U.S. Insiders Say Iraq Intel Deliberately Skewed
By Jim Wolf
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A growing number of U.S. national
security professionals are accusing the Bush administration of
slanting the facts and hijacking the $30 billion intelligence
apparatus to justify its rush to war in Iraq.
A key target is a four-person Pentagon team that reviewed material
gathered by other intelligence outfits for any missed bits that
might have tied Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to banned weapons or
terrorist groups.
This team, self-mockingly called the Cabal, "cherry-picked the
intelligence stream" in a bid to portray Iraq as an imminent
threat, said Patrick Lang, a former head of worldwide human
intelligence gathering for the Defense Intelligence Agency, which
coordinates military intelligence.
The DIA was "exploited and abused and bypassed in the process of
making the case for war in Iraq based on the presence of WMD," or
weapons of mass destruction, he added in a phone interview. He said
the CIA (news - web sites) had "no guts at all" to resist the
allegedly deliberate skewing of intelligence by a Pentagon that he
said was now dominating U.S. foreign policy.
Vince Cannistraro, a former chief of Central Intelligence Agency
(news - web sites) counterterrorist operations, said he knew of
serving intelligence officers who blame the Pentagon for playing up
"fraudulent" intelligence, "a lot of it sourced from the Iraqi
National Congress of Ahmad Chalabi."
The INC, which brought together groups opposed to Saddam, worked
closely with the Pentagon to build a for the early use of force in
Iraq.
"There are current intelligence officials who believe it is a
scandal," he said in a telephone interview. They believe the
administration, before going to war, had a "moral obligation to use
the best information available, not just information that fits your
preconceived ideas."
CHEMICAL WEAPONS REPORT 'SIMPLY WRONG'
The top Marine Corps officer in Iraq, Lt. Gen. James Conway, said
on Friday U.S. intelligence was "simply wrong" in leading military
commanders to fear troops were likely to be attacked with chemical
weapons in the March invasion of Iraq that ousted Saddam.
Richard Perle, a Chalabi backer and member of the Defense Policy
Board that advises Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, defended the
four-person unit in a television interview.
"They established beyond any doubt that there were connections that
had gone unnoticed in previous intelligence analysis," he said on
the PBS NewsHour Thursday.
(CIA director)Tenet sat conspicuously behind Secretary of State
Colin Powell (news - web sites) during a key Feb. 5 presentation to
the U.N. Security Council arguing Iraq represented an ominous and
urgent threat -- as if to lend the CIA's credibility to the
presentation, replete with satellite photos.
Powell said Friday his presentation was "the best analytic product
that we could have put up."
SHAPED 'FROM THE TOP DOWN'
Greg Thielmann, who retired in September after 25 years in the
State Department, the last four in the Bureau of Intelligence and
Research working on weapons, said it appeared to him that
intelligence had been shaped "from the top down."
"The normal processing of establishing accurate intelligence was
sidestepped" in the runup to invading Iraq, said David Albright, a
former U.N. weapons inspector who is president of the Institute for
Science and International Security and who deals with U.S.
intelligence officers.
Anger among security professionals appears widespread. Veteran
Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, a group that says it is made
up mostly of CIA intelligence analysts, wrote to U.S. President
George Bush May 1 to hit what they called "a policy and
intelligence fiasco of monumental proportions."
"In intelligence there is one unpardonable sin -- cooking
intelligence to the recipe of high policy," it wrote. "There is
ample indication this has been done with respect to Iraq."
RED ALERT BUSH NEEDS ANOTHER 9/11
By: Ed
Henry
Etherzone
No
infamous weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and the liberated
Iraqis don't welcome us or democracy; the Taliban is reorganizing
in Afghanistan; most of the people in the rest of the world think
we are a bunch of empire building war mongers; people are
boycotting our products; we’ve got a growing trade deficit;
our economy is still in trouble; the Euro is replacing the dollar;
unemployment is growing; and our national debt is on its way to the
moon.
After a
three month hiatus that sent just about every local government in
the union to the poor house, Congress has given Bush an open
trillion dollar ($984 billion) line of credit to do just about
anything he wants. And the Washington Post claims that this new
debt will be used up by the summer of 2004 just before elections
get under way in earnest.
According to the polls, the man who won the last election through
our republic's Electoral College still enjoys high ratings from the
people. Campaigning on the platform of compassionate conservatism
with the unique ability to bring opposing sides together, this
president now acts like a character from OK Coral and wants
portable miniature nukes so troops in the field can kill a number
equivalent to one-third of the Hiroshima population at a
time.
Watch
out, because President Bush needs something dramatic to regain the
world sympathy we had after 9/11 and to keep the American
collective consciousness diverted elsewhere.
The idea
that the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were attacked by a
group of suicidal maniacs who envied our freedoms is beginning to
wear thin. It wasn't the Al Qaeda that stonewalled any
investigation into why this happened and then delivered the
ultimate insult to victim families by appointing Henry Kissinger,
Dr. Strangelove himself, a man who can't leave the country without
fear of arrest for crimes against humanity, to head up an
investigation. And finally, when another commission of friends to
the administration is selected to investigate, their results are
not released to the public because it might endanger national
security. Does that sound like freedom to you? [...]
Actor Sean Penn Bashes Bush, Iraq War in
Newspaper
Reuters
Friday, May 30, 2003; 8:16 PM
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Actor Sean Penn published a 4,000-word open
letter in the front section of the New York Times on Friday
defending his December trip to Baghdad and criticizing the U.S.-led
war on Iraq.
Penn would not comment on why he chose to place the full-page
advertisement, preferring to "let the essay speak for itself," the
actor's publicist Mara Buxbaum said.
Penn wrote that he was moved by a sense of patriotism to
question the underlying purpose of U.S. policy to force out Saddam
Hussein, who he described as a "beast among men."
"Our flag has been waving, it seems, in servicing a regime
change significantly benefiting U.S. corporations," said Penn,
questioning whether rebuilding the nation would benefit the "people
of either Iraq or the United States."
Penn said U.S. claims that an invasion was necessary over fears
of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction were false.
"We found that our secretary of state presented plagiarized and
fictitious evidence of WMD's in Iraq to the American people and the
world," he wrote. "Any responsible person must ask, in whose hands
our flag now waves and what perception the world may have of it in
those hands."
Penn's agent declined to comment on how much the advertisement
cost. A Times spokeswoman said the standard price for a full page
ad in that section of the newspaper is about $135,000.
"We see Bechtel. We see Halliburton. We see Bush, Cheney,
Rumsfeld," Penn wrote. "We see dead Iraqi civilians. We see no
WMDs. We see chaos in the Baghdad streets. But no WMDs. We see the
disappearance of a murderous Iraqi dictator, who relented his
struggle and ran without the use of WMDs."
Friday's piece was not the first Penn has placed in a major
newspaper. He wrote an open letter to President Bush published in
October 2002 by The Washington Post at a reported cost of $56,000,
expressing his anti-war views and concerns about the
administration's "intolerance of debate."
Penn wrote in the Times that following the October letter, "I
was hit by a tidal wave of media misrepresentation, and even
accusations of treason."
Comment: Read Sean Penn's full page
article in the NY Times
here
Bush's Illegal War
Let Us Count the Violations
By DANIEL
BACHER
May 30, 2003
Burns
Weston, Director of the University of Iowa Center for Human Rights
and a leading authority on international human rights law, contends
that the U.S. and British war in Iraq was completely illegal,
according to the existing body of international law regarding
military interventions.
Weston's
contention occurs at a time when human rights activists in many
countries are filing lawsuits against the U.S. and British
governments for war crimes in Iraq. A Belgian lawyer on May 14
filed a suit against General Tommy Franks, commander of U.S. forces
in Iraq, under Belgium's law that allows its courts to try
foreigners for war crimes. Lawyer Jan Fermon filed the suit in a
Brussels court on behalf of 19 Iraqi victims of cluster bombs and
U.S. attacks on ambulances and civilians.
The Bar
Association of Athens, Greece said it will also file a suit against
British officials, including Prime Minister Tony Blair, at the
International Criminal Court - the recently created tribunal for
cases of war crimes, crimes against humanity and
genocide.
The long
implications of the illegal intervention in Iraq - and so-called
anti-terrorism laws like the Patriot Act - are alarming for the
future of our country and the world. What Weston and other human
rights experts see in Iraq - rather than a "Pax Americana" - is the
imposition of an aggressive military empire designed to control
resources to offset future economic competition from the European
Union (EU) and China.
"Our
country is moving further and further into a peculiarly American
type of fascism that has its roots in the belief that international
law doesn't matter," said Weston. [...]
U.S. Embassy warns of kidnap threats
May. 30,
2003. 12:23 PM
ASSOCIATED PRESS
JERUSALEM
— The U.S. Embassy has received "credible reports" of plans
to kidnap U.S. citizens in Gaza, the embassy announced on its Web
site today.
