Signs of the Times - 2003-09-17

21 years later Sharon the butcher still at large

By Amal Hamdan
Tuesday 16 September 2003

The piles of bloated corpses and the overwhelming stench of rotting flesh are still crystal clear memories in Mahir al-Srour al-Marei’s mind.

It was 16 September 1982 in the Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut, and the sounds of gunfire echoed throughout the densely packed, impoverished area.

A thick cloud of uneasiness lingered over Israeli-occupied west Beirut. Two days earlier, Phalange militia leader and Lebanon’s president Bashir Jmayil had been assassinated after only three weeks in power. The militia, close to Israel, blamed Palestinians for his death.

As the rattling of battle became more insistent, Mahir’s father told him to go to a nearby relative’s house and bring her back. Mahir, then 15, recalls venturing out with his sister Suad, then 18, into the night. Electricity had been cut off after Israel’s savage bombing of west Beirut.

“We arrived at the home of Abu Yasir’s, who had the largest bomb shelter in the neighbourhood,” said Mahir. Outside, rows of men lined the streets.

“We thought they were asleep. It was normal then to sometimes sleep outside because the shelter would become too full,” said the photo-journalist. The shelter was empty. "Then my sister screamed, 'run, they’re all dead,' " he said. As Israeli flares lit up the skies, Mahir looked at the bodies in the street and realised his neighbours were dead.

"When they saw her still moving, they shot her in the head. I saw her brains blown out." Mahir al-Srour al-Marei, Palestinian survivor of Sabra and Chatila massacre

For 62 hours, members of the Phalange militia went on a rape and murder spree, butchering women, babies and the elderly - all under the watchful eye of Ariel Sharon, 200 metres away, on the rooftop of the Kuwaiti embassy.

Sharon, then Israel’s defence minister, had overall responsibility for the occupation forces and according to the Geneva Conventions, to protect civilians.

The decision to send in Phalangists to “mop up” the camps as Sharon had put it, was made two days before Jmayil was killed, according to historians and journalists. Israeli forces had completely surrounded the camp a day before the rampage, and forced fleeing civilians to return.

Some of the dead had been mutilated or disembowelled before or after they were killed, according to investigations after the massacre. Journalists who arrived at the scene after the rampage saw clear evidence of the summary execution of young men.

Moris Draper, the US special envoy to the Middle East at the time, said he cabled Sharon after the killings began, telling him: “You must stop the slaughter…The situation is absolutely appalling. They are killing children. You have the field completely under your control and are therefore responsible for that area.”

Militiamen pounded on Mahir’s door on the morning of the 17th, after seeing a neighbour on the rooftop. His father opened the door after they lobbed a bomb at the house.

Armed and covered in blood, the militants surveyed the terrified family.

“One man said to the others, ‘You haven’t shot them yet? This is how you shoot’, and he started shooting,” said Mahir in the steady tone of someone who has re-visited this memory many times.

From his hiding place in the bathroom, Mahir saw his family being executed. Amid screams, the militiamen murdered his father; Bassam, 13; Farid, six; Shady, four and Shadya, one and a half.

“Shadya was trying to crawl towards me. She was looking at me and screaming and saying, ‘dada’. When they saw her still moving, they shot her in the head. I saw her brains blown out,” he said in a dead voice. She slumped over between her dead father and mother, who had been injured, but not killed.

“I wanted to help her - and he (militiaman) killed her. And I couldn’t do anything,” he said after a pause. “I won’t forget that feeling.”

A day after multinational forces evacuated Beirut, Sharon claimed "2000 terrorists" were still in the camps. He sent an order to the Israeli command saying the "mopping up" would be carried out by the Phalange.

The exact number of victims will never be known. The International Committee for the Red Cross initially counted 1500 bodies at the time, but by 22 September this count had risen to 2400. The next day, another 350 corpses were uncovered, raising the total to 2750.

However, this toll does not include those still unaccounted for, buried in mass graves or carted away by militiamen, never to be seen again.

On 16 December 1982, the UN General Assembly condemned the massacre and declared it to be an “act of genocide”.

And in 1983, a three-member Israeli commission of inquiry, charged with investigating the massacre known as the Kahan Commission, found Sharon along with other Israelis, personally responsible for the massacre.

Sharon resigned as defence minister, only to become prime minister in 2001, sending a shudder throughout the Arab countries, and the world. Mahir’s sister Suad was seriously injured in the legs, making it impossible for her to escape after the militiamen had left their home.

Mahir, his brother Ismail who had taken refuge with him, left with their mother, believing they could find her an ambulance. For three days, she laid among the quickly rotting corpses of her family. She was raped at least once during that period by militiamen.

Suad is one of 23 survivors bringing a case against Sharon in Belgium, under the country’s law of universal jurisdiction for acts of genocide and crimes against humanity.

