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©2006 Pierre-Paul Feyte

Signs Economic Commentary Donald Hunt January 16, 2006 Gold continued its rise, closing at 556.90 dollars an ounce on Friday, up 2.7% from $542.20 the Friday before. The dollar closed at 0.8236 euros on Friday, virtually unchanged from 0.8239 the week before. The euro, in turn, closed at 1.2142 compared to 1.2137 the week before. Gold in euros would be 458.66 euros an ounce up 2.7% from 446.73 at the previous week’s close. Oil closed at 63.92 dollars a barrel, down 0.6% from $64.31 the week before. Oil in euros would be 52.64 euros a barrel, down 0.7% from 52.99 at the end of the previous week. The gold/oil ratio closed at 8.71, up 3.3% from 8.43 the Friday before. In the U.S. stock market, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 10,959.87, virtually unchanged from 10,959.31 the week before. The NASDAQ closed at 2,317.04 up 0.5% from 2,305.62 at the close of the previous week. The yield on the ten-year U.S. Treasury note was 4.35 at Friday’s close, down two basis points from 4.37 the week before. Besides gold, everything in the numbers looks pretty normal. Gold, however, has risen 10% since Christmas. The economic crisis is here. So why is the stock market doing so well? Steven Lagavulin of the Deconsumption blog points out that the U.S. Federal Reserve Board has pumped more money into the system than they have since September 11, 2001: Fed Flood I've been watching this handy thumbnail graph of Federal open market actions for some time now and thought it might be of interest to pass along. It basically reflects the daily liquidity that's being created--measuring the power of the proverbial printing presses. And frankly, they've been kicked into high gear for the past couple weeks. I assumed this was just to give a quick boost to the stock market going into year's end, but I gotta tell ya.....yesterday's action was massive...I mean the kind of liquidity you wouldn't see unless there was real Fear at the Fed. To give you some perspective you might eyeball the bottom black lines on this longer-term chart....and note that the last time we saw 60 billion was in the second week of Sept. 2001.... Michael Nystrom confronts the high stock price question and also concludes that it is due to the massive increase in the M3 money supply: Is This Rally for Real? And Other Thoughts by Michael Nystrom January 10, 2006 Cambridge, MA "The tape moves in mysterious ways, the multitude to deceive" - WD Gann 2006 - Year of the Bear As most of you are aware, there are a number of bearish omens hanging over US economy and stock market for 2006. Here is the list, off the top of my head: 1. Rising short term interest rates 2. Inverted yield curve 3. Housing bubble slowdown / pop in the works (See this excellent article by Gary Schilling) 4. Massive slowdown and/or bankruptcy at GM and/or Ford on the horizon 5. Rising unemployment in home building, financial services, and manufacturing due to 3 & 4 6. Rising energy costs 7. Corresponding slowdown in consumerism due to 5 & 6 8. Stock market's four year / presidential cycle pointing down 9. Rising trade deficit 10. Rising budget deficit 11. Rising national debt 12. New Iranian oil bourse in the works to price oil in euros this spring 13. Falling dollar as a result of most of the above, but especially #12 14. New guy on the job at the Fed to deal with all of the above. I won't belabor these points; I think we're all well aware of them. Anyone with eyes and a brain knows what they mean. All the evidence is lined up against the economy and the stock market. But just when things are looking the most bearish, when we all expect the market to start the year off with a loud thud and keep on going, what does it do? It confounds everyone with new highs. So no matter how bearish one may be (and I am pretty bearish for 2006), there is one thing that bears cannot argue with right now, and that is new highs. And that is exactly what we've seen so far in the new year on all the major indices. The Dow is perched above 11,000 for the first time since 2001, just 8% away from a new all time high. Gold likewise put in a new closing high today, over 550. A number of commentators have already pointed out that these gains have been accompanied by huge increases in M3. That money has to go somewhere, and it looks like for the time being it will continue to flow into stocks, gold, and other commodities. This means inflation as long as the Fed keeps pumping. But have you noticed that everything seems to deflate after they lay off the gas just a little bit? Rather than being a forecast, I prefer to call this a roadmap for 2006, and rather than discussing specific targets, I'm going to give a scenario of what might happen this year, in line with the Gann quote above. No one can tell with any certainty what is going to happen, especially in this volatile environment, so what I'm going to do is tell you a story. First I am going to lay out what I see happening now then give you my best guess and some perspective as to what might happen in the future. And like any good story, this one has a moral… Nystrom's Scenario for 2006 1Q From a long-term perspective, things look pretty dismal for 2006. Most mainstream analysts seem, if not bullish, certainly not bearish, while most internet commentators sense trouble ahead. Count me among the the second camp. In the short term however, we've got a little rally on our hands in the stock market. While I have no idea how long this current rally could last, it appears fairly clearly correlated with M3: M-3 has been launched into outer space, up another $56.3 billion last week, up $92.4 billion over the past two. This is some real horsepower. Over six weeks, the meaningless figure, ahem, is up $177.8 billion. These annualized growth rates are 28.7 percent, 23.6 percent, and 15.3 percent respectively. I doubt the Fed is going to abruptly shut off the spigot, and this pace should be enough to keep the rally going at least through most of the first quarter. From a technical perspective, the SPX (futures) looks to have around 60 - 80 points of rally in it, the NDX around 150 points and the Dow around 600 - 800. Bull or bear I think we'd all like to see the old Dow make a good run at its all time high, if just for nostalgia's sake. It would be something exciting to cheer for in this dreary winter of 2006 - free and better than a movie. Of course if the Dow does beak to a new all time high, the psychological boost to the markets could be much greater, and prices might move much higher. But we will cross that bridge when and if we come to it. What I would like to caution bears on is not to underestimate the possible extent of this rally. Think back to last year at this time and how just about everyone was bearish on the dollar. The Economist had a cover that showed pictures of paper airplanes made of dollars, crashing from the sky. Warren Buffet went short the dollar, and Bill Gates was quoted as saying, "the ole' dollar - its going down." (As if he knew.) But while the "fundamentals" said it should be in for a fall, instead it did the exact opposite. For the whole year. That's how markets go sometimes. As the old saying goes, "the market can stay irrational longer than investors can stay solvent." And so it is with the stock market as we start this new year. So I caution bears not to take this rally lightly. Prices are going up now. If you're a nimble trader, you can go with the flow (up), but if your a bear don't try shorting until you see clear signs of a top. The Reason the Most "Conservative" Investors Get Caught Buying at the Top I know that a lot of bears out there can't believe their eyes, can't believe that this market is still going up, not with the deteriorating economic picture, and not with that 14-point list up there. But the market has confounded just about everyone of late, because that is part of its job. So let's imagine that the market has a nice run over the next several months, and the conservative investors on the sidelines see others making money while they're missing out. Then those "conservative" investors will start to get a little antsy. Every day the market moves higher they'll get more uncomfortable. By the time they're finally convinced that the advance is real and they buy in, the top will be in and the rally will be over. The prime point for this to occur would be as the Dow approaches its all time high, looking like its going to bust right through it without looking back. The other prime point would be tomorrow morning. Please note, all of this is pure speculation, but it is the best way I can imagine for a bear market rally to fool the maximum number of people. So if this first quarter rally does materialize, keep your eyes peeled for signs of economic weakness and recession. The factors on that list above are real, and barring some kind of miracle, they are not going away. The first quarter is when Iran's oil bourse comes online, it is not unprecedented for markets to peak in the spring. The Nasdaq's all time high came on March 10, 2000 as investors started to look ahead to first quarter earnings and decided they didn't like what they saw. Oil is rallying again, and whether it makes a new high or not, I think the damage has already been done to the economy -- we just haven't seen it yet. If oil makes new highs, then forget it - recession is practically inevitable. Changing of the Guard at the Fed Greenspan's last meeting as Fed Chairman comes on January 28, and I suspect the huge increase in M3 has something to do with ensuring a smooth transition between himself and Bernanke. If you recall, Greenspan also flooded the pipeline just before Y2K. He is a cautious man. He wanted to make sure to stem any potential panics, so he did what any banker would do - throw money at the problem in the hopes that it would go away (and we all know what that did to the market). The changing of the guard at the Fed will likely go smoothly -- everyone will be on their best behavior -- and the markets will politely welcome in the new guy. At least for the first few days. Greenspan took over Chairmanship of the Fed on August 11, 1987. If memory serves me correctly, the market peaked around August 25th of that year, but waited a full two months before the big welcome party in the form of the October 1987 crash. Bernanke takes over February 1st, 2006, and his first meeting as Fed Chairman comes on March 28th, 2006. We're all expecting him to have a trial by fire, but who knows what will trigger it? Maybe he'll spook the market with his overly direct manner of speaking, in stark contrast to what Jim Grant called Greenspan's "central banker Esperanto." Or maybe he'll disappoint the market by continuing with the short term rate hikes in an attempt to live down his inflationist reputation. Whatever the case, by the time the market peaks, most people will be so intoxicated by the rising stock market that they won't notice the deteriorating economic conditions. Or if they do notice, they'll do what they always do - they'll ignore them and say that this time they don't matter. The market always climbs a wall of worry, but when prices diverge massively from underlying reality, the stage becomes set for a crash. Bernanke won't be the cause of it (if it happens), but if he doesn't fix it, he'll certainly get the blame for it! The Credible Threat Last night I reread the text of Bernanke's Fed speech on deflation (Deflation: Making Sure "It" Doesn't Happen Here). I remember the first time I heard his printing press remarks -- I was blown away. I didn't know who this guy was, other than that he was a new guy and that I thought the line about the printing press was an extremely irresponsible thing to be saying. I was sure that he would be fired, or at least reprimanded for his remarks, but look where he is now. Shows you how much I know. This is what I gleaned from the speech last night: Bernanke tells a story, that if an alchemist invented a way to make gold in unlimited quantities, then released this news to the world and said he was going to start making and selling unlimited amounts of gold, the price drop immediately, before the Alchemist made or sold a single ounce. He goes on to compare the Fed to that alchemist. He talks about the printing press, then says, "By increasing the number of U.S. dollars in circulation, or even by credibly threatening to do so, the U.S. government can also reduce the value of a dollar in terms of goods and services, which is equivalent to raising the prices in dollars of those goods and services." Then it struck me - this elimination of M3 in March is the credible threat.. Its a bluff. First they juice M3 like it is the end of the world (or 1999), and then they turn the lights out on the statistics. Since we're all in the dark, the only thing we can assume is that the Fed is monetizing debt like there is no tomorrow. But they really don't want to do that -- it is not good for their balance sheet -- so instead they engineer this bluff. Everyone believes it, and they (we) act accordingly, bidding up stocks and gold. If you don't think the Fed is that clever, I encourage you to read Bernanke's speech. It is a long treatise on stimulating demand and causing inflation in the event that interest rates fall to zero. After reading the speech, you may find that they are beyond clever. They are insane! Max Fraad Wolf adds to the usual catalog of bearish omens a couple more: Latin America standing up to neoliberalism and the end of pensions in the United States: Sleeping dogs wake? Wisdom holds that the 2005 miracle avoidance of long deferred bills will continue. The admitted fly in the ointment seems to be growing consensus that housing markets may not be able to furnish double digit growth in prices, cashout refinancing and home equity extraction. Fingers are crossed - assurances are made - that this will not have serious near term macro dampening effects. My interest, however, is to call attention to facts so long ignored they have been forgotten. The quick and dirty summary is: coming pension problems and the economic impact of losing Latin America might merit mention and concern. If these are odd subjects, almost never discussed, therein rests their import. As we slide into what could be the 6th year without real median income growth, under funded pension plans, rising co-pays and decelerating housing gains are likely to coincide with rising interest rates and high energy prices, a combination sure to squeeze debt laden family budgets. Precious little attention has been paid to the earnings footprint of new pension and health care cost accounting. New accounting rules set to take effect will require firms to move discussion of pension costs from ignored footnotes to the general content of financial statements and filings. This will add a powerful incentive for many to follow the leads of IBM, Motorola, Verizon, airlines, autos, auto parts and the foiled NYC MTA to off-load present and future pension costs. Stop and ponder what this means and you will see why markets should be paying a lot closer attention to these developments. Pensions are massive buyers of equities and fixed income products. If they shrink and more dollars are turned over to negative savings rate America, what will follow? If there is no slack in pressured household budgets, and retirement security looms large, how smooth will the pension offload sailing be? These pressures are unfolding as baby boomers move into retirement cash out mode and US indexes lag foreign competitors. Anyway this shakes out, pensions are a huge issue likely to grab headlines and cause turmoil in 2006 and well beyond. At some point the string of massive and costly foreign policy missteps of the last five years will be discovered by our ever prescient, wise and forward looking friends in the financial markets. Chief among the nasty little items that will occur to folks when they decide to look around again will be that US influence, prestige and potency in Latin America has plummeted to previously unthinkable lows. From Argentina and Bolivia to Uruguay, those associated with and friendly toward Washington have been dropping like flies. Our loss of influence and access have neither gone unnoticed nor, unexploited by foriegn rivals. China’s freshly inked contract with Bolivia offers an example of a global reshuffling that is proceeding briskly while America sleeps and congratulates herself over imaginary victories. I believe that losing a continent matters. Others will too when they get around to discovering it. I fear a too little, too late and heavy handed response is likely to materialize. If the past offers guidance, it will further worsen the situation. A significant part of the way we squeezed out 2004 and 2005 was through a combination of perception management and inter-temporal shifting. Perception management entails prima facia rejection of bad news and exaggerated embrace of the positive. Inter-temporal shifting is defined by shifting costs into the future and consumption into the present. Both are overdue to hit the wall. Perception management is exemplified by the rising dollar proving stability and desirability of US assets. This is done in neglect of an approaching $800 billion current account deficit, distortion created by one time repatriations of foreign held multinational cash under a now expired tax provision and the increasingly uncomfortable fact that US equity market returns are lower than other region’s returns. Not to worry, all good things are fundamentally based and eternally true. Bad news is hype and ephemeral. Our inter-temporal shifting is actually growth and wisdom; future costs are exaggerated and fleeting. The time transfer I refer to is the new national past time, forget baseball. We accomplish this stunning economic achievement through credit markets and the break down of time honored lending standards and credit constraint. Debt trades more today for less tomorrow. We live in a national economy that is swapping ever more today’s consumption for ever less tomorrow's wealth. This defines our relations with the rest of the world and has been accelerating for years. The inter-temporal sleeping dog will wake and 2006 promises several kicks to slumbering canine. Korea and China have recently signaled discomfort with the hundreds of billions in our future wealth and earnings they have taken on to facilitate massive American consumption of their exports. The prospects of some recovery in Japan and Germany suggest to all that there may be other places to park capital. Households live on transferring today’s shortfalls into the future with rising debt. They trade growing future streams of repayment to spend today. Expansive houses, shiny new cars, high end appliances, Swiss Watches and flat screen TVs have been amassed against pledges of future income. We will gladly pay you Tuesday 2010 for a Toyota today. This is perception management and time transformation of earning and payment par excellence! Surety of future income to cover rising debt service is peaking amid historically low and rising interest rates, falling retirement income security, stagnant real median earnings and rapidly shifting global economic realities. Just like everyone else, I don’t know how much further beyond prudence this can stretch. Unlike a lot of folks I don’t believe sleeping dogs lie forever still. When they do stir to life, expect much bite and little bark. Charley Reese gave us a little common sense on Latin America last week: Latin America is beginning to turn left, and you can't blame it. So-called globalization is nothing more than financial colonialism. Big capital comes in, exploits the people's labor, loots the country of its resources and leaves nothing behind except the bribes it paid the country's leaders to sell out their own people. That's really what globalization is — all of the heifer dust spread about it by lickspittle journalists and professors notwithstanding. The same process is going on in the United States. The robber barons are back, and their morals haven't changed, only their tactics. More important than debt, the housing bubble, pensions or Latin America, though, is the looming attack on Iran. The consequences of such an action go far beyond any sort of financial numbers. The world economy, to the extent it survives at all, will be based on rationing, the black market, and day-to-day scraping by, no matter what economic class you belong to now. George Ure is worried, too: The Melt Down Ahead To see what's coming, you only need to read a few stories, in the right order, and think through the picture being painted. Because it's a weekend, bear with me for a few minutes, and let me walk you through the highlights, ok? --- More than a few of us who have been buying gold since the Manufacturers Resource War broke out (with 9/11/2001) have been expecting gold to begin making its "big move". With prices surging past 24-year highs on Friday, this very well could be it. If it is, our inclination is to wait until the Dow and the Price of Gold (POG) are even, then we'll figure out where to deploy both of our dollars next. I have to agree with one poster over at LeMetropole Cafe who noted that the surge in prices was not directly attributable to Iran tensions. He noted if that was the case, we would have seen oil spike up in a similar meaningful way. It hasn't, so he figures, something else is at work. What's really going on, as best I can judge, is that the Fed has partially lost control of the money supply (which is why they will stop their weekly confessionals of M-3 in March of this year - it will be too scary for "regular people" to stomach by then. This week's report shows that M-3 has increased by 7.84% compared with year ago levels. It's really worse: The November to December change in M-3 pencils out to an 11.5% annual rate. In simplest terms, the money supply is going nonlinear now. That's why gold is up. You might be asking what is so frightening about that - we've had bouts of inflation before, so no big deal. Well, not quite. You see in the same period, the amount of M-1 (basically cash in the system) has actually decreased by about 2-10th's of one percent in the same period!. In other words we have deflation and inflation simultaneously in the money figures. The divergences are staggering. You've got less paper money in hand, yet easy credit - so the purchasing power of cash goes up and the consumers are forced more and more into debt to make ends meet. It doesn't take a rocket surgeon to figure out that this condition in the economy can't go on forever. Thus, later this weekend, when the new web bot run (future forecasting techniques of www.halfpasthuman.com based on linguistic shifts on the internet which seem to precede major social/psychological turnings points, such as 9/11, the anthrax attack, and others) we expect that a very large unexpected event will seen happening between now and April 1st. Why? Because its clear to the international banksters that their game is falling apart and they need an "event" of some kind in order to maintain their cover and remain in functional control of the country through their shadow government proxies. Care to take a guess what that will be? Let me help you... Leading to Iran One of our brilliant sources makes a very sage observation: Don't be surprised by war with Iran around the time of the dark moon this month. His reasoning? Well, this bright fellow looks at Navy ship reports, a few selected posts, and notices how many small landing craft and small carriers are out of port at the moment. Then he catches that some jet jockeys have rotated out of country for duty. To his way of thinking, this is a tip off - or a none-too-subtle hint to Iran that the US is not kidding around on the uranium enrichment issue. Still, Iran seems to be sticking by its guns on this and says there is no basis for other countries to restrict what it does on its own soil, whether we like it or not. Still, it all potentially leads to a regional conflict, which could easily go "theater nukes" which means the genie is out of the bottle and there's no bets at that point. But isn't that what the Powers that Be are after? The demand destruction and continued concentration of wealth in the hands of the few? Of course! A move against Iran, and I hope not in response to another false flag terrorist event, would keep the public's mind off the bankers and will provide a mechanism for the spinsters to blame economic duress on indigenous people and the Muslim faith which are fighting for what they see as control of their natural resource base and against Western/corporate exploitation. The greed of the money changers and usurers would be shielded from public scorn by opening of an Iran front, especially if there was an "event" and thus their continuance in power would be assured. That's why the Texas Cell Phone story from Friday is so important - we can almost see something coming. (Along with ID to buy a cell phone, for sure!) Simple, huh? Now be a good citizen and run out and charge something on that 21% credit card, would yah? You've got 20-minutes yet before you're due back in the squirrel cage to line the corporate thieves pockets.

Dusting off the Brown-shirts and Jackboots for Alito by Mike Whitney 15 Jan 2006 Alito is the final piece in the neocon puzzle; the cornerstone for an American police-state. If he is approved by the Senate, Bush will have his Federalist “rubber-stamp” on the high court and the Congress will be rendered powerless. No law will be able to check or balance the “unitary” authority of the executive. The spiking gold market is a sure sign that the dollar is headed for the dumpster. Large institutional investors are hastily moving boatloads of cash into precious metals that promise to retain their value while the hemorrhaging dollar goes the way of Icarus. We’re finally beginning to see the effects of Bush’s profligate spending, “unsustainable” trade deficits, and the economic master-plan to reorder American society. And, don’t think that that the poker-faced Sam Alito doesn’t factor heavily in this new paradigm of class-division and elite rule. He’s the last vital part of the neocon strategy for tossing America’s struggling middle class overboard and paddling pell-mell towards the shore of the new world order. Gold had already doubled in less than a year when (two weeks ago) the bad news started to dribble in. Since then the news of America’s burgeoning trade deficit with China, China’s plan to move away from the weakening dollar, and finally, the saber-rattling over Iran, have the big-time investors scampering for the exits and gold prices headed through the ceiling. Gold is the canary in the coalmine; it tells us when major investors see structural vulnerabilities in the system and begin to bail out. All I can say is, it took them long enough to figure it out. The Bush team has been spending $400 billion more than it takes in in tax revenues for 4 years, a practice it now wants to enshrine as “permanent tax cuts”. Huh? Question: How can anyone argue that the plundering of America is not intentional when deficits are defended as a “permanent” function of government? Deficits are theft; and it is future generations that will have to pay for the criminal largesse of the Bush administration. Secretary of the Treasury John Snow announced just last week that the national debt would have to be raised to $9 trillion by February to keep the government operating. That means that Bush has generated a whopping $3 trillion dollars of debt in just 5 years. Unbelievable! This is a strategy that is clearly designed to undermine the dollar and shift middle class wealth to the lucky 1% that Bush serves. It conflates perfectly Greenspan’s plan to sluice zillions into the economy through low interest rates and flawed lending practices ($0 down payments on homes; interest-only loans; ARMs) which create massive bubbles designed to purge the middle class of their hard-earned savings. The stock market bubble alone moved $7 trillion from (mainly) middle class investors in retirement funds and IRAs into the pockets of the cigar-chomping plutocrats in Bush’s inner circle. With housing prices on a downward trajectory, energy going up, and the dollar destined for life-support; we can expect to see a growing line at the food-banks and homeless shelters. No kidding. America is marching in lockstep towards a depression that was planned at the highest levels of government. Deregulation has produced a trade deficit that requires an infusion of $2 billion dollars (or 6.8% GDP) every day just to keep the good-ship Bush afloat. When the flow of borrowed money slows, the dollar will crash to earth like Humpty-Dumpty leaving wreckage strew throughout the American heartland. Why else would Bush claim the extraordinary powers of a dictator? In just months Bush has claimed that he has the right to incarcerate citizens without charging them with a crime, torture prisoners, unilaterally declare war, and spy on Americans. Why? Is Bin Laden somehow weakened by the steady erosion of civil liberties? Or, is the White House cabal anticipating massive civil disorder from their planned economic meltdown? Even Greenspan has warned that the present path is “unsustainable”, and darker days are just ahead. Regrettably, the administration has seized all the levers of power and is prepared for the worst. Alito is the final piece in the neocon puzzle; the cornerstone for an American police-state. If he is approved by the Senate, Bush will have his Federalist “rubber-stamp” on the high court and the Congress will be rendered powerless. No law will be able to check or balance the “unitary” authority of the executive. It may be time to dust off the brown-shirts and jackboots; looks like they may be back in style. Mike lives in Washington State with his charming wife Joan and two spoiled and overfed dogs, Cocoa and Pat-Fergie.