"At this
time, Americans are advised to be particularly cautious," the
announcement said, adding that citizens should also follow
already-existing recommendations on the site to defer travel to
Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza. [...]
Israel: A cease-fire is not enough
By Joshua
Brilliant
From the International Desk
Published 5/30/2003 12:51 PM
TEL AVIV,
Israel, May 30 (UPI) -- Israeli officials Friday rejected an offer
by the Palestinian leadership to reach a cease-fire deal with the
militant group Hamas, saying only a "permanent cessation of
terrorism" would satisfy them.
"The
Palestinians must take concrete action to eradicate terrorism,"
Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom told foreign ambassadors. "A
cease-fire is not enough. Israel wants a permanent cessation of
terrorism, not a cease-fire."
On
Thursday, Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas told
his Israeli counterpart, Ariel Sharon, of his efforts to reach a
cease-fire with Hamas. Israel and the Palestinians are engaged in
talks as part of the "road map" to peace in the region.
Shalom
said, however, a cease-fire with militant groups would place Israel
in a precarious position.
"We don't
want to be hostages of the Hamas, or the Islamic Jihad," he said.
"When they will decide to put an end to the cease-fire, this quiet,
they will renew attacks against Israeli civilians. We can't accept
it." [...]
A senior
Hamas member told UPI the group was willing to accept a 1-year
cease-fire to test Sharon's intentions to end the Israeli
occupation.
Subsequent Hamas reports said the group would accept a hudna --
an Islamic concept of a cease-fire limited in time -- providing
Israel stopped targeted killings, incursions, house demolitions,
and released prisoners arrested in the past 2-1/2 years.
[...]
Bush denies further war plans
Friday,
30 May, 2003, 21:51 GMT
BBC
US President George W Bush has denied reports that Washington is
considering attacking Iran or Syria, shortly before he arrived in
Poland on the start of a week-long diplomatic mission.
The US
president also defended the recent conflict in Iraq, saying the
military option was chosen after all diplomatic channels were
exhausted.
Mr Bush
said reports that the recent conflict in Iraq could be extended to
its neighbours were "idle speculation".
"You
know, this is pure speculation and we used force in Iraq after a
long, long period of diplomacy," he said, in comments broadcast on
Russian television.
The US
president, who arrived in Poland on Friday on the first leg of a
trip that will also take him to Russia, France and the Middle East,
also said he had wanted a second resolution on Iraq but was blocked
by the United Nations Security Council.
He said
military action was the only way left for him to deal with a
dangerous regime in possession of weapons of mass destruction.
Critics who disputed that any findings would be made "must not be
paying attention," he said. [...]
Comment: Bush's patently ridiculous
denials might actually be humorous if it weren't for the fact that
thousands upon thousands of people have been and will be killed or
maimed as a result of his administration's imperialist
policies.
US judge finds Iran liable for 1983 bombing of Marine
barracks
May 31,
2003
WASHINGTON (AFP)
A US
federal judge on Friday found Iran liable for the 1983 bombing of a
US Marine barracks in Beirut that killed 241 troops, calling the
attack an act "of unspeakable horror" that had left an indelible
imprint on the lives of those affected by it.
The ruling by US District Judge Royce Lamberth appeared to step up
pressure on the Islamic republic, coming as the Bush administration
expressed "serious unhappiness" about Tehran's alleged harboring of
al-Qaeda operatives and its meddling in the affairs of US-occupied
Iraq.
Comment: Such impeccable timing! 20 years
after the bombing took place, right when the Bush Reich is hinting
at invading Iran, this ruling is issued to whip the American
sheeple into another mindless war frenzy.
US gunfire kills three teens at
wedding
May 30 2003
US soldiers opened fire on a festive wedding parade earlier this
week, killing three teenagers and wounding seven others after the
celebrants fired weapons in the air.
The shooting, on Monday night, was only one of a series of
deadly incidents this week that have sharply increased tension
between US troops and Iraqi civilians.
The incident highlights a clash of cultures. It is a popular
custom in Iraq to fire weapons in the air to celebrate weddings and
other festive events.
But the practice has been prohibited under a new weapons policy
being enforced by US troops.[...]
Anti-American anger as soldiers search
homes
Authorities are trying to keep a lid on things, but in the Iraqi
town of Heet it's all too much, reports Tyler Marshall.
On the third consecutive day of violence against the US military
occupation, the situation finally exploded.
Furious about house-to-house searches in the western town of
Heet, mobs ransacked the police station, stoned US armoured
vehicles and set police cars on fire.
There is widespread lawlessness and a lack of essential services
such as drinking water, electricity and medical supplies.
[...] People said US troops had provoked anger on Tuesday when
they searched houses and set up a checkpoint on the way into town.
They then began searching homes with the help of police.
When the searches continued despite what residents called a
peaceful protest, a second, angrier, protest formed in the late
afternoon, and quickly turned violent.
The US troops and the police immediately withdrew from the town
when the riot started, residents said.
"They forced women and children to leave their houses," said
Esmael Rabee, a construction worker. "They violated the dignity and
honor of our women. We won't accept this violation.
"The people will do more of this if the Americans come in here
again. They showed no respect for our way of life."
Allied use of cluster bombs illegal, minister
admits
By
Paul Waugh
The Independent
30 May 2003
The
Government admitted during the war on Iraq that the use of cluster
bombs against civilian targets would "not be legal", a letter
obtained by The Independent has revealed.
Anti-landmine charities
claimed last night that the letter by Adam Ingram, the Armed Forces
minister, proved that the Ministry of Defence had broken
international law by using the munitions in towns and
cities.
Mr
Ingram admitted for the first time yesterday that cluster bombs
were dropped on "built-up areas" in Iraq in an attempt to protect
British servicemen. After initially denying the charge in an
interview with the BBC, the minister said the unguided weapons,
which release hundreds of bomblets, were used "in specific
circumstances where there is a threat to our troops".
[...]
Loss of Limbs and Livelihood
By Scott
Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, May 31, 2003
BAGHDAD,
May 30 -- Since U.S. forces ended their sprint up the Iraqi desert
with a violent pass through her quiet Baghdad neighborhood, Dina
Sarhan has begun a new life learning to make do.
Since she
can no longer climb stairs, she has restricted herself to coasting
among the first-floor rooms where her life changed suddenly in a
moment of war. She has taken to sleeping in the dining room, where
the pink-and-white checked bedspread is out of place among the
high-back chairs and china cabinet.
What the
family and people who witnessed the fighting say was a fragment
from a U.S. tank round smashed though the front door on the night
of April 10 and into Sarhan's left leg, leaving it a tangle of
exposed muscle and bone. Doctors removed much of the leg. The
amputation saved her life, leading Sarhan, 22, to write poems of
thanks to her surgeons. But now she has been consigned to a wheel
chair.
Never a
supporter of the U.S. invasion, Sarhan has nonetheless forgiven the
anonymous soldiers who injured her in pursuit of an enemy adept at
using civilians as cover. Now she wants help from the United States
in finding a prosthetic leg. But she has been told during visits
from U.S. military officials and an army chaplain that none will be
forthcoming. "They told me, 'We don't have anything for you right
now. It's up to a higher authority.' "
The stub
where her leg was still tingles from time to time. "I knew they
would hurt us," she said. "Mr. Bush said this would be a clean war.
Is this a clean war?" [...]
U.S. releases suspected Iraqi war
criminal
By Pamela
Hess
UPI Pentagon Correspondent
5/29/2003 6:06 PM
WASHINGTON, May 29 (UPI) -- U.S. military forces mistakenly
released a man suspected of being an Iraqi war criminal from a
prisoner-of-war camp in Umm Qasr on May 18, and U.S. Central
Command is offering $25,000 for information leading to his capture,
Centcom said Thursday.
Mohammed
Jawad An-Neifus is suspected of being involved in the execution of
between 10,000 and 15,000 Iraqi Shiites after their 1991 uprising.
Many of their remains were found in a mass grave in Mahawil, about
50 miles south of Baghdad. As many as 15,000 bodies were found in
the grave in early May.
Comment: After reading the
objective facts as outlined in the above articles lets hear US
government spokeman Ari Fleischer's understanding of the situation,
or rather what he would like us all to understand about the
situation: "I think that as the world increasingly sees the
brutality, the horrors that Saddam Hussein carried out against his
own people," Fleischer said. " I think the world is rejoicing in
the fact that, thanks to the efforts of the coalition, millions of
people who were previously imprisoned are now free." - What would
we do without Ari (and the people he speaks for) to inform us of
reality. I mean, if we didn't have them telling us the true nature
of reality we might go taking things at face value and assessing
situations based on facts. Fear not however, now we know that when
we see Iraq in disarray, people protesting in the streets,
lootings, and murders, that this in fact means that the Iraq people
are now "free" and "rejoicing". So you may dispense with your
devious and misleading faculty for independent thought.
Horror at PoW sex abuse pics
By JOHN SCOTT and MICHAEL LEA
THE young mum who uncovered the Iraqi PoW sex snaps scandal said
last night: “I felt sick to the stomach at those
pictures.”