Under the 1993 law, Belgian courts could try suspects for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, regardless of where the alleged incidents took place or the accused's nationality.

But under intense US and Israeli pressure, the law has been amended so that now a Belgian prosecutor will have to decide which cases fall under the law's jurisdiction.

Israel’s prime minister, responsible for what has been described as “among the most heinous crimes of the 20th century” has never been punished. Mahir, however, believes his sister’s efforts are futile because “she has no power and money and the world is power and money.”

He then falls into a short silence, contemplating the thousands who were butchered. “Sometimes I feel like talking about this. Sometimes I feel it’s worthless. No one wants to listen.”

You will need RealPlayer to view this media clip. This demonstrates a number of things...how little we see here. The culture of violence and the attitude taken towards it in the Israeli State and it's occupation forces.

Comment: After viewing this CBC news clip you will have a better understanding of the Palestinian situation.

Israel dismisses Palestinian truce offer

Tuesday, 16 September , 2003

Jerusalem: Israel dismissed as a deceptive "honeytrap" a proposal Tuesday by a top aide to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat for an indefinite ceasefire and continued its deadly pursuit of wanted militants.
"We are not going to be lulled into this honeytrap of a 'hudna,' or ceasefire," Ranan Gissin told AFP upon hearing the proposal by Arafat's national security adviser, Jibril Rajub.

The spokesman belittled the proposal, saying it was merely a reaction to Israel's decision last week to "remove" Arafat in the wake of two suicide attacks in Jerusalem and near Tel Aviv.

"We have been deceived many times by Arafat," Gissin said. "When you put pressure on them, threatening to remove Arafat from here and remove this obstacle of peace, suddenly they act.

"After being in the first horror movie called 'hudna' (truce), in which we participated not as spectators but as actors, allow us to be a little suspicious." [...]

Comment: Israel is not interested in peace. Israel wants a civil war among the different Palestinian groups so that they wipe themselves out, finishing the genocide begun by the Israelis. This is the politics of Sharon.

I know I have said it before but the times bear repeating it, sometimes it feels like we’ve all become Alice, the character in the Lewis Carroll classic Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Events these days are so bizarre, it’s as if we have fallen into that story’s "rabbit hole" and ended up in "Wonderland" where everything is upside down.

Ten years after we gathered on the White House lawn to witness the historic Israeli-Palestinian peace accord and the Arafat-Rabin handshake, Rabin has been murdered by an Israeli assassin and Arafat is in his compound threatened with expulsion or death.

Ten years ago, while the majority of Israelis and Palestinians celebrated the promise of peace, they were joined by Arab-Americans and American Jews who shared the same hope. Extremists, on all sides, however, were resolved to bring the process down and, it appears, they are close to accomplishing their goal.

[...] And yet in the bizarre upside-down political discourse of the United States the brutal provocateur Sharon is "a man of peace" and Arafat, the head of a dismembered and dispossessed people and a dismantled authority is "an obstacle to peace". Israel continues to receive compassion, as victims of terror, while Palestinian suffering is largely ignored and almost never condemned. [...]

Comment: In exactly the same way that the US is the "victim of terror" which apparently justifies the indiscriminate murder and maiming of innocent women and children. Has the world gone mad? Apparently so. Remember: war is peace, love is hate, black is white - now go back to sleep.

The U.S. advice to avoid expelling or killing Arafat remains just an advice, and not a binding request made to the ally Ariel Sharon, as long as he is engaged in the "war on terror."

What Washington fears is a burst of anger in the region, at a time when it refuses to speed up its withdrawal from Iraq, and where killing is allowed, just as it is in the Palestinian territories. [...]

Why did the murder or assassination attempt of Abdulaziz Al Rantissi, Ismail Abu Shanab, Ahmad Yaseen and Mahmud Zahar, all of them Hamas leaders, take place at a time when Hamas had agreed to freeze military operations and initiate a dialogue with the Authority, the Palestinian factions, the Egyptian government and Europe?

Why didn't Israel kill or try to kill them when the Intifada was at its peak? Was the escape of those Hamas leaders, with the exception of Abu Shanab in Gaza, and before them Khaled Mishaal a coincidence or is it that Israel threatens them but doesn't want to kill them? [...]

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has postponed decision on the route of a contested security barrier cutting through the West Bank after the US warned it might forfeit part of a €7.9bn loan guarantee package.

The Israeli security Cabinet was to have met today to decide on the path of the next segment of the barrier. One issue on the agenda was whether the barrier should include several Jewish settlements deep in the West Bank.

Israeli government officials said John Wolf, a US envoy to the Middle East, raised specific objections to a stretch of the barrier planned to cut into Palestinian territory.

