olmert, 60, a former Jerusalem mayor and Sharon loyalist who has served in the prime minister's shadow, has the stature and charisma to take bold steps with the Palestinians that Sharon may have envisioned. Comment: We are disinclined to think that Sharon's party under Olmert will win the March elections. Those who understand the nature of politics know that there are no chance happenings. Sharon is gone for a reason, and it was not to allow Olmert a free run at the top job, but netanyahu. Labour secretary-general Eitan Cabel may be correct when he dismissed Kadima's rising position in the polls as "an honest expression of public sympathy" for Sharon and predicted that the effects would wear off by election day. If the effects do not show signs of wearing off however, then other tactics will be resorted to in order to prove to Israeli voters that they need an extreme right winger like "Bibi" to protect them.

European countries tighten measures against bird flu www.chinaview.cn 2006-01-11 15:17:43 BEIJING, Jan. 11 (Xinhuanet) -- Several European countries have stepped up measures aimed at preventing the outspread of bird flu after the virus recently killed three children in neighbouring Turkey. On Monday, Bulgaria's Agriculture Minister Nihat Kabil said his country was bracing itself for a spread of the deadly H5N1 strain of avian flu, warning that the nearest outbreak was only 500 km away from the Turkish-Bulgarian border and that the situation there was extremely serious. To prepare its citizens for possible outbreaks in the country, the Bulgarian authorities had issued special instructions on how to deal with infections, said its Health Ministry, adding that at least 50,000 leaflets would be distributed in rural areas. Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday urged his government to take decisive action in order to prevent any new outbreak of avian flu. Earlier, Russia's chief state epidemiologist Gennady Onishchenko had informed Putin that Russian doctors had started examining people arriving from Turkey at airports and railway stations. About 70 people have been hospitalized with bird flu symptoms in Turkey, and so far four of them have been confirmed by the United Nations' health agency as suffering from the deadly H5N1 strain of the virus. Italian Health Minister Francesco Storace said in a newspaper interview that the country might go it alone in bringing in stiffer measures against the epidemic, although the European Unionhas already banned imports of poultry from countries where bird flu has been detected. "We can't wait for the European Union, unless it moves fast," he said. The World Health Organization says there is no evidence so far of human-to-human transmission of the flu virus, which has killed at least 76 people since late 2003.

Gamma-ray burst study may rule out cosmological constant Maggie McKee, Washington DC NewScientist.com 15:15 11 January 2006 Dark energy – the mysterious force that drives the acceleration of the universe – changes over time, controversial new calculations suggest. If true, the work rules out Einstein's notion of a "cosmological constant" and suggests dark energy, which now repels space, once drew it together. Astronomers invoked the concept of dark energy to explain supernovae observations in the late 1990s that the universe is not only expanding but accelerating. The supernovae appeared dimmer – and therefore more distant – than expected, given their red shift, which measures how much their light has been stretched by the expansion of space. But it is still not clear what dark energy is. Theories range from a "vacuum" energy of space itself which is fixed in value – an idea Einstein proposed as the "cosmological constant" – to more exotic possibilities, such as quintessence – a type of energy field that can vary over space and time. So far, supernova studies have supported the cosmological constant – one recent study of 70 supernovae reported that the strength of repulsion given by dark energy could not have changed by more than about 20% over the past eight billion years. Reliable data But supernovae are too dim to be seen over the largest cosmic distances. So some astronomers argue that gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) – violent, fleeting explosions that accompany the deaths of some massive stars – are better signposts. At about 100 times brighter than supernovae, they can be seen at much greater distances. Now, astronomer Bradley Schaefer of Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, US, has used observations of 52 GRBs to suggest that dark energy has changed over time. In the largest GRB study of its kind, Schaefer found that 12 of the most distant GRBs – lying nearly 13 billion light years away – were all brighter than expected, suggesting the universe was expanding at a slower rate than it is today. He says the fact that all 12 were brighter than would be predicted by a cosmological constant increases his confidence in the data. "It's like if you flip a coin and get 12 heads in a row," Schaefer told New Scientist. He says that rather than pushing space apart, dark energy appears to have changed over time and was in fact drawing space together in the early universe. What that means for the fate of the universe is not clear, but it seems to open a Pandora's box of outlandish possibilities for dark energy, he says: "With quintessence, you can do anything you want." Standard candles But other researchers are yet to be convinced. Type 1a supernovae all explode with the same intrinsic energy, making them ideal "standard candles" to measure distance. But GRBs explode with a variety of energies. So Schaefer used five observed properties of the bursts – such as how their brightness changes over time – to estimate their intrinsic brightness, and thus their distance. But GRB expert Dale Frail of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in New Mexico, US, says GRBs vary too widely and are not understood well enough to make such inferences. "I think it's premature to start using GRBs as standard candles," he told New Scientist. Robert Kirshner, an astronomer at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, and a pioneer of supernova dark energy studies, agrees: "You've got kind of a blunt tool to measure a very delicate effect." Schaefer acknowledges the research is preliminary, but says the analysis will improve as more GRBs are discovered and studied. The research was presented on Wednesday at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Washington DC, US.