Kelly Tilford, 22, called police after developing a film in her
photo shop.
The shocking pictures — revealed by The Sun yesterday
— showed male Iraqis apparently forced into sexual positions
by their British captors. In another a prisoner was suspended by
rope from a fork-lift truck driven by a laughing Brit.
Fusilier Gary Bartlam, 18, of Tamworth, Staffs, is being grilled
by the Army’s top criminal investigator — amid fears
the scandal is the tip of an iceberg.
Disgusted Kelly said she knew she had to call police after
seeing the horrific scenes in Gulf War II snaps she had just
developed.
Kelly said: “I immediately realised something terribly
wrong had happened and something had to be done about it.
“I started shaking and was panicking in case the guy came
back before I could raise the alarm.”
She spoke out last night as Bartlam, of the 1st Battalion the
Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, was in custody.
Four snaps on Bartlam’s roll of 25 exposures shocked the
mum-of-two.
ONE was apparently taken in a warehouse. It showed a man stripped
at least to the waist and suspended high in the air by a rope
attached to one of the forks on a fork-lift truck.
More rope bound him throughout the length of his body.
He was hanging horizontally and his frightened face was in
close-up. A soldier driving the fork-lift truck could be seen in
the background, staring at his victim and apparently laughing.
ANOTHER picture showed a pair of white legs and the head of a
male Iraqi.
The hand of a man behind the Iraqi’s head appeared to be
forcing him to perform oral sex.
The Iraqi was squatting and again appeared to be at least naked
to the waist. The soldier’s face was not visible.
A THIRD picture showed a pair of bare backsides. One Iraqi man
was on his knees on the floor with his body bent.
Another was pressed behind him, tightly moulding his body like a
spoon in what seemed to be a sexual position.
THE FOURTH snap showed two naked Iraqis cowering on the ground
as if thrown there.
Kelly, who has children aged two and eight months, said Fusilier
Bartlam called at the Max Spielmann photo shop where she works in
Tamworth, Staffs, on Wednesday.
The young soldier, who was home on leave after the war, left a
roll of film to be developed into 7in x 5in prints within an
hour.
She went on: “I went to the mini-lab. As you put the film
through, you are meant to check the pictures on a screen to ensure
they are printed properly.
“You have never got time to watch all of them, because you
are inevitably doing something else. We had been very busy.
“I had already processed the films of one or two soldiers
back from Iraq and had told them, ‘Congratulations, well
done,’ when they came to collect their photos.
"But when I started cutting the negatives on this batch, I looked
at one and noticed immediately that it seemed a bit strange. I took
a closer look.
“At first appearance, it had seemed like soldiers having a
laugh.
“Then I realised it was a half-naked Iraqi being hauled
high into the air by a forklift truck while bound hand and
foot.
“I saw the look on his face. He was petrified.
“I will never forget that terrible stare. I immediately
thought, ‘That’s not right’.
“Then I saw some sexual pictures. One looked like an Iraqi
PoW being forced to give a soldier oral sex. I think the Iraqi was
naked — you could just see the top half of him and the bottom
half of the soldier.
“There was also a close-up of the naked backsides of two
Iraqis, as if they were simulating anal sex.
“Another shot showed two Iraqis lying naked on the ground
as if they had just been thrown there. There didn’t seem
anything wrong with the other photos. They were just pictures of
Iraqi soldiers surrendering — the sort of thing you saw on
the TV during the war.”
Comment: What was it Blair said to
his wonderful troops in Basra yesterday: "But I can assure you of
one thing - there is absolutely no dispute in Britain at all about
your professionalism and your courage and your dedication and not
just in the way you won the war, which was extraordinary, but the
way you are conducting the peace, which is remarkable."
From the Third Geneva Convention: "Basic food
rations should keep prisoners in good health, Suitable clothing
should be supplied, preferably prisoners' original uniforms,
Prisoners must be protected against violence or intimidation,
insults and public curiosity, POWs should be released and
repatriated after ceasefire."
BLAIR BLOWS TOP OVER WEAPONS REPORTS May 31
2003
From Oonagh Blackman, Deputy Political Editor, In
Warsaw
TONY BLAIR yesterday furiously denied lying amid spiralling
controversy over Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
Rattled Mr Blair rejected claims he had ordered MI6 to "sex-up"
the government's dossier on Iraq's weapons to justify his moral
case for backing the US-led attack.
Robin Cook: Britain must not be suckered a second
time by the White House
The
Independent
The
British government needs to concede that we went to war for reasons
of US foreign policy and Republican Party politics
Chutzpah was the word that
used to be applied to people who radiated belief in themselves
without possessing any visible reason to justify it. In the
chutzpah stakes Donald Rumsfeld is way off the top of the scale.
[...]
Europe Unites Against USA
Pravda
What
do NATO, Iraq and the Holocaust have in common ? Having dealt with
Germany and France, the anti-Iraqi coalition has turned its
attention to another European state that took an anti-war stance -
Belgium.
As
is well known, 13 Iraqi citizens filed a lawsuit in a Belgian court
in the beginning of May. The Iraqis accused US commander Tommy
Franks of war crimes. However, the suit was dismissed after
American officials said that Belgium might have big problems (NATO
headquarters is located in Brussels). The trial threatens Israeli
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon too: he has been accused of genocide.
As a counterattack, Belgium has been accused of its participation
in the mass genocide of European Jews during WWII.
The
Guardian newspaper reported that any research into the issue was
banned in Belgium for 60 years, as many Belgian officials had
become senior statesmen despite their cooperation with the Nazis.
More than 30,000 people were sent to death camps from Belgium
during WWII, and only 1,500 survived. It goes without saying that
many Belgian citizens do not like to recollect shameful periods in
their history.
Yet,
it seems that the tragedy of the Holocaust is being actively used
for political purposes. The current attacks on Belgium may not be
connected with the suit against Ariel Sharon, but with the events
that preceded and followed the recent war in Iraq.
It
was Germany, France and Belgium that decided to block NATO's plans
to strengthen Turkey's defenses. The opposition of the three
countries was a source of great irritation for the US
administration. Donald Rumsfeld said that it was a shameful
decision to make. A large number of experts started talking about a
serious crisis within NATO. It is hard to believe that Paris,
Berlin and Brussels did not know that moves against Washington's
and London's plans would provoke accusations. Yet, the three
countries decided to continue their initiative.
French, German and Belgian
leaders had a meeting in Brussels in order to discuss the idea of a
united European defense system. The idea called for the
establishment of a united military planning arrangement in European
countries that would be independent of NATO. The Belgian government
(where the idea originated) believes that the establishment of a
united European military planning arrangement might eventually
result in the creation of a European military union. The Iraq
crisis has divided Europe into two parts, so such a union might
become a structure that would execute NATO's functions without the
USA's participation.
The
summit was a success; the countries reached an agreement to set up
European rapid-deployment However, it is not known when this idea
is to be realized.
Of
course, Washington does not need an independent military and
political alliance in Europe. Therefore, one shall assume that
pressure on "dissidents" will grow in the future. It would be
enough to initiate another investigation into history to do that.
Any politician in any country has sins, and Belgium is not an
exception. Furthermore, the USA will definitely provide generous
grants to Belgian investigators.
Chirac Seems Intent on Challenging U.S. Foreign
Policy
French Leader Expected to
Pursue Policies Based on Multipolar View
By Keith B. Richburg
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, May 31, 2003; Page A12
PARIS -- On Sunday, President Jacques Chirac will sit down with
President Bush in a resort in the Alps for their first one-on-one
meeting since they sparred before the world over the war in Iraq.
Chirac will be cordial, officials and analysts here say, but he
will not back off from his determination that U.S. dominance of the
world must be challenged and that France is the country to lead
that effort. [...]
And
France's interest in pursuing an independent foreign policy does
not mean it will automatically oppose the United States on every
issue.
Blair's unity call to US and Europe
Saturday,
31 May, 2003, 00:39 GMT
BBC
Tony Blair has urged the US and Europe to heal their divisions over
the war in Iraq.
The UK prime minister made the call before heading to Russia for St
Petersburg's 300th anniversary celebrations.
Speaking
during a visit to Poland, he warned that Europe stood at a "crucial
moment" in its relationship with the US, following the arguments
over war in Iraq.
"It is a
moment either for reconciliation or for drifting apart," he
said.
"The real
question is: can we recognise a sufficient convergence of interest
to rebuild this trans-Atlantic alliance and strengthen it? I
believe we can."
He said
any disagreements between Europe and the US should be managed
"carefully as between allies", rather than as a "diplomatic
dogfight".
But he
warned the US, in turn, to treat Europe as "America's partner, not
its servant". [...]
Geneva protesters to be kept 30 miles
away
By John
Lichfield
31 May 2003
The Independent
More than
50,000 anti-globalisation protesters are expected to demonstrate on
the first day of the summit but they will not be allowed within 30
miles of Evian, on the south shore of Lake Geneva, where the world
leaders are meeting.