Alito Confirmation Would Soon Establish Unitary Executive Theory (Fuehrerprinzip) As Law, Then Make Bush Dictator by Rev. Bill McGinnis Wake up, America! It's happening right now, while you are sound asleep! If Alito gets confirmed to the Supreme Court, that would give Bush the one extra vote he needs on the Supreme Court to prevent Congress from stopping him as he disregards the anti-Torture and anti-Spying laws already passed. Using the "signing statement" technique developed earlier by Samuel Alito, Bush has already announced that he has the power to disregard the anti-Torture and anti-Spying laws. Then when Congress goes to the Supreme Court, trying to make him stop, Alito would already be on the Court, waiting to decide the case for Bush. Bush would win, on the grounds that he has the Unitary Executive (Fuehrerprinzip) "inherent powers" in "wartime" to do anything he wants to do, to "protect Americans from harm." Then that would become the new Supreme Court precedent regarding Executive Powers vs. Congressional Powers, and all subsequent cases would go in favor of Bush, based on that precedent. Thus Congress is neutralized, just like happened in Germany when Hitler did basically the same thing Bush is doing now. And the Supreme Court is in Bush's pocket, because we let his nominees slip through without giving straight answers to any important questions during their confirmations. So we would get what we deserved: An all-powerful George W. Bush as President, probably for life, because that, too, would be ruled necessary for "national defense." And perpetual war, because why would they ever want to stop? And all the fat cats getting fatter, at Public expense. We can stop this nonsense right now, by not confirming Samuel Alito. Then we could impeach and remove Bush and Cheney for breaking the anti-Spying and anti-Torture laws; and lying about Weapons Of Mass Destruction in order to start a disastrous war in Iraq; and negligence for not preparing for possible 9-11 attacks despite being warned; and for running up huge deficits to pay off their fat-cat supporters, etc.; and the problem would be gone. But, that would be a lot of trouble, and everybody has already decided Judge Alito is "qualified" and should be confirmed immediately. And our lapdog mainstream Corporate Press is oblivious, checking the value of their stocks and waiting for their next ride on Air Force One and their next dinner at the White House. And all the neutered inept Democrats are thankful, because they still have their jobs in the Senate and still get to go on TV; and they think they probably couldn't do anything to stop it anyway, so why bother. And the Senate Republicans are all saying, "Thank you, Jesus, for giving us a wonderful Leader like George W. Bush and wonderful God-fearing Supreme Court Justices like John Roberts and Samuel Alito, who will stand by our Leader and let him do anything he wants to do. We're facing a terrible enemy, which will stop at nothing to destroy us and our way of life!" "Besides, President Bush is a true Patriot, you know. And he surely wouldn't do anything bad for the Country! So all you baby-killing, Atheistic, homosexual liberals should simply shut up and let Our Leader (Der Fuehrer) do anything he wants to do to protect the Country," they exclaim, righteously. And then the Army tanks start rolling down Constitution Avenue, heading toward the Capitol, "just in case anything bad might happen. We have to protect the Country, you know." Blessings to you. May God help us all. Rev. Bill McGinnis, Director www.LoveAllPeople.org www.LoveAllPeople.org Rev. Bill McGinnis is an Internet Christian minister, writer and publisher. He is Director of LoveAllPeople.org, a small private think tank in Alexandria, Virginia, and all of its related websites, including InternetChurchOfChrist.org,CommitteeForTheGoldenRule.org,CivicAmerican.com, and AmericanDemocrat.net. His agenda is to help maximize the happiness and well-being of all people

Senate and Citizens: Save Our Constitution: Oppose Alito by Stephen Crockett 16 Jan 2006 This writer cannot count the number of deep expressions of worry about the future of our Constitutional Democracy received in the past year from worried American citizens. Citizens are worried about the voting process in America and for good reason. Voting rights have been manipulated by Republican partisans in government office to keep many citizens from voting. Legally cast votes have gone uncounted. Laws have been passed to force state and local governments to use voting machines that can be hacked or programmed in ways to facilitate vote fraud. Voting rights issues have been deeply explored by voting rights activists and widely documented on the Internet. Bev Harris of Black Box Voting.org ( see: http://www.blackboxvoting.org ), Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman at Free Press.org (see: http://www.freepress.org ), investigative reporter Greg Palast (see: http://www.gregpalast.com ) and Brad Friedman of Brad Blog ( see: http://www.bradblog.com ) are just a few of these voting rights activists. Unfortunately, elected Democrats and most journalists are not paying enough attention to this issue. We should be seeing all of the voting rights activists listed above and many others almost nightly on network news and cable news channels. Major newspapers and magazines should be doing serious investigative journalism on voting rights and voting machines. Why are Democrats in the United States Senate not holding public hearings on the voting machine issue? No issue is more important than voting and free, honest elections to American Democracy and freedom. Just as important to preserving Constitutional Democracy in America is the strength of an independent judiciary in the “checks and balances” system of federal government power devised by our Founding Fathers. Senate Democrats are demonstrating a very serious lack of spine by not filibustering the Supreme Court nomination of Alito. Alito has clearly shown a lack of respect for Constitutional rights of individuals and a tendency to support government power favoring the governing elite over the common man. The Bush Republicans seem to have gained control over the federal government with the backing of huge corrupt corporations. Election fraud can be concealed and legalized by a Republican partisan Supreme Court. Other illegal abuses of government power by the Bush Administration can be ignored or legalized in a similar manner including imprisonment without trial, illegal wiretapping, opening the private mail of citizens, blacklists among others. Senators of both major political Parties do not seem willing to stand against abuses of power by the Bush Administration that clearly threaten the Constitution. This can be understood from the Bush Republicans but not from seemingly moderate Republicans and all Democratic Senators. Citizens must demand a return to a working Constitutional Democracy with a working “checks and balances system” that includes a real independent Supreme Court and a free, honest, open voting system of fair elections. We must demand all elected officeholders, especially members of the U.S. Senate, work tirelessly and vigorously to achieve these goals. Written by Stephen Crockett ( co-host of Democratic Talk Radio http://www.democratictalkradio.com ). Mail: P.O. Box 283, Earleville, Maryland 21919. Email: midsouthcm@aol.com . www.DemocraticTalkRadio.com Stephen Crockett is co-host of Democratic Talk Radio and author of the Democratic Voices opinion column.

Our Litmus Test: Tell Them FILIBUSTER Alito Or Get Out Of OUR Congress nocrony.com 16 Jan 2006 NEW ACTION PAGE TO FILIBUSTER ALITO: CALL YOUR SENATORS RIGHT NOW at 888-818-6641, 888-355-3588 or 800-426-8073 When they surrendered on the original filibuster confrontation without a fight they told us they were "saving our ammunition." Strike one. When they waved Roberts through without demanding access to any of his records for the last 20 years they told us they were "keeping our powder dry." Strike two. Don't DARE tell us that now rubberstamping the most radical jurist on the appellate bench is yet more "picking our battles." A number of senators in the last couple days have made statements to the effect they did not hear anything at Alito's confirmation hearing that would make them vote against him. Of course not, because he did not actually say ANYTHING! Alito is on the record stating that he believes in a dictatorial model of the president and that a woman's private decisions are up for grabs. He lied about his position on the former and categorically refused to repudiate the later. Robert Bork himself stated the other day he believes conclusively that Alito still holds that view. THAT is the evidence to filibuster Alito, not what he might have evaded saying at his hearing. This is our litmus test. If our senators will not protect us from this constitutional outrage, we call for each and every one to be defeated in their next election. We call for candidates to arise in their own primaries if necessary to punish them for their cowardice and their complicity. If putting their own job on the line is not a circumstance "extraordinary" enough for them we don't know what is. Alito has been called a "walking constitutional amendment." Let our senators clearly understand that for them he represents a walking pink slip. And don't think because you are not up for re-election in 2006 that we will not remember. If you blow this one you will come to find out what a "done deal" really is. Nothing you can do in the future will redeem you. We the people can do better. CALLING ALL POTENTIAL PRIMARY AND GENERAL ELECTION CANDIDATES If you live in a state where your senator has expressed support or indifference on the Alito nomination we need you to immediately contact us about mounting a primary or general election challenge with yourself or someone else you know as the candidate. Be ye not concerned where you will get the money to run. We will provide you with the tools to run a campaign with no money and win. All you need to the courage to want to represent your fellow constitutents and do what they want their senators to do . . . for a change. Did you catch Alito's snaky answer when asked if he thought Roe v. Wade was well settled? He said it depended on what you meant by "well settled. And they ridiculed Clinton for quibbling about the meaning of the word "is". When he says stare decisis is not an inexorable command, what he really means is Katie bar the door to the Supreme Court. He doesn't always rule against the "little guy" he said at this hearing. And he gave as his primary example the machine gun case. Oh swell . . . if you are a little guy with a machine gun you can get a fair shake in judge Alito's courtroom. On issue after issue he refused to comment, on the grounds that it might come before him. MIGHT come before him? Of course these issues will come before him. That's the whole plan, to systematically revisit every one of these decisions and roll them back one century at a time. The members of the Federalist society have been plotting this judicial coup since their mentor Bork was rejected for admitting his extremism. Since then they have been packing the courts with true believers who refuse to disclose their agendas, accelerated by the Bush neocon cabal. And Alito is the last piece of the puzzle they need to fall into place, WITHOUT WHICH THEY CANNOT PROCEED. That is why it is so critical. That is why you must speak out again now. That is why you must submit this action page now. http://www.nocrony.com That is why you must ignore even now the voices on our own side who have been conned into parroting the right wing line that this is a foregone conclusion. Our senators did not have the burden of proof to stop Alito. It was his burden of proof to earn the position with straight forward and honest answers to the American people about what he stood for. The Federalist society knows EXACTLY what he stands for. They dropkicked Miers because they weren't 100% sure about her. It is the American people they are so desperately trying to keep in the dark. This one is a ringer. You don't run with the wolf pack for so many decades without being a wolf. But they could not nominate a wolf without outfitting him with the sheep's clothing of "I'd have to carefully examine the facts of the case." They played up a weepy wife to trivialize the monumental danger this man represents as the fifth and deciding vote to overturn absolutely everything we ever cared about. And his supporters admit it even if he will not. Yeah, sure they say, that's what they want, to roll to clock back to the mid-thirties for starters and work backwards from there. One of the most pathetic reasons we've ever heard for inaction is that they'll just nominate somebody as bad if Alito is rejected. What kind of defeatism is that? C'mon folks, snap out of it. No, not only are we going to turn thumbs down on Alito, but the next one, and the next one, until we get a true moderate at the very worse. That is what the American people deserve, if only you will demand it by calling your senators right now at one of the toll free numbers. There are three we know of, 888-818-6641, 888-355-3588, 800-426-8073. Tell them if they do not filibuster Alito their own jobs are in jeopardy. Those who will not exercise the power they have will have whatever power they do have taken away from them. The OTHER side will do that if we do not do it first. Hold a press conference and declare your opposition and willingness to run in the primary of any state where such a senator dwells. You won't have to worry about raising money. You will be drafted so fast it will make your head spin. http://www.nocrony.com

Abortion Politics and Alito By Eleanor Clift Newsweek Jan. 13, 2006 The Alito hearing couldn't have come out better for the Republicans if the Supreme Court nominee himself had chaired the committee. Even though it was a Republican senator, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who brought Alito's wife to tears by asking her husband if he was "a closet bigot," the Democrats got blamed for hectoring the nominee with questions he wasn't going to answer. The shock of the rhetorical ploy briefly drove Martha-Ann Alito from the hearing room and gave Graham the stage to defend the judge's character and bemoan the "guilt by association" tactics employed by Democrats. It turns out that Graham had a hand in helping prep Alito for the hearings, which raises the issue of whether the line was scripted. At issue was Alito's membership in the Concerned Alumni of Princeton (CAP), which he listed on a job application for the Reagan administration. The group opposed the admission of women and minorities at the expense of the children of alumni, known as legacies. Alito claimed he didn't remember being part of CAP, and early documents of the group don't reveal him as an active member. Yet Democrats kept hammering away until Graham exploded their line of questioning with his mock prosecutorial interrogation: "Are you really a closet bigot?" Through most of the four days of hearings, Alito sat impassively while Democrats fell into the worst caricature of bloviating senators. There is no danger whatsoever when it comes to the nominee’s confirmation. He'll get more Democrats voting against him than Roberts, who had half the 44-member Democratic caucus voting for him, including the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary committee, Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy. One Hill vote-counter predicted the number of no votes on the Democratic side would be in the high 30s, no nail-biter but a sign of stormy weather ahead for the Republicans if Alito becomes the deciding vote against Roe v. Wade. A pro-choice Republican who spoke with NEWSWEEK but didn't want her name used said she is more worried about Alito after hearing him testify, and wishes the Democrats would spend their time finding a candidate to beat Hillary Clinton in the primaries "or we're going to get four more years of judges like this." She thinks that to win the White House the Democrats need a more centrist candidate than Clinton. "The math is against her." (That debate is raging within Democratic circles, but no candidate has yet surfaced who could plausibly overtake Clinton, given her rock-star hold on party activists and the esteem in which she and her husband are held by African-American voters, a core Democratic constituency.) It's pretty clear where Alito is headed on abortion rights. He refused to say whether he agreed with the characterization of the 1973 Roe ruling as "settled law," that couldn’t be re-examined. Now that the GOP is within striking distance of overturning Roe, they're having second thoughts. The public is not ready to abandon the landmark case legalizing abortion, and neither is the Republican Party. They used abortion as a wedge issue because the politics worked; they really didn't think abortion would ever be banned. "Any activist will tell you they'd rather have the issue out there than to have it resolved," says this pro-choice Republican, who has worked on the Hill and for various Republican interest groups. "If Roe were overturned, we'd be electing Democrats as far as the eye can see." According to this source, even committed right-to-life activists don't want Roe struck from the books before society is ready. "They think if given the time, they can change the culture. I think they're deluded, but they know it's going to take time." So what is the most likely scenario? The fight over Roe is not imminent. The more immediate challenge will be whether underage pregnant women will have to notify their parents of abortion plans, and extending the right of privacy to minors. "Would we have had Sandra Day O'Connor with us on that?" says the pro-choice Republican. "I'm not sure." She expects Alito to vote to erode Roe, and then the argument will be, sometime in the not too distant future, that the ruling is a shell, and it will be overturned. Then the battle moves back to state legislatures, and some places—like Utah, Louisiana, Missouri, Alabama, Oklahoma and South Dakota—would outlaw abortions while other states, like New York and California, would be decried by the Right as "abortion mills." Politically, the end of Roe would crack open the Republican coalition in the country and on Capitol Hill. The party is full of secret pro-choicers, Republicans who signed on to a package that included the pro-life position with the belief that it would never happen. They've kept their mouth shut all these years, but they'll be mad as hell and not willing to take it any more. "Even if there's no right to privacy in the Constitution, there ought to be," says this pro-choice Republican. "It's an American virtue.” © 2006 Newsweek, Inc.

Laura Bush backs domestic spying program By DEB RIECHMANN ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER 15 Jan 2006 ACCRA, Ghana -- First lady Laura Bush said Sunday that the U.S. government is right to eavesdrop on Americans with suspected ties to terrorists, but a top Senate Republican joined a chorus of lawmakers who think domestic spying is on shaky legal ground. "I think the American people expect the United States government and the president to do what they can to make sure there's not an attack by foreign terrorists," Mrs. Bush said just before landing here to begin a four-day stay in West Africa. President Bush is concerned that media disclosure of the program will cripple work to foil terrorists, she said. "I think he was worried that it would undermine our efforts by alerting terrorists to what our efforts are," Mrs. Bush said. Bush's secret order gave the National Security Agency permission to listen in on international phone calls and peek at e-mails between Americans and suspected terrorists. Administration officials claim a congressional resolution passed after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 - a resolution that authorized him to use force in the fight against terrorism - gave the president the authority to order the program. "I thought they were wrong," Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said on ABC's "This Week." Specter is one of several Republicans and Democrats who are questioning the administration's authority to engage in domestic spying without court warrants. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has agreed to testify at hearings next month before the Judiciary Committee, which Specter chairs. Committee members, including GOP Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas, have expressed doubt about Bush's legal argument for the program. "We're not going to give him a blank check, and just because we're of the same party doesn't mean we're not going to look at this very closely," Specter said. "And I moved immediately when the matter was disclosed to say that I would use my authority as chairman of the Judiciary Committee to have hearings, and we're going to pursue it." Speaking on CBS' "Face the Nation," Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said she too does not think Bush had the legal authority to order the program. She lamented the administration's decision to bypass checks and balances provided by the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Under the act, the attorney general can authorize a warrantless wiretap for up to 72 hours. But he must give the presiding judge of an 11-member FISA court a head's up and justify the surveillance later. If the attorney general fails to do so, the court has discretion to notify the target of the surveillance. "If you're going to wiretap Americans, if you may wiretap whomever an American might call, if you're going to put that information in a database - and I said if, because we don't exactly know what happened - follow the law, and do it legally," Feinstein said. On her second trip to Africa, Mrs. Bush plans to join Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in Monrovia, Liberia, on Monday to attend the inauguration of President-elect Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, the first woman president on the continent. "The centerpiece of this trip is women's empowerment, with Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf as an example, a shining example for all of us, for women around the world," she said. Mrs. Bush also is highlighting U.S.-backed education and HIV-AIDS programs in Ghana and Nigeria. In a 12-minute exchange with reporters on the plane, Mrs. Bush rebuffed criticism that too much of U.S. assistance for battling AIDS in Africa is focused on abstinence programs. She said abstinence, the use of condoms and being faithful to one's sexual partner are all important in curbing the spread of disease. "I'm always a little bit irritated when I hear the criticism of abstinence, because abstinence is absolutely 100 percent effective in eradicating a sexually transmitted disease," she said. In countries where girls feel obligated to comply with the wishes of men, girls need to know that abstinence is a choice. "When girls are not empowered, when girls are vulnerable ... their chances of being able to negotiate their sexual life with their partners and to encourage or make their partners use a condom are very low," she said. "So it's really important for all three to be part of a successful eradication of AIDS, and that is ... abstinence, be faithful to your partner, and then use condoms, correctly and consistently."

Tasteless (Condoleezza) Rice Arutz Sheva Israel National News She may be attractive, articulate and intelligent, but don’t let that fool you into thinking that Condoleezza Rice is a friend of Israel. The US Secretary of State in recent weeks has engineered yet another major Israeli concession, compelling the Jewish state to allow Palestinians in eastern Jerusalem to take part in the upcoming Palestinian Authority (PA) elections. Despite months of insisting that it would not back down on the issue, Israel has done precisely that, with Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert now planning to get the cabinet to approve the move at its weekly session on Sunday. This is far more than just a question of procedural issues – it undercuts Israel’s sovereignty in its own capital, and reinforces ties between the city’s Palestinians and the PA. Allowing Jerusalem Palestinians to take part sends a message that a foreign entity – namely, the PA – is the ultimate political authority to whom the city’s Arab residents must turn. And that, of course, is precisely what the Palestinian leadership would like to see happen. By twisting Israel’s arm on this issue at a time when the country’s Prime Minister lies in a hospital bed fighting for his life, Condoleezza Rice has demonstrated a startling lack of decency and humanity. And by undermining Israel’s position on Jerusalem, and giving the Palestinians a huge political victory, Rice has shown where her sympathies truly lie.

Condi's 'Sex Problem' Explains 'Harsh Anti-Russian Stance' By Yaroslava Krestovskaya Pravda January 11, 2006 In one of the more remarkable interviews in modern political history, the leader of the Liberal and Democratic Party [extreme nationalists], Vladimir Zhirinovsky explains Condoleezza Rice's recent 'harsh' criticism of Russia. According to him, 'Rice needs a company of soldiers. She needs to be taken to barracks where she could be satisfied.' Courtesy of Russia's pro-communist Pravda newspaper. Condoleezza Rice, the U.S. Secretary of State, openly criticized the Russian government in connection with its dispute with Ukraine over gas supplies. In doing so, Ms. Rice used a quite trivial method of applying psychological pressure, which is most often practiced in the field of education. According to Rice, Russia's actions toward Ukraine did not characterize it as a respectable member of the Group of Eight. The statement from this high-ranking U.S. official sounded like a strict babysitter's reprimand, who is teaching a baby to behave. It goes without saying that the largest Eurasian power is no baby. Additionally, the global geopolitical system has undergone dramatic changes since the 1990s. The U.S. Secretary of State, however, has seemingly lost any sense of time or reality. Ms. Rice's attempt to exercise her own political power was quite a surprise to the Russian Ministry for Foreign Affairs and to proponents of traditional liberal values. Ms. Rice's criticism can be explained by the politician's personal peculiarities. Why is Condoleezza Rice so fond of her "strict teacher's" role? Is this her technique for remaining in the political spotlight? The leader of the Liberal and Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR), Vladimir Zhirinovsky, expressed his opinion on the matter in an exclusive interview with Pravda.Ru. "Condoleezza Rice released a coarse anti-Russian statement. This is because she is a single woman who has no children. She has lost her reason because of her advanced single status. Nature takes it all [her reason]. "Such women are very rough. They are all workaholics, public workaholics. They can be happy only when they are discussed and written about everywhere: "Oh, Condoleezza, what a remarkable woman, what a charming Afro-American lady! How well she can play the piano and speak Russian! What a courageous, tough and strong female she is! "This is the only way to satisfy her female needs. She derives pleasure from this. If she hasn't found a man by her side by her age, such a man will never appear. Even if she had an entire selection of men to choose from, she would remain single because her soul and heart have hardened. Like Napoleon, Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, or Alexander the Great of Macedon, Ms. Rice needs to fight and release tough public statements on a global scale. She needs to be on top of the world. "Ms. Rice was always interested in Russia. Now she needs to prove that she actually has some insight into Russia. Her number one goal is to observe America's interest. If Russia rises, it means that the U.S. falls. Europe has united, China is growing rapidly and Russia possesses immense power in terms of energy resources. There is nothing the U.S. administration can do about it. "The United States is experiencing a crisis of ideological and moral values. Americans talk about good family values, but the actual state of things is disastrous. That's why they need to protect themselves with such public personalities as Condoleezza Rice, who get pleasure from provoking political commotion. "The civilized world needs to think about ensuring that single politicians are not allowed to stay in power. This was a common practice in the Soviet political system. The matter of international relations is very subtle and exquisite. A single word or phrase may play an extremely important role in politics. This is not the place where one can sublimate personal sexual problems. "Complex-prone women are especially dangerous. They are like malicious mothers-in-law, women that evoke hatred and irritation with everyone. Everybody tries to part, as quickly as possible, with such women. But a mother-in-law is better than a single, childless political persona. "This is really scary. Ms. Rice's personal complexes affect the entire field of international politics. This is an irritating to everyone, especially for the Eastern and the Islamic worlds. When they look at her, they go mad. "Condoleezza Rice needs a company of soldiers. She needs to be taken to barracks where she could be satisfied. On the other hand, she can hardly be satisfied because of her age. This is a mental complex. She needs to return to her university and teach students. She could also use some psychological analysis. "The true reason of Ms. Rice's attack on Russia is simple. Condoleezza Rice is a very cruel woman, offended by a lack of attention from men. Releasing such stupid remarks gives her the feeling of being fulfilled. This is the only way for her to attract men's attention," Vladimir Zhirinovsky said.

Publish on the web and be damned: Copyright laws are designed to encourage creative endeavour. But on the web they are being used to silence and intimidate. 14 January 2006 From New Scientist Print Edition Annalee Newitz HOWARD HALLIS is a comic book artist who made a big mistake. He used his website to publish parodies of Chick Tracts - Christian comic books chronicling the adventures of mixed-up teenagers who are rescued from lives of sex, drugs and Dungeons and Dragons when they find Jesus. Hallis drew a "Cthulhu Chick Tract" in which the confused youths eschew Jesus in favour of Cthulhu, H. P. Lovecraft's infamous, slimy demon of the deep. Soon after Hallis posted it, his internet service provider received a letter from lawyers representing Chick Publications, ordering the ISP to take down Hallis's comic on the grounds that it infringed their copyright. Many copyright attorneys would argue that Hallis' work was clearly a satire and therefore would qualify under "fair use", an exemption to American copyright law. Still, rather than face a legal battle, Hallis removed the comic from his website. His experience reads like a digital update on one of the oldest forms of censorship in the west: the church squelching its critics. But it's not just the church. Hallis's experience is becoming commonplace on the internet as companies and individuals exploit a loophole in copyright law to censor websites without ever going to court. Under section 512 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), copyright owners can send letters known as "takedown notices" to ISPs or web hosts. These notices require the service provider to remove any material the rights holder deems infringing. The European Union Copyright Directive contains similar provisions. In practice, this means that online publications are likely to be removed from the public eye before legal proceedings are even initiated. Usually it is up to the person who posted the materials to protest the takedown notice, but unless they are willing to risk expensive legal action, they are likely to do exactly what Hallis did: cave in rather than fight. All this has become clear thanks to two recent studies that looked at hundreds of takedown notices archived at ChillingEffects.org, a website that compiles and analyses legal notices sent to websites, ISPs and Google. Both concluded that a large number of takedown notices would not have stood up had they gone to court. One study, by law researchers at New York University's Brennan Center for Justice, found that 47 per cent of takedown notices sent to ISPs concerned material that had "a strong or reasonable fair use or First Amendment defense", that is, the material was likely exempt from copyright laws. And yet they found that half of this content had been removed from the internet. The DMCA, the researchers say, "is a powerful tool for anyone seeking to suppress criticism". The authors of the second study, Jennifer Urban of the University of Southern California and Laura Quilter of the University of California, Berkeley, found that 9 per cent of takedown notices included "significant statutory flaws" that rendered them invalid. Some of these takedown notices were aimed at commentaries on religion, others at movie and television fan websites. But the vast majority related to commercial sites run by competitors. One of these was MIR Internet Marketing, a web optimisation company. It sent Google 15 takedown notices during 2004 alone demanding that Google remove search results linking to its competitors' websites. MIR claimed the websites were using phrases it had copyrighted. Google complied, replacing the censored links with links to MIR's takedown notices on the Chilling Effects website. What does this mean for the future of online publishing? Urban and Quilter warn that "public discourse and the internet's value as an expressive platform" is at risk. Citizens of countries where DMCA-like copyright legislation is being adopted - and this includes all 25 EU nations - would do well to take heed. The studies suggest that restrictive online copyright regimes, rather than fostering new kinds of expression, instead lead to further restrictions on political speech and social criticism. There is cause for hope, though. The Brennan Center researchers found that many people who refuse to remove material are not sued. In addition, protest groups are actively challenging the takedown culture. In 2004, for example, DownhillBattle.org staged an online protest in which more than 100 participants hosted free copies of DJ Danger Mouse's The Grey Album, a mash-up of music from rapper Jay-Z's The Black Album and the Beatles' The White Album, sharing it with millions online. DJ Danger Mouse had stopped circulating the album after receiving seven "cease-and-desist" notices from Capitol Records/EMI, which owns the rights to The White Album. When Downhill Battle received a takedown notice from EMI, it refused to comply. It is heartening to see activist organisations entering the fray. But we need more than protests; we need laws that protect the rights of creators without giving them the power to deprive everyone else of theirs. Annalee Newitz is based in San Francisco and writes on the social impact of science and technology From issue 2534 of New Scientist magazine, 14 January 2006, page 20 Comment: Indeed, intimidation and COINTELPRO tactics are being used to suppress information. If you doubt this, read Laura's blog where she is publishing exchanges of a similar nature with an alleged "Conspiracy" discussion forum.