Controversial Indian Film Claims Jesus Came to India 02 January 2006 BosNewsLife NEW DELHI, INDIA - A controversial feature film made by an influential Indian film-maker claims that Jesus did not die after the Crucifixion, but just "resuscitated" and moved across to Kashmir in India, where he eventually died at the age of 120. That message is contrary to the Bible which says Jesus, also described as "God's only begotten Son" in John 3:16, died for the sins of mankind and resurrected from death on the third day so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but has everlasting life. The Telegraph, a daily published from Kolkata, also known as Calcutta and the capital of West Bengal state, said Kolkata-based Shubhrajit Mitra gave his 100-minute film on the life of Jesus in India the title 'The Unknown Stories of the Messiah.' Christian leaders fear the project will add to religious tensions in predominantly Hindu India, which saw a series of violent incidents against Christians in 2005. BENGALI ACTOR In his film, Mitra featured a well-known Bengali actor Soumitra Chatterjee, who plays the role of an archaeologist and renowned actress Aparna Sen, a novelist researching Jesus. The film, which is dubbed as being in "a fiction format", evolves around a discussion between Chatterjee and Sen about the “alternative theory” regarding the life of Jesus in India. However Babu Joseph, the spokesperson for the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India, told BosNewsLife, that "for a lack of any credible historical evidences to corroborate it, serious scholars of history and the Bible have dismissed this theory as non-serious and fictitious." He said that "Jesus Christ is the center of the Christian faith and a lot of credible historical documentation is available on his life, work, death and resurrection. And if the available material on Jesus is reliable, another version of his life, as alleged by the film maker, seems to be redundant and even uncalled for." "ACCEPTABLE PARAMETERS" Joseph admitted that "freedom of expression is extremely important for the growth of any art form," but also said "it has to be exercised within certain acceptable parameters so that unnecessary provocation of someone's religious feelings can be avoided." The Indo-Asian News Service (IANS) quoted engineer-turned-film-maker Mitra as defending his film. "Neither the Bible nor the mainstream 'gospels' give credence to such theories but… there is evidence in Hindu, Muslim, and Buddhist scriptures of Jesus staying in India." He claimed that a "Jesus-like man" finds mention "in the holy books of Jerusalem, Alexandria, Turkey, Persia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tibet and India." Mitra also told IANS that he would submit the film to National Geographic or Discovery Channel as he is also a scriptwriter-director for the two channels. RUSSIAN AUTHOR He said he was inspired by Nicolai Notovitch and Holger-Kersten, proponents of the alternative theory. Notovitch, a Russian and the author of the alternative theory, wrote a book, 'The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ', after his visit to Ladakh region in Jammu and Kashmir state in 1887. Influenced by Notovitch, Kersten also wrote a book, “Jesus lived in India: His Unknown Life before and after the Crucifixion”. The alternative theory says Jesus visited Ladakh and Kashmir valley, which are now in the northern-most state of Jammu and Kashmir as well as Varanasi city, which is in today’s north-central state of Uttar Pradesh, parts of the southern state of Kerala and Puri in the western state of Orissa. It alleges that Jesus was buried in an ancient tomb built in Kan Yar area of Kashmir’s Srinagar district. The story also suggests that Jesus first came to India as a child to learn from Hindu gurus, and later taught what He studied in His country Israel. "MERE SPECULATION" But Neil Vimalkumar, an Indian apologist from the Ravi Zacharias International Ministries India, told BosNewsLife that the theory was based on mere speculation. “These are fanciful stories and make an interesting read. It is only when historical status is asserted that they fail miserably. Claims about ‘evidences’, ‘scholarship’ and ‘historical works’ are made big-heartedly to give these stories an authentic flair, similar to [author] Dan Brown’s recent bestseller, ‘Da Vinci Code’.” He said similar sounding names or activities in Kashmir or Afghanistan "at best" suggest some connections, "but to say that because we have similar names, Jesus must have been in India is an overstatement. For then we have to go against the overwhelming historical record we have of Jesus in the New Testament.” Vimalkumar stressed that Notovitch "was just a traveler, and not a scholar by any right." “As regards Kersten, it is ironic that while the Bible is supported by strong historical basis, he would like to build his case by reading it ‘between the lines’ and then use Gnostic documents literally as though they were historical," he added. CHRISTIANS CONCERNED Christian workers say Hindu fundamentalists and sections of Hindu priests in India use the alternative theory to discredit the relevance of the Gospel for Hindus. “Some years ago, I met a Hindu priest in Varanasi who said Hindus did not need to listen to the Gospel because Jesus came to Varanasi and learnt about God from Hindu scriptures,” Reverend Ashok Singh, presently director of Shechem, a Christian ministry based in North India, told BosNewsLife. Author Dr. Ron Rhodes of 'Reasoning from the Scriptures Ministries' said on a website that there was "No evidence" that Jesus studied in India. "Though the Gospels [of the Bible] do not directly address Jesus’ childhood, there are convincing indirect evidences that He remained in Palestine. Luke 2:52 summarizes Jesus’ life from age 12: 'And Jesus kept increasing in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man,'" he recalled. Comment: Hoo Boy! Isn't that rich! "Babu Joseph, the spokesperson for the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India, told BosNewsLife, that 'for a lack of any credible historical evidences to corroborate it, serious scholars of history and the Bible have dismissed this theory as non-serious and fictitious.'" Pot? Kettle? Black? Who wrote the bible anyway?