Two
protest marches are planned tomorrow - one starting from Geneva and
the other from the French town of Annemasse on the Franco-Swiss
border. The two processions will unite for a joint demonstration at
a frontier post, half-way between the two starting points.
[...]
Given the
threat of a possible terrorist attack, security for the summit is
tight to the point of being almost paranoid. More than 16,000
soldiers, policemen, gendarmes, riot police, border guards and
customs officers have been mobilised by France.
More than
half of them will be squashed into a one sq km zone - codenamed
Zone Zero - around the summit campus at the Royal Parc and
Hermitage hotels in Evian. Only senior members of national
delegations will be allowed in.
To get
into Zone One - the rest of Evian and towns and villages for five
miles around - people will have to be accredited as a journalist,
official or local resident. Even residents will have to wear
accreditation badges at all times. A wider area - Zone Two - will
be banned to all but summit-goers and locals. Zone Three - 30 miles
from Evian - will be open to protesters.
Nearly
10,000 Swiss soldiers and policemen will also be on duty. About 100
French, Swiss. Italian and German warplanes will patrol overhead
while patrol boats will defend the French shore of Lake Geneva from
possible terrorist attack.
Russia Suggests U.S. Build Iran Reactor
Too
Fri May
30, 2003 05:49 PM ET
By Oliver Bullough
MOSCOW
(Reuters) - Russia suggested Friday that the United States join it
in building a nuclear power plant in Iran, calling it a way to ease
Washington's concern that Tehran would use the Russian reactor to
develop atomic weapons.
No More Chance for Dollar
Pravda
The
European Union and Russia are playing against the US
currency.
It
was just a short time ago that everybody was hoping the dollar had
finally stopped its fall and would soon strengthen its position
relative to the euro. Analysts explain that the slight rise in the
value of the American currency was connected with the desperate
hope of world markets a better positions for the dollar.
There is a suspicion that
the European Central Bank may play a dirty trick on the US
currency. Traders are afraid, and not without reason, that the Bank
may drop the rate below today's 2.5%. What is more, many European
economists don't think that the euro's excessive strengthening
poses a serious threat to the economic stability of United Europe.
Therefore, the Europeans are treating the dollar's decline as a
nice opportunity to improve the economic situation in Europe. If
so, reduction of the European Central Bank's rate will be treated
as one more stimulus to revive the economies of the EU countries.
[...]
Rumsfeld changes tack by insisting that WMD will
be found
By Paul Waugh, Deputy Political Editor
31 May 2003
Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, insisted yesterday that
weapons of mass destruction were still in Iraq as Washington and
London rejected claims that they used intelligence as
"propaganda".
But the fightback was immediately undermined when former
Washington security officials claimed that US "intelligence had
been cooked to the recipe of policy".
Mr Rumsfeld triggered an outcry from critics of the war earlier
this week when he suggested that the Iraqi regime may have
destroyed chemical and biological weapons before the Anglo-American
invasion. However, he told a radio phone-in yesterday that he
personally believed that evidence of the secret programme would be
found in the country.
In his latest remarks, he said the reason that weapons had not
been found was because the government of Saddam Hussein had worked
so hard to hide them. "It is not because they are not there," he
said. Mr Rumsfeld also rejected the idea that the war was waged
under any false pretext. The US and British case against Iraq was
based on what he called "good intelligence".
Ray McGovern, a former CIA analyst who briefed the former
president George Bush Snr, said the Pentagon's claims about WMD in
Iraq were "an intelligence fiasco of monumental proportions". Mr
McGovern, who heads the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for
Sanity, a new group, told BBC Radio 4's PM programme that Mr
Rumsfeld set up his own intelligence unit because he didn't get the
"correct answers" from the CIA and other agencies.
In London, Baroness Amos, the International Development
Secretary, insisted that the Government's dossier on WMD in Iraq
had been "thorough and accurate". Lady Amos told BBC Radio 4's The
World at One programme: "It is absurd to suggest that we invented,
exaggerated or distorted evidence for our own ends. There have been
successive United Nations Security Council resolutions about Iraq's
WMD. We have evidence that Iraq used its WMD against its own
people. These are the facts."
Fresh doubts about how politicians manipulated intelligence
reports came when Patrick Lang, a former director of Middle East
analysis at the Pentagon's Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA),
criticised the American claims.
Mr Lang attacked the Office of Special Plans, a unit set up by
Mr Rumsfeld inside the Pentagon to rival the CIA and the DIA. The
unit relied heavily on information from Ahmed Chalabi, the exiled
leader of the Iraqi National Congress and a favourite of hawks in
Washington. The Office of Special Plans "started picking out things
that supported their thesis ... It's political propaganda".
Both Democrats and Republicans in the Senate and House of
Representatives are to hold hearings to determine whether "the
analysis relayed to our policy-makers was accurate and
unbiased".
Baroness Williams, Leader of the Liberal Democrats in the House
of Lords, said yesterday: "As new and disturbing facts emerge, the
war on Iraq begins to look more like a tragic mistake ... It is
very depressing to see our fears confirmed."
Comment: WMDs may very well be
"produced", but by whom...
Pentagon steps up Iraq weapons hunt
22:57
Friday 30th May 2003
The
Pentagon says it is widening the hunt for suspected Iraqi weapons
of mass destruction.
It
follows days of claims that the coalition exaggerated the threat
from Saddam Hussein.
The Iraq
Survey Group, a new team of 1,400 experts from Britain, the US and
Australia, will be a significant expansion of the search, said
Major General Keith Dayton, who is leading the group.
Investigators will also shift their focus away from areas
identified as suspicious sites before the war and instead look in
places where new documents and interviews with Iraqis suggest
banned weapons could be hidden. [...]
Before
the war, the US drew up a list of more than 900 "suspect sites"
where weapons of mass destruction or evidence of chemical or
biological weapons programmes might be found.
Military
teams have visited more than 200 of those sites without finding any
actual weapons.
The US
has found two equipment-filled trailers in northern Iraq that
American intelligence agencies claim were mobile biological weapons
production facilities. But they did not find any firm evidence of
biological agents.
Comment: In other words, Bushy and his
gang of thugs are openly admitting that their list of 900 suspect
sites is total hogwash.
General: Iraq chem-bio arms intel
wrong
By Pamela
Hess
UPI Pentagon Correspondent
5/30/2003 1:49 PM
WASHINGTON, May 30 (UPI) -- The top U.S. Marine general in Iraq
says he is still surprised no chemical or biological weapons were
used against U.S. forces, particularly since his Marines in their
lightning push to Baghdad came up against three or four Republican
Guard divisions believed to have such weapons.
"One of
the real surprises I think we all experienced was that we did not
get struck with weapons of mass destruction as we crossed the
Euphrates or even as we crossed the Tigris and went up against
Republican Guard divisions," said Lt. Gen. James Conway, commander
of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force.
Conway is
equally surprised U.S. forces have found no chemical or biological
warheads, despite seven weeks of searching. Saddam Hussein's
possession of such weapons was a primary reason for the war cited
by the Bush administration.
"What the
regime was intending to do in terms of its use of the weapons, we
thought we understood or we certainly had our best guess, our most
dangerous, our most likely courses of action that the intelligence
folks were giving us. We were simply wrong," he said.
"It was a
surprise to me then, it remains a surprise to me now, that we have
not uncovered weapons, as you say, in some of the forward dispersal
sites. Again, believe me, it's not for lack of trying. We've been
to virtually every ammunition supply point between the Kuwaiti
border and Baghdad, but they're simply not there," he told Pentagon
reporters Friday, from his headquarters in al-Hillah, Iraq, south
of Baghdad. [...]
Bush: 'We Found' Banned Weapons
By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, May 31, 2003
KRAKOW,
Poland, May 30 -- President Bush, citing two trailers that U.S.
intelligence agencies have said were probably used as mobile
biological weapons labs, said U.S. forces in Iraq have "found the
weapons of mass destruction" that were the United States' primary
justification for going to war.
In
remarks to Polish television at a time of mounting criticism at
home and abroad that the more than two-month-old weapons hunt is
turning up nothing, Bush said that claims of failure were "wrong."
The remarks were released today.
"You
remember when [Secretary of State] Colin Powell stood up in front
of the world, and he said, 'Iraq has got laboratories, mobile labs
to build biological weapons,' " Bush said in an interview shortly
before leaving on a seven-day trip to Europe and the Middle East.
"They're illegal. They're against the United Nations resolutions,
and we've so far discovered two. [...]
U.S.
authorities have to date made no claim of a confirmed finding of an
actual nuclear, biological or chemical weapon. In the interview,
Bush said weapons had been found, but in elaborating, he mentioned
only the trailers, which the CIA has said were intended for
production of biological weapons. [...]