Chilling Effects Clearinghouse: Monitoring Internet Suppression and Intimidation A joint project of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley, University of San Francisco, University of Maine, George Washington School of Law, and Santa Clara University School of Law clinics. Do you know your online rights? Have you received a letter asking you to remove information from a Web site or to stop engaging in an activity? Are you concerned about liability for information that someone else posted to your online forum? If so, this site is for you. Chilling Effects aims to help you understand the protections that the First Amendment and intellectual property laws give to your online activities. We are excited about the new opportunities the Internet offers individuals to express their views, parody politicians, celebrate their favorite movie stars, or criticize businesses. But we've noticed that not everyone feels the same way. Anecdotal evidence suggests that some individuals and corporations are using intellectual property and other laws to silence other online users. Chilling Effects encourages respect for intellectual property law, while frowning on its misuse to "chill" legitimate activity. The website offers background material and explanations of the law for people whose websites deal with topics such as Fan Fiction, Copyright, Domain Names and Trademarks, Anonymous Speech, and Defamation. In addition, we want your help. We are gathering a searchable database of Cease and Desist notices sent to Internet users like you. We invite you to input Cease and Desist letters that you've received into our database, to document the chill. We will respond by linking the legalese in the letters to FAQs that explain the allegations in plain English. Periodically, we issue "weather reports" assessing the climate for Internet activity based on the letters we receive and news reports. What areas (topics, legal categories, jurisdictions) are coolest to online conduct? What activities risk being frozen out altogether? What conduct gets the warmest reception?

Ark's New Dawn Letter - Part II - Shipov Replies SOTT Arkadiusz Jadczyk 01/16/2006 Gennady Shipov replies to Ark's New Dawn letter Date sent: Sun, 15 Jan 2006 22:42:19 0300 Hi, Arkadiusz! I do not think, that the example resulted by you on the unification of even and odd numbers is similar to the unification of the quantum theory and the general theory of relativity. All is much more complex also a problem not in good mathematics, and in excellent physics. Now there is no lack of good mathematicians and physicists. Are now necessary ingenious physics of a level of Einstein. They are not present and it is the reason of crisis in physics. As I see a situation in physics for today. The matter is that physics in the beginning of the last century have refused the direct description of a reality, having replaced the direct description indirect. 1. It began since that moment, when E. Rutherford has found out a deviation from the Coulomb law at scattering of the charged particles in strong (E, H =10^16V/s) electromagnetic fields. Physicists had enter "by hands" short-range additives to Coulomb potential. It is done till now the nuclear potentials are very complex and for their definition there are no reasonable equations. 2. Even more significant approach to the indirect description of a reality has arisen after creation of the quantum theory. Physics have ceased to understand physics and in general have refused figurative thinking. In physics there were unsoluble paradoxes and attempts of them to understand have led to split of leading scientists on two groups led by Einstein and Bohr. 3. The numerous models suggested for the description of elementary particles based on laws of conservation of energy-momentum , mass, charge, spin, etc. In some experiments these laws were broken. In this case new elements of the theory and new concepts were entered (for example, neutrino), restored the broken laws of conservation. It is one of elements of the indirect description, widely widespread in physics of a microcosm. Usually search of generalization by this or that physical theories stimulate experiments which cannot be described within the framework of the existing theory. It is possible to specify enough of such experiments in modern physics. And speech here goes not only about experiences in elementary particles spent on accelerators, or the phenomena observable in depths of cosmos with the help of modern telescopes. The question is about experiments which have been carried out in laboratory conditions also are known to experts. I shall list only some (from the big number): 1. Mechanical experiments of Tolchin-Torson-Shipov on the creation of the inertial propulsion, showing " jet movement without rejection of mass". 2. Experiments Tesla-Avramenco on wireless and single-wire transfer of the electric power. 3. Experiments of the Ampere - Nicolaev on longitudinal electromagnetic fields 4. Classical experiments of the Aharonov-Bohm-Nicolaev. 5. Electrotorsional experiments Akimov-Chatchison Though these and many other "abnormal" phenomena is good enough are known, the scientific beau monde prefers to ignore them and supersedes these experiences from a field of a science. Therefore sources of "free energy" are created not by scientists, but watch-makers (Paul Bauman, Switzerland) and musicians (Kochei Minato, Japan). That is why are now necessary physics of a level of Einstein. Ark's reply will be published soon in our upcoming new "Science corner".

Seattle Nears Rainy-Day Record By DONNA GORDON BLANKINSHIP Associated Press Writer Jan 13 12:58 PM US/Eastern SEATTLE - People in water-logged Washington now have official confirmation of something they've been suspecting: It's been raining a lot. The city had its 26th straight day of rain Friday and was just a week short of the 1953 record of 33 consecutive rainy days. Daily rainfall records have already fallen in Seattle and Olympia. More seriously, officials worried about the potential for more landslides and floods, warning that the saturated landscape can't hold much more water. "What we need is a reprieve," Tony Fantello, maintenance and operations manager for Pierce County Water Programs in Tacoma, told The News Tribune. "Everything is just overtaxed. Even 24 to 36 hours of dry conditions really help take the heat off." No dice. Mostly light rain fell early Friday, and the weather service predicted more over the next 10 days. Meteorologist Danny Mercer said he thinks the rain will continue at least until Jan. 20, when Seattle would tie the 1953 mark. "We have a front coming in almost every single day, with very few breaks in between these systems," Mercer said. A respite could come Sunday or late next week, but it's more likely that the rain will only lessen, possibly with a few hours of scattered sunshine, he said. On Wednesday the weather service reported 0.94 inches of rain at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, breaking the old record for Jan. 10 of 0.71 set in 1979. A record of 1.56 inches was set at Olympia Airport, breaking the previous mark of 1.12 set in 1976. Flooding along numerous rivers, none of it severe, was generally easing as water receded early Friday, and the only flood warnings were for the Chehalis below Centralia and the short, flood-prone Skokomish west of Bremerton. Some highways remained closed by mudslides, while Amtrak and commuter train service that had been suspended north of Seattle due to mudslides could resume Friday afternoon, officials said.

State could have its driest winter season in centuries AP 1/12/2006 3:07 PM PHOENIX - As much of Arizona enters an 11th year of drought conditions, the state could experience its driest winter season in centuries. And that has officials worried about agriculture, water supplies and the threat of wildfires. Arizona's mountains are virtually bare, with snowpack conditions worse than they were at the same time in 2002 - a year that set records as one of the driest in five centuries. Rural areas are bracing for water shortages by early summer if rains don't come. January and February typically bring much of the snow needed to refill reservoirs and keep rivers and forests healthy. But a stubborn weather pattern has been steering every storm north of Arizona so far this winter. The Salt and Verde rivers' watersheds received just 0.14 of an inch of rain in November and December, and none has fallen in Phoenix since Oct. 18. "I've never seen anything like this," said Larry Martinez, water supply specialist for the federal Natural Resources Conservation Service. "It's quite shocking to a lot of folks who depend on the snow. There could still be a miracle turnaround; don't underestimate Mother Nature. But the trend doesn't look good for us right now." Farmers who draw on smaller rivers and reservoirs could run short this year. The lack of rain will increase the demand for water early in growing seasons, which will further weaken supplies. Poor range conditions could tighten grazing allotments, squeezing ranchers who have yet to recover from earlier dry years. Meanwhile, some experts are already predicting one of the worst wildfire seasons in years around Arizona with a lethal combination of drying trees and dried-out grass and shrubs. The state Department of Water Resources had begun meeting with local leaders under a drought plan produced two years ago by a governor's task force. That process, led in part by a newly appointed statewide drought coordinator, is expected to take on added importance as rural communities seek guidance in creating drought and conservation blueprints. The main effect of the dry winter in the Phoenix metropolitan area is an increase in water consumption, say city water departments. Mesa increased its use of Central Arizona Project water by 17% in November and 26% in December. Whether cities will be forced to dip into other reserves depends on the weather for the next two or three months. Forecasters are predicting warm, dry conditions.

Environment in crisis: 'We are past the point of no return' By Michael McCarthy Environment Editor 16 January 2006 Thirty years ago, the scientist James Lovelock worked out that the Earth possessed a planetary-scale control system which kept the environment fit for life. He called it Gaia, and the theory has become widely accepted. Now, he believes mankind's abuse of the environment is making that mechanism work against us. His astonishing conclusion - that climate change is already insoluble, and life on Earth will never be the same again. The world has already passed the point of no return for climate change, and civilisation as we know it is now unlikely to survive, according to James Lovelock, the scientist and green guru who conceived the idea of Gaia - the Earth which keeps itself fit for life. In a profoundly pessimistic new assessment, published in today's Independent, Professor Lovelock suggests that efforts to counter global warming cannot succeed, and that, in effect, it is already too late. The world and human society face disaster to a worse extent, and on a faster timescale, than almost anybody realises, he believes. He writes: " Before this century is over, billions of us will die, and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable." In making such a statement, far gloomier than any yet made by a scientist of comparable international standing, Professor Lovelock accepts he is going out on a limb. But as the man who conceived the first wholly new way of looking at life on Earth since Charles Darwin, he feels his own analysis of what is happening leaves him no choice. He believes that it is the self-regulating mechanism of Gaia itself - increasingly accepted by other scientists worldwide, although they prefer to term it the Earth System - which, perversely, will ensure that the warming cannot be mastered. This is because the system contains myriad feedback mechanisms which in the past have acted in concert to keep the Earth much cooler than it otherwise would be. Now, however, they will come together to amplify the warming being caused by human activities such as transport and industry through huge emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2 ). It means that the harmful consequences of human beings damaging the living planet's ancient regulatory system will be non-linear - in other words, likely to accelerate uncontrollably. He terms this phenomenon "The Revenge of Gaia" and examines it in detail in a new book with that title, to be published next month. The uniqueness of the Lovelock viewpoint is that it is holistic, rather than reductionist. Although he is a committed supporter of current research into climate change, especially at Britain's Hadley Centre, he is not looking at individual facets of how the climate behaves, as other scientists inevitably are. Rather, he is looking at how the whole control system of the Earth behaves when put under stress. Professor Lovelock, who conceived the idea of Gaia in the 1970s while examining the possibility of life on Mars for Nasa in the US, has been warning of the dangers of climate change since major concerns about it first began nearly 20 years ago. He was one of a select group of scientists who gave an initial briefing on global warming to Margaret Thatcher's Cabinet at 10 Downing Street in April 1989. His concerns have increased steadily since then, as evidence of a warming climate has mounted. For example, he shared the alarm of many scientists at the news last September that the ice covering the Arctic Ocean is now melting so fast that in 2005 it reached a historic low point. Two years ago he sparked a major controversy with an article in The Independent calling on environmentalists to drop their long-standing opposition to nuclear power, which does not produce the greenhouses gases of conventional power stations. Global warming was proceeding so fast that only a major expansion of nuclear power could bring it under control, he said. Most of the Green movement roundly rejected his call, and does so still. Now his concerns have reached a peak - and have a new emphasis. Rather than calling for further ways of countering climate change, he is calling on governments in Britain and elsewhere to begin large-scale preparations for surviving what he now sees as inevitable - in his own phrase today, "a hell of a climate", likely to be in Europe up to 8C hotter than it is today. In his book's concluding chapter, he writes: "What should a sensible European government be doing now? I think we have little option but to prepare for the worst, and assume that we have passed the threshold." And in today's Independent he writes: "We will do our best to survive, but sadly I cannot see the United States or the emerging economies of China and India cutting back in time, and they are the main source of [CO2] emissions. The worst will happen ..." He goes on: "We have to keep in mind the awesome pace of change and realise how little time is left to act, and then each community and nation must find the best use of the resources they have to sustain civilisation for as long as they can." He believes that the world's governments should plan to secure energy and food supplies in the global hothouse, and defences against the expected rise in sea levels. The scientist's vision of what human society may ultimately be reduced to through climate change is " a broken rabble led by brutal warlords." Professor Lovelock draws attention to one aspect of the warming threat in particular, which is that the expected temperature rise is currently being held back artificially by a global aerosol - a layer of dust in the atmosphere right around the planet's northern hemisphere - which is the product of the world's industry. This shields us from some of the sun's radiation in a phenomenon which is known as "global dimming" and is thought to be holding the global temperature down by several degrees. But with a severe industrial downturn, the aerosol could fall out of the atmosphere in a very short time, and the global temperature could take a sudden enormous leap upwards. One of the most striking ideas in his book is that of "a guidebook for global warming survivors" aimed at the humans who would still be struggling to exist after a total societal collapse. Written, not in electronic form, but "on durable paper with long-lasting print", it would contain the basic accumulated scientific knowledge of humanity, much of it utterly taken for granted by us now, but originally won only after a hard struggle - such as our place in the solar system, or the fact that bacteria and viruses cause infectious diseases. Rough guide to a planet in jeopardy Global warming, caused principally by the large-scale emissions of industrial gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2), is almost certainly the greatest threat that mankind has ever faced, because it puts a question mark over the very habitability of the Earth. Over the coming decades soaring temperatures will mean agriculture may become unviable over huge areas of the world where people are already poor and hungry; water supplies for millions or even billions may fail. Rising sea levels will destroy substantial coastal areas in low-lying countries such as Bangladesh, at the very moment when their populations are mushrooming. Numberless environmental refugees will overwhelm the capacity of any agency, or indeed any country, to cope, while modern urban infrastructure will face devastation from powerful extreme weather events, such as Hurricane Katrina which hit New Orleans last summer. The international community accepts the reality of global warming, supported by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In its last report, in 2001, the IPCC said global average temperatures were likely to rise by up to 5.8C by 2100. In high latitudes, such as Britain, the rise is likely to be much higher, perhaps 8C. The warming seems to be proceeding faster than anticipated and in the IPCC's next report, 2007, the timescale may be shortened. Yet there still remains an assumption that climate change is controllable, if CO2 emissions can be curbed. Lovelock is warning: think again. 'The Revenge of Gaia' by James Lovelock is published by Penguin on 2 February, price £16.99

Why Gaia is wreaking revenge on our abuse of the environment By Michael McCarthy Published: 16 January 2006 With anyone else, you would not really take it seriously: the proposition that because of climate change, human society as we know it on this planet may already be condemned, whatever we do. It would seem not just radical, but outlandish, mere hyperbole. And we react against it instinctively: it seems simply too sombre to be countenanced. But James Lovelock, the celebrated environmental scientist, has a unique perspective on the fate of the Earth. Thirty years ago he conceived the idea that the planet was special in a way no one had ever considered before: that it regulated itself, chemically and atmospherically, to keep itself fit for life, as if it were a great super-organism; as if, in fact, it were alive. The complex mechanism he put forward for this might have remained in the pages of arcane geophysical journals had he continued to refer to it as "the biocybernetic universal system tendency". But his neighbour in the village of Bowerchalke, Wiltshire, the Nobel Prize-winning novelist William Golding (who wroteLord of The Flies), suggested he christen it after the Greek goddess of the Earth; and Gaia was born. Gaia has made Professor Lovelock world famous, but at first his fame was in an entirely unexpected quarter. Research scientists, who were his original target audience, virtually ignored his theory. To his surprise, it was the burgeoning New Age and environmental movements who took it up - the generation who had just seen the first pictures of the Earth taken by the Apollo astronauts, the shimmering pastel-blue sphere hanging in infinite black space, fragile and vulnerable, but our only home. They seized on his metaphor of a reinvented Mother Earth, who needed to be revered and respected - or else. It has been only gradually that the scientific establishment has become convinced of the essential truth of the theory, that the Earth possesses a planetary control system, founded on the interaction of living organisms with their environment, which has operated for billions of years to allow life to exist, by regulating the temperature, the chemical composition of the atmosphere, even the salinity of the seas. But accepted it is, and now (under the term Earth System Science) it has been subsumed into the scientific mainstream; two years ago, for example, Nature, the world's premier scientific journal, gave Professor Lovelock two pages to sum up recent developments in it. Yet now too, by a savage irony, it is Gaia that lies behind his profound pessimism about how climate change will affect us all. For the planetary control system, he believes, which has always worked in our favour, will now work against us. It has been made up of a host of positive feedback mechanisms; now, as the temperature starts to rise abnormally because of human activity, these will turn harmful in their effect, and put the situation beyond our control. To give just a single example out of very many: the ice of the Arctic Ocean is now melting so fast it is likely to be gone in a few decades at most. Concerns are already acute about, for example, what that will mean for polar bears, who need the ice to live and hunt. But there is more. For when the ice has vanished, there will be a dark ocean that absorbs the sun's heat, instead of an icy surface that reflects 90 per cent of it back into space; and so the planet will get even hotter still. Professor Lovelock visualises it all in the title of his new book, The Revenge of Gaia. Now 86, but looking and sounding 20 years younger, he is by nature an optimistic man with a ready grin, and it felt somewhat unreal to talk calmly to him in his Cornish mill house last week, with a coffee cup to hand and birds on the feeder outside the study window, about such a dark future. You had to pinch yourself. He too saw the strangeness of it. "I'm usually a cheerful sod, so I'm not happy about writing doom books," he said. "But I don't see any easy way out." His predictions are simply based on the inevitable nature of the Gaian system. "If on Mars, which is a dead planet, you doubled the CO2, you could predict accurately what the temperature would rise to," he said. "On the Earth, you can't do it, because the biota [the ensemble of life forms] reacts. As soon as you pump up the temperature, everything changes. And at the moment the system is amplifying change. "So our problem is that anything we do, like increasing the carbon dioxide, mucking about with the land, destroying forests, farming too much, things like that - they don't just produce a linear increase in temperature, they produce an amplified increase in temperature. "And it's worse than that. Because as you approach one of the tipping points, the thresholds, the extent of amplification rapidly increases and tends towards infinity. "The analogy I use is, it's as if we were in a pleasure boat above the Niagara Falls. You're all right as long as the engines are going, and you can get out of it. But if the engines fail, you're drawn towards the edge faster and faster, and there's no hope of getting back once you've gone over - then you're going down. "And the uprise is just like that, the steep jump of temperature on Earth. It is exactly like the drop in the Falls." Professor Lovelock's unique viewpoint is that he is just not looking at this or that aspect of the Earth's climate, as are other scientists; he is looking at the whole planet in terms of a different discipline, control theory. "Most scientists are not trained in control theory. They follow Descartes, and they think that everything can be explained if you take it down to its atoms, and then build it up again. "Control theory looks at it in a very different way. You look at whole systems and how do they work. Gaia is very much about control theory. And that's why I spot all these positive feedbacks." I asked him how he would sum up the message of his new book. He said simply: "It's a wake-up call.''

Bird flu: Death in the air UK Independent 15 January 2006 It really could kill millions. So say the scientists in a locked British lab who are now the best hope of stopping it This is how the nightmare begins: a child plays with chickens in her yard and catches bird flu. She already has ordinary flu. The two mix inside her body, combining to produce a new virus that passes easily from human to human. It spreads fast. No existing vaccine is effective. Before long, millions of people are dead. This is not a scare story. It is the scenario that three research scientists at a locked and sealed laboratory in north London expect to meet every day they go to work. Their high-security lab, hidden away in the unsuspecting suburb of Mill Hill, is suddenly on the front line of the global fight against bird flu. Yesterday they were placed on high alert as it seemed the nightmare was about to become real. A Russian journalist had got off a flight from an infected area in Turkey and had gone straight to hospital with flu-like symptoms. He was put in isolation; blood tests were taken and Mill Hill prepared for samples to arrive. Panic began to rise all over Europe. But then the Belgian health minister announced to a packed press conference that the test results had made doctors "100 per cent sure" their patient did not have bird flu after all. Panic over. For now. If (or when, as the scientists say) the virus does make the change that would enable it to cause a pandemic and kill up to 150 million people worldwide, the British scientists will probably be the first to spot it. The faster they can do so, the more lives will be saved. "We do have a great responsibility here," says their boss, Sir John Skehel. "Flu research requires that you accept that." Alan Douglas is one of the scientists, a 54-year-old research associate who last week became the first person to isolate and grow the strain that had killed three children in a village in Turkey. He and his colleagues at the World Influenza Centre worked flat out on their samples for days. They knew people were dying, but that their results would tell doctors which drugs to use against the virus. They were also looking for evidence of the big change that the world dreads. Two days ago the World Health Organisation announced that the H5N1 virus found in the body of a 14-year-old boy from a village in Turkey had mutated. The protein spikes on its surface had changed and it was now more attracted to people than birds. This was not the nightmare scenario, insisted Sir John Skehel, but it was "one step along the way". He is director of the National Institute for Medical Research at Mill Hill, which contains the World Influenza Centre on its 50-acre site. The centre is one of four labs that receive samples from new victims of bird flu - but as the others are in America, Japan and Australia, it is London that will test the European outbreaks first. Few outsiders ever see the lab, but last week The Independent on Sunday was given unprecedented access. The head of the centre, Dr Alan Hay, cut short a holiday when he heard the news of an outbreak in the Van region of Turkey. The other scientists cancelled days off as samples from the dead boy and his sister were flown to London, a week ago last Thursday. They were driven to Mill Hill from the airport in a car with Turkish diplomatic plates. As it swept through red and white security barriers the passenger, a woman from the Ministry of Health in Turkey, may just have felt she had seen the institute before. The main block is a tall building with a presence unsettling enough to have been used as an asylum in Batman Begins. The samples were driven down the hill overlooking the parklands and big houses of Totteridge - "where the millionaires live", as one member of staff on government wages puts it - to Containment Four, the laboratory with the highest level of security. From the outside, the lab looks like the boiler house on a 1960s polytechnic campus, with pipes and ducts sprouting from the walls. Only four people have permission to enter the laboratory: the security manager and three scientists. Before starting work, Alan Douglas showered and left his clothes in a decontamination room, then dressed in royal blue overalls very like a surgeon would wear in an operating theatre, with a white laboratory coat. He unlocked the door and entered the laboratory, the air in which passes through a complicated series of filters, each sterilised with formaldehyde. This is to stop unwelcome particles from ruining experiments, but it is also to stop viruses with which the scientists work from escaping into the atmosphere. The air pressure inside the building is lower than outside, so that if an accident happens air will be sucked inside rather than out. Black polythene is taped up at the windows to prevent sunlight from getting in. All waste leaving the lab is sterilised. The Turkish samples came in plastic tubes, protected by bubble wrap, in a box containing carbon dioxide to keep them at the right temperature. One by one they were placed in an airtight chamber, then passed into a main cabinet. Mr Douglas and his colleagues work with their hands and arms thrust through a portal into gloves, or look into a microscope that extends out of the cabinet as a hood. The best of the samples was a swab or slice from the lungs of Mehmet Kocyigit, a 14-year-old boy who had lived on a farm thousands of miles away in the village of Dogubayazit, in the mountains close to the border with Iran. He had died from the pneumonia-like symptoms of avian flu which have hospitalised 78 other people across Turkey. It is thought that Mehmet and his siblings had been playing with the severed heads of infected birds. His sisters Fatima and Hulya also died. "I knew the boy offered our best chance of isolating and growing the virus," says Mr Douglas, who diluted the sample, and from part of it extracted the RNA, the genetic material that is the virus equivalent of DNA. This was then analysed. The rest of the sample was shared out between dishes in which the virus might grow. Some contained chicken eggs, which are usually used for growing ordinary flu viruses; others contained tissue culture made from canine kidney cells. "Four of us were working flat out," says Mr Douglas, 55, a research associate who was in the laboratory all last weekend. More people were being hospitalised in Turkey as he worked. "I came in on Sunday morning, checked the tissue culture under the microscope in the hood and took out fluids from all the eggs, and found out that the virus had grown." He was thrilled. Nobody in Turkey had been able to grow, isolate and test the strain. Nobody else in the world had been asked to try. "On Monday morning I continued extracting, and I got the results that afternoon, then repeated the tests." The World Health Organisation (WHO) let it be known that the virus had been isolated. American newspapers got hold of the story early and described Mill Hill as only one of the labs working on it. Mr Douglas and his colleagues were furious. "It was as if we were just another bunch of people working away in the background, but that's not true. We are the only ones in the world who have grown this virus. A lot of people are asking for it now, obviously. The Americans are going to be last on the list, I can tell you." This is not merely a spat. The scientific world depends on patronage, which depends on kudos. The institute has been threatened with a move into central London and its workers do not want to go. They want the world to know about the work they are doing, and the Government to let them stay put. Another colleague shakes his head when asked about the Americans he perceives to be glory-grabbers: "Bastards," he sighs. The World Influenza Centre used to spend most of its time tracking changes in human flu, but now it also has to keep pace with the avian virus that has so far infected 150 people and killed at least 78. People working with chickens in Hong Kong and South Korea were the first to die in the current outbreak, in 1997 and 2003. Since then there have been outbreaks and mass bird culls across South-east Asia. A South American parrot in a quarantine centre in Essex was said to have brought the virus to England in November, but the real carriers were 53 Taiwanese finches in the same compound. No humans were infected here. Wild ducks can carry the virus without symptoms as they migrate, and give it to domestic poultry. British bird owners have been told to keep them away from lakes and waterways where the ducks might land during the migratory season. Once chickens are infected, humans can pick up the virus by touching the birds, their droppings or secretions, or inhaling faecal dust. Somebody with the virus might travel to another country before succumbing to the symptoms, as may have been the case with the suspected bird flu reported in Belgium yesterday. But so far humans cannot pass it to each other. The tests at Mill Hill last week enabled the WHO to confirm that the anti-viral drugs Tamiflu and amantadine are effective against the Turkish strain. The British Government is one of many around the world stockpiling Tamiflu in case of an outbreak: the UK has four million doses now and expects to have another 10.6 million by the end of the year. But the tests also showed that the H5N1 virus had changed in the boy's body. "Each virus contains eight RNA molecules carrying information for the proteins in the virus," says Sir John Skehel. "In one of the samples, one of the proteins had mutated in a way that would allow it to move from bird to human cells more effectively." That has been seen before, in Hong Kong in 2003 and Vietnam last year, but two more genetic changes will probably have to take place before the virus becomes infectious among humans, says Sir John. In the meantime, the fewer people who become infected with avian flu now, the less likely one of them will be a host in which it mutates. "This is why all these chickens need to be killed," says Sir John. "It is not that they have done anything at all wrong; it is just that we cannot afford for them to infect large numbers of humans." The leader of the World Influenza Centre, Dr Alan Hay, flew to Turkey last week to advise doctors and scientists there. "A flu pandemic really is inevitable," he said last year. "We don't know when it will arrive, but we are anticipating it." There on a hill in north London, hidden in a lab that looks like a boiler house, his team will be ready to tell the world if the nightmare comes true. THE HUMAN MIXING BOWL How avian flu could mutate and cause a pandemic 1. WILD DUCKS Migrating wildfowl may carry the H5N1 virus without symptoms as they fly thousands of miles to another continent 2. CHICKENS Domestic poultry become infected with the virus if they have contact with the nasal secretions or faeces of migrating wildfowl 3. HUMANS People working closely with chickens inhale faeces dust or touch secretions and droppings carrying the H5N1 virus 4. MUTATION If avian flu infects a patient who also has human flu the body may act as a mixing bowl for the two. They will combine to form a new avian/human flu virus with a new genetic make-up. The protein spikes on its surface are a new shape, making the virus resistant to all known vaccines. The victim could travel to another country before succumbing to the symptoms 5. PERSON TO PERSON The new virus may be so different that humans have little or no immunity. This would allow it to spread across the world very quickly, carried through the air like old-fashioned flu by droplets from coughs and sneezes. Experts say it could kill as many as 150 million people 1997 was when the current outbreak of avian flu first killed a human being 6 people died in Hong Kong that year and 18 were infected 72 more people have been killed by the virus since that time 158 have needed treatment in countries spreading from Thailand to Turkey 14.6m shots of the Tamiflu anti-viral drug ordered by the British government 150m people could die across the world if the virus mutates and causes a pandemic Comment: Matthew 24:3 ...Take heed that no man deceive you. 24:5 For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many. And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places. All these are the beginning of sorrows. ...But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.