Mystery Humming Plagues Pensioner 09 January 2006 Thisisgrimsby.co.uk It sounds like a big tumble dryer, but it seems airborne rather than underground. That is the desperate question from New Waltham pensioner Margaret Belton (67), who claims the humming noises which have plagued her for three years are getting worse. In May 2004, the Telegraph reported how unidentified humming and whizzing sounds were keeping Mrs Belton awake at her Pretymen Crescent home. Since then a team of experts from the University of Salford have visited the location as part of a national research project into the "hum". A fascinating report has proved the noises Mrs Belton hears are not just sounds in her head. In a report by academics, an intermittent sound of between 40 and 60 decibels was recorded at the pensioner's home. The findings were mirrored in other parts of the country where low frequency sounds were also registered in areas where residents complained of "humming" noises. However, the cause of the noises remain a mystery. Mrs Belton said: "It sounds like a big tumble dryer, but it seems airborne rather than underground. It has got so much worse - now I am waking up each morning at 5am and I know I am not the only one to hear them." "I am not going mad - it's there." A deaf friend visited the house and also detected the vibrations, while a puppy next-door but one is also affected by the whirring. A summary of the report on the University's website reads: "Normal noise guidelines are not appropriate for low frequencies, so Environmental Health Officers have little guidance on whether to class a low frequency noise as a nuisance. "Low frequency noise is also particularly difficult to measure reliably. This means that low frequency noise problems may go unresolved for years." The latest theories Low frequency sound is only detected by about five per cent of the population. These are almost always aged 50 or over, with 70 per cent of them being female. One of the latest theories is that the sounds are caused by dead people. Known as white noise, it is a pattern of sound which registers below most human beings' hearing range and is the spirit's attempt at communicating with the living. Mrs Holton does not endorse this theory, but instead blames the noises on some kind of industrial equipment. One of her most persuasive theories is that the noises are caused by electricity surges, made more plausible by her claims that the sounds worsen at 7am to 9am in the morning and 6pm to 8pm at night, which is when demand is highest. Sounds like a good idea The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) is now trying to develop guidelines for use by local authorities in cases of unidentified sounds. A study will focus on 10 cases where a cluster of residents is known to be disturbed by low frequency noise. The sound will be recorded over several days while residents keep a log of comments. These 10 sounds will then be reproduced in a listening room and 16 people will be asked to comment on whether they find them disturbing. They will then try various ways of rating the sounds according to their level, frequency content and, for example, whether they fluctuate or have particular characteristics. The methods that give the best agreement with the reported disturbance from the field and lab trials will be proposed as a criteria for rating low frequency sounds

Ark's Quantum Quirks SOTT January 11, 2006

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