Bush
plans to use a speech in Krakow on Saturday to argue anew that the
liberation of the people of Iraq was a legitimate cause for war,
according to an administration official. He will speak after a
solemn visit to the firing squad's "Death Wall" at the site of the
Auschwitz concentration camp, and will draw a line from that to
modern evil, including to Hussein and terrorists. Bush told Polish
television that the visit's purpose is "to remind people that we
must confront evil when we find it." [...]
Comment:
Bush is visiting Auschwitz - how appropriate. Perhaps
the American people should take Bush's advice and confront him with
impeachment.
Where Are Saddam & Osama?
WASHINGTON, May 30, 2003
Having Saddam and Osama become the Butch Cassidy and Sundance
Kid of global terrorism strikes most people as a fairly bad
idea.
(CBS) Are our great enemies dead or alive? In his latest Against
the Grain commentary, CBSNews.com's Dick Meyer wonders if he's the
only one who still wants to know.
Pardon me for beating a dead – or alive – horse, but
what's the deal with Saddam Hussein? Is he dead? Is he alive? If
he's alive, any hints about where he might be? Are we getting
warmer? Colder?
And by the way, what about Osama bin Laden?
Asking the big, fat obvious questions appears to be a violation
of civil etiquette in George Bush's Emerald City, a place where
Republican dreams really do come true -- lately.
Or maybe it's just journalistically uncool to ask, like if you
have to ask you're just so out of it. Well, count me out of it.
I want to know, dammit. And so does everyone I know who's not in
the know. Even some in the know admit to not knowing and wanting to
know.
Having Saddam and Osama become the Butch Cassidy and Sundance
Kid of global terrorism strikes most people as a fairly bad
idea.
But beyond pure curiosity, the questions about public enemies
number one and two get at issues about the use and abuse of U.S.
intelligence that have been looming since September 11, 2001. The
whereabouts of Saddam and Osama are just the biggies at the top of
a long list.
Where are Saddam's weapons of mass destruction?
This week Secretary Rumsfeld suggested for the first time that
Iraq may have destroyed it biological and chemical arms before the
war started. If so, was the war in fact necessary? Do we know that
W.M.D. were destroyed, or are we just guessing? Did we ever know
they existed, or were we just guessing? Was the intelligence about
W.M.D. cooked to help justify an invasion?
Where is al Qaeda?
We've now imposed "regime change" (still one of the better
euphemisms of this young century) in the two countries we were told
were leading state-sponsors of terror – Afghanistan and Iraq.
That didn't seem to stop al Qaeda from blowing bits of Riyadh and
Casablanca to smithereens. Was Iraq a serious source of support for
al Qaeda? Is there a next step in the battle against al Qaeda?
These questions all point to one more: Where is the CIA?
Shrouded by secrecy and protected by post-9/11 paranoia, the CIA
was spared the kind of grilling that many expected after the
unforeseen tragedy. Iran-Contra and the space shuttle explosions
received more intensive, high profile post-mortems than did the
role of U.S. intelligence and national security agencies in 9/11.
It's extraordinary.
Yet with all these unanswered questions, it is the secrets that
emanate from behind the curtain that screens the intelligence
wizards that the White House wizards use to justify their foreign
policies. We must effect regime change in Iraq because of
"intelligence" that they have W.M.D. and harbor al Qaeda. We go
from Code Yellow to Code Orange because of "intelligence."
Will we send troops left from Iraq into Syria or right into Iran
because of "intelligence"? In a May 29 CBS News poll, 69 percent
think it is very or somewhat likely the U.S. will take military
action against Iran.
That same poll shows that the public has more trust in
politicians who use intelligence than the spooks who create it (at
least on the question of Iraq's W.M.D.). My trust goes in the exact
opposite direction. Whether the allegations are that the spooks
cooked intelligence to please their masters or that the politicians
misused intelligence to make their cases, the credibility of the
secret world is in as much trouble as it has seen since
Iran-Contra.
The spies and their bosses avoided high profile, competent
scrutiny after 9/11. They must not be allowed to pull the same
trick again after the war with Iraq.
And I'm sorry to be uncool, but I'd like some answers to the big
questions of what happened before buying off on a new set of
answers about what we're to do next.
A QFS member comments:There is
definitely something afoot here. Everyone is starting to turn over
rocks. My question is: who has unmuzzled the press all of a sudden?
Could this be Rockybux via Jay?
Is
There Anything Left That Matters?
by Joan
Chittister, OSB
05/29/03
This is
what I don't understand: All of a sudden nothing seems to
matter.
First,
they said they wanted Bin Laden "dead or alive." But they didn't
get him. So now they tell us that it doesn't matter. Our mission is
greater than one man.
Then they
said they wanted Saddam Hussein, "dead or alive." He's apparently
alive but we haven't got him yet, either. However, President Bush
told reporters recently, "It doesn't matter. Our mission is greater
than one man."
Finally,
they told us that we were invading Iraq to destroy their weapons of
mass destruction. Now they say those weapons probably don't exist.
Maybe never existed. Apparently that doesn't matter
either.
Except
that it does matter.
I know
we're not supposed to say that. I know it's called
"unpatriotic."
But it's
also called honesty. And dishonesty matters.
It
matters that the infrastructure of a foreign nation that couldn't
defend itself against us has been destroyed on the grounds that it
was a military threat to the world.
It
matters that it was destroyed by us under a new doctrine of
"pre-emptive war" when there was apparently nothing worth
pre-empting.
It surely
matters to the families here whose sons went to war to make the
world safe from weapons of mass destruction and will never come
home.
It
matters to families in the United States whose life support
programs were ended, whose medical insurance ran out, whose food
stamps were cut off, whose day care programs were eliminated so we
could spend the money on sending an army to do what did not need to
be done.
It
matters to the Iraqi girl whose face was burned by a lamp that
toppled over as a result of a U.S. bombing run.
It
matters to Ali, the Iraqi boy who lost his family - and both his
arms - in a U.S. air attack.
It
matters to the people in Baghdad whose water supply is now fetid,
whose electricity is gone, whose streets are unsafe, whose 158
government ministries' buildings and all their records have been
destroyed, whose cultural heritage and social system has been
looted and whose cities teem with anti-American
protests.
It
matters that the people we say we "liberated" do not feel liberated
in the midst of the lawlessness, destruction and wholesale social
suffering that so-called liberation created.
It
matters to the United Nations whose integrity was impugned, whose
authority was denied, whose inspection teams are even now still
being overlooked in the process of technical evaluation and
disarmament.
It
matters to the reputation of the United States in the eyes of the
world, both now and for decades to come, perhaps.
And
surely it matters to the integrity of this nation whether or not
its intelligence gathering agencies have any real intelligence or
not before we launch a military armada on its say-so.
And it
should matter whether or not our government is either incompetent
and didn't know what they were doing or were dishonest and refused
to say. The unspoken truth is that either as a people we were
misled, or we were lied to, about the real reason for this war.
Either we made a huge - and unforgivable - mistake, an arrogant or
ignorant mistake, or we are swaggering around the world like a
blind giant, flailing in all directions while the rest of the world
watches in horror or in ridicule.
If Bill
Clinton's definition of "is" matters, surely this matters. If a
president's sex life matters, surely a president's use of global
force against some of the weakest people in the world matters. If a
president's word in a court of law about a private indiscretion
matters, surely a president's word to the community of nations and
the security of millions of people matters.
And if
not, why not? If not, surely there is something as wrong with us as
citizens, as thinkers, as Christians as there must be with some
facet of the government. If wars that the public says are wrong
yesterday - as over 70% of U.S. citizens did before the attack on
Iraq - suddenly become "right" the minute the first bombs drop,
what kind of national morality is that?
Of what
are we really capable as a nation if the considered judgment of
politicians and people around the world means nothing to us as a
people?
What is
the depth of the American soul if we can allow destruction to be
done in our name and the name of "liberation" and never even demand
an accounting of its costs, both personal and public, when it is
over?
We like
to take comfort in the notion that people make a distinction
between our government and ourselves. We like to say that the
people of the world love Americans, they simply mistrust our
government. But excoriating a distant and anonymous "government"
for wreaking rubble on a nation in pretense of good requires very
little of either character or intelligence.
What may
count most, however, is that we may well be the ones Proverbs warns
when it reminds us: "Kings take pleasure in honest lips; they value
the one who speaks the truth." The point is clear: If the people
speak and the king doesn't listen, there is something wrong with
the king. If the king acts precipitously and the people say
nothing, something is wrong with the people.
It may be
time for us to realize that in a country that prides itself on
being democratic, we are our government. And the rest of the world
is figuring that out very quickly.
From
where I stand, that matters.
Waggy Dog Stories
by PAUL KRUGMAN
An administration hypes the threat posed by a foreign power. It
talks of links to Islamic fundamentalist terrorism; it warns about
a nuclear weapons program. The news media play along, and the
country is swept up in war fever. The war drives everything else
— including scandals involving administration officials
— from the public's consciousness.
The 1997 movie "Wag the Dog" had quite a plot.