'Mild' collision spawned Earth's moon January 2006 NewScientist.com news service Maggie McKee The collision that spawned the Earth's moon was relatively mild, reveals the longest and most detailed computer simulation ever done of the impact. The research puts limits on the size and velocity of space rocks that can lead to the formation of satellites in cosmic smash-ups. Computer models suggest the Moon formed after an object the size of Mars (just over half the diameter of Earth) crashed into Earth about 4.5 billion years ago. Debris from the impact formed a disc around Earth that eventually coalesced to become the Moon. But modelling the process realistically is extremely difficult, and researchers have tried a variety of approaches. Most have used single particles in the models to represent some larger number of real particles, a method called Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH). But the best of these models use just a few thousand particles in the debris disc, and therefore can not reveal detailed disc structures. As a result, the models can only recreate conditions for less than a day after the impact. "Extreme" simulations Now, researchers led by Keiichi Wada at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan in Tokyo have used another approach to model the disc for about four days. They divided the disc into a three-dimensional grid of boxes – each with its own properties, such as temperature and density – and evolved the boxes over time. They ran two "extreme" simulations – one in which the disc was made mostly of hot gas, and another where it was mostly liquid and solid. Both simulations behaved similarly for the first 10 hours after the initial impact, with the damaged impactor circling back and hitting Earth a second time, when it is destroyed. This accords with SPH models as well, suggesting gravity is the dominant force in the early formation of the disc. But the two models begin to diverge after that. If the impactor vaporises when it is destroyed, spiral shock waves are created that slow down the disc's rotation. This allows the disc material to fall onto the Earth and prevents the formation of a moon. Trouble with models In contrast, if the impactor produces mostly liquid or solid debris, the shocks cannot slow the disc down enough to make it fall to Earth, and the Moon is formed. The researchers suggest that any impact powerful enough to vaporise the impactor would not form a satellite. In the case of the Earth, they estimate the Mars-sized object must have been travelling at less than 15 kilometres per second. In more general terms, they conclude that if an impactor is more than a few times the mass of Earth, then "the giant impact never results in forming a large satellite". Scott Kenyon, an astronomer at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, says the conclusion is reasonable. "The gaseous disc would most likely collapse faster than a solid or liquid disc," he told New Scientist. But he points out that astronomers have long struggled with modelling the viscosity of gas in rotating discs. He says all models have this problem, but that the 3D grid approach may be more vulnerable to it because the viscosity must be chosen by the researchers, and the value selected could affect the timescale over which the disc falls to Earth. Journal reference: Upcoming issue of the Astrophysical Journal

How a supervolcano covers a continent 14 January 2006 New Scientist Print Edition. WHEN supervolcanoes blow they can cover entire continents with ash. But how this happens has been a puzzle because wind and the initial force of the eruption are not enough to carry the ash over such long distances. Now an examination of prehistoric eruptions has come up with an answer. Supervolcanoes are classified as volcanoes that spew out more than a trillion tonnes of material when they erupt - equivalent to 30 Krakatoas. Such volcanoes cannot be studied directly as the most recent was Toba in Sumatra around 71,000 years ago. So Peter Baines from the University of Melbourne, Australia, and Stephen Sparks from the University of Bristol, UK, used geological records of ash volume and magma chamber size to estimate the energy of past blasts and model the plumes they would have generated. From this they deduced that the Earth's rotation fans ash out into a giant spinning cloud up to 6000 kilometres wide within one day. "It is a bit like a hurricane, but on a much larger scale," Sparks says. Unfortunately the findings don't offer a solution for surviving a future eruption, such as if the supervolcano underneath Yellowstone National Park in the US were to blow. "I'm not sure what we could do, except stay underground," says Sparks. From issue 2534 of New Scientist magazine, 14 January 2006, page 19

Born free, shot for sport 07 January 2006 NewScientist.com news service Duncan Graham-Rowe IS TROPHY hunting the way to save dwindling populations of African lions? That's the question on the table for delegates to the World Conservation Union's (IUCN) meeting in Johannesburg on 8 January when they will try to agree on the first ever pan-African lion conservation strategy. But countries that oppose hunting, notably Kenya, are sure to raise bitter objections to the proposal. Until a few years ago lion populations were assumed to be doing well. But two studies in 2002 and 2004 revealed an unexpected population crash in the last two decades, with numbers dropping by as much as 50 per cent in some regions (New Scientist, 20 September 2003, p 36). The problem stems from huge increases in the human population in many African "range states" where lions are naturally found, such as Cameroon and Senegal. Laurence Frank, a wildlife biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, says local people need an incentive not to poison or shoot lions, which they view as a nuisance. Sustainable hunting would be that incentive, he says, bringing money into a country. In Tanzania, for example, tourists may spend up to $75,000 to shoot a lion. "Personally I'm totally opposed to trophy hunting," says Will Travers, director of UK conservation charity, the Born Free foundation. He says Kenya banned it in the 1970s because it seemed to be having a significant impact on wildlife populations. "I don't accept that it might be the only way forwards." But some scientists insist that controlled hunting, carried out only where populations are sustainable, is a necessary step. "By no stretch of the imagination is trophy hunting responsible for the situation that lions are in," says Frank. "Particularly in Kenya we have seen a total collapse in lion populations in the absence of hunting or trade." He says the real culprit is industrial-scale poaching both of lions and their prey, caused by the human population explosion. The controversial strategy would also incorporate a radical shift in wildlife management by establishing lion conservation "units" as parks for sustainable hunting. These units would be sited according to where lions actually are rather than where people think they ought to be. Within these units conservationists would try to curb land encroachment and encourage livestock husbandry practices that have been shown to reduce conflict between lions and humans. Negotiations covering range states in western and central Africa took place in Cameroon in October. Participating countries agreed that hunting should only occur in sustainable conservation units. Government representatives and other delegates are meeting in Johannesburg to thrash out similar regional strategies for eastern and southern Africa. The aim is to end up with a consensus, says Kristin Nowell of the IUCN's cat specialist group, to make sure that only sustainable hunting is carried out. But a consensus may be a tall order given Kenya's historical objections to hunting. As recently as 2004 Kenya proposed including lions on a list of species protected by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. Things are likely to get ugly, says Nowell. From issue 2533 of New Scientist magazine, 07 January 2006, page 12

Hungry African lions taking to humans: Shrinking habitat, food supply is costing human lives, experts say Reuters Jan. 10, 2006 “Once they discover that they can eat people they get quite bold. They are even breaking into people’s houses and pulling them out,” Packer said. JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - Attacks on humans by man-eating lions are on the rise in Tanzania and Mozambique, raising the stakes in the conservation game as environmentalists strive to save the big cats from extinction. Lions in the area have developed a taste for human flesh because people have been sleeping outdoors to protect their crops from raiding bush pigs, which the cats follow onto croplands, a leading expert said. “In Tanzania in the early 1990s there were about 40 recorded lion attacks a year. In the past couple of years they have risen to over 100 and about 70 percent are fatal,” said Craig Packer, an ecologist at the University of Minnesota. “The problems are down in southern Tanzania and northern Mozambique, a region which is very remote and very poor,” Packer said Tuesday. Packer, who has headed the Serengeti Lion Project since 1978, was in Johannesburg for a conference on conservation strategies to save the African lion which also aims to find ways to reduce human-feline conflict. Estimates for the continent’s lion population range from 23,000 to 40,000. Much of west Africa has dense human populations and the bulk of the lion habitat there has been turned into farmland. “Lions have lost 80 percent of their historic range in the last century and we don’t want the next century to be a repeat,” said Kristin Nowell, a member of the lion specialist group at the World Conservation Union, the world’s largest network of conservation groups. Bush pigs and people In southern Tanzania and northern Mozambique, which are contiguous, Packer said there was believed to be around 5,500 lions. This is one of the biggest concentrations of the predator and most of that range is outside of protected areas. “The region doesn’t have a lot of natural prey or a lot of livestock and so as a result, the lions there eat a lot of bush pigs, which is unusual,” said Packer. “But the bush pigs are also quite a pest and so the people in those rural areas sleep outside to protect their crops. So it seems that the lions are drawn into the cropland where they encounter sleeping people,” he said. And humans are easy prey. “Once they discover that they can eat people they get quite bold. They are even breaking into people’s houses and pulling them out,” Packer said. The lure of the easy kill even attracts lions in the prime of life, contrary to the widely held view that most man-eaters are elderly animals with diminished hunting abilities. “There was a bad man-eater in the Rufiji district of Tanzania a couple of years ago which they think ate around 40 people. When it was finally destroyed they found it was only about four years old, which is quite young,” he said. An attack every month Packer said in the Lindi region of southeast Tanzania there had been an average of a lion attack every month for the past 15 years. “Imagine living in an area where you know there will be a lion attack in the next four weeks. That must be terrifying.” People in the region and in neighboring Malawi also frequently fall victim to crocodile attacks. But Packer said while crocodiles lay in wait in rivers, the lions actively stalked people even in their homes — a more chilling scenario. In short, both are man-eaters but the lions are actually man-hunters. Packer said strategies to prevent conflict between rural peasants and killer cats included the digging of trenches around garden plots to stop the bush pigs from raiding crops and being followed by lions in the process. Lacking indoor plumbing, people could also be encouraged to build toilet facilities closer to their homes to limit the distance taken on nocturnal forays when the lions were on the prowl. “It has to be something that people can afford and are able to do themselves,” Packer said. Trophy hunting approach? Nowell said a priority should be to improve the state of the lion’s prey base. “If there is nothing for them to eat they turn to livestock and people too occasionally ... One of our objectives is to come up with strategies to reduce lion/human conflict.” Nowell said one avenue being pursued was to transplant successful lion trophy hunting programs in Tanzania, Zimbabwe and South Africa to other countries. “As long as trophy hunting is done sustainably and doesn’t affect the viability of the lion population then there is quite a lot of support for it among range states,” she said. “It helps to raise money for conservation and gives local people an incentive to have lions living in their neighborhood.” Outside of Africa the only wild lion population is confined to the Gir forest in India. Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited.

Chomsky: 'There Is No War On Terror' By Geov Parrish AlterNet January 14, 2006. For over 40 years, MIT professor Noam Chomsky has been one of the world's leading intellectual critics of U.S. foreign policy. Today, with America's latest imperial adventure in trouble both politically and militarily, Chomsky -- who turned 77 last month -- vows not to slow down "as long as I'm ambulatory." I spoke with him by phone, on Dec. 9 and again on Dec. 20, from his office in Cambridge. Geov Parrish: Is George Bush in political trouble? And if so, why? Noam Chomsky: George Bush would be in severe political trouble if there were an opposition political party in the country. Just about every day, they're shooting themselves in the foot. The striking fact about contemporary American politics is that the Democrats are making almost no gain from this. The only gain that they're getting is that the Republicans are losing support. Now, again, an opposition party would be making hay, but the Democrats are so close in policy to the Republicans that they can't do anything about it. When they try to say something about Iraq, George Bush turns back to them, or Karl Rove turns back to them, and says, "How can you criticize it? You all voted for it." And, yeah, they're basically correct. How could the Democrats distinguish themselves at this point, given that they've already played into that trap? Democrats read the polls way more than I do, their leadership. They know what public opinion is. They could take a stand that's supported by public opinion instead of opposed to it. Then they could become an opposition party, and a majority party. But then they're going to have to change their position on just about everything. Take, for example, take your pick, say for example health care. Probably the major domestic problem for people. A large majority of the population is in favor of a national health care system of some kind. And that's been true for a long time. But whenever that comes up -- it's occasionally mentioned in the press -- it's called politically impossible, or "lacking political support," which is a way of saying that the insurance industry doesn't want it, the pharmaceutical corporations don't want it, and so on. Okay, so a large majority of the population wants it, but who cares about them? Well, Democrats are the same. Clinton came up with some cockamamie scheme which was so complicated you couldn't figure it out, and it collapsed. Kerry in the last election, the last debate in the election, October 28 I think it was, the debate was supposed to be on domestic issues. And the New York Times had a good report of it the next day. They pointed out, correctly, that Kerry never brought up any possible government involvement in the health system because it "lacks political support." It's their way of saying, and Kerry's way of understanding, that political support means support from the wealthy and the powerful. Well, that doesn't have to be what the Democrats are. You can imagine an opposition party that's based on popular interests and concerns. Given the lack of substantive differences in the foreign policies of the two parties -- Or domestic. Yeah, or domestic. But I'm setting this up for a foreign policy question. Are we being set up for a permanent state of war? I don't think so. Nobody really wants war. What you want is victory. Take, say, Central America. In the 1980s, Central America was out of control. The U.S. had to fight a vicious terrorist war in Nicaragua, had to support murderous terrorist states in El Salvador and Guatemala, and Honduras, but that was a state of war. All right, the terrorists succeeded. Now, it's more or less peaceful. So you don't even read about Central America any more because it's peaceful. I mean, suffering and miserable, and so on, but peaceful. So it's not a state of war. And the same elsewhere. If you can keep people under control, it's not a state of war. Take, say, Russia and Eastern Europe. Russia ran Eastern Europe for half a century, almost, with very little military intervention. Occasionally they'd have to invade East Berlin, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, but most of the time it was peaceful. And they thought everything was fine -- run by local security forces, local political figures, no big problem. That's not a permanent state of war. In the War on Terror, however, how does one define victory against a tactic? You can't ever get there. There are metrics. For example, you can measure the number of terrorist attacks. Well, that's gone up sharply under the Bush administration, very sharply after the Iraq war. As expected -- it was anticipated by intelligence agencies that the Iraq war would increase the likelihood of terror. And the post-invasion estimates by the CIA, National Intelligence Council, and other intelligence agencies are exactly that. Yes, it increased terror. In fact, it even created something which never existed -- new training ground for terrorists, much more sophisticated than Afghanistan, where they were training professional terrorists to go out to their own countries. So, yeah, that's a way to deal with the War on Terror, namely, increase terror. And the obvious metric, the number of terrorist attacks, yeah, they've succeeded in increasing terror. The fact of the matter is that there is no War on Terror. It's a minor consideration. So invading Iraq and taking control of the world's energy resources was way more important than the threat of terror. And the same with other things. Take, say, nuclear terror. The American intelligence systems estimate that the likelihood of a "dirty bomb," a dirty nuclear bomb attack in the United States in the next ten years, is about 50 percent. Well, that's pretty high. Are they doing anything about it? Yeah. They're increasing the threat, by increasing nuclear proliferation, by compelling potential adversaries to take very dangerous measures to try to counter rising American threats. This is even sometimes discussed. You can find it in the strategic analysis literature. Take, say, the invasion of Iraq again. We're told that they didn't find weapons of mass destruction. Well, that's not exactly correct. They did find weapons of mass destruction, namely, the ones that had been sent to Saddam by the United States, Britain, and others through the 1980s. A lot of them were still there. They were under control of U.N. inspectors and were being dismantled. But many were still there. When the U.S. invaded, the inspectors were kicked out, and Rumsfeld and Cheney didn't tell their troops to guard the sites. So the sites were left unguarded, and they were systematically looted. The U.N. inspectors did continue their work by satellite and they identified over 100 sites that were systematically looted, like, not somebody going in and stealing something, but carefully, systematically looted. By people who knew what they were doing. Yeah, people who knew what they were doing. It meant that they were taking the high-precision equipment that you can use for nuclear weapons and missiles, dangerous biotoxins, all sorts of stuff. Nobody knows where it went, but, you know, you hate to think about it. Well, that's increasing the threat of terror, substantially. Russia has sharply increased its offensive military capacity in reaction to Bush's programs, which is dangerous enough, but also to try to counter overwhelming U.S. dominance in offensive capacity. They are compelled to ship nuclear missiles all over their vast territory. And mostly unguarded. And the CIA is perfectly well aware that Chechen rebels have been casing Russian railway installations, probably with a plan to try to steal nuclear missiles. Well, yeah, that could be an apocalypse. But they're increasing that threat. Because they don't care that much. Same with global warming. They're not stupid. They know that they're increasing the threat of a serious catastrophe. But that's a generation or two away. Who cares? There's basically two principles that define the Bush administration policies: stuff the pockets of your rich friends with dollars, and increase your control over the world. Almost everything follows from that. If you happen to blow up the world, well, you know, it's somebody else's business. Stuff happens, as Rumsfeld said. You've been tracking U.S. wars of foreign aggression since Vietnam, and now we're in Iraq. Do you think there's any chance in the aftermath, given the fiasco that it's been, that there will be any fundamental changes in U.S. foreign policy? And if so, how would it come about? Well, there are significant changes. Compare, for example, the war in Iraq with 40 years ago, the war in Vietnam. There's quite significant change. Opposition to the war in Iraq is far greater than the much worse war in Vietnam. Iraq is the first war I think in the history of European imperialism, including the U.S., where there was massive protest before the war was officially launched. In Vietnam it took four or five years before there was any visible protest. Protest was so slight that nobody even remembers or knows that Kennedy attacked South Vietnam in 1962. It was a serious attack. It was years later before protest finally developed. What do you think should be done in Iraq? Well, the first thing that should be done in Iraq is for us to be serious about what's going on. There is almost no serious discussion, I'm sorry to say, across the spectrum, of the question of withdrawal. The reason for that is that we are under a rigid doctrine in the West, a religious fanaticism, that says we must believe that the United States would have invaded Iraq even if its main product was lettuce and pickles, and the oil resources of the world were in Central Africa. Anyone who doesn't believe that is condemned as a conspiracy theorist, a Marxist, a madman, or something. Well, you know, if you have three gray cells functioning, you know that that's perfect nonsense. The U.S. invaded Iraq because it has enormous oil resources, mostly untapped, and it's right in the heart of the world's energy system. Which means that if the U.S. manages to control Iraq, it extends enormously its strategic power, what Zbigniew Brzezinski calls its critical leverage over Europe and Asia. Yeah, that's a major reason for controlling the oil resources -- it gives you strategic power. Even if you're on renewable energy you want to do that. So that's the reason for invading Iraq, the fundamental reason. Now let's talk about withdrawal. Take any day's newspapers or journals and so on. They start by saying the United States aims to bring about a sovereign democratic independent Iraq. I mean, is that even a remote possibility? Just consider what the policies would be likely to be of an independent sovereign Iraq. If it's more or less democratic, it'll have a Shiite majority. They will naturally want to improve their linkages with Iran, Shiite Iran. Most of the clerics come from Iran. The Badr Brigade, which basically runs the South, is trained in Iran. They have close and sensible economic relationships which are going to increase. So you get an Iraqi/Iran loose alliance. Furthermore, right across the border in Saudi Arabia, there's a Shiite population which has been bitterly oppressed by the U.S.-backed fundamentalist tyranny. And any moves toward independence in Iraq are surely going to stimulate them, it's already happening. That happens to be where most of Saudi Arabian oil is. Okay, so you can just imagine the ultimate nightmare in Washington: a loose Shiite alliance controlling most of the world's oil, independent of Washington and probably turning toward the East, where China and others are eager to make relationships with them, and are already doing it. Is that even conceivable? The U.S. would go to nuclear war before allowing that, as things now stand. Now, any discussion of withdrawal from Iraq has to at least enter the real world, meaning, at least consider these issues. Just take a look at the commentary in the United States, across the spectrum. How much discussion do you see of these issues? Well, you know, approximately zero, which means that the discussion is just on Mars. And there's a reason for it. We're not allowed to concede that our leaders have rational imperial interests. We have to assume that they're good-hearted and bumbling. But they're not. They're perfectly sensible. They can understand what anybody else can understand. So the first step in talk about withdrawal is: consider the actual situation, not some dream situation, where Bush is pursuing a vision of democracy or something. If we can enter the real world we can begin to talk about it. And yes, I think there should be withdrawal, but we have to talk about it in the real world and know what the White House is thinking. They're not willing to live in a dream world. How will the U.S. deal with China as a superpower? What's the problem with China? Well, competing for resources, for example. NC: Well, if you believe in markets, the way we're supposed to, compete for resources through the market. So what's the problem? The problem is that the United States doesn't like the way it's coming out. Well, too bad. Who has ever liked the way it's coming out when you're not winning? China isn't any kind of threat. We can make it a threat. If you increase the military threats against China, then they will respond. And they're already doing it. They'll respond by building up their military forces, their offensive military capacity, and that's a threat. So, yeah, we can force them to become a threat. What's your biggest regret over 40 years of political activism? What would you have done differently? I would have done more. Because the problems are so serious and overwhelming that it's disgraceful not to do more about it. What gives you hope? What gives me hope actually is public opinion. Public opinion in the United States is very well studied, we know a lot about it. It's rarely reported, but we know about it. And it turns out that, you know, I'm pretty much in the mainstream of public opinion on most issues. I'm not on some, not on gun control or creationism or something like that, but on most crucial issues, the ones we've been talking about, I find myself pretty much at the critical end, but within the spectrum of public opinion. I think that's a very hopeful sign. I think the United States ought to be an organizer's paradise. What sort of organizing should be done to try and change some of these policies? Well, there's a basis for democratic change. Take what happened in Bolivia a couple of days ago. How did a leftist indigenous leader get elected? Was it showing up at the polls once every four years and saying, "Vote for me!"? No. It's because there are mass popular organizations which are working all the time on everything from blocking privatization of water to resources to local issues and so on, and they're actually participatory organizations. Well, that's democracy. We're a long way from it. And that's one task of organizing. Geov Parrish is a Seattle-based columnist and reporter for Seattle Weekly, In These Times and Eat the State! He writes the "Straight Shot" column for WorkingForChange. Noam Chomsky is an acclaimed linguist and political theorist. Among his latest books are Hegemony or Survival from Metropolitan Books and Profit Over People: Neoliberalism and the Global Order published by Seven Stories Press.