He told the director general of the Israeli Defence Ministry, that money spent on construction of that segment would be deducted from the loan guarantees.[...]

There are fears Israel will see America's veto at the United Nations as a "licence to kill" in the Jewish state's bid to get rid of Yasir Arafat.

A war of words erupted between UN members within hours of the resolution - demanding Israel neither harm nor deport Arafat - being tabled.

The resolution fell after America voted against the motion, while Britain, Bulgaria and Germany abstained leaving the remaining 11 members voting for. [...]

We all know Republicans are tough on crime ... except in Baghdad, as it turns out. The L.A. Times reports, "The number of reported gun-related killings in Baghdad has increased 25-fold since President Bush declared an end to major combat May 1.

Before the war began, the morgue investigated an average of 20 deaths a month caused by firearms. In June, that number rose to 389 and in August it reached 518. Moreover, the overall number of suspicious deaths jumped from about 250 a month last year to 872 in August." Democracy is an overcrowded morgue, it seems.

BAGHDAD — A sourness stings the morning air as men with wooden coffins tied on taxis come to collect the murdered: a boy shot in the face during a carjacking, a ruffian stabbed in a neighborhood fight, a sheik ambushed by his rivals, a son with a bullet through the heart.

U.S.-led coalition forces insist that stability is returning to Iraq. The ledger in the Baghdad morgue tells a different tale. [...]

For the past few weeks, I have been watching videotapes of the attack on Iraq, most of them not shown in this country. The tapes concentrate on the epic suffering of ordinary Iraqis. There are photographs, too, that were never published here. They show streets and hospitals running with blood, as American and British forces smashed their way into Iraq with weapons designed to incinerate and dismember human beings.

It is difficult viewing, but necessary if one is to understand fully the words of the Nuremberg judges in 1946 when they laid down the principles of modern international law: "To initiate a war of aggression... is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole." [...]

WASHINGTON -- Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Tuesday he had no reason to believe that Iraq's Saddam Hussein had a hand in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States.

At a Pentagon news conference, Rumsfeld was asked about a poll that indicated nearly 70 percent of respondents believed the Iraqi leader probably was personally involved. "I've not seen any indication that would lead me to believe that I could say that," Rumsfeld said.[...]

January 30, 2003

President Bush spent Wednesday trying to draw a link between a possible war in Iraq and the war against terrorism. He repeated accusations that Iraq is linked to the al Qaeda terrorist network[...]

A reminder for those on the right who still refuse to admit that President Bush used the media and 9/11 to decieve (however indirectly) the American public to beleive Saddam was personally involved in the September 11 Attacks.

Sept. 5, 2002

"We have evidence Iraq knew and approved of the Sept. 11 targets."

Over a thousand victims and family members of those who died in the Sept. 11 attacks sued Iraq and its leader Saddam Hussein Wednesday alleging there is evidence of a conspiracy with Osama bin Laden to attack the United States. [...]

Comment: Rumsfeld Bush and their war buddies spread the disinfo and then wash their hands of any responsibility... Lies and the lying liars who tell them - doesn't it make you mad that they hold 'we the public' in such contempt that they think they can so easily pass this off on us?! Hello?! Anyone??!

The Bush administration can't get its story straight. During a nationally televised interview last weekend, Vice President Dick Cheney defended the White House's policy in Iraq by insinuating that Iraq might have been involved in the September 11 terrorist attacks, a claim that has been widely dismissed by intelligence analysts and senior members of Bush's inner circle.

Indeed, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, one of the main architects for the war in Iraq, admitted for the first time last month that Iraq had nothing to do with the September 11 terrorist attacks, contradicting Cheney and other senior White House and Pentagon officials whose attempt to link Saddam Hussein and the terrorist organization al-Qaeda was cited by the Bush administration as one of the main reasons for launching a preemptive strike in March against Iraq.

In an interview last month with the Laura Ingraham show, a conservative radio broadcast, Wolfowitz was asked when he first came to believe that Iraq was behind the 9-11 terrorist attacks.

"I'm not sure even now that I would say Iraq had something to do with it," Wolfowitz said in the interview, aired Friday, a transcript of which can be found here. [...]

Comment: The lies get bigger and bolder every day. See the next article for even more mendacity!

From John King
CNN Washington Bureau
Tuesday, September 16, 2003 Posted: 2316 GMT

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Vice President Dick Cheney's office Tuesday dismissed as "a political cheap shot" new Democratic questions about his financial stake in the energy services giant Halliburton, which has received lucrative contracts in postwar Iraq.

"He doesn't have a financial interest in the company," a top Cheney aide told CNN. [...]

Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-New Jersey, said Cheney's financial disclosure forms show that he continues to receive deferred salary from the company and therefore has a stake in whether the company stays profitable. [...]