Although the movie's title has entered the language, I don't
know how many people have watched it lately. Read the screenplay.
If you don't think it bears a resemblance to recent events, you're
in denial.
The Iraq war was very real, even if its Kodak moments —
the toppling of the Saddam statue, the rescue of Pfc. Jessica Lynch
— seem to have been improved by editing. But much of the
supposed justification for the war turns out to have been
fictional.
The war was justified to the public by links between Saddam and
Al Qaeda, and Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction. No
evidence of the Qaeda link has ever surfaced, and no W.M.D.'s that
could have posed any threat to the U.S. or its allies have been
found.
The failure to find W.M.D.'s has been described as an
"intelligence failure," but this ignores the fact that intense
pressure was placed on intelligence agencies to tell the Bush and
Blair administrations what they wanted to hear. Even before the war
began we learned of such pratfalls as the presentation of a
plagiarized, decade-old report about Iraqi capabilities as hot new
intelligence, and the use of crudely forged documents as evidence
of a nuclear program.
Last fall the former head of the C.I.A.'s counterterrorism
efforts warned that "cooked intelligence" was finding its way into
official pronouncements. This week a senior British intelligence
official told the BBC that under pressure from Downing Street, a
dossier on Iraqi weapons had been "transformed" to make it "sexier"
— uncorroborated material from a suspect source was added to
make the threat appear imminent.
It's now also clear that George W. Bush had no intention of
reaching a diplomatic solution. According to The Financial Times,
White House sources confirm that the decision to go to war was
reached in December: "A tin-pot dictator was mocking the president.
It provoked a sense of anger inside the White House," a source told
the newspaper.
Administration officials are now playing down the whole W.M.D.
issue. Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary, recently told
Vanity Fair that the decision to emphasize W.M.D.'s had been taken
for "bureaucratic reasons . . . because it was the one reason
everyone could agree on." But it was the W.M.D. issue that
stampeded the Senate into giving Mr. Bush carte blanche to wage
war.
For the time being, the public doesn't seem to care — or
even want to know. A new poll by the Program on International
Policy Attitudes finds that 41 percent of Americans either believe
that W.M.D.'s have been found, or aren't sure. The program's
director suggests that "some Americans may be avoiding having an
experience of cognitive dissonance." And three-quarters of the
public thinks that President Bush showed strong leadership on
Iraq.
So what's the problem? Wars fought to deal with imaginary
threats have real consequences. Just as war critics feared, Al
Qaeda has been strengthened by the war. Iraq is in chaos, with a
rising death toll among American soldiers: "We have reports of
skirmishes throughout the central region," a Pentagon official told
The Los Angeles Times.
Meanwhile, the administration has just derived considerable
political advantage from a war waged on false premises. At best,
that sets a very bad precedent. At worst. . . . "You want to win
this election, you better change the subject. You wanna change this
subject, you better have a war," explains Robert DeNiro's political
operative in "Wag the Dog." "It's show business."
A final note: Showtime is filming a docudrama about Sept. 11.
The producer is a White House insider, working in close
consultation with Karl Rove. The script shows Mr. Bush as decisive
and eloquent. "In this movie," The Globe and Mail reports, "Mr.
Bush delivers long, stirring speeches that immediately become
policy." And we can be sure that the script doesn't mention the
bogus story about a threat to Air Force One that the White House
floated to explain Mr. Bush's movements on the day of the attack.
Hey, it's show business.
A QFS member
comments: Hey the press is
starting to really get down on the bogus "evidence of WMD" If this
trend gains any momentum, Bush might just wind up unelectable. Then
you have to wonder who the consortium has lined up
next...shudder.
This quote says it all: "You want to win
this election, you better change the subject. You wanna change this
subject, you better have a war," explains Robert DeNiro's political
operative in "Wag the Dog." "It's show business."
Nazi Germany's War On Terrorism
Information Clearing
House
Hitler used the 1933
burning of the Reichstag (Parliament) building by a deranged
Dutchman to declare a “war on terrorism,” establish his
legitimacy as a leader (even though he hadn’t won a majority
in the previous election).
“You are now witnessing the beginning of a great epoch in
history,” he proclaimed, standing in front of the burned-out
building, surrounded by national media. “This fire,” he
said, his voice trembling with emotion, “is the
beginning.” He used the occasion – “a sign from
God,” he called it – to declare an all-out war on
terrorism and its ideological sponsors, a people, he said, who
traced their origins to the Middle East and found motivation for
their “evil” deeds in their religion.
Two weeks later, the first prison for terrorists was built in
Oranianberg, holding the first suspected allies of the infamous
terrorist. In a national outburst of patriotism, the nation’s
flag was everywhere, even printed in newspapers suitable for
display.
Within four weeks of the terrorist attack, the nation’s
now-popular leader had pushed through legislation, in the name of
combating terrorism and fighting the philosophy he said spawned it,
that suspended constitutional guarantees of free speech, privacy,
and habeas corpus. Police could now intercept mail and wiretap
phones; suspected terrorists could be imprisoned without specific
charges and without access to their lawyers; police could sneak
into people’s homes without warrants if the cases involved
terrorism.
To get his patriotic “Decree on the Protection of People and
State” passed over the objections of concerned legislators
and civil libertarians, he agreed to put a 4-year sunset provision
on it: if the national emergency provoked by the terrorist attack
on the Reichstag building was over by then, the freedoms and rights
would be returned to the people, and the police agencies would be
re-restrained.Within the first months after that terrorist attack,
at the suggestion of a political advisor, he brought a formerly
obscure word into common usage. Instead of referring to the nation
by its name, he began to refer to it as The Fatherland. As hoped,
people’s hearts swelled with pride, and the beginning of an
us-versus-them mentality was sewn. Our land was “the”
homeland, citizens thought: all others were simply foreign
lands.
Within a year of the terrorist attack, Hitler’s advisors
determined that the various local police and federal agencies
around the nation were lacking the clear communication and overall
coordinated administration necessary to deal with the terrorist
threat facing the nation, including those citizens who were of
Middle Eastern ancestry and thus probably terrorist sympathizers.
He proposed a single new national agency to protect the security of
the Fatherland, consolidating the actions of dozens of previously
independent police, border, and investigative agencies under a
single powerful leader.Most Americans remember his Office of
Fatherland Security, known as the Reichssicherheitshauptamt and
Schutzstaffel, simply by its most famous agency’s initials:
the SS.
And, perhaps most important, he invited his supporters in industry
into the halls of government to help build his new detention camps,
his new military, and his new empire which was to herald a thousand
years of peace. Industry and government worked hand-in-glove, in a
new type of pseudo-democracy first proposed by Mussolini and
sustained by war.
Gore Vidal on the "United States of Amnesia"
29.05.2003
GORE
VIDAL:The United States is not a normal country. We are a homeland
now under military surveillance and military control. The President
asked the Congress right after 9-11 not to conduct a major
investigation. "As it might deter our search for terrorism wherever
it might be in the world." So Congress obediently rolled
over.
There was, I remember,
Pearl Harbor. I was a kid then. And within three years of it I
enlisted in the army. That's what we did in those days; we did not
go off to the Texas Air Force and hide. I realize the country has
totally changed, that the government is not responsive to the
people. Either in protecting us from something like 9-11, which
they should've done, could've done. Did not do. And then when it
did happen, to investigate, investigate, investigate.
So I
wrote two little books, one called Perpetual War for Perpetual
Peace, in which I try to go into the why Osama Bin Laden, if it
were he, or whoever it was, why it was done. And I wrote anther
one, Dreaming War, on why we were not protected on 9-11, which
ordinarily would have led to the impeachment of the President of
the United States who had allowed it to happen. They said they had
no information. Since then every day the New York Times prints
another mountain of people that say they had warned the government,
President Putin of Russia, he had warned us, President Mubarek, of
Egypt, he had warned us, three members of Mossad claim they had
come to the US to warn us that sometime in September something
unpleasant might come out of the sky in our direction.
Were
we defended? No we were not defended. Has this ever been
investigated? No, it hasn't. There was some attempt at the midterm
election, there was a pro forma committee in Congress which has
done nothing thus far, and we¹re three years later. This is
shameful. The media, which is controlled by the great
conglomerates, which control the political system, has done an
atrocious job of reporting, though sometimes good stories get in.
I've worn my eyes out studying the Wall Street Journal, which
despite its dreadful editorial policies is a pretty good newspaper
of record, which the New York Times is not.
Comment: Gore Vidal lays it all out, the
events that have transpired since the stolen election. He does not
draw the logical conclusions, but it is definitely worth
reading.
Halliburton's Iraq, Afghanistan Contracts at
$600 Million and Growing
Friday, May 30, 2003
WASHINGTON — Vice President Dick Cheney's (search) former
company already has garnered more than $600 million in military
work related to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and potentially
could earn billions more without having to compete with other
companies.