More Lies about Iran By Mike Whitney ICH 15 Jan 2006 There’s been a lot of rubbish written about Iran’s “removing the seals” from its uranium enrichment equipment. The fear-mongering western media have exploited the expression for all its worth. Even those who are normally skeptical of the Bush-propaganda machine are taken aback by this ominous-sounding phrase. What gibberish! How else does one make nuclear fuel for electric power plants if the fuel-producing mechanism is under lock and key? The fear-engendering description provided in the news would have the reader believe that “diabolical” Iranians are ripping off the seals with crowbars so they can quickly assemble their secret nuclear stockpile to bomb Tel Aviv. This is the worse type of demagoguery. The fuel that is produced from these uranium enrichment reactors DOES NOT PRODUCE WEAPONS-GRADE MATERIAL. That requires thousands of centrifuges which Iran does not have. At the same time, the nuclear watchdog agency, the IAEA, has on-site inspectors and cameras monitoring the entire process. Everything is under constant observation. Additionally, as nuclear weapons physicist, Gordon Prather states, “After almost three years of go-anywhere see-anything interview-anyone inspections, IAEA inspectors have yet to find any indication that Iran has—or ever had—a nuclear weapons program”. Get it??? No nukes! Not now…not ever! The public has been duped again by the intentionally misleading rhetoric and blatant lies of the MSM and the Bush administration to build the case for war with Iran. What could be more clear? The public does have a choice, however; either they can accept the credible statements from the Nobel Prize-winning Mohammed Elbaradei, chief of the IAEA, or the spurious allegations of the Liar-and-Chief. Which will it be? "Removing the Seals?" So, why were the seals put on the Iranian conversion equipment? Was Iran being punished for violations to the NPT (Non Proliferation Treaty) for secretly developing nuclear weapons? No, but this seems to be the conclusion of most people who haven’t followed the issue closely. The seals were put in place because the Iranian negotiators foolishly fell into a trap that was set by the EU-3. (England, France and Germany) Iran agreed to “confidence-building” measures that would placate the United States, which included “additional protocols” that were not demanded under the terms of the treaty or required by the IAEA. As it turns out, the EU used the extra concessions to make it look like Iran was violating the NPT after negotiations had ended. The EU strategy was a clever ploy that worked like a charm, but that doesn’t change the facts: IRAN HAS NOT VIOLATED ITS TREATY OBLIGATIONS, AND THE AGREEMENT WITH THE EU-3 WAS NEITHER BINDING NOR DESIGNED TO BE PERMANENT. Iran has never given up its “inalienable right” (language of the NPT) to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes. Was Iran foolish to trust the EU-3? (not suspecting that Washington was orchestrating a media-coup behind the scenes) Yes, they were… but that is not a violation of the treaty; that’s simply being deceived by some very brainy neocons. Iran has completely cooperated with the IAEA to ensure that it stays within the rules and does not develop highly-enriched, weapons grade material. Presently, Iran poses no threat to either its neighbors or the United States. The Bush administration does not accept the internationally-recognized treaty rights of Iran because it believes that all law flows from Washington; a fact that is tragically evident in its torturing of prisoners, spying on American citizens, and its vast destruction of Iraq. As long as the Bush-media, which serves as an annex to the political establish, can continue to hoodwink the American people with its alarmist misinformation; there’s little chance that a war with Iran will be avoided. (For those who really want to understand the truth about Iran’s nuclear programs and the many fictions created in the press, there’s no better place to start than the articles of nuclear physicist, Dr. Gordon Prather on antiwar.com.)

Bin Laden 'dead' evidence mounts Reuters 16 Jan 06 A terrorism expert says he has seen evidence showing al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is either seriously ill or dead. Dr Clive Williams, director of terrorism studies at the Australian National University, says documents provided by an Indian colleague suggested bin Laden died of massive organ failure in April last year. "It does seem reasonably convincing based on the evidence that I've been provided with that he's certainly either severely incapacitated or dead at this stage," Dr Williams told ABC radio. Dr Williams said Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden's deputy who was the target of a US air strike in Pakistan last week, has been making all statements on behalf of the terror network for the past year. Dr Williams said proving whether the terrorist leader was still alive might be impossible. "It's hard to prove or disprove these things because there hasn't really been anything that allows you to make a judgment one way or the other," Dr Williams said. "But it does seem strange that Dr Zawahiri has been making all of the statements since then, and nothing's been heard from bin Laden since, I think, the December of the year before." Dr Williams said even if bin Laden was dead, those who upheld the same philosophies would continue to fight for their cause. Al-Qaeda umbrella body Al-Qaeda in Iraq and some other militant groups have set up an umbrella body to coordinate their fight against US-led forces and the Iraqi government, according to a Web statement posted today. The Mujahideen Council aims to confront the "crusaders and their rejectionist (Shi'ite) and secularist followers who have seized Baghdad", said the statement attributed to al-Qaeda, the Army of the Victorious Sect and four less known Sunni Muslim groups. The council, which does not include leading groups such as the Army of Ansar al-Sunna and the Islamic Army in Iraq, said it "welcomes anyone desiring (Islam's) victory to join". The statement's authenticity could not be verified. It was posted on a website often used by insurgents, which subsequently carried messages from the council claiming responsibility for attacks in recent days. "The council also calls on Muslims in Iraq and across the world to join the jihad in Iraq to fight for the victory of religion and to defend the oppressed," it said. Al-Qaeda in Iraq, led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi - Washington's most wanted man in the country, is one of the main insurgent groups fighting US-led forces and the US-backed Iraqi government, which is dominated by Kurds and Shi'ite Muslim Arabs.

US policies "break human rights law" AP 14 Jan 2006 US policies in the war on terrorism are contravening international law on human rights, a top European investigator said today. "The strategy in place today respects neither human rights nor the Geneva Conventions," said Dick Marty, the head of a European investigation into alleged CIA prisons in Europe. "The current administration in Washington is trying to combat terrorism outside legal means, the rule of law." Marty, a Swiss lawmaker leading the probe on behalf of the Council of Europe, said there was no question the CIA was undertaking illegal activities in Europe in its transportation and detention of prisoners. "The question is: Was the CIA really working in Europe?" Marty said. "I believe we can say today, without a doubt, yes." The Council of Europe, based in Strasbourg, France, began its investigation after allegations surfaced in November that US agents interrogated key al-Qaeda 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. Marty said European countries had "a fairly shocking attitude" toward US policies, and that attention should not be focused solely on Romania and Poland. "All the indications are that this 'extraordinary rendition' was already known about," Marty told a news conference in the Swiss town of Burgdorf, referring to the alleged covert movement of prisoners between countries. The covert transportation of prisoners was "completely unacceptable," he said. 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.

Berlin's Spies Reportedly Helped US By Charles Hawley in Berlin 12 Jan 2006 German intelligence agents reportedly helped US forces target Saddam Hussein in an April 2003 Baghdad bombing raid that killed at least 12 people, contravening former chancellor Gerhard Schröder's insistence that Germany was not involved in the war in Iraq. The message from ex-chancellor Gerhard Schröder immediately prior to the United States invasion of Iraq was hard to misunderstand. Germany, he said on Aug. 5, 2002, "will not make itself available for any adventures under my leadership." Indeed, his anti-war stance resonated so strongly with German voters that it even helped get him re-elected in September 2002. In January 2003, he emphasized that Germany -- then one of the rotating members of the United Nations Security Council -- would also not vote in favor of a resolution to go to war with Iraq. But according to new revelations about the activities of Germany's intelligence service Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), the country was not nearly so removed from the US-led war efforts as Schröder liked to claim. German intelligence agents, according to reports in both the Süddeutsche Zeitung and in German public television, were active in Iraq during the entire war and even helped the United States choose bombing targets. BND spooks may even have delivered targeting assistance for the early April 2003 bombing in the wealthy Mansour district of Baghdad -- a strike which was meant to vaporize Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein along with several top members of his regime. The attack left between 12 and 19 people dead -- but not Saddam. "Despite the troubles in the relationship between Berlin and Washington, the political decision was made to continue the close relationship of the intelligence services," an unidentified source from the BND told the public television station ARD. German help "very important" to the US That close relationship apparently involved German intelligence agents remaining in Baghdad during the entire Iraq war at the same time Schröder, his Social Democratic Party, and his junior coalition partner the Greens -- led by then-foreign minister Joschka Fischer -- were officially maintaining strong opposition to the war in Iraq. Germany evacuated its own embassy on March 17, 2003 -- just three days before the start of the invasion -- but at least two BND employees remained in Baghdad, lodged in a safe house. The BND agents allegedly helped the Americans by identifying "non-targets" -- such buildings as embassies, schools and hospitals that should not be bombed. Schröder's chancellery allegedly knew all about the cooperation. On Thursday, an intelligence official told the Reuters news agency that the practice of identifying "non-targets" is a lesson learned from the US bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade during the Kosovo War in 1999. But the Germans' assistance may have gone even further. ARD quotes an American source, identified as a "former Pentagon employee," as saying that the German help was "very important" for the American offensive. The source went on to say that the BND provided "direct assistance in choosing targets." The most dramatic example of such direct assistance may well have been the April 7, 2003 attempt on Saddam. According to ARD's Pentagon source, US intelligence received a tip that morning of a column of black Mercedes limousines near a restaurant often frequented by Saddam and other government leaders. It was thought that Saddam might be among the passengers. But how to verify the report? According to the Pentagon source, US officials called up German intelligence and asked them to have their agents do a drive-by of the restaurant. The German agents in Baghdad confirmed the existence of a convoy of armored vehicles outside the restaurant. Not long afterwards, four satellite-guided bombs obliterated the site. The Bundesnachrichtendienst denies helping the Americans with targeting. It confirms that two BND agents were in Baghdad during the war, but said its agents "provided neither of the warring parties with targets or coordinates for bombing. The BND collected, analyzed and communicated information to the German government within the framework of its legal obligations," a BND spokesman said on Wednesday. A political firestorm in Berlin The revelations come as Chancellor Angela Merkel flies to the United States on Thursday for talks with US President George W. Bush. Germany, along with many European countries, has expressed concern over recent allegations of CIA flights carrying terror suspects to third countries for interrogation -- part of a program known as extraordinary rendition. Alleged secret CIA prisons in eastern Europe have also raised hackles, and last weekend, Merkel said the US prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba " in its present form cannot and must not exist in the long term." She's expected to mention the case of Murat Kurnaz, a Turkish citizen who was born and raised in Germany and is currently incarcerated at Guantanamo, in her talks with Bush. Opposition politicians in Germany are demanding an investigation into the lastest reports of BND activities during the war. The broadly pro-American Free Democrats have said that if the story is true, "it would be a proper scandal that would urgently require a complete clarification." The less Washington-friendly socialist Left Party has demanded a special investigation into the allegations. Much attention, however, is focusing on the Green Party -- Schröder's coalition partners during the war in Iraq. Former foreign minister Fischer said on Thursday that he had no problem with an investigation. "I have nothing to hide," he said. Other members of the Green Party, though, said that Fischer was outraged by the news and, although he knew about the BND agents who were in Baghdad during the war, he claims not to have known about any assistance offered by them to the Americans. Green Party leader Claudia Roth said "the parliament and the German public has the right to see the allegations cleared up with no ifs or buts." Similar voices are to be heard in Schröder's party. SPD parliamentarians spoke on Thursday of the "dark side of foreign policy" and of "BND's separate foreign policy." One can't escape the feeling, said one SPD politician, that Schröder's Iraq policy seems "more and more dishonest."

German Secret Service Issues Passports for MOSSAD Berlin IRNA Jan 14, 2006 Germany's BND foreign intelligence agency has issued German passports for Israel's Mossad secret service, the daily Koelner Stadt-Anzeiger quoted a former high-ranking BND member as saying on Saturday. According to the official, Mossad agents are using German passports during their covert operations in Middle Eastern countries. Reacting to the news report, an unidentified BND spokesman said, "Of course we also have a cooperation with Mossad." The number of issued German passports for Mossad operatives has reportedly increased dramatically since September 11, 2001. Mossad used also passports from Canada and New Zealand in the 1990s.

The drone, the CIA and a botched attempt to kill bin Laden's deputy Jason Burke and Imtiaz Gul in Islamabad January 15, 2006 The Observer In the hunt for al-Qaeda, a missile attack on a mountain village killed women and children. The attack was precise, the intelligence was flawed, and the strained relation between Pakistan and the US has been pushed to breaking point The missiles were deadly accurate. In the pitch dark of a night in Pakistan's sparsely populated North West Frontier Province, they not only located the three targeted houses on the outskirts of the village of Damadola Burkanday but squarely struck their hujra, the large rooms traditionally used by Pashtun tribesmen to accommodate guests. Yesterday some of the results of the strike were very clear: three ruined houses, mud-brick rubble scattered across the steeply terraced fields, the bodies of livestock lying where thrown by the airblast, a row of newly dug graves in the village cemetery and torn green and red embroidered blankets flapping in the chilly wind. Four children were among the 18 villagers who died in the brutally sudden attack on their homes. Yet evidence emerging appeared to indicate that, though the technology that guided the missiles to their targets at 3am on Friday was faultless, the intelligence that had selected those targets was not. Even as American military and intelligence sources spoke of the possible death of Ayman al-Zawahiri, the second-in-command of al-Qaeda and the man considered to be the brains behind the militant group's strategy, Pakistani officials said that there was no evidence any 'foreigners', shorthand locally for al-Qaeda fighters, were among the 18 victims, though they said that 'according to preliminary investigations there was foreign presence in the area'. In a bid to distance themselves from what was looking like a tragic and counter-productive tactical error that had cost many innocent lives, Pakistan announced it would file a formal protest with the Americans. Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed told a news conference that the Pakistani government wanted 'to assure the people we will not allow such incidents to recur,' adding that the government had no information about al-Zawahiri. 'We deeply regret that civilian lives have been lost in an incident. While this act is highly condemnable, we have been for a long time striving to rid all our tribal areas of foreign intruders who have been responsible for all the misery and violence in the region. This situation has to be brought to an end,' he said. But his words did little to calm the anger in and around Damadola, a bastion of conservative religion and tribal chauvinism, and elsewhere in Pakistan. The village lies in the semi-autonomous Bajur tribal region around 120 miles northwest of Islamabad, the Pakistani capital. It is a rugged and desperately poor region, until recently a centre of opium cultivation, where local men habitually go armed and government authority is limited to main roads. Thousands of local men marched in a series of protests yesterday, one crowd attacking the office of a US-funded aid group. In another incident, police were forced to fire tear gas to disperse as many as 400 protesters chanting anti-American slogans and waving banners condemning the Pakistan President, General Pervez Musharraf. Musharraf, who came to power in 1999, has maintained a difficult and domestically unpopular alliance with Washington since 2001 and has deployed unprecedented numbers of troops on bloody operations to capture senior al-Qaeda figures. However, to the Americans' intense annoyance, he has not granted US forces in Afghanistan the right to cross the border into Pakistan, even in pursuit of militants. American-led coalition forces clashing with militants in the mountainous province of Kunar, immediately adjacent to Bajaur which lies a mere four miles from the frontier, say they have often been frustrated by their enemies' use of Pakistan as a sanctuary. Yesterday the Pakistani Foreign Ministry took pains to point out that 'in all probability [the village] was targeted from across the border in Afghanistan'. Tensions between Washington and Islamabad have grown in recent weeks as American troops have stepped up operations against militants. Pakistan has already lodged a protest with the US military six days ago after a reported US airstrike killed eight people in the North Waziristan tribal region, an almost deserted area of mountains 300 miles south of Damadola. In Damadola itself, locals said they had never sheltered any al-Qaeda or Taliban leaders, let alone al-Zawahiri, an instantly recognisable 54-year-old Egyptian-born ex-doctor. 'This is a big lie... Only our family members died in the attack,' said Shah Zaman, a jeweller who lost two sons and a daughter in the attack. 'They dropped bombs from planes and we were in no position to stop them... or to tell them we are innocent. I don't know [al-Zawahiri]. He was not at my home. No foreigner was at my home when the planes came and dropped bombs.' Haroon Rashid, a member of parliament who lives in a village near Damadola, told The Observer that he had seen a drone surveying the area hours before the attack. 'A drone has been flying over the area for the last three, four days, and I had a feeling that something nasty was going to happen,' he said in a phone interview. 'There was no foreigner there - we never saw a single foreigner here. They were all local people, jewellers and shop-keepers, who used to commute between Bajaur and their village. We knew them.' The dead were reported to include four children, aged between five and ten, and at least two women. According to Islamic tradition, they were buried almost immediately. One Pakistani official, speaking anonymously, told The Observer that hours before the strike some unidentified guests had arrived at one home and that some bodies had been removed quickly after the attack. This was denied by villagers. US and Pakistani officials have also said that the missiles were launched from American pilotless predator drones, which have previously been used to target senior al-Qaeda figures. A man alleged to be al-Qaeda's third-in-command was killed in a 'stand-off' missile attack around a month ago. However, several eyewitnesses spoke of seeing planes and illuminating flares over the village, which if true would indicate the use of missiles from planes guided in by special forces teams on the ground rather than CIA-operated drones. Obaidullah, a local doctor, said he saw the airstrike from his home about five to six kilometres away. 'There was one plane flying (overhead). Then more planes came. First they dropped light and then bombs,' he said. If US troops have crossed the frontier from Afghanistan in pursuit of militants, it would be a major diplomatic incident and a domestic disaster for Musharraf. The Americans have become increasingly frustrated by their inability to catch al-Zawahiri, whom analysts see as the strategic mentor of Osama bin Laden. Al-Zawahiri was already a hardened Egyptian militant when he joined bin Laden, a Saudi Arabian six years younger, in the late 1980s to form the al-Qaeda group out of the remnants of Arab 'mujahideen' who had fought the Russians in Afghanistan. After masterminding a series of attacks, culminating in the 11 September atrocities, from camps in Afghanistan in the late 1990s, al-Zawahiri has been on the run. However, this has not stopped him providing broad strategic direction for the international Islamic militant movement and, through appearing in frequent propaganda videos, becoming almost as well known as bin Laden himself. Despite a huge manhunt and a $25m reward, he has escaped capture. Strong local sympathy for al-Qaeda fugitives in the harsh hills that line the Afghan frontier with Pakistan has been a major advantage. 'The Americans are really not much closer to finding him than they were years ago,' said one intelligence analyst. 'They are hunting in an area that is about a thousand miles long and two hundred miles wide. That is a tough job by anyone's standards.' The carnage at Damadola indicates that the hunted is still a step ahead of the hunters. The Al-Zawahiri file · Born 1951, Cairo. Son of a chemistry professor. A trained paediatrician. · Travelled to Pakistan in 1985 after being arrested, imprisoned and tortured in sweep of militants following killing of President Sadat. · Spent 1991-1996 in Sudan with Osama bin Laden before moving to Afghanistan. · A key theorist of modern Islamic militancy, he developed strategy of using spectacular violence against American interests to 'wake up the masses'. · From series of mountain hideouts along Pakistan -Afghanistan frontier he has issued videos and communiqués aimed at inspiring militants

West is in dark ages, says Iran's President Robert Tait in Tehran Sunday January 15, 2006 The Observer Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the hardline President of Iran, launched an angry tirade against the West yesterday, accusing it of a 'dark ages' mentality and threatening retaliation unless it recognised his country's nuclear ambitions. In a blistering assault, Ahmadinejad repeated the Islamic regime's position that it would press ahead with a nuclear programme despite threats by the European Union and United States to refer Iran to the UN Security Council, where it could face possible sanctions. He added that Iran was a 'civilised nation' that did not need such weapons. Iran insists its nuclear programme is a wholly peaceful attempt to generate electricity. Addressing a rare press conference in Tehran, he appeared to issue thinly veiled threats against Western countries, implying that they could face serious consequences unless they backed down. 'You need us more than we need you. All of you today need the Iranian nation,' Ahmadinejad said. 'Why are you putting on airs? You don't have that might.' Reminding the West that it had supported the monarchical regime of the former Shah, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi - overthrown in the 1979 Islamic revolution - he went on: 'Those same powers have done their utmost to oppress us, but this nation, because of its dignity, has forgiven them to a large extent. But if they persist with their present stance, maybe the day will come when the Iranian nation will reconsider.' He added: 'If they want to deny us our rights, we have ways to secure those rights.' Ahmadinejad, an ultra-Islamist populist elected last June, did not elaborate on his apparent threat. But Iran is the world's fourth-largest oil producer and analysts have predicted that any disruption to its supplies could have a grave impact on global markets. The Iranian President's outburst - the latest in a series asserting Iran's nuclear rights and questioning Israel's right to exist - came after the EU last week effectively abandoned two-and-a-half years of negotiations with the Iranians. The move came after Iran decided to remove UN seals at a nuclear plant in Natanz, enabling it to resume research into uranium enrichment, a process that can be used to produce a nuclear weapon. The EU, backed by the United States, is calling for an emergency meeting of the UN's nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), to discuss Iran's possible referral to the security council. The next phase of the intensifying diplomatic pressure on Iran takes place in London tomorrow when officials from the EU, US, Russia and China gather to discuss future strategy. Ahmadinejad accused the West of misusing bodies such as the UN and IAEA. 'Why are you damaging the good name of the security council and IAEA for you own political purposes?' he asked. 'Don't take away the credibility of legitimate forums. Your arsenals are full to the brim, yet when it's the turn of a nation such as mine to develop peaceful nuclear technology you object and resort to threats.' In an apparent effort to cast the nuclear issue as one that could unite all Iranians and appeal to nationalist sentiment, Ahmadinejad spoke against the backdrop of a picture of the Damavand volcano, widely seen as a patriotic, non-religious symbol. But he did not withdraw his remarks, warning that Bush and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who on Friday condemned his comments as 'unacceptable', would be tried as 'terrorists' and 'war criminals' due to their support of Israel. German Deputy Foreign Minister Gernot Erler yesterday called for travel restrictions on Iran's politicians. He told German radio that economic sanctions would be 'a very dangerous path' and could hurt both sides. Germany is the biggest exporter to Iran.

Cronkite: Time for U.S. to Leave Iraq By DAVID BAUDER AP Television Writer PASADENA, Calif. - Former CBS anchor Walter Cronkite, whose 1968 conclusion that the Vietnam War was unwinnable keenly influenced public opinion then, said Sunday he'd say the same thing today about Iraq. "It's my belief that we should get out now," Cronkite said in a meeting with reporters. [...] The best time to have made a similar statement about Iraq came after Hurricane Katrina, he said. "We had an opportunity to say to the world and Iraqis after the hurricane disaster that Mother Nature has not treated us well and we find ourselves missing the amount of money it takes to help these poor people out of their homeless situation and rebuild some of our most important cities in the United States," he said. "Therefore, we are going to have to bring our troops home." Iraqis should have been told that "our hearts are with you" and that the United States would do all it could to rebuild their country, he said. Now 89, the television journalist once known as "the most trusted man in America" has been off the "CBS Evening News" for nearly a quarter- century. He's still a CBS News employee, although he does little for them. Cronkite said one of his proudest moments came at the end of a 1968 documentary he made following a visit to Vietnam during the Tet offensive. Urged by his boss to briefly set aside his objectivity to give his view of the situation, Cronkite said the war was unwinnable and that the U.S. should exit. Then-President Lyndon Johnson reportedly told a White House aide after that, "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost Middle America." The best time to have made a similar statement about Iraq came after Hurricane Katrina, he said. "We had an opportunity to say to the world and Iraqis after the hurricane disaster that Mother Nature has not treated us well and we find ourselves missing the amount of money it takes to help these poor people out of their homeless situation and rebuild some of our most important cities in the United States," he said. "Therefore, we are going to have to bring our troops home." Iraqis should have been told that "our hearts are with you" and that the United States would do all it could to rebuild their country, he said. "I think we could have been able to retire with honor," he said. "In fact, I think we can retire with honor anyway." Cronkite has spoken out against the Iraq war in the past, saying in 2004 that Americans weren't any safer because of the invasion. Cronkite, who is hard of hearing and walks haltingly, jokingly said that "I'm standing by if they want me" to anchor the "CBS Evening News." CBS is still searching for a permanent successor to Dan Rather, who replaced Cronkite in March 1981. "Twenty-four hours after I told CBS News that I was stepping down at my 65th birthday I was already regretting it and I've regretted it every day since," he said. "It's too good a job for me to have given it up the way that I did."