Lautenberg also listed Halliburton stock options that are shown on Cheney's financial disclosure form -- some 233,000 shares in all that vest between 2007 and 2009.

The Cheney aide said that on January 18, 2001 -- just before being sworn in as vice president -- Cheney assigned all of his Halliburton stock options to a charitable trust.

"He legally and irrevocably assigned them and he receives no tax benefit from them," the Cheney aide said. This aide said the trustee of the trust decides when to sell them. [...]

As American post-conflict combat deaths in Iraq overtook the wartime number, the administration counseled patience. "The war on terror is a test of our strength. It is a test of our perseverance, our patience, and our will," President Bush told an American Legion convention.

National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice embellished the message with what former White House speechwriters immediately recognize as a greatest-generation pander. "There is an understandable tendency to look back on America's experience in postwar Germany and see only the successes," she told the Veterans of Foreign Wars in San Antonio, Texas, on Aug. 25. "But as some of you here today surely remember, the road we traveled was very difficult. 1945 through 1947 was an especially challenging period. Germany was not immediately stable or prosperous. SS officers—called 'werewolves'—engaged in sabotage and attacked both coalition forces and those locals cooperating with them—much like today's Baathist and Fedayeen remnants." [...]

One group of those dead-enders was known as "werewolves." They and other Nazi regime remnants targeted Allied soldiers, and they targeted Germans who cooperated with the Allied forces. Mayors were assassinated including the American-appointed mayor of Aachen, the first major German city to be liberated. Children as young as 10 were used as snipers, radio broadcasts, and leaflets warned Germans not to collaborate with the Allies. They plotted sabotage of factories, power plants, rail lines. They blew up police stations and government buildings, and they destroyed stocks of art and antiques that were stored by the Berlin Museum. Does this sound familiar?

Well, no, it doesn't. The Rice-Rumsfeld depiction of the Allied occupation of Germany is a farrago of fiction and a few meager facts. [...]

Comment: Oh what a surprise! The Bush administration is LYING AGAIN. See the full article for the details.

VIENNA - There is little danger of terrorists using stolen radioactive material from Iraq to build a so-called dirty bomb, say the country's scientists, because most of the looted material has been recovered and was low in radiation anyway.

Abbas Balasem said he didn't think Saddam Hussein revived efforts to build nuclear weapons after UN officials destroyed his initial program in the wake of the 1991 Gulf War. The required resources weren't available, Balasem said.

Balasem is one of several Iraqi scientists attending a meeting of the United Nation's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna.

His words echoed those of IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei, who presented a report to the agency's board of governors last week.

ElBaradei reported that, before leaving Iraq in March, UN inspectors found Iraq's nuclear program in disarray and unlikely to be able to support an active effort to build weapons.

VIENNA, Sept 16 (Reuters) - Iraq never revived its secret nuclear weapons programme after it was dismantled by U.N. inspectors in the 1990s, a senior Iraqi scientist at Iraq's new Ministry of Science and Technology said on Tuesday. [...]

SYDNEY, Sept. 17 — Former U.N. chief weapons inspector Hans Blix now believes Iraq destroyed its weapons of mass destruction 10 years ago and that intelligence agencies were wrong in their weapons assessment that led to war. [...]

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The commander of the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq said in an interview published Wednesday that U.S. forces, already under pressure from a guerrilla-style resistance, now face revenge attacks from ordinary Iraqis angered by the occupation.

North of Baghdad, there were at least three separate attacks on U.S. forces with roadside bombs in less than 1 1/2 hours Wednesday morning. Witnesses reported injured soldiers, but details were unclear. The attacks hit U.S. Humvees about 12 miles north of Baghdad near al-Taji. [...]

HALDIYA, Iraq, Sept. 16 — Six people identifying themselves as Americans, and two others saying they are British, are being held prisoner in connection with guerrilla attacks in Iraq, a United States general said today.

Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, who is in charge of prisoners in Iraq, provided no details on the men, except to say they are among 4,400 "security detainees," a category distinct from prisoners of war or common criminals. She said the "security detainees" were suspected of carrying out or planning attacks on American or other troops in Iraq, Agence France-Presse reported. [...]

US officials have admitted they are holding 10,000 prisoners in Iraq, double the number previously reported, including six claiming to be Americans and two who say they are British.

"They didn't fit into any category," said Brigadier General Janis Karpinski of the 3,800 extra people who have now been classified as "security detainees." [...]

Asked if they had any rights or had access to their families or legal help while they were being "secured", she said: "It's not that they don't have rights ... they have fewer rights than EPWs (enemy prisoners of war)." [...]

AFP
Wednesday September 17, 3:27 PM

The US Senate rejected a measure that would have halted the development of "bunker buster" bombs -- small nuclear weapons created for battlefield use -- while also allowing the resumption of underground nuclear tests.