As the Army's sole provider of troop support services,
Halliburton's Kellogg Brown & Root subsidiary has received work
orders totaling $529.4 million related to the two wars under a
10-year contract that has no spending ceiling.
Rather than put the Iraq work up for bidding, the government has
used the 2001 Halliburton contract to place the various work orders
in Iraq, prompting criticism from some Democrats that Cheney's
former company is receiving favored treatment.
"The amount Halliburton could receive in the future is virtually
limitless," said Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., who disclosed the
troop support work orders Thursday. "It is simply remarkable that a
single company could earn so much money from the war in Iraq."
[...]
Halliburton Iraq contract queried
BBC
Halliburton could have years of work in Iraq
Halliburton, the oil services and construction group once led by US
vice president Dick Cheney, is in the spotlight once again over its
role in the reconstruction of Iraq.
The
Houston-based firm has been given reconstruction contracts worth
almost $500m so far, according to a US congressman.
Henry Waxman, a California
Democrat, has written to the US army questioning why so much work
has been given to Halliburton's subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root
without any competition.
Rather than opening
contracts to tender, the US government has used a Halliburton
contract won in 2001 to place new orders for troop support work in
Iraq.
Philadelphia
council condemns Patriot Act
PHILADELPHIA, May 29 (Reuters) - Philadelphia on Thursday became
the largest U.S. city to date to condemn the USA Patriot Act as a
threat to the constitutional rights of its citizens.
By a 13-3 vote, the Democrat-dominated City Council passed a
resolution calling on local members of Congress to work for the
repeal of the federal law that granted the Justice Department broad
new police powers for Washington's so-called war on terrorism.
The vote added Philadelphia, the fifth-largest U.S. city with
1.5 million residents, to a roster of 116 other state and local
governments that have passed measures opposing the Patriot Act.
Among major U.S. cities, the Patriot Act has also come under
fire from Baltimore, Denver, Detroit, Minneapolis and San
Francisco, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.
Formally named Uniting And Strengthening America by Providing
Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism, the
Patriot Act was signed by U.S. President George W. Bush less than
six weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and
Washington that killed 3,000 people.
Civil liberties groups have long criticized it for enhancing the
government's ability to tap phones and track e-mail and cell phone
conversations.
Philadelphia, the city where the U.S. Constitution and
Declaration of Independence were written in the late 18th century,
said in its resolution that the law allows for unconstitutional
surveillance and secret searches.
But the resolution also reaffirmed City Council's support for
the U.S. government's "campaign against global terrorism."
"The worst of it is, if you dare to question the Patriot Act,
you're immediately labeled unpatriotic," said Councilman Angel
Ortiz, a resolution sponsor and one of 14 Democrats on the
16-member council.
100th Civil Liberties Safe Zone! Hawaii Is the First State
to Defy Ashcroft
Nat
Hentoff
Village Voice
May
6, the commissioners of Broward County, Florida, in a unanimous
vote, passed the 100th local resolution in the United States
proclaiming "a civil liberties safe zone."
These resolutions are
directed at the Bush-Ashcroft war on the Bill of Rights. However,
the undeterred Attorney General is planning to introduce in
Congress USA Patriot Act II, which would much more radically reduce
individual liberties in the holy name of national security.
[...]
Worth attention is the
following section of the State of Hawaii's resolution reminding
members of Congress and other Americans of the Japanese-American
internment camps ordered by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and
confirmed by the United States Supreme Court:
"The
residents of Hawaii during World War II experienced firsthand the
dangers of unbalanced pursuit of security without appropriate
checks and balances for the protection of basic
liberties."
And
now, the resolution continues, "the citizens of Hawaii are
concerned that the actions of the Attorney General of the United
States and the United States Justice Department pose significant
threats to Constitutional protections."
That
resolution should have added to the list of despoilers of our
liberties President George W. Bush, who has enthusiastically
approved all this legislation and has told John Ashcroft that he is
doing a "fabulous job."
In the 2004 presidential campaign, already well under way, Bush
should be continually held accountable for violating his oath to
protect the Constitution, very much including the Bill of Rights.
But who is the Democratic presidential candidate to demand
that?
A Sad Obituary for a Dearly Departed Friend:
Freedom
by
Beth Quinn
commondreams.org
[...] Freedom has been
dying a slow death since Oct. 26, 2001, when Congress passed the
USA PATRIOT Act without debate or discussion, thereby administering
a lethal dose of poison to Freedom.
Weakened and in pain,
Freedom lost the will to live. His health further deteriorated as
he came to understand that Americans were indifferent to the threat
to his life. [...]
Your
Bill of Rights repealed
By John
David Rose
05/30/03:
(Information Clearing House) Think About It In the Stalin era of
the Soviet Union, Americans arrested for spying disappeared into
the gulag without an opportunity for legal assistance or even to
contact their families.
My high
school social science teacher illustrated how different America was
from Russia by explaining to us the 14th Amendment to the
Constitution: "No person shall be deprived of life, liberty or
property, without due process of law."
We were
proud to be citizens of a country where peoples' rights were
guaranteed, protected against even the government. We foolishly
believed those rights would last as long as the United
States.
Today,
through presidential fiat, the 14th Amendment to the Constitution
is no longer in force. The government can take liberty from
American citizens without a trial.
Attorney
General John Ashcroft asserts that President Bush has the power to
hold any American citizen incommunicado, in solitary confinement
for a month, a year, even life if Bush designates that citizen an
"enemy combatant." The accused may not have access to a lawyer or
visits by a member of the family or even a priest.
Shades of
Joseph Stalin. The prisoner has no right to know what proof the
government has of the offense and is given no opportunity to
present a defense.
If a
court orders a hearing for habeas corpus, the government can assert
that you're a danger to the country, and presto, even that right is
revoked.
Ironic,
isn't it? To protect our "freedom" and preserve our "liberty," the
administration takes away the most basic right of all, our right to
life, liberty and property protected by the courts.
[...]
Video: 700 UN Peacekeepers sat and watched as thousands were
massacred in Bunia
Death in the Congo: a mother watches as machete
militiamen murder her little girls
By
Adrian Blomfield in Bunia
The Telegraph
From her hiding place in the woods outside the Congolese town of
Bunia, Ruta Bonabingi watched as militiamen roasted and then ate
the severed arms of her dying daughters. It was the horrifying
finale to 48 hours of terror for Ruta and her family.
Three weeks after ethnic violence engulfed Bunia and the
surrounding Ituri province, crazed gunmen stormed Shar, five miles
outside the town. Shooting or hacking to death anyone they came
across, they torched every home in the village. [...]
The
peacekeepers had repeatedly warned the UN that a bloodbath was
likely and requested reinforcements.
They were ignored. Lacking the firepower, equipment or mandate to
intervene, they retreated powerless to their compound and
watched.
No one knows how many have died. The Red Cross has found 415 bodies
on the streets or in mass graves, and may just be the tip of the
iceberg. There are fears that thousands more were killed in
outlying villages. At least 50,000 people have been victims of
violence in Ituri since 1998.
U.N. Approves French-Led
Peacekeepers for Congo
By Emily Wax
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, May 31, 2003; Page A16
NAIROBI, May 30 -- After weeks of negotiations, the U.N. Security
Council today approved deployment of French-led international
troops to chaotic northeastern Congo, where ethnic massacres have
claimed more than 400 lives and left 300,000 homeless in the latest
phase of a war that seems to have no end.With a mandate to try to
prevent more bloodshed, about 1,200 troops will be dispatched to
the town of Bunia in Congo's Ituri region. The troops, mostly from
France but from other countries as well, are expected to start
arriving next week and stay until Sept. 1, according to U.N.
announcements.
Reports of massacres,
widespread rape and cannibalism have been emanating from Bunia
since late last year, particularly after neighboring Uganda pulled
out of Congo this month as part of a peace plan aimed at ending the
country's nearly five-year-old civil war. The resulting power
vacuum enflamed long-standing ethnic and economic tensions between
the region's Hema and Lendu tribes.
Ugandan involvement in northeastern Congo was just one facet of the
complex conflict commonly referred to as Africa's first world war.
Since August 1998, when rebels backed by Rwanda and Uganda launched
an armed campaign aimed at toppling then-President Laurent Kabila,
more than a half-dozen nations have been involved on both
sides.[...]
Bangladesh police given 'shoot on sight'
order
May 30,
2003. 9:17 AM
Toronto Star
DHAKA,
Bangladesh (AP) — Bangladesh has authorized police to shoot
at will as part of its anti-crime campaign, an official said today
after reporting more than 350 deaths to gang violence in the past
two months.
Calling
for a Media Crimes Tribunal
by
Danny Schechter
commondreams.org
In
the best of all possible worlds, there would be a war crimes
investigation into this dreadful war. And a media crimes tribunal
should accompany it, investigating the sins of commission, omission
and blinkered patriotism.