Senators Support Penalties Against Iran By NEDRA PICKLER Associated Press 15 Jan 2006 Washington - The prospect of higher energy prices should not stop the world from imposing sanctions against oil-rich Iran, U.S. senators said Sunday. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said sanctions will be tough but that Iran poses a greater danger to the United States than Iraq at this point and must be contained. ``If the price of oil has to go up, then that's a consequence we would have to suffer,'' McCain said on ``Face the Nation'' on CBS. Iran restarted its research at a nuclear facility last week after a two-year freeze. The Bush administration says Iran wants to make nuclear arms and is pursuing harsh penalties through the United Nations Security Council. But it's unclear if the U.S. has support from other Security Council members, particularly Russia and China. Iran is OPEC's second-largest producer, and trade restrictions could increase already high prices across the globe, even for nations that don't import oil from Iran. Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Bush should do whatever he can to get support from Russia and China. ``They need stuff from us,'' Schumer said on ``Fox News Sunday. ``They need trade. They need all kinds of assistance. We ought to play hardball with them.'' McCain said it would be ``abominable'' for Russia and China to vote against sanctions. In that case, he said the U.S. should pursue them anyway with other nations that are willing to support them. Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., said penalties should be imposed as a response to Iran's ``irresponsible'' behavior. He pointed to Iran's announcement Sunday that it will hold a conference to examine evidence of the Holocaust. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called the Holocaust a ``myth'' and called for Israel to be wiped from the face of the earth. ``We cannot be intimidated by economic threats from their side,'' Lott said. ``At the minimum, we should go to the U.N. Security Council and we should impose economic sanctions unless there is some dramatic change in the Iranian position.'' Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., said President Bush should have dealt with threats from Iran years ago. He said Iran is the foremost sponsor of terrorism in the world and a ``force for instability and death.'' ``I'm glad the president is finally speaking out about this, but for four long years they have ignored this problem,'' Bayh told CNN's ``Late Edition.'' ``It has brought us to the position that we're in today. And it has undermined the national security interests of the United States.'' The senators agreed that the United States should pursue penalties and diplomatic options before taking military action against Iran. They also agreed that Iran poses one of the most serious threats to the world since the Cold War. ``I don't think it's a stretch to say that if the Iranians had a nuclear missile that this president might well use it against Israel,'' said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.

Why an Economic Boycott of Israel is Justified By Norman G. Finkelstein Aftenposten (Norway) January 14, 2006 The recent proposal that Norway boycott Israeli goods has provoked passionate debate. In my view, a rational examination of this issue would pose two questions: 1) Do Israeli human rights violations warrant an economic boycott? and 2) Can such a boycott make a meaningful contribution toward ending these violations? I would argue that both these questions should be answered in the affirmative. Although the subject of many reports by human rights organizations, Israel's real human rights record in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is generally not well known abroad. This is primarily due to the formidable public relations industry of Israel's defenders as well as the effectiveness of their tactics of intimidation, such as labeling critics of Israeli policy anti-Semitic. Yet, it is an incontestable fact that Israel has committed a broad range of human rights violations, many rising to the level of war crimes and crimes against humanity. These include: Illegal Killings. Whereas Palestinian suicide attacks targeting Israeli civilians have garnered much media attention, Israel's quantitatively worse record of killing non-combatants is less well known. According to the most recent figures of the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories (B'Tselem), 3,386 Palestinians have been killed since September 2000, of whom 1,008 were identified as combatants, as opposed to 992 Israelis killed, of whom 309 were combatants. This means that three times more Palestinians than Israelis have been killed and up to three times more Palestinian civilians than Israeli civilians. Israel's defenders maintain that there's a difference between targeting civilians and inadvertently killing them. B'Tselem disputes this: "[W]hen so many civilians have been killed and wounded, the lack of intent makes no difference. Israel remains responsible." Furthermore, Amnesty International reports that "many" Palestinians have not been accidentally killed but "deliberately targeted," while the award-winning New York Times journalist Chris Hedges reports that Israeli soldiers "entice children like mice into a trap and murder them for sport." Torture. "From 1967," Amnesty reports, "the Israeli security services have routinely tortured Palestinian political suspects in the Occupied Territories." B'Tselem found that eighty-five percent of Palestinians interrogated by Israeli security services were subjected to "methods constituting torture," while already a decade ago Human Rights Watch estimated that "the number of Palestinians tortured or severely ill-treated" was "in the tens of thousands - a number that becomes especially significant when it is remembered that the universe of adult and adolescent male Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza is under three-quarters of one million." In 1987 Israel became "the only country in the world to have effectively legalized torture" (Amnesty). Although the Israeli Supreme Court seemed to ban torture in a 1999 decision, the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel reported in 2003 that Israeli security forces continued to apply torture in a "methodical and routine" fashion. A 2001 B'Tselem study documented that Israeli security forces often applied "severe torture" to "Palestinian minors."? House demolitions. "Israel has implemented a policy of mass demolition of Palestinian houses in the Occupied Territories," B'Tselem reports, and since September 2000 "has destroyed some 4,170 Palestinian homes." Until just recently Israel routinely resorted to house demolitions as a form of collective punishment. According to Middle East Watch, apart from Israel, the only other country in the world that used such a draconian punishment was Iraq under Saddam Hussein. In addition, Israel has demolished thousands of "illegal" homes that Palestinians built because of Israel's refusal to provide building permits. The motive behind destroying these homes, according to Amnesty, has been to maximize the area available for Jewish settlers: "Palestinians are targeted for no other reason than they are Palestinians." Finally, Israel has destroyed hundred of homes on security pretexts, yet a Human Rights Watch report on Gaza found that "the pattern of destruction?strongly suggests that Israeli forces demolished homes wholesale, regardless of whether they posed a specific threat." Amnesty likewise found that "Israel's extensive destruction of homes and properties throughout the West Bank and Gaza?is not justified by military necessity," and that "Some of these acts of destruction amount to grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention and are war crimes." Apart from the sheer magnitude of its human rights violations, the uniqueness of Israeli policies merits notice. "Israel has created in the Occupied Territories a regime of separation based on discrimination, applying two separate systems of law in the same area and basing the rights of individuals on their nationality," B'Tselem has concluded. "This regime is the only one of its kind in the world, and is reminiscent of distasteful regimes from the past, such as the apartheid regime in South Africa." If singling out South Africa for an international economic boycott was defensible, it would seem equally defensible to single out Israel's occupation, which uniquely resembles the apartheid regime. Although an economic boycott can be justified on moral grounds, the question remains whether diplomacy might be more effectively employed instead. The documentary record in this regard, however, is not encouraging. The basic terms for resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict are embodied in U.N. resolution 242 and subsequent U.N. resolutions, which call for a full Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza and the establishment of a Palestinian state in these areas in exchange for recognition of Israel's right to live in peace and security with its neighbors. Each year the overwhelming majority of member States of the United Nations vote in favor of this two-state settlement, and each year Israel and the United States (and a few South Pacific islands) oppose it. Similarly, in March 2002 all twenty-two member States of the Arab League proposed this two-state settlement as well as "normal relations with Israel." Israel ignored the proposal.? Not only has Israel stubbornly rejected this two-state settlement, but the policies it is currently pursuing will abort any possibility of a viable Palestinian state. While world attention has been riveted by Israel's redeployment from Gaza, Sara Roy of Harvard University observes that the "Gaza Disengagement Plan is, at heart, an instrument for Israel's continued annexation of West Bank land and the physical integration of that land into Israel." In particular Israel has been constructing a wall deep inside the West Bank that will annex the most productive land and water resources as well as East Jerusalem, the center of Palestinian life. It will also effectively sever the West Bank in two. Although Israel initially claimed that it was building the wall to fight terrorism, the consensus among human rights organizations is that it is really a land grab to annex illegal Jewish settlements into Israel. Recently Israel's Justice Minister frankly acknowledged that the wall will serve as "the future border of the state of Israel." The current policies of the Israeli government will lead either to endless bloodshed or the dismemberment of Palestine. "It remains virtually impossible to conceive of a Palestinian state without its capital in Jerusalem," the respected Crisis Group recently concluded, and accordingly Israeli policies in the West Bank "are at war with any viable two-state solution and will not bolster Israel's security; in fact, they will undermine it, weakening Palestinian pragmatists?and sowing the seeds of growing radicalization."? Recalling the U.N. Charter principle that it is inadmissible to acquire territory by war, the International Court of Justice declared in a landmark 2004 opinion that Israel's settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and the wall being built to annex them to Israel were illegal under international law. It called on Israel to cease construction of the wall, dismantle those parts already completed and compensate Palestinians for damages. Crucially, it also stressed the legal responsibilities of the international community: all States are under an obligation not to recognize the illegal situation resulting from the construction of the wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including in and around East Jerusalem. They are also under an obligation not to render aid or assistance in maintaining the situation created by such construction. It is also for all States, while respecting the United Nations Charter and international law, to see to it that any impediment, resulting from the construction of the wall, to the exercise by the Palestinian people of its right to self-determination is brought to an end. A subsequent U.N. General Assembly resolution supporting the World Court opinion passed overwhelmingly. However, the Israeli government ignored the Court's opinion, continuing construction at a rapid pace, while Israel's Supreme Court ruled that the wall was legal. Due to the obstructionist tactics of the United States, the United Nations has not been able to effectively confront Israel's illegal practices. Indeed, although it is true that the U.N. keeps Israel to a double standard, it's exactly the reverse of the one Israel's defenders allege: Israel is held not to a higher but lower standard than other member States. A study by Marc Weller of Cambridge University comparing Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory with comparable situations in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, East Timor, occupied Kuwait and Iraq, and Rwanda found that Israel has enjoyed "virtual immunity" from enforcement measures such as an arms embargo and economic sanctions typically adopted by the U.N. against member States condemned for identical violations of international law. Due in part to an aggressive campaign accusing Europe of a "new anti-Semitism," the European Union has also failed in its legal obligation to enforce international law in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. Although the claim of a "new anti-Semitism" has no basis in fact (all the evidence points to a lessening of anti-Semitism in Europe), the EU has reacted by appeasing Israel. It has even suppressed publication of one of its own reports, because the authors -- like the Crisis Group and many others -- concluded that due to Israeli policies the "prospects for a two-state solution with east Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine are receding." The moral burden to avert the impending catastrophe must now be borne by individual states that are prepared to respect their obligations under international law and by individual men and women of conscience. In a courageous initiative American-based Human Rights Watch recently called on the U.S. government to reduce significantly its financial aid to Israel until Israel terminates its illegal policies in the West Bank. An economic boycott would seem to be an equally judicious undertaking. A nonviolent tactic the purpose of which is to achieve a just and lasting settlement of the Israel-Palestine conflict cannot legitimately be called anti-Semitic. Indeed, the real enemies of Jews are those who cheapen the memory of Jewish suffering by equating principled opposition to Israel's illegal and immoral policies with anti-Semitism.?

With Friends like these… By Uri Avnery ICH 15 Jan 06 There is indeed a growing danger of anti-Semitism and anti- Israelism - two different phenomena that can appear both together and separately. But it is not connected with primitive skinheads like the Moscow knife-wielder. It is much more dangerous, and the fuel that feeds them exists in other places and on other levels. JUDAS ISCARIOT is headed for a makeover. According to news reports, cardinals close to the new pope recommend a change in the Catholic Church's attitude towards him: exit the treacherous Jew who turns the messiah over to the cohorts of the evil High Priest - enter the apostle who simply fulfilled his role in the divine design. After all, it was God who decided that his son should die on the cross. A well-intentioned effort, but a pathetic one. No Vatican decision can alter the image of Judas in the New Testament: a despicable informer who received "thirty pieces of silver" for his betrayal of the Son of God. No Christian who absorbs this story in his childhood will ever forget the picture of the contemptible traitor who kisses Jesus at the moment of betraying him to his executioners. Nothing will help except changing the biblical text itself, and that is, of course, not so easy. If one of the other 11 apostles had betrayed Jesus, the consequences would not have been, perhaps, so horrible. But since Judas sounds in many languages like "Jews", the betrayal is associated in the consciousness of Christians with Jews in general. Multitudes of Jews throughout history have been butchered because of this. The Nazi battle-cry "Judah Verrecke!" (Perish, Jews!") paved the way to the gas chambers. Perhaps this had some influence on the young neo-Nazi, Alexander Koptsev, who ran amok this week in the Moscow synagogue, stabbing and wounding ten people. That act lit up all the red lights. Again, "the rise of anti-Semitism in the world" became a major subject, again the alarm bells shrilled. There is indeed a growing danger of anti-Semitism and anti- Israelism - two different phenomena that can appear both together and separately. But it is not connected with primitive skinheads like the Moscow knife-wielder. It is much more dangerous, and the fuel that feeds them exists in other places and on other levels. IN ONE of the stream of speeches in which George W. Bush is now trying to defend his ill-fated invasion of Iraq, this week he let loose a sentence that should light all the red lights. In this sentence he castigated his opponents for asserting that he had attacked Iraq "for the oil and for Israel". He thus brought to the surface an assertion that had until then been openly voiced only by anti-Semitic marginal groups. They have put together three facts: (a) that the people who most aggressively pushed for the war were the neo-cons who play a major role in the Bush administration, (b) that almost all the important members of this group are Jews, and (c) that the occupation of Iraq has freed Israel from a significant military threat. Up to now, the American media have treated this allegation with contempt, as a ridiculous "conspiracy theory". Now that the President himself has spoken about it, it may become part of the legitimate public discourse in the United States and throughout the world. Therein lies a great danger for Israel. The entire Israeli establishment supported the American invasion. (When we, the opponents of the war, called a demonstration against it in Tel-Aviv, on the day when millions took to the streets all around the world, it was a small event, ignored by the media.) Now it may happen, as so often in history, that those responsible for the disaster will evade responsibility. George Bush will fade from memory in a few years. What will remain is the impression that Israel and the Jews dragged the poor US into a despicable adventure. BY SHEER CHANCE, this week saw the appearance of a book about the Iraq war that touches on the same subject - "State of War" by James Risen. Among other things, the book says that the Secretary of Defense and the neo-cons who dominate Washington did not listen to the American intelligence analysts, who advised caution when it came to Iraq, but to the Israeli intelligence people who flooded Washington and briefed high- ranking officials. According to Risen, it was the hard-line Israelis that Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, were listening to, not the cautious CIA. "CIA analysts were often skeptical of Israeli intelligence reports, knowing that Mossad had very strong - even obvious - biases about the Arab world." After their visits, CIA officials would generally discount much of what the Israeli intelligence officers supplied, "Wolfowitz and other conservatives at the Pentagon became enraged by this practice," Risen writes. Wolfowitz is, of course, a very Jewish name. The obvious conclusion: it was the Israelis and their allies, the Washington Jews, who pushed the US into the war. AS IF that was not enough, Washington is now rocked by a big scandal that has a close connection with Israel. At its center stands a person called Jack Abramoff - again a name that discloses the Jewish identity of its owner. This Jack is a super-lobbyist, a symbol of the phenomenon that has turned American politics into a dirty stable of corruption, which even the mighty Hercules would have had trouble cleaning up. He skimmed the money of his clients, mostly Native Americans, put some of it into his own pocket and used the rest to bribe establishment figures, senators and congressmen. He gave them generous gifts, junkets around the world, suites in luxury hotels and other perks. Most of the beneficiaries were Republicans, but some crumbs were thrown to Democrats, too. Up to this point, it's nothing unusual, just bigger than usual. The lobbying industry is very well developed in Washington, which is infested by lobbyists like a hobo with lice. The pro-Israeli lobby is no different from all the others. The lobbyists corrupt everything. They bribe the politicians to make laws that will divert billions of public money into the pockets of their clients. They play a major role in financing the election campaigns of politicians, from the President himself down to the lowliest mayor. Only rarely is one of them caught and sent to prison, as may happen now to that Abramoff. What is special about Abramoff is that he is a fanatical Zionist. According to the stories published in the States, some of the money that he diverted was transferred to extreme settlers in the West Bank. Abramoff sent them military equipment for use against the Palestinians, and perhaps against the Israeli government. Among other items, he bought them camouflage uniforms, telescopic sights for snipers, night-vision binoculars and a thermal imager. American publications mention a settler named Shmuel Ben- Zvi from the Betar Illit settlement, a high-school buddy of Abramoff, who received this equipment. Ben-Zvi denied it, but the Senate committee has obtained e-mail messages from him lauding Abramoff for sending him "reinforcement", while Abramoff wrote him that "if only there were another dozen of you, the dirty rats would be finished." Abramoff himself claims that he is simply an idealist, who uses the money "put into his hands by God" in order to help Israel. He also financed a - probably fictitious - outfit of Syrian exiles, supported by Israel. One of the American publications mentions in this context the biblical Mossad motto: "By way of deception thou shalt make war" (Proverbs 24,6 - that's how it sounds in modern Hebrew, but the actual meaning of the words is in doubt. The English Bible renders it thus: "For by wise counsel thou shalt make thy war".) So that's how it looks to Americans: the man who has become a symbol of corruption is a Jew who supports Israel. AND AS IF that is not enough, either, another friend of Israel has also made waves in the American media. That's our old acquaintance Jerry Falwell, the leader of millions of American Christian fundamentalists, a friend of the late Menachem Begin. It may be remembered that Binyamin Netanyahu, our then Prime Minister, went to America in 1998 to meet President Bill Clinton. In those days, Clinton was trying to exert pressure on Israel in order to promote peace. Netanyahu was invited for this purpose. On the eve of his meeting with Clinton, Netanyahu met publicly with Falwell of all people, in front of a crowd of hundreds. Falwell, a sworn enemy of Clinton, reveals now that the meeting was deliberately planned as an affront to the President. Some days before that, another friend of Netanyahu's, William Kristol, one of the Jewish neo-con power-brokers, had publicly hinted that a huge White House sex-scandal was about to break. Immediately afterwards, the Monica Lewinsky scandal was unleashed and the public was informed that the President had had sex in the White House with the young intern with the very Jewish-sounding name. Two weeks before the Netanyahu visit, an American Jewish paper had published an ad demanding that the President abstain from pressuring Israel. The ad included a photo of Clinton taken from the back - the very shot of Clinton embracing Monica that was later published all around the world. Falwell practically brags that he helped Netanyahu to blackmail Clinton. If so, he was successful. No pressure on Israel materialized at that meeting. By the way, the magazine in which Falwell published his allegation, Vanity Fair, belongs to the publishing empire of Si and Donald Newhouse, generous contributors to the pro- Israel lobby. (Another high-profile leader of the Christian fundamentalists, Pat Robertson, declared last week that the stroke that felled Sharon was God's punishment for giving away a piece of the Holy Land to the Arabs. He later apologized, probably hoping to save an agreement he has with the Israeli government to build a huge tourist complex near the Sea of Galilee.) THE PICTURE that emerges for the American public is that Israel and the Jews dominate Washington and that the US government dances to their tune. That is, of course, a wild exaggeration, but many may come to believe it. That may not have any immediate influence, but constitutes a very serious long-term danger. When things repeat themselves again and again, the effect is cumulative. Such events must serve as a warning. The Israeli government and the leaders of the US Jewish community must think again about this danger. Disapproving words about "the rise of anti-Semitism" are not enough, what is required is a profound change of behavior. We must stop all contact with crooks, especially if they are Jewish, and with fundamentalists of all sorts. Everyone who has the best interests of Israel at heart must demand that. The matter concerns the national security of Israel, especially when the policy of our government is completely based on unstinting American support. Ariel Sharon was too overbearing to consider this danger. Let's hope that his successors will be a little more sober.

How to buy friends and influence politics Editorial SW 15 Jan 06 “Now here's the thing,” commented Iraq expert Juan Cole. “If a Palestinian-American had diverted $140,000 from a Muslim charity to ‘security equipment’ and ‘sniper lessons’ for Palestinians on the West Bank, that individual would be in Gitmo so fast that the sonic boom would rattle your windows...But here’s a prediction. None of the Jewish extremists, some of them violent, who are invading the West Bank and making the lives of the local Palestinians miserable will ever be branded ‘terrorists’ by the U.S. government, and Abramoff’s foray into providing sniper lessons will be quietly buried.” WASHINGTON’S RATS are scurrying for cover as one of their own goes down--and threatens to take others with him. Lobbyist Jack Abramoff, a major player in Washington, pled guilty last week to fraud, tax evasion and conspiracy to bribe public officials, after making a deal to cooperate with federal prosecutors. The scandal is a perfect illustration of the sleaze in Washington politics--including the particular puddle surrounding former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. But it’s also something more--a glimpse inside the highly successful political machine of the Republican right. Politicians like George Bush, Newt Gingrich and John McCain were the outward face of that machine, but make no mistake: crooks and fixers like Abramoff are at work on the inside, greasing the wheels the whole time. That’s the reality of the system that’s promoted around the planet as the “world’s greatest democracy”--political influence is for sale, and right-wing fanatics are able to impose an unpopular agenda that would be rejected outright by ordinary people. As one of Washington’s highest-paid and most influential lobbyists, Abramoff was able to buy political access for his wealthy clients that ordinary citizens couldn’t begin to imagine. But Abramoff is in hot water not for that, but for ripping off some of those clients. In his guilty plea, he admitted to bilking four Native American tribes--the Louisiana Coushattas, Mississippi Choctaws, Saginaw Chippewas of Michigan and Tigua of Ysleta del Sur Pueblo in Texas--out of tens of millions of dollars. The tribes hired Abramoff to represent their interests in Washington regarding casino and gambling issues. Abramoff instructed them to make political donations to certain politicians, while also recommending that they hire Michael Scanlon--a one-time aide to Tom DeLay--as their publicist. What he didn’t tell them was that Scanlon was his business partner--and that in some cases, the two were working for groups with agendas directly opposed to the tribes’ interests. In 2002, for example, Abramoff and Scanlon worked with religious conservatives to persuade the state of Texas to shut down the Tigua tribe’s Standing Rock casino on the grounds that it violated Texas gambling laws--while Abramoff charged the Tiguas $4.2 million for promising to use his influence to reopen the casino. In addition to being a thief, Abramoff exposed himself as a racist of the first order. In e-mails made public during 2004 Senate Indian Affairs Committee hearings, Abramoff refers to tribal members as “trogdolytes” and “morons.” "I have to meet with the monkeys from the Choctaw tribal counsel," he wrote in an e-mail to Scanlon. The money Abramoff stole didn’t just line his own pockets, but was funneled into his pet projects. According to Newsweek’s Mike Issikoff, Abramoff used money from a charity that was supposed to benefit inner-city youths to provide sniper scopes, night-vision binoculars, camouflage suits--and even sniper lessons--for right-wing Israeli settlers in the West Bank. “Now here's the thing,” commented Iraq expert Juan Cole. “If a Palestinian-American had diverted $140,000 from a Muslim charity to ‘security equipment’ and ‘sniper lessons’ for Palestinians on the West Bank, that individual would be in Gitmo so fast that the sonic boom would rattle your windows...But here’s a prediction. None of the Jewish extremists, some of them violent, who are invading the West Bank and making the lives of the local Palestinians miserable will ever be branded ‘terrorists’ by the U.S. government, and Abramoff’s foray into providing sniper lessons will be quietly buried.” Abramoff is being dismissed by many politicians--including some of the ones he bought as a lobbyist--as “just” a corrupt lobbyist. But he’s more than that. Abramoff is a fixture of the Washington political establishment--which is why this scandal is potentially so damaging to so many powerbrokers. He made his name in the early 1980s as a national chair of the College Republicans--alongside friends that include future anti-tax guru Grover Norquist and Christian Coalition head Ralph Reed--with stunts like the “adopt-a-contra” appeal, to support the counter-revolutionary guerrillas fighting to overthrow the left-wing Nicaraguan government. Along with Norquist and Reed, he became an important Republican operative. During the mid-1980s, Abramoff helped to sell the “Reagan Doctrine” to Congress as head of the Oliver North-connected “Citizens for America.” Abramoff took $1.5 million from the racist apartheid regime in South Africa to found the “International Freedom Foundation,” which demonized Nelson Mandela in the West and targeted groups like Oxfam for supporting sanctions against apartheid. Abramoff even helped right-wing Angolan guerrilla leader Jonas Savimbi organize a “convention” of anti-Communist forces from Laos, Nicaragua and Afghanistan. In the mid-1990s, Abramoff moved from the political to the financial side of the Republican machine, becoming a full-time lobbyist. According to reports, this was the point when Abramoff struck up a close friendship with Rep. Tom DeLay. Showering DeLay staffers with gifts, Abramoff was granted a seat at the table in exchange for putting money and political muscle behind DeLay’s favored causes and candidates. Abramoff developed such a close relationship with DeLay’s deputy chief of staff Tony Rudy that Abramoff reportedly bought Rudy a text-messaging pager so that they would never be out of touch. As DeLay’s power increased, so did Abramoff’s--especially after George Bush’s selection as president in 2000, when DeLay came into his own as the political “muscle” behind the Bush administration’s most right-wing policies. Abramoff got his clients--not just Native American tribes, but businesses and government officials in foreign countries--to donate hundreds of thousands of dollars, often making contributions to nonprofit foundations that would then finance lavish trips for DeLay and other lawmakers. In exchange, DeLay and Abramoff were able to make legislation that threatened his clients’ interests go away. Now, in exchange for a reduced prison sentence of about 10 years, Abramoff has agreed to testify against former associates in the influence-peddling case. That’s bad news for Abramoff’s bought-and-paid-for friends in the Republican Party--as well as some Democrats. One official involved with the Abramoff inquiry told Time that investigators see Abramoff as a “the middle guy”--suggesting that there may be bigger targets to come. At the top of that list is DeLay who, already under investigation for violations of Texas campaign finance laws, was forced this week to give up on regaining his former role as House Majority Leader. But plenty of other politicians are running for cover, too. A whole parade of Republicans and Democrats has dumped any campaign contributions associated with the lobbyist--“[perpetuating] the fiction that ‘bad’ contributions can be segregated from ‘good’ contributions in some orderly fashion that allows politicians to raise millions without compromising their independence,” wrote Los Angeles Times columnist Ron Brownstein. The Democrats are hoping to use the Abramoff scandal to make gains this coming November by chiding Republicans for the “culture of corruption” in Washington. But they are every bit a part of that culture as the Republicans. Washington politics thrives on exactly the kind of influence peddling that Abramoff specialized in. That’s the truth about the “world’s greatest democracy.” The White House lies to go to war and spies on anyone who disagrees with it--and filthy-rich super-lobbyists buy political power and impose their right-wing agenda.