By a 53-41 vote, the Republican-controlled Senate rejected legislation sponsored by Democrats Dianne Feinstein of California and Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts.

"At the very time when we are urging other nations to halt their own nuclear weapons programs, the administration is rushing forward to develop our own new nuclear weapons," said Kennedy, who warned that a new "nuclear arms race" could result. [...]

North Korea said US-led exercises to stop and search ships suspected of carrying weapons of mass destruction were a prelude to a nuclear war and it would strengthen its deterrent force in response.

The threat, issued by North Korea's official KCNA news agency yesterday, came after the US, Australia, Japan and France held manoeuvres off northeast Australia at the weekend in the first of 10 exercises to track and board a ship suspected of carrying weapons of mass destruction.

The US has said the exercises were not specifically aimed at North Korea but few doubt the target, with Washington and others accusing the isolated state of making clandestine shipments of drugs, counterfeit cash and missiles.

German neo-Nazi threat 'rising'

The threat to Germany from neo-Nazis has risen to a new level, Interior Minister Otto Schily has warned.
The discovery of a suspected plot to bomb a Munich Jewish centre during a visit by the German president has "dramatically confirmed" the danger to society, he said on Monday.

At least 10 suspects were held and up to 14kg (31lb) of explosives seized in police raids last week.

Officials believe plans were being made to bomb the centre on 9 November, when its foundation stone is due to be laid at a ceremony attended by President Johannes Rau, Bavarian governor Edmund Stoiber and Jewish leader Paul Spiegel.

The suspected attack would have coincided with the anniversary of the Nazis' 1938 Kristallnacht attacks, when thousands of Jewish targets were attacked and dozens murdered.

"One could (even) say there is a new quality of terror, though we know from previous times that in right-extremist circles bombing attacks were planned and carried out," Mr Schily told Germany's ZDF television, referring a 1980 attack that killed 13 people.

"There have been hints that right extremists are really a great potential danger for our society... and this has now been dramatically confirmed." [...]

Comment: In facilitating the events of 9/11 the US government, doing the bidding of the Zionists and the other high level manipulators, have provided an excellent cover-all excuse for governments the world over to clamp down on social freedoms. In Germany, the abovementioned Interior Minister Otto Schilly, winner of the ' Big Brother award", wasted no time back in Oct 2001 in declaring that the fun was over. Of course in Germany the memory of the Jewish holocaust is used and abused to ensure that the draconian laws cannot be questioned. There is evidence to suggest however that the 'resurgence' of right wing Nazi elements is a ruse designed to further terrify the population. See below articles.

Germany's top neo-Nazis spy for ministry

By Hannah Cleaver in Berlin
(Filed: 16/07/2002)

One in seven of Germany's top neo-Nazis is a secret service agent, the government has admitted in an attempt to sustain faltering efforts to ban a far-Right political party.

Government lawyers have offered the information in the hope that it will save agents from being identified in court.

The government is trying to ban the National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD) for its alleged unconstitutional, anti-democratic and racist views.

But the constitutional court, the only body with the power to ban a political party, unwittingly embarrassed the government when it called several senior party members to give evidence.

It turned out that many had been working for the intelligence services, some of them for decades. Five were identified and the court stopped its examination of the potential ban among fears that the evidence presented could have been influenced by the government's desire to ban the party.

Germany's most notorious postwar neo-Nazi party was led by an intelligence agent working for the British, according to both published and unpublished German sources.
The alleged agent - the late Adolf von Thadden - came closer than anyone to giving the far-right real influence over postwar German politics.

Under his leadership, the National Democratic party (NPD) made a string of impressive showings in regional elections in the late 60s, and there were widespread fears that it would gain representation in the federal parliament.

Yet, according to a report earlier this year in the Cologne daily, the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger, the man dubbed "the New Führer" was working for British intelligence throughout the four years he led the NPD, from 1967 to 1971. [...]

The United States on Tuesday accused Russia of supplying arms to "state sponsors of terrorism," chiefly Iran, and slapped sanctions on a Russian defense company.

The charges -- which mirror U.S. accusations concerning Baghdad after the Iraq war started -- appear to be an attempt to pressure Moscow over its cooperation with Tehran, analysts said. [...]

The timing may have something to do with U.S.-Russian differences over Iran's nuclear capacity and could be a message to Moscow that "the U.S. is very concerned about Iran and is willing to pick at anything," said Ivan Safranchuk, director of the Moscow office of the Washington-based Center for Defense Information.

The Foreign Ministry on Tuesday reiterated the need for a quick transition to Iraqi rule and suggested there should be nothing "symbolic" about the transfer of power as France's ambassador in Washington said.