NEW YORK, May 30, 2003 -- By late May, no one in Washington wanted
to talk about Iraq any more. Iran had become the enemy du jour as
all the familiar tools of media demonization were trotted out as if
they were in some playbook of well-worked but successful scenarios
for orchestrating crises. The same neo-conservative cast of
strategists that gave us the Iraq War seemed to be cranking up a
new confrontation with Teheran.
Oddly, some of the Terror
War advocates here recommend assisting (i.e., arming) opposition
movements that the Iranians brand as terrorists. A Pentagon warning
that it will seek to "destabilize" the Teheran government has given
that country's right-wing mullahs new arguments to label reformists
traitors. Another country is on the verge of imploding.
Meanwhile, Iraq is still
coming apart at the seams. More U.S. soldiers are dying in
incidents that lead the Independent’s Middle East
correspondent Robert Fisk to say that an armed resistance is
emerging as complaints about a lack of services and self rule
spread. Politically, demography appears to be destiny. Reports
William O. Beeman in the Los Angeles Times: "The war in Iraq has
produced an unintended consequence -- a formidable Shiite Muslim
geographical bloc that will dominate politics in the Middle East
for many years. This development is also creating political and
spiritual leaders of unparalleled international
influence."
[...]
An
environment of patriotic correctness in the media led to more
selling than telling on the part of many journalists. When
historians began to construct the real story of this war, it is
safe to predict that they will indict the media along with the
administration.
In
the best of all possible worlds, there would be a war crimes
investigation into this dreadful war. A media crimes tribunal
should accompany it.
Heard the local
news? It may soon be harder to find
David Shaw
LA Times
June 1,
2003
The
Federal Communications Commission is about to make big, powerful
media corporations in this country even bigger and more
powerful.
It
now appears all but certain that the FCC will vote — probably
Monday — to significantly relax the ownership rules that have
long kept alive, if only barely, a sense of competition and
independence among the nation's news media.
Big
mistake.
It's
a mistake with ominous portents for what little is left of true
media diversity in this country — and, more important, it
will be a damaging blow to a citizenry that is increasingly
force-fed a news diet so narrow and nutrition-deficient that
intellectual scurvy sometimes seems inevitable.
If
you think local TV news is bad now, if you think there's a
stultifying sameness to most of what passes for news and commentary
in the electronic media today, wait till you see what happens when
Rupert Murdoch and Mickey Mouse rule the world. [...]
Bush 'buried' critical report
BBC
The Bush administration reportedly buried a report commissioned by
the US Treasury which predicted a budget deficit of over $44,000bn
and called for tax rises.
In a
front-page story Britain's Financial Times said the report, which
advocated tax rises, was left out of February's budget report as
the White House lobbied for $350bn in tax cuts. [...]
The
FT reported that former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, who was
sacked from the administration in December, commissioned the
paper.
Tax Law Omits Child Credit in Low-Income
Brackets
By
DAVID FIRESTONE
The New York Times
WASHINGTON, May 28 A
last-minute revision by House and Senate leaders in the tax bill
that President Bush (news - web sites) signed today will prevent
millions of minimum-wage families from receiving the increased
child credit that is in the measure, say Congressional officials
and outside groups. [...]
Mars finder did find life
Claims have re-emerged that the US space agency (Nasa) did
find signs of life on Mars during the historic Viking landings of
1976. Dr Gil Levin, a former mission scientist, says he now has the
evidence to prove it, just days before the US and Europe send new
expeditions to the Red Planet.The United States and Russia have
spent billions since the 1960s on a handful of space craft designed
to land on Mars. Only three have succeeded so far: the two Viking
probes in the 1970s and Mars Pathfinder in 1997. In 1976, the world
was gripped by excitement when a robotic spacecraft touched down on
Mars for the first time in history. Biology experiments detected
strange signs of activity in the Martian soil - akin to microbes
giving off gas. Before announcing the news that life had been found
on another planet, Nasa carried out more tests to look for evidence
of organic matter. However, the Viking experiments failed to find
this essential stuff of life and it was concluded that Mars was a
dead planet. New evidence
Dr Levin, one of three scientists on the life detection
experiments, has never given up on the idea that Viking did find
living micro-organisms in the surface soil of Mars.
He continued to experiment and study all new evidence from Mars
and Earth, and, in 1997, reached the conclusion and published that
the so-called LR (labelled release) work had detected life. He says
new evidence is emerging that could settle the debate, once and for
all. He told BBC News Online: "The organic analysis instrument was
shown to be very insensitive, requiring millions of micro-organisms
to detect any organic matter versus the LR's demonstrated ability
to detect as few as 50 micro-organisms." Dr Levin, now president
and CEO of US biotechnology company Biospherix, has a new
experiment that he says "could unambiguously settle the argument".
But it was rejected by both Nasa and the European Space Agency
(Esa) to go on-board this summer's Mars missions.
The British-built Beagle 2, which will be deposited on the
Martian surface by Esa's Mars Express space craft, is going with
the main purpose to hunt for life. This is a risky strategy, claims
Dr Levin. "Strangely, despite its billing, Beagle 2 carries no life
detection experiment!" he said. "Neither its GCMS (organic
detector) which is claimed to be more sensitive than Viking's, nor
its isotopic analysis instrument can provide evidence for living
organisms."
Nasa's mission to Mars is taking a more circumspect approach to
the big life question. Its two identical rovers will roam the
ancient plains of Mars acting as robot geologists. Mark Adler,
deputy mission manager, said the main science objective was to
understand the water environment of Mars not to search for life. He
told BBC News Online: "What we learnt from Viking is that it is
very difficult to come up with specific experiments to look for
something you don't really know what to look for." Claims of life
on Mars have always proved highly contentious. Twenty years after
Viking, microbe-like structures discovered inside a Martian
meteorite found in Antarctica led to more claims that were later
rejected. As the astronomer Carl Sagan once said, extraordinary
claims require extraordinary evidence. And there is no reason to
believe that anything found this time will be any different. "It's
going to take a number of missions if we want to know whether there
is life on Mars or not," said Dr Charles Cockell.
A QFS member comments: Only a few
days before the ESA Mars Express launches and up pops this story.
So we have three rovers due to touch down on Mars next year. Hmmm,
seems someone is keen to make sure they get something down on Mars.
Lets hope NASA has got those imperial to metric calculators working
this time.
Which reminds us of a few comments by
the Cs:
Q: (L) How long have they known that rocks
from Mars are on the planet?
A: 12 years.
Q:(T) About the same length of time it took them to analyze the
soil samples that they got from Mariner probes.
(L) OK, Why all of a sudden are they revealing, or releasing this
information about this Mars Rock? In such a big and manipulative
way? (T) You just said it!
A: You have already figured it out yourselves. [...]
Q: (L) Well, OK, but is this Mars Rock, and is this opening of the
doors concept, is this leading up to some definite, overt
interaction with aliens? (T) They told us, we know it, yes!
A: Gradually. [...] Notice how you heard nothing about the Mars
Probes until the rock announcement?
Q: (T) This is the new stuff? (L) Is this right?
A: The excavation robot spacecraft. One Probe is already on its
way, another to follow. No further explanation about "loss" of Mars
Explorer.
Q: (L) What did happen to the Mars Explorer? A: Blacked out. You
see, 'Too risky.' And too much too soon, due to pressure from
Hoagland and others.
Q: (T) My own opinion is that they've already been there, and they
know what's there.
A: No. Microbes are easier to swallow than humans in togas!
Q: (T) Cleopatra and Antony are not going to go over real big this
week! Especially with the Bible scholars. [...] (T) OK, you just
mentioned that somebody from this planet already launched a Mars
Probe. A new Mars Probe, that no one in public knows about. Because
it's never been talked about. So, it's a secret probe. Who does it
belong to?
A: Was secret US government.
Q: (T) Was it something that one of the Shuttle missions put out?
A: No.
Q: (J) When did it go up?
A: September of 1995.
Q: (T) Last September, a year ago. So, it's gone for a year. It
takes it a year, two years to get there? Maybe not that long. So,
it's over half-way there at this point.
A: Yes.
Q: (T) What's it going to do?
A: Next year.
Q: (T) Next year for the next probe?
A: Yes.
Q: (T) Is this going to be one of those public ones? A publicly
announced one?
A: They both are.
Q: (T) What is the purpose of these probes?
A: Excavation to display living organisms.
Q: (T) Display? (L) Yes, for public consumption. In other words,
not only do we have a rock now, that shows evidence that there
was... (T) Oh, display, as when they find it and dig it up, they're
going to show it on camera! (L) Yes! (T) Connie Kourek will
interview it! (L) Right! (F) First they said they found no
evidence, then they said it was inconclusive... Now, who the hell
knows what they found! In revealing things, we'll start with
fossilized life, and then move on... (L) So, they're going to
display the discovery of living organisms on Mars to take the next
step to acclimate...
A: Yes.
Q: (L) So, in other words, this process is going to be something of
an on-going thing, and that all of these people who are cranking
around about, you know, alien landings...
A: No faces, though.
Q: (L) There's not going to be any 'Faces On