Ethics Committees Won't Commit to Action By LARRY MARGASAK Associated Press Writer January 15, 2006 WASHINGTON - The leaders of Congress' ethics committees are not committing to any investigation of misconduct despite the growing revelations about the favors that lobbyist Jack Abramoff won for clients and the largesse he arranged for lawmakers. The committees, for now, are poised to remain on the sidelines. The House committee, stymied by partisan disagreements, launched no investigations in 2005 even after former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, requested an inquiry into his foreign travel arranged by Abramoff. The lack of commitment to investigate issues about lawmakers' conduct with Abramoff, his lobbying team and his clients is raising anew the question of whether Congress adequately can discipline its own. ``There have always been questions about whether Congress can police itself,'' said Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis who specializes in ethics. ``The situation in the House removes all doubt. The House is not policing itself.'' The Associated Press asked the four lawmakers who lead the ethics committees whether they would make a commitment to investigate ethical wrongdoing if, as expected, the information Abramoff supplies in a plea agreement exposes misconduct by a number of members of Congress. Each of the four - two Republicans and two Democrats - declined, through his spokesmen, to do so. The House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct is headed by Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash.; the top Democrat is Rep. Alan Mollohan of West Virginia. The Senate Select Committee on Ethics is led by Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio; the ranking Democrat is Sen. Tim Johnson of South Dakota. While the committees have an equal number of Democrats and Republicans, forging a bipartisanship consensus in ethics investigations often has proved difficult. After the House levied a $300,000 fine against former Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., for ethical violations in 1997 - payment for part of the cost of investigating his conduct - weary members of both parties declared an ethics truce. For several years, there were no major cases. The House committee revived itself in 2004, admonishing DeLay on three separate issues. The House Republican leadership reacted by refusing to extend the term of the chairman at that time, Rep. Joel Hefley, R-Colo. He had asked to stay on. Last year, Hastings and Mollohan feuded for months over investigative rules, and then for additional months over the composition of the staff. The entire year was gone before the leaders finally chose the committee's top staff member; he started work only recently. Abramoff pleaded guilty this month to conspiracy, tax evasion and mail fraud in Washington and to additional charges in Miami. He has agreed to cooperate with prosecutors. The committees traditionally defer to prosecutors and do not interfere with criminal investigations. But they can investigate violations of standards of conduct that are separate from criminal violations. Committee actions can range from a critical letter to recommendations of serious punishment by the full House - all the way to expulsion. The Abramoff criminal inquiry raises numerous issues. Lawmakers, for instance, are prohibited from accepting trips from lobbyists. One way Abramoff lavished favors on lawmakers was through free travel that he arranged through nonprofit organizations that got money from the lobbyist's clients. DeLay has said he was unaware that Abramoff may have paid for some of his travel. More than four dozen lawmakers - from House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., to Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D. - sent to federal agencies letters that were favorable to Abramoff clients or took official actions in Congress to help them. Around the same time, those lawmakers received large political donations or used Abramoff's skybox or restaurant for fundraising. Some lawmakers didn't provide reimbursement until years later. Ethics watchdog groups have written the committees alleging those activities violate congressional ethics standards that require lawmakers to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest. Congress' response to the budding scandal so far, especially in the House, has been a flurry of proposals to write new laws to control lobbyists' relations with lawmakers. Some experts believe that without an investigation that can lead to discipline, ethics violators get a free pass. ``You have to publicly reprimand someone,'' said Judy Nadler, the former mayor of Santa Clara, Calif., and now a senior fellow at Santa Clara University. ``If there are no consequences, things will not change. This is drive-by ethics.'' Former Sen. Warren Rudman, a Republican who served on the Senate ethics committee, said, ``The amount of politics that intruded into the House committee is discouraging.'' Rudman said the ethics leaders have an obligation to follow up on any potential violations of standards of conduct. ``It would be impossible not to address some of these issues,'' said Rudman, who served during the Keating Five investigation that suffered through partisanship in the Senate panel. That investigation had similarities to the Abramoff case. It involved donations to five senators from a savings and loan operator, who persuaded the lawmakers to intervene with federal regulators on his behalf. The timing of the donations and official actions was a key issue with both the Keating Five and the Abramoff cases. Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, said the Abramoff case is ``likely to raise the issue of how well Congress does in keeping track of its own behavior.'' But he said the public will not really get interested until more lawmakers are publicly named in the criminal investigation.

A Power Outage on Capitol Hill By Jonathan Alter Newsweek Jan. 23, 2006 issue We are in danger of scrapping our checks and balances—not just for a few years (as was done during the Civil War), but for good. What if we faced a constitutional crisis and hardly anyone noticed? As he quietly mastered the tiresome cat-and-mouse game inside the Senate Judiciary Committee last week, Judge Samuel Alito gave few hints of where he stood on a matter that goes to the heart of what it means to live in a republic. With a few exceptions, the media coverage didn't help. It's so much easier to talk about Joe Biden's big mouth or a right-wing Princeton alumni group or Mrs. Alito's tears than to figure out how the country should prevent a president of the United States from castrating the United States Congress. I wasn't expecting Alito to say whether he thought that President Bush broke the law when he admitted authorizing warrantless wiretaps on American citizens, which is a clear violation of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Alito is right not to comment on a specific case that, with any luck, will soon go rocketing toward the Supreme Court. I can even understand why he failed to offer an opinion on why Bush didn't simply seek to amend FISA (which Congress would have eagerly done after 9/11) if he believed his tools for catching terrorists were insufficient. Even so, the nominee's "no person is above the law" platitudes did not suffice. Alito endorsed a famous 1952 concurring opinion from Justice Robert H. Jackson that the president's power is at its "lowest ebb" when he operates without congressional authority (the case involved whether President Truman could seize steel mills during the Korean War). But we never heard whether the brainy New Jersey jurist believes (like Bush) that the Constitution entitles the president to break the law in wartime. Remember, this is not about whether it's right or wrong to wiretap bad guys, though the White House hopes to frame it that way for political purposes. Any rational person wants the president to be able to hunt for Qaeda suspects wherever they lurk. The "momentous" issue (Alito's words) is whether this president, or any other, has the right to tell Congress to shove it. And even if one concedes that wartime offers the president extra powers to limit liberty, what happens if the terrorist threat looks permanent? We may be scrapping our checks and balances not just for a few years (as during the Civil War), but for good. Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Russ Feingold ably raised some of these questions last week; Al Gore is about to weigh in, too. But the Democratic Party as a whole cannot stay focused on the issue. Some activists keep jumping ahead to the remedy for the president's power grab, which they say is impeachment. But that's a pipe dream and a distraction from the task at hand, which is figuring out how to reassert Congress's institutional role. This must by necessity involve Republicans, who control Congress. Unfortunately, most have so far shown little concern about being defenestrated by their president. But "Snoopgate" is already creating new fissures on the right. The NSA story is an acid test of whether one is a traditional Barry Goldwater conservative, who believes in limited government, or a modern Richard Nixon conservative, who believes in authority. Alito is in the latter category. His judicial opinions suggest a deference to executive power, and he once pioneered presidential "signing statements" that are meant to help judges come down on the president's side. Just recently, Bush attached such a statement to John McCain's bill banning torture in which the president reserved the right to ignore the law if he wants to. Alito embodies the inherent contradiction of the conservative movement. The nominee is an "originalist," which means, as he said last week, that "we should look to the meaning that someone would have taken from the text of the Constitution at the time of its adoption." But at that time, the 18th century, the Founders could not have been clearer about the role of Congress in wartime. As James Madison put it, "In no part of the Constitution is more wisdom to be found than in the clause which confides the question of war and peace to the legislative and not to the executive branch." Congress, for its part, is in no shape to assert its constitutional prerogatives. Gabby senators came across poorly in the Alito hearings. And the House side looks like someone just lifted a rock on a colony of slithering worms. The race to succeed Rep. Tom DeLay as majority leader, for instance, is currently between "Tobacco John" Boehner, who once passed out checks from the tobacco industry on the House floor, and "Tobacco Roy" Blunt, who inserted an amendment to favor cigarette makers in, of all things, the homeland-security bill. Fortunately, Sen. Arlen Specter will hold hearings in early February on presidential power. Watch them, please, even if you're tired of this cast of Judiciary Committee characters. Our whole system is on the line. © 2006 Newsweek, Inc.

Specter: Bush could face impeachment By Staff and Wire Reports Jan 16, 2006 The powerful Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee admitted Sunday President Bush could face impeachment over his authorization for spying on Americans by the National Security Agency. "The remedy could be a variety of things, including impeachment or criminal prosecution, but the principal remedy … under our society is to pay a political price," Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter told ABC's "This Week." "But," Specter added. "I don't see any talk about impeachment here." Even so, Specter said he and his fellow Republicans on the Judiciary Committee are "not going to give him a blank check, and just because we're of the same party doesn't mean we're not going to look at this very closely." Specter joins a growing chorus of Republicans and Democrats who are questioning the legal justification for spying on Americans by the super-secret NSA. Specter, who will hold hearings next month on the decision to allow the NSA program without court approval, said he has told Bush administration officials he believes they are on shaky legal ground. Bush has pointed to a congressional resolution passed after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that authorized him to use force in the fight against terrorism as allowing him to order the program. The program authorized eavesdropping of international phone calls and e-mails of people deemed a terror risk. "I thought they were wrong," Specter said on ABC's "This Week." "There still may be different collateral powers under wartime situations. That is a knotty question." A number of members of Specter's committee, including GOP Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas, have expressed doubt about the administration's legal basis. The hearings, planned for early February, will feature Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Specter noted that impeachment and criminal prosecution are possibilities in the event a president acted unconstitutionally. But Specter added: "I don't see any talk about impeachment here. I don't think anyone doubts the president is making a good-faith effort. He's acting in a way that he feels he must."

The Imperial Presidency at Work Editorial New York Times 15 Jan 06 You would think that Senators Carl Levin and John McCain would have learned by now that you cannot deal in good faith with a White House that does not act in good faith. Yet both men struck bargains intended to restore the rule of law to American prison camps. And President Bush tossed them aside at the first opportunity. Mr. Bush made a grand show of inviting Mr. McCain into the Oval Office last month to announce his support for a bill to require humane treatment of detainees at Guantánamo Bay and other prisons run by the American military and intelligence agencies. He seemed to have managed to get Vice President Dick Cheney to stop trying to kill the proposed Congressional ban on torture of prisoners. The White House also endorsed a bargain between Mr. Levin and Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, which tempered somewhat a noxious proposal by Mr. Graham to deny a court hearing to anyone the president declares to be an "unlawful enemy combatant." The bargain with Mr. Levin removed language that stripped away cases already before the courts, which would have been an egregious usurpation of power by one branch of government, and it made clear that those cases should remain in the courts. Mr. Bush, however, seems to see no limit to his imperial presidency. First, he issued a constitutionally ludicrous "signing statement" on the McCain bill. The message: Whatever Congress intended the law to say, he intended to ignore it on the pretext the commander in chief is above the law. That twisted reasoning is what led to the legalized torture policies, not to mention the domestic spying program. Then Mr. Bush went after the judiciary, scrapping the Levin-Graham bargain. The solicitor general informed the Supreme Court last week that it no longer had jurisdiction over detainee cases. It said the court should drop an existing case in which a Yemeni national is challenging the military tribunals invented by Mr. Bush's morally challenged lawyers after 9/11. The administration is seeking to eliminate all other lawsuits filed by some of the approximately 500 men at Gitmo, the vast majority of whom have not been shown to pose any threat. Both of the offensive theories at work here - that a president's intent in signing a bill trumps the intent of Congress in writing it, and that a president can claim power without restriction or supervision by the courts or Congress - are pet theories of Judge Samuel Alito, the man Mr. Bush chose to tilt the Supreme Court to the right. The administration's behavior shows how high and immediate the stakes are in the Alito nomination, and how urgent it is for Congress to curtail Mr. Bush's expansion of power. Nothing in the national consensus to combat terrorism after 9/11 envisioned the unilateral rewriting of more than 200 years of tradition and law by one president embarked on an ideological crusade. Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

Chile gets first female president Last Updated Sun, 15 Jan 2006 20:05:02 EST CBC News A socialist doctor and former political prisoner has been elected as Chile's first female president. With 97.5 per cent of about eight million votes counted by early Sunday evening, Michelle Bachelet of the centre-left coalition Concertacion had captured 53.5 per cent of the vote. Her conservative opponent, Sebastian Pinera, held 46 per cent of the ballots and conceded defeat. "I want to congratulate Michelle Bachelet for her triumph," Pinera, a billionaire businessman, said in a televised concession speech. Bachelet, 54, is a pediatrician who was held as a political prisoner during the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet. She won 46 per cent of the votes during a presidential election against three other candidates in December, but needed to win more than half the votes to be declared president without the runoff poll. Bachelet was defence minister for three years under the centre-left coalition that has governed Chile since Pinochet's military regime was ousted in 1990. Female vote thought to be crucial in runoff The female vote was thought to be key in the runoff election. Voting is mandatory in Chile and a majority of women surveyed before the runoff said they would back Bachelet, a single mother with three children. Although Bachelet has liberal social views, she won the trust of business leaders by promising to continue the economic policies of the popular outgoing president, Ricardo Lagos. In fact, Bachelet and Pinera shared common campaign themes, including support for free-market economics, more trade agreements and careful government spending. Family history lured voters to Bachelet Bachelet won voter support in part because of her family history. Her father, Alberto, was an air force general who was charged with treason after the 1973 coup led by Pinochet. He was jailed, tortured and died in prison. Bachelet, who was only 22 at the time, was briefly jailed along with her mother. She then left Chile and spent five years in exile in Austria and East Germany, where she studied medicine. She was an unknown when she entered politics, but benefited when Lagos introduced a policy requiring five cabinet ministers to be women.

Cancer Researcher Admits to Faking Data By MATTIAS KAREN Associated Press Writer Jan 14 8:42 PM US/Eastern STOCKHOLM, Sweden - A Norwegian cancer researcher has admitted fabricating data published in a renowned international medical journal, officials in Norway said Saturday. The researcher at Norway's Comprehensive Cancer Center, who was not identified, used faked patient data in an article on oral cancer published in the October 2005 issue of The Lancet, Britain's leading medical journal, said Stein Vaaler, strategy director for the cancer center. The article claimed that a certain kind of drug decreased the risk of getting oral cancer and referred to results seen in patients in two national databases, Vaaler said in an interview. A colleague raised questions about the article when it was published, and when the researcher was confronted this week about the data, he acknowledged the fabrication, Vaaler said. "All of it was fabricated," Vaaler said. "It was not manipulation of real data - it was just complete fabrication." The Washington-based journal Science announced Thursday that it was unconditionally retracting two papers by South Korean stem cell researcher Hwang Woo-suk, who publicly apologized for faking data that purported to show the creation of stem cells from the world's first cloned human embryos. Vaaler said the center has informed The Lancet about the fabrication, and an external review committee will examine the researcher's methods and his previous publications. A decision about whether the researcher should be fired will be made after the review committee issues its report, Vaaler said. "This is a very serious situation for the hospital," the center's director, Aage Danielsson, said in a letter to colleagues that was posted on the Web site of The Norwegian broadcaster TV2. There was no immediate reaction from The Lancet.

Babies born in winter are bigger, brighter and more successful By Roger Dobson 15 January 2006 For centuries astrologers have sworn that the time of year a baby is born plots the course its life will take. Now extensive research conducted over a seven-year period appears to prove that babies born in the winter are more likely to grow into big, bright and successful adults than their summer counterparts. The study, which will be published this week, was led by scientists at Harvard University and monitored the development of 21,000 boys and girls worldwide. It shows that there were large seasonal variations when it came to weight, length, height, head size and mental ability. Researchers believe that the effects on the pregnant mother and the growing foetus of seasonal variations in diet, hormones, temperature, exposure to sunlight and viruses and other infections may influence a baby's characteristics. The American and Australian psychiatrists and anthropologists from Harvard and Queensland universities measured the children and carried out mental and motor tests at birth, at eight months, and at four and seven years. Compared to summer births, those born in winter were significantly longer at birth, and were heavier, taller and had larger head circumference at age seven. They also had higher scores in a series of intelligence exercises. By the age of seven, winter- and spring-born children were 210g heavier, 0.19cm taller, and had head circumferences significantly larger than summer and autumn-born children. The results also show that babies born in the winter were the longest, while winter- and spring-borns weighed the most at the age of seven and were also the tallest. The researchers, whose work appears this week in the medical journal Schizophrenia Research, conclude: "The overall pattern of findings is that winter/spring babies are both 'bigger' on the anthropometric variables and 'smarter' on the selected neurocognitive variables." The new study is the latest - and largest - in a series of projects worldwide aimed at evaluating the effect of the seasons on human health, longevity and physical and intellectual development. In 2002, scientists at Germany's prestigious Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research announced that people born in the autumn live longer than those born in spring, and do not become as ill in old age. Studying census data from Denmark, Austria and Australia, the institute also revealed a seasonal link to life expectancy for those older than 50. In Austria, for example, it was found that adults born between October and December lived some seven months longer that those born between April and June. Dietary changes and seasonal infections are thought to be at the heart of the phenomenon. "A mother giving birth in spring spends the last phase of her pregnancy in winter, when she will eat fewer vitamins," said Gabriele Doblhammer, one of the scientists who carried out the research. "When she stops breast-feeding and starts giving her baby normal food, it is in the hot weeks of summer - when babies are prone to infections of the digestive system." The season of birth can also influence whether a person is an optimist or pessimist. Yet it is the summer's babies that have a brighter outlook than winter-born grumblers. The American and Australian researchers offer a number of explanations for such differences in the early years of life. One theory is that foetal exposure to changing seasonal factors such as temperature, rainfall and ultraviolet radiation may be responsible.

Asian rationalists in Britain dare tantriks Indo-Asian News Service London, January 14, 2006 A group of rationalists of Indian origin here have raised 10,000 pounds that is being offered to tantriks or mystical healers who can scientifically prove they can cure people of diseases or solve their personal problems. Newspapers catering to Asian and Afro-Caribbean readerships have several pages of advertisements from such practitioners, promising magical cures and manna to those who believe in spells and occult practices. Lavkesh Prashar, president of the Asian Rationalist Society of Britain (ARSB), told the agency that such witchdoctors and charlatans were exploiting the superstitious and gullible people from these communities and earning thousands of pounds every year. The prize money was raised from 2,000 pounds to 10,000 pounds at a meeting of the society in Birmingham last week, Prasher said. "We challenge them to prove that they have magical powers under scientific conditions. They charge anything up to 300 pounds for a simple chat and claim they can cure anything from serious illness to bad luck. "They are nothing more than charlatans. They are preying on the more traditional members of our society who have been brought up to believe in this kind of thing. "We announced a prize of 2,000 pounds in 1997 to any such person who can prove to posses magical powers before the media and scientists. No one has come forward so far. We hope someone will now come forward to claim the higher prize money," the Birmingham-based Prashar said. The society, set up in 1997 to promote scientific awareness, works closely with the Federation of Indian Rationalists Association, and has branches in Derby, Leicester and Coventry. Prashar said the fact that such individuals could afford to spend hundreds of pounds to advertise in various newspapers in Britain every week indicated that they were doing good business. He said his organisation had brought such practices to the attention of the British government, but the police were not able to move without a victim coming forward and lodging a complaint. He, however, hopes that such victims will soon volunteer to complain. "Many victims come to us and narrate how they have been cheated of thousands of pounds, but they either don't want to expose themselves by going to the police or are just too scared of having a bad spell cast on them for doing so." Apart from those who advertise in the Asian and Afro-Caribbean papers, Prashar said, there were many more who were active within the communities. Many such individuals come to Britain on visitors' visas and earn money by claiming to possess divine powers, he added. Prashar said: "If they can do all of the things that they claim, and they do have divine powers, then they should come forward and prove it to the world. If they cannot, then they are exposed as the cheap street magicians they are. "The problem is not only confined to the superstitious people in the Asian community. Others also fall victim to such promises. The victims feel trapped and do not come forward to help put an end to such practices." He said the rationalist body had written to ministers in the British government and others to put an end to such exploitative practices. Tax authorities were also asked to inquire whether individuals offering such services were paying taxes on the income earned, but official action was stymied by the lack of victims coming forward to complain.