"The French position is that expressed by French authorities," Foreign Ministry spokesman Herve Ladsous said, noting that the position had been spelled out by President Jacques Chirac and Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin. Neither used the word "symbolic."

France has called for a speedy transition to Iraqi rule with a provisional Iraqi government in place within a month, a draft constitution by the end of the year, and elections next spring.

WASHINGTON - With America needing all the help it can get in Iraq, it's time to swallow our pride and give the French back their fries, a House lawmaker said in a letter to her colleagues.

House Republican leaders last March, angered by French opposition to U.S. plans to take military action against Iraq, ordered that all restaurants in the House replace the french fries on their menus with "freedom fries." But now, said Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, we need to bring the French back to the table.

"President Bush is now urging that all parties put aside 'past bickering.' Delays in rebuilding international good will are costing Americans lives in Iraq, and billions of dollars to the American taxpayers," Lee wrote last week in a letter first reported by the congressional newspaper Roll Call. "A symbolic start to that effort would be reinstating foods in the House cafeterias and dining halls and their traditional 'American' names — french toast and french fries." [...]

Ney said that the day after Jackson Lee wrote her letter the French came out with an untenable timetable for elections in Iraq, confounding U.S. efforts to win United Nations backing for the reconstruction effort. "They were noncooperative and arrogant then," before the war, "and they are again noncooperative and arrogant," Ney said. "I haven't seen a huge change." [...]

Comment: American lawmakers are acting like spoiled brats. They are shaming all Americans with their childish antics. They preach liberty and freedom of speech, or the freedom to disagree, and then chastise the French in the most absurdly infantile manner imaginable when they disagree with the Iraq invasion. It is the American lawmakers and the American people who support them who are non-cooperative, arrogant, and supremely self-centered in their words and actions.

(Washington, DC) Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, said today that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has refused to produce records, under the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act ("FOIA"), pertaining to the decision to grant "sole source" contracts to Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root ("KBR"). Sole source contracts are awarded to a company without having to go through a competitive bidding process.

Vice President Richard B. Cheney was Halliburton’s chief executive and chairman from 1995 to 2000, when he stepped down to be President George W. Bush’s running mate. The Securities and Exchange Commission is currently investigating Halliburton's 1998 decision to change the way it accounted for revenue on cost-overrun projects. Last year Halliburton agreed to a $4 billion cash-and-stock deal to settle 200,000 asbestos lawsuits. [...]

[...] Here is the real cover op that deflects the search for truth in America: Those who oppose the war tend to funnel themselves into the Democratic Party, and those who favor the war tend to align themselves with the Republicans.

This is perfect for the secret players behind the scenes, because in the long run, both political parties are One.

So it's a dead-end op. Most people who have an opinion at all wind up in the camp of a group that will do nothing to change the chessboard. [...]

John Ashcroft's tour to defend the Patriot Act against grassroots America a failure; far more people attended the protests outside Ashcroft's closed-door meetings than attended the meetings themselves.

Attorney General John Ashcroft's tour to defend the Patriot Act against criticism raised by grassroots America, and acted upon by members of Congress was a public relations disaster. At every stop on his 16-city tour, protesters gathered outside to voice their opposition to the un-American law, and at each stop, the news media gave at least as much coverage to the demonstrators as they did to John Ashcroft. Thanks you to all the wonderful, civic-minded people in Philadelphia ,Cleveland ,Detroit ,Des Moines ,Salt Lake City ,Boise ,Las Vegas ,Boston, Buffalo ,Tampa ,Atlanta ,Research Triangle Park ,Norfolk ,and New York City who turned out to say no to John Ashcroft and his Orwellian laws. [...]

WASHINGTON - Cops on the beat, airport security personnel and officials who issue U.S. travel visas would have access to a single anti-terrorist "watch list" containing more than 100,000 names under orders issued Tuesday by President Bush.

The Terrorist Screening Center, a 24-hour, 7-days-a-week operation under the FBI's lead, will merge a patchwork of a dozen existing lists currently maintained by nine different federal agencies — but not always accessible to the officials who need them. [...]

NEW YORK (Reuters) - President Bush is an incessant liar bent on destroying America's social safety net, central bank guru Alan Greenspan should shut his mouth on issues unrelated to monetary policy and the U.S. media have done a terrible job of keeping the public informed.

If those opinions seem stark, they are meant to be. The New York Times pays op-ed columnist Paul Krugman to ruffle feathers. The Princeton University economist has been writing for the Times since 1999 -- work now compiled in his latest book "The Great Unraveling."

In it, Krugman says Bush lied during his 2000 presidential campaign, lied once he took office, turned a record budget surplus into the biggest deficit to line the pockets of the rich and abused the public's patriotism after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. [...]

A White House spokeswoman said she would have no immediate comment on Krugman's charges.

Krugman said he misses the honesty of Ronald Reagan, the last Republican president to slash taxes. Reagan had "irresponsible fiscal policy," Krugman said, but at least it was based on the "crazy theory" that tax cuts for the rich would trickle down to help the working man. [...]

While some critics dismiss Krugman's views as inflammatory, his book shows many of his predictions have come true, especially those about the nation's budget. And that makes his ultimate prognosis of the nation's fiscal outlook chilling. [...]

Once again, the dispiriting spectacle of the American media in full campaign cry is upon us, as coverage of the 2004 presidential race begins in earnest. But this time around, the usual inanities, inaccuracies and insipidities have a more melancholy flavor, an almost elegiac feel. It's like watching priests of a dead cult, vacantly enacting their rituals in a ruined temple whose gods have been broken, desecrated and cast down.

The difference from past campaigns lies in the media mandarins' sad belief that there will actually be a genuine, open, presidential election in November 2004. This childlike faith stems, of course, from their equally fallacious conviction that the United States did not suffer a coup d'etat in December 2000 at the hands of an extremist faction of elites.

But of course, a classic coup is "not necessarily assisted by either the intervention of the masses or, to any significant degree, by military-type force." It's an inside job, carried out by factions within the elite. Who says? The man who literally wrote the book on the subject: right-wing guru -- and Pentagon advisor -- Edward Luttwak.

[...] In 1968, Luttwak penned "Coup d'Etat: A Practical Handbook," which could be the text of the 2000 Bush campaign, as John Dee reports in Lumpen magazine. Drawing on the extensive experience of the CIA in such pranks, Luttwak says that "a coup consists of the infiltration of a small but critical segment of the state apparatus, which is then used to displace the government from its control of the remainder." True coupsters "want to seize power within the present system" [his italics], then use the existing lines of authority and habits of obedience inherent in legitimate government to advance their own illegitimate aims.

Propaganda and false patriotism are key coup ingredients. Luttwak says a coup's "information campaign" must "reassure the general public by dispelling fears that the coup is inspired by extremist elements, and to persuade particular groups that the coup is not a threat to them. The first aim will be achieved by manipulating national symbols and by asserting our belief in the prevailing pieties." United we stand!

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. - Retired Gen. Wesley Clark, who boasts a four-star military record but concedes he has gaps to fill on domestic policy, told political advisers Tuesday he will join the presidential race as the 10th Democratic candidate. [...]

PHOENIX (AP) - A UPS cargo plane that took off from Los Angeles made an emergency landing here after the delivery company received two threatening phone calls, including one that mentioned a bomb, a UPS spokesman said. [...]

[A]pparently sometime on Saturday, someone set the day-old, 10-by-15-foot flag ablaze, bent the pole and left a typewritten note condemning the U.S. war in Iraq, according to Summit County Sheriff Joe Morales. [...]

Colombian officials are questioning why a party of backpackers travelled in a notoriously dangerous area occupied by guerrillas, who seized eight of them last Friday, including two Britons, in the country's biggest foreign kidnapping in two decades.

Mark Henderson, a 31-year-old television producer from Harrogate, and Matthew Scott, a 19-year-old from London, were among the tourists abducted by suspected Marxist guerrillas while trekking through the ruins of Cuidad Perdida, in northern Colombia. [...]

Christopher Henderson, of Harrogate, North Yorkshire, said yesterday that his son, Mark, was "pretty tough". He added: "I'm confident that he will be able to cope.

"I fully expect him to write a bestseller as soon as he gets back, and then follow it up with the movie. It's obviously quite a shock but Mark's tough. He's physically very fit. He has been trekking and scuba-diving for the last four months and was in good spirits when I spoke to him 10 days ago." [...]

Comment: Mr. Henderson is apparently so concerned about his son's life that he's already thinking about a future book and movie deal.

BY KARL RITTER STOCKHOLM, Sweden -- Investigators collected DNA from a baseball cap apparently left behind by the man who killed Sweden's foreign minister but found no match in a national criminal database, police said Monday.

A mother listened on the telephone as her estranged husband murdered each of their four young sons by locking them inside his fume-filled car, an inquest was told yesterday.

At one point, Samantha Young, 28, was allowed to hear her eldest child, Joshua, seven, bid her a last farewell before he was overcome by the fumes entering his father's Mitsubishi Shogun. [...]

Ross admits 'telling lies'

Jason Warick, Senior Reporter
Saskatchewan News Network

The boy who made up fantastic stories of ritual sexual abuse against his former foster parents admitted in court Monday that he lied because he was mad at them.

"I was angry. That's why I started telling stories and stuff," Michael Ross testified Monday during the malicious prosecution lawsuit filed by 12 adults once charged with sexually assaulting children.