The day the music died January 15, 2006 The Observer Author and critic Nik Cohn has been obsessed by New Orleans for more than 30 years, and has been involved in the rap scene there for the last five. Six months after Hurricane Katrina he revisited the city and was stunned by what he found. In this compelling despatch he describes communitites struggling to piece together their lives as they watch their city being ripped apart by politicians and planners with designs on a very different New Orleans. Brandon McGee is a rapper and survivor. His rap name is Shorty Brown Hustle but most people call him B. He is 30, not much over five foot, has a shaved skull and two gold teeth, wears sagging jeans and a hoodie. He never stops talking. The day before Katrina hit New Orleans, B was leaning towards staying put. Few in his world watch TV news or read papers, so he didn't know how serious the situation was. Hurricanes didn't bother him. Almost every season brought a false alarm. Katrina was almost on the doorstep by the time B's mother, who lived outside the city, called and told him to get the hell out. Still he hesitated. His cousin Terence, who lived in New Orleans East, refused to shift. B stopped by his house and tried to talk sense into him. Terence, trying to impress his girlfriend Vonda, chose bravado over reason. They were still arguing at dawn when the power went out and the wind hit. They were in a brick apartment complex. The door buckled and the roof blew off, but the walls held. After a few hours, when the eye of the storm passed, everyone in the complex came outdoors to inspect the damage and celebrate their survival. The air was brown and purple and the silence unearthly. Then the waters started to rise. B has always been terrified of water, so he took shelter upstairs. The water rose fast and smelled of gasoline. Soon it was lapping at the upstairs windows. Boats drifted by, ripped loose from their moorings in Lake Pontchartrain. When Terence grabbed a passing rowboat, B told him to wait. There were people in the building who had no way to save themselves: Miss Beulah, an old woman in a wheelchair, whose husband had gone missing; a woman in her thirties with a baby; a 13-year-old boy; and two small children with no parents in sight. Though all were strangers to B, he hauled them into the boat, along with Terence and Vonda, and they paddled with their hands and bits of driftwood out of the apartment complex, across the vast lake where New Orleans East had been. From time to time, they passed corpses, floating face down or tangled in felled electric wiring. It was mid-afternoon and the only landmark visible above the waters was the overpass of the freeway, a quarter-mile away. Miss Beulah didn't know where she was. She kept grunting and rocking the boat, but the children were calm. None of them cried, not then or the days that followed. When the boat reached the overpass, hundreds were huddled there. No one knew the levees had burst; some thought this was the end of the world. Military vehicles drove past without stopping and helicopters circled overhead. To B, this meant rescue was at hand. He didn't understand why none of the soldiers dropped food or water, but he told Miss Beulah and the kids that everything was under control. Come morning, their troubles would be over. The next day was molten. Insufferable heat and humidity are par for New Orleans in late August, but this was like nothing B had experienced. There wasn't a whisper of breeze; the skyline was dotted by fires. Stuck on the overpass without water, he felt his tongue and eyeballs swell. People were screaming and crying. Some jumped; others were hauled back. More dead bodies floated by below. The stench was indescribable. National Guardsmen cruised by in motor boats and waved. None offered help or information. 'Looked like we were supposed to die there. That seemed to be the plan,' B says. When darkness came, he and some others broke into a grocery store and took what they needed: water, snacks, chocolate. Then he sat awake till dawn, making sure no one bothered Miss Beulah or the kids. They had become his responsibility. Next day, a coastguard boat came by and moved them from the overpass to Chef Menteur Highway, a dilapidated stretch of fast-food joints, strip clubs and hot-sheet motels, where there was less flooding. The hurricane had stripped many buildings bare, leaving only twisted metal. B and his flock sat by the roadside outside Skate Country till a man with a towtruck gave them a lift to Capt Sal's, a seafood restaurant, where other escapees had made an encampment. B helped liberate some of the seafood. Though the fish was spoiled, he was too hungry to care. All inhibitions were falling away. There were no rules now. You got by any way you could. Miss Beulah could hardly walk a step, every movement made her groan, and she was incontinent. When B tried to lift her, she inundated him. At night, he lay down in the smell and felt he couldn't breathe. Campfires were lit, people cursing and bitching, getting high on weed or alcohol. Suddenly, women started screaming. Five escaped pitbulls came rushing out of the dark. The men beat them off with sticks and iron bars till military police came to shoot them. Someone asked a cop why all these people were stranded here. The cop laughed. Two days and nights outside Capt Sal's, then a fleet of trucks ferried them to the Convention Centre. They didn't know that the whole city had drowned till the trucks left Chef Highway and climbed on to the Interstate. Penned in like cattle, 50 to a truck, they looked down and saw that the world they knew was gone. The neighbourhoods they'd grown up in lay deep under water, only roofs and treetops visible. It's nothing left but the stink, B thought. Stink and heat is all. The one consolation was knowing they were past the worst. When they reached the Convention Centre, there'd be food and clean clothing, medicine for Miss Beulah, diapers for the baby. B could take a long, hot shower, let the poisons wash away. Then he'd look for a new life. The city centre was almost deserted. The convoy of trucks made its way through mountains of debris, a sea of abandoned cars. Isolated figures waded along the streets, carrying their earthly goods in plastic bags, the waters above their waists. There was no looting, no violence and not a sound till the trucks were a few blocks from the Convention Centre and B heard the chanting, faint at first: Help us! Help us! Help us! The centre consists of large halls with cement floors and plate-glass windows, perhaps a half-mile from end to end. By the time B arrived, the interiors were overflowing and he settled his group on the walkway outside. One end was peopled by families, the others by street gangs. When B went indoors to look for a bathroom, he couldn't get the door open. He shoved harder and managed to look inside. Dead bodies littered the floor. It was Friday, the fourth day since Katrina, and B hadn't slept more than a few minutes at any time. Some of his new neighbours told him that sex offenders, escaped from custody, were roaming the halls, snatching children, raping and killing them. B believed it. Evil was everywhere. He gathered the children close around him and set himself to stay awake, never mind how long it took. Four more days went by. People pissed and shat wherever they could, old people died in their filth, babies became too weak to cry. B felt his mind cracking. A rastaman kept circling him, chanting what sounded like spells. Sometimes National Guardsmen strolled by with rifles, laughing among themselves. Days began to bleed together. B thought about dying. At last, on the morning of the eighth day, troops arrived in force and every-one was bussed out. B wasn't told where he was going or what he'd find there. The main thing was to keep his group together, make sure he finished what he'd begun. He lifted Miss Beulah on to the bus, settled the kids, then took up position at the back to keep watch. Fourteen hours later, the bus pulled up outside an army barracks - 'some place in Bumfuck, Texas' - that looked like the projects in New Orleans: barred windows, dung-coloured bricks. B couldn't face staying there but he had no ID, no money to phone his mother or pay for a motel room. He was standing in the road, breathing the cool country air, when a white man hailed him and offered a lift to a church a few miles down the road. One last time, B gathered together his flock and they piled into a minibus. More white people were waiting at the church with food and clothing. All B wanted was a shower. The white people gave him a towel and soap, and let him stay in the shower as long as he needed. The soap, B noted, was quality. It smelled real good... Why did B and so many others have to endure those eight days? Was it racism? Of course. None of this could have happened in Boston or Beverly Hills and the politicians who've pretended otherwise are liars. New Orleans, two-thirds black, largely impoverished, has been for years a sinkhole of neglect and racial profiling. Katrina simply exposed to the world what those in the city already knew. Was it, therefore, simply a matter of white 'haves' abandoning black 'have-nots'? Not quite. In the decades since the civil-rights movement, America has enmeshed itself in a cocoon of self-delusion and double-talk where race is concerned, and many African-Americans, their own fortunes improving, have played along. The black middle-class has distanced itself from those left behind. Chris Rock, the black comedian, jokes that he loves black people - it's niggas he can't stand. For others, it isn't a joke. The people stranded at the Superdome and Convention Centre were pariahs, and the root of their exclusion, deeper even than race, is poverty. They are what's buried below. Everything that the American Dream is supposed to wipe away. They aren't supposed to exist, yet here they are. How, in God's name, to make them disappear? I've been obsessed by New Orleans and its music since childhood and have lived there, off and on, more than 30 years. For me, it has always been the most seductive city on earth - corrupt, murderous, half-mad, but so intensely alive that its sins could never outweigh its allure. In the last few years I spent much of my time there working with rappers, including B, as a would-be producer. When Katrina struck, I was in New York, revving up for another round of recording. Suddenly, the rappers and their families, people I'd come to care about deeply, were scattered all over the South. My own losses were trivial, but they lost everything: homes, jobs, possessions and dreams. When we talked on the phone, they told me their world - black New Orleans - was gone. Now, on a chill winter morning, I walk the Lower Ninth Ward, close to the spot where the levee burst on the Industrial Canal. It's my first time back in the city post-Katrina, and this is an area I knew well - a ramshackle quarter of wooden, shotgun houses and brick, ranch-styles, ragged and loud, overrun by children. The majority of homes were owned, not rented. Older people grew vegetables in their backyards and went to church every Sunday, but most of the young had lost faith. Guns and drugs had taken over the streets, there were constant shootings, yet the place was vivid with life. Families were all-important, extended tribes that stuck together. Sudden death was commonplace. Blood endured. Music was everywhere - gospel in the wooden churches, old soul records playing on front porches, rap blasting out of the gangstas' cars. Today, the silence is so profound I can hear a scrap of rag flapping in a thorn bush. In the streets closest to the levee, the ones that took the first brunt of the flood, many houses have vanished entirely. A giant barge, left (unforgivably) in the canal as Katrina approached, now rests a hundred yards inland, prow upturned like a giant snout. The roadways, littered with drowned cars, are covered in mud, baked almost white by the sun; children's toys cling to the branches of the few trees that survive. Here and there, I come upon a wedding photo or some strands of Mardi Gras beads. Amid the ruins of one home, a marble shrine to the Virgin Mary stands almost undamaged. A film of dust and grit still hangs over everything, almost four months after the storm. As the morning lengthens, a few clean-up crews appear. Most workers stand idle, perhaps overwhelmed by their task. I talk to a man in protective clothing and a hard hat. White, with a neat ginger beard, he tells me he comes from Mississippi. His name is Cal. 'I don't mean to be heartless, but Katrina came at a good time for me,' he says. The week before the storm, he was laid off from his job. Now he's on a year's contract, with free lodging and medical coverage. 'There's opportunity here if you know how to recognise it,' he says. Sometimes a car passes, occupied by a black family returning for the day to sift through the wreckage of their home and salvage a few possessions. Until recently, the Lower Ninth was off-limits to all but government workers - too many toxins, too many bodies still undiscovered. Now anyone can come so long as they're gone before dark, and tour buses have begun to cruise the disaster areas, allowing day-trippers to take snapshots in comfort. Every house still standing displays spray-painted hieroglyphs, marking the date it was inspected, how many corpses were recovered and whether any residents or pets are still missing. An orange sticker means the dwelling has been condemned. Many residents have stuck up 'No Bulldozing' signs but precious few homes can ever be made habitable again. Most returning residents go away empty-handed. In front of their properties stand small piles of discards - beds, sheets, rotted books, framed pictures, a Bible. Each pile is a life. Lives. When I talk to returnees, the consensus is that the levee was blown deliberately, the city choosing to drown the Ninth Ward and the East, which are 97 per cent black, thus sparing the French Quarter and moneyed enclaves uptown. The second levee break, near Lake Pontchartrain, which inundated black and white neighbourhoods alike, is grudgingly allowed to have been unpremeditated. There's historical precedent for such suspicions. In the great Mississippi flood of 1927, the white city fathers were allowed by the federal government to dynamite a levee, flooding parishes downriver while keeping themselves dry. More recently, a Ninth Ward levee burst during hurricane Betsy in 1965, causing 81 deaths and a quarter-million evacuations, and there's widespread belief that this, too, was deliberate. Small wonder if the breach at the Industrial Canal strikes many as too convenient to be true. My guess is that the levee wasn't blown, because it didn't need to be: its structure was so inadequate that a major hurricane was bound to overwhelm it and the city was aware of this. Call it depraved indifference. For decades, the king of the Lower Ninth was Fats Domino. He never abandoned his home neighbourhood but built a large, pink-trimmed bungalow on Caffin Street, adjacent to his yellow-and-black office, decorated with music clefs. On sticky summer evenings he used to stand on the porch with his grandchildren, basking in the esteem of passers-by. In his mid-seventies, he still had the same serene baby-face as 50 years before, at the time of his great hits. In the days after Katrina, a rumour spread that Fats had perished in the flood. Actually, he'd taken refuge in the attic and been pulled to safety through a small dormer window, popped like the cork from a champagne bottle, but it took a while before his rescue was announced. When I make a pilgrimage to his house, a scrawled message on one of the walls says 'RIP Fats, we'll miss you'. The property is protected by a single sheet of plywood, propped across a doorway. I peer through the crack and see Fats' grand piano lying on its back, below an array of crystal chandeliers. The French Quarter isn't feeling much pain. At the height of the storm, it shipped less than a foot of water. A couple of bars on Bourbon Street never closed. All that's missing are the tourists. There's bitter irony in this, because tourism is the primary reason that New Orleans sold its soul. Before the 1980s, visitors were expected to adjust to native customs. Then the local economy ran aground. The oil boom of the Seventies collapsed, and big business, driven off by Louisiana's punitive taxes, left town. Even the port, the city's primary source of income, was diminished. That left the tourist dollar. The French Quarter, previously ramshackle, was transformed into a creole Disneyland. Shopping malls, convention centres, casinos and theme parks sprang up, enriching a power elite. Old white money and new black money thrived. The populace at large was left to rot. In recent decades, the mayors and the majority of the city council have been African-Americans, which merely proves that black rip-off artists can be as voracious as white. Pre-Katrina, tourism generated $1 million a day but not a dime ever seemed to reach the streets. And this was deliberate. Tourists need service - menial labour to clean their tables and make their beds, hose away their vomit on Bourbon Street. To provide it, the city adopted a policy of malign neglect. The old black neighbourhoods, rich in history and culture, were allowed to sink into ruin and the school system to founder. Without education, there was no way out. Many who refused to submit to grunt work in the Quarter became criminals, most often drug dealers. The public-housing projects that ringed the city's centre became armed camps, where killing was seen as proof of manhood. By 2000, New Orleans was America's murder capital, eight times as deadly as New York. For tourists, this was an invisible world. If they ventured beyond the Quarter at all, they took the streetcar past the mansions on St Charles Avenue or joined a walking tour of the Garden District, and few troubled to inquire what paid for such luxury. The only white faces seen in the projects belonged to social workers and drug-trawlers. The city was more deeply segregated than at any time in its history. Almost every project family lost someone to violence or jail. A culture of hopelessness took hold. These were the people herded into the Superdome and Convention Centre, the people on rooftops and overpasses, waiting to be rescued, and the people branded as looters, even though most took only what they needed to stay alive. If one small good has come out of Katrina it is that they're invisible no longer. That doesn't mean they now have a voice or will be treated better. In the Quarter, they already seem forgotten. About half the hotels and restaurants have reopened, catering to an army of relief workers. Many have the same habits as the tourists they've replaced. As a race, they're gigantic - huge pink slabs of beef, bellies, legs like tree-trunks in floppy shorts - and they drive SUVs to match. New Orleans, shadowy and mysterious, birthplace of jazz, has been taken over by behemoths, blasting country and western on their car stereos. 'We can fix anything that we focus on. We, as a people, and we, as Americans.' So says Scott Angelle, secretary of Natural Resources for Louisiana, and there's little question he's right. The issue, in contemplating New Orleans' future, is what will be the real focus and what window dressing. Politicians, both national and local, have been big on promises. The city will be restored, the levees strengthened, the school system overhauled. New Orleans won't merely be as it was before Katrina, but improved. As I travel the city, this vision appears selective, to put it mildly. The uptown streets are immaculate. Where houses were damaged, crews are busy painting and restoring. Power and phone service have been restored long since, the zoo is up and running, Tulane University is about to reopen. In designer coffee houses, upscale whites and blacks swap Katrina war stories with the wry humour of the fully insured. The atmosphere is relaxed. The project people are gone, those gangbangers and dope-dealers. At last the city feels safe. One school of thought holds that the hurricane was a blessing in disguise. Mayor Ray Nagin, echoing the relief worker I talked to in the Lower Ninth, has spoken of 'the opportunity of 400 years'. New Orleans has always been shambolic, a feckless, enchanted backwater, hopelessly behind the times. Here's the chance to clean out its trash, human and otherwise and drag it into the present. If the Opportunity party has its way, New Orleans will be remade as a boutique city. Instead of the almost half-million who lived here before Katrina, it will slim down by half. The racial make-up will be reversed so that whites outnumber blacks by two-to-one. The menial labour previously consigned to blacks will be taken over by Hispanic immigrants, housed in tent cities. Since many of these are illegals, they can be relied on not to act unruly or whine about civil rights. As images of Katrina start to fade, tourists will return. With the projects razed and criminals gone, big business will also return. In place of slums will be condos and cluster homes; where the Lower Ninth stood, golf courses. Mayor Nagin has even proposed a law permitting casinos in most hotels. Ten years from now, if Nagin has his way, New Orleans may be Las Vegas South. The city must first be made safe. That means rebuilding and upgrading the levee system. Engineers estimate the cost at $32 billion, but so far President Bush has committed only $2.6bn. There's a strong sense that Washington has already lost interest; congressmen speak freely of 'Katrina fatigue'. Without dependable levees, built to withstand a category 4 or 5 onslaught, New Orleans hasn't a hope. According to marine geologists, the cycle of disturbances that gave rise to Katrina and Rita (mere category 3s at landfall) is likely to last at least 10 more years, and another major hurricane seems a racing certainty. No one wants to rebuild their house just to have it levelled again. The uptown wealthy, whose mansions stand on higher ground, may feel secure, but the middle class has had enough: 74 per cent of buildings suffered serious damage; 115,000 small businesses are still out of commission; the city's population has shrunk to 70,000. Desperate for workers, Burger King is offering a $6,000 signing-on bonus, but there are few takers. Nagin keeps promising that all will be well. No one I've talked to believes him. Nagin is a contentious figure. After the flood, when it became obvious that the city's disaster plan had been hopelessly inadequate and he might be held accountable, he posed as a firebrand, accusing the powers in Washington. He had a point: the performance of those in power was a crime. Government at every level failed utterly to help its own citizens in need, and it continues to do so. But Nagin's efforts have been nothing to brag about and his posturing fools few. 'Ray Nagin was never black until Katrina' is a popular line among his constituents. Formerly owner of the local cable-TV franchise, his loyalty has always been to business. He has made a show of organising televised forums on New Orleans' future, at which community leaders can berate each other to their hearts' content. The serious brainstorming, though, goes on at private luncheons beforehand, reserved for Nagin and the developers and demolishers who are the true powers behind his throne. Nagin, like most of the city's black mayors, is light-skinned; the majority of project dwellers are dark. In a city where the 'brown paper bag test' has held sway for 200 years as a guideline to social status, this is no petty distinction. The reshaping of New Orleans, he seems to feel, is not a matter for the mass of its people. Like most things in America, it will be determined by dollars, and dark-brown dollars aren't many. Hunters Field is a sacred spot. A scrubby tract in the shadow of the Interstate, it's the home of the Yellow Pocahontas, one of the most revered Mardi Gras Indian tribes, and a site of Super Sunday, perhaps the greatest day in the black calendar, when the tribes gather in full costume to pow-wow, make music, and party as only New Orleanians can. This is the heart of the Seventh Ward, rich in history and black culture. Before Katrina, I could look from here down St Bernard Avenue with its hole-in-the-wall bars, barbershops, used-clothing stores and social clubs, and it seemed no power on earth could snuff out the vitality here. Now, nothing stirs. The shops and bars are all boarded up, there is no power and no one is allowed to live in the houses. At the height of the flooding, the waters rose eight-foot deep and caused massive damage. Most homes that weren't destroyed are infected by mould. Yet, experts agree, the area can be salvaged. It would take a lot of money and commitment, but the Seventh Ward, unlike the Lower Ninth, isn't gone. So far, there's scant sign of rebirth. In the first three months after Katrina, government agencies received 276,000 applications for home-improvement loans. Few have been processed as yet; of those that have, 82 per cent were turned down. At the present rate of bureaucratic foot-dragging, it will take 114 years to consider every case. A few citizens have set to work on gutting and restoring their houses, but the city has made no move to help. Nagin makes bold speeches, telling people to come on home. The trick is, they have no homes to come to. FEMA has thousands of trailers on hand, which could serve as temporary dwellings, but no black area has electricity, and white areas, which have, don't want trailer camps. As a result, most blacks who've returned are hunkered across the Mississippi in Algiers or out by the airport in Kenner. Shorty Brown Hustle is one of those in Algiers. Until a few weeks ago, he was staying with his mother in San Antonio. 'Still I got's to head back, I missed it too bad. The food and the music, the where-I-belong. San Antonio is fine, but it's not my place. New Orleans stinks, but this bitch is mine.' That doesn't mean he's welcome. Before Katrina, the city had need of young black males; in the new blueprint, they're surplus to requirements, especially if, like B, they come from the streets. Law-abiding or not, they find themselves demonised. In the days after the hurricane, the level of looter-hysteria reached such heights that two groups of white uptowners, not content with arming themselves, rented Israeli commando units for protection. The widely reported snipers at Charity Hospital turned out to be imaginary. And when the losses to looting were totted up, some of the worst culprits turned out to be policemen. Many of the law enforcement squads remain. New Orleans, bizarrely, has become the safest city in America, its drug-dealers and killers scattered. Yet the climate of fear remains. 'We're an endangered species,' says Seventh Ward Snoop, B's partner in rap. 'They trying every trick in the book to make us gone, but this is my city too.' Though he has degrees in sociology and criminal justice, he works as a security guard at a downtown hotel. 'Ray Nagin keeps saying New Orleans is going to be the paradigm of a new city,' says Snoop. 'Paradigm of fucked is what it is.' Common sense tells me he's right. But common sense and New Orleans are pretty much strangers, and deep down I'm not convinced that all is lost. This has always been a city of spirits, impervious to logic. Perhaps it's denial, perhaps survivor guilt, but I need to believe those spirits will yet find some way to outfox the real world. For the moment, though, the sense of loss is overwhelming. One morning, I ask B to retrace his Katrina journey with me. The apartment complex where he started is under guard, but everything else - the ravaged wasteground by the overpass, littered with fast-food containers and water bottles; the shattered glass in the forecourt of Skate Country; the felled and twisted neon sign outside Capt Sal's; the whole of Chef Highway, mile on mile of desolation - has been left to its own devices. 'I guess the clean-up crews must be on their break,' says B. We drive along the interstate, taking the same route as the trucks that delivered him and his group to the Convention Centre. None of the areas below shows any sign of life till we reach the CBD (Central Business District), which is almost back to normal. The centre has been scrubbed clean, inside and out, but remains closed to visitors. B finds the spot where he squatted, those dreadful days and nights. He relives it - the bodies blocking the bathroom door, the snatched children, the old women dying in their faeces, the National Guardsmen laughing among themselves, the heat, the stench, the helplessness - and he cries. · Nik Cohn's 'Triksta' is published by Harvill Secker at £12.99. To buy it at £11.99 with free UK p&p go to observer.co.uk/bookshop or call 0870 836 0885

Execution and Apathy by Mary Shaw 15 Jan 2006 Because of this apathy, the United States is the only Western democracy that still claims for itself the right to execute its citizens. Each year since 1976, three more nations have added their names to the list of countries that have abolished the death penalty. This worldwide trend towards abolition of the death penalty reflects the growing awareness that there are alternative punishments that are effective and which do not involve state-sponsored killing. But America does not care. When the State of California executed Stanley "Tookie" Williams last month, the news media briefly pulled their heads out of the sand and prompted us to think about the death penalty and the possibility of redemption behind bars. Then, five minutes later, they went back to reporting on Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. Apparently, most Americans care more about the sex lives of celebrities than the injustices that are being funded by our tax dollars. Death row inmates aren't as sexy as movie stars, and most don't have Tookie's star power. Unless it's being glamorized on a "Law and Order" episode, the death penalty is simply dismissed as a boring partisan political football. But the death penalty is not about left vs. right. It's about wrong vs. right. It's about the fact that two wrongs don't make a right. It's about human rights, and it's about human decency. And, while Americans spend their time worrying about what Angelina is doing with Brad, governors across the country keep on signing death warrants. Because of this apathy, the United States is the only Western democracy that still claims for itself the right to execute its citizens. Each year since 1976, three more nations have added their names to the list of countries that have abolished the death penalty. This worldwide trend towards abolition of the death penalty reflects the growing awareness that there are alternative punishments that are effective and which do not involve state-sponsored killing. But America does not care. Amnesty International describes the death penalty as "the ultimate, irreversible denial of human rights." By retaining the death penalty, the United States finds itself increasingly out of step with the rest of the world, aligned on this issue only with such backward nations as Afghanistan, Botswana, Cameroon, Chad, Cuba, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guatemala, and Mongolia. Furthermore, as a moral litmus test, it is interesting to note that most major religious denominations in the United States have statements opposing the death penalty. But Brad and Angie are so much more alluring. So Americans don't waste their time thinking about it. When the subject comes up, they mindlessly parrot the tired old death penalty myths: Myth #1: An eye for an eye, rah-rah-rah. Logically, it makes little sense to use execution to condemn killing. Such an act by the state is the mirror image of the criminal's willingness to use physical violence against a victim. It is the premeditated and cold-blooded killing of a human being by the state in the name of "justice". When someone is convicted of rape, we do not turn that person over to an official State Rapist to be treated in kind as punishment. Therefore, it is difficult to understand why some people find it appropriate to kill in order to show that killing is wrong. It offers society not further protection but further brutalization. Myth #2: It's about justice. Studies have shown that the death penalty is applied in a discriminatory, arbitrary, and uneven manner, and is used disproportionately against racial minorities and the poor. For example, a recent study of death sentences in Philadelphia found that African-American defendants were almost four times more likely to receive the death penalty than were people of other ethnic origins who committed similar crimes. Where is the justice in that? Myth #3: It serves as a deterrent. The death penalty is not a deterrent to violent crime. It is incorrect and naive to assume that people who commit such serious crimes as murder do so after rationally calculating the consequences. Murders are often committed in moments when emotion overcomes reason, or under the influence of drugs, alcohol, or mental illness. Moreover, those who do commit premeditated serious crimes may decide to proceed despite the risks in the belief that they will not be caught. The key to deterrence in such cases is to increase the likelihood of detection, arrest, and conviction. The death penalty is a harsh punishment, but it is not harsh on crime. Myth #4: It brings closure to victims' families. Not all families are thirsty for revenge. In fact, so many families oppose the death penalty that some have formed an organization called Murder Victims' Families for Reconciliation, through which they actively work to abolish the death penalty. Murder is always a despicable act and a terrible tragedy. But killing the murderer will not bring the victim back. A striking example of the growing worldwide public support against the death penalty is the illumination of the Colosseum in Rome whenever a death sentence is suspended or commuted anywhere in the world. It is also illuminated whenever a country establishes a moratorium on executions or abolishes the death penalty. Perhaps someday the Colosseum will light up to celebrate the abolition of the death penalty in the United States, thereby symbolizing American society's newly enlightened approach to criminal justice. In the meantime, we must work to promote justice, not revenge, one case at a time. Perhaps Mahatma Ghandi said it best: "An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind." Comment: Take action -- click here to contact your local newspaper or congress people: End the death penalty

Ark's Quantum Quirks SOTT January 16, 2006

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