Their $10-million lawsuit against a Saskatoon police officer, a therapist, and various Justice Department officials is into its second week. [...]

Man, 91, kills and dismembers wife

September 17, 2003

A 91-year-old Spanish man has been taken to a maximum security prison, after killing his 90-year-old wife and cutting her into pieces, press reports said.

The frail-looking man, whom police helped walk to a court hearing in the southern city of Jaen on Monday, was ordered by a judge to undergo psychiatric testing in prison, pending trial.

A social worker found the man packing his wife's severed arms and legs into plastic bags, after having thrown her head into a garbage container.

The woman had been bed-bound, and the husband said he had wanted to end her suffering. [...]

By DIRK MEISSNER

CAMPBELL RIVER, B.C. (CP) - A father admits he killed his six children because he wanted to save them from hell on Earth, a B.C. Supreme Court jury heard Tuesday.[...]

Sep 16 2003

MOSCOW. Sept 16 (Interfax) - An earthquake measuring six points on the Richter scale has hit Buryatia. No reports have been issued about the effects of the quake.

The Russian Emergency Situations Ministry told Interfax that tremors measuring 5.5-6 points were registered at 3:25 p.m. Moscow time. The epicenter was 250 kilometers north of Lake Baikal, outside the village of Uoyan.

Tremors measuring about 5 points were felt in Kinery, 4.5 points in Severo-Baikalsk, about 4 points in Nizhne-Angarsk, about 3 points in Chita, and 2 points in Irkutsk, the ministry said.

TENS of thousands of people have fled their homes on the US East Coast and dozens of navy vessels were ordered out to sea to avoid a collision with Hurricane Isabel.

Isabel eased slighty but was still packing winds of 170kph as it headed for an expected landfall early tomorrow, according to the US National Hurricane Centre.
Forecasters said Isabel would pack its first punch in North Carolina and then sweep up the seaboard towards Washington. Nearly 50 million people live in the path Isabel is expected to take.

North Carolina and Virginia issued states of emergency and evacuations orders were made for an area covering about 110,000 people, mainly on the small Outer Bank islands off North Carolina and beach resorts on the coast.

About 23,000 people in North Carolina's Dare county were affected by the evacuation order.

In summer the Dare population swells to 150,000 but Frank Pierce, a state public safety spokesman, said there were few tourists in the county now.

North Carolina Governor Mike Easley urged people to "stock up on needed supplies such as gasoline and water, and tune to news broadcasts to hear the latest updates from emergency management personnel".

Thousands of home and store owners from South Carolina to Virginia and Maryland rushed to board up windows and buy emergency food, batteries and first aid kits. Several hardware stores reported shortages.

Todd Liston, 34, screwed sheets of plywood onto the metal frame of the windows of the offices of his seaside pool company in Kitty Hawk.

This hurricane "looks pretty serious, more than usual", Liston said. "We're pretty prepared here, more than further inland."

Liston said that he has had to board up the windows several times because of hurricanes, including in 1999 for Hurricane Floyd. "Most people kept their plywood from last time," he said.

US warships began steaming out of the giant US naval base at Norfolk, Virginia, to get out of Isabela's path.

Up to 40 submarines and warships, including the carrier USS Ronald Reagan, headed to sea to ride out the hurricane, the US navy said.[...]

Isabel is now a Category two hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale, which goes to five. Over the weekend Isabel was a Category Five, packing winds of up to 260kph.

"The public must continue to take this storm seriously," Tim Schott, a spokesman for the National Weather Service, said.

Pat Robertson prays that Hurricane Isabel will turn away

Virginia Beach, Virginia-AP -- The Reverend Pat Robertson, whose Christian Broadcasting Network could be hit by Hurricane Isabel, has asked God to turn the storm away from Virginia Beach and the U-S East Coast. [...]

SEATTLE - The co-founder of software giant Microsoft Corp. is donating $100 million US to create a new brain research centre, he announced Tuesday.

Researchers at the Allen Institute for Brain Science, named for Paul Allen, will attempt to map the role of genes in brain development.

It is estimated that up to 20,000 genes may play a key role in human brain development

The brain atlas project will start by studying the brain of a lab mouse in the hopes of discovering which genes are active in different regions of the organ.

The centre, based in Seattle, hopes to eventually determine how human brain cells are involved in learning, memory, emotions and cognition.

A Wellington woman whose house was splattered from the sky with a brown smelly substance says the event is just the tip of the iceberg.

Shonnie Gordon from Takapu Valley near Tawa was still waiting yesterday for the outcome of tests being run by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to find out what hit her house at the weekend. [...]

Mr Sommer said he had received a few calls from people complaining of similar experiences, but farmers had also said it could be from ducks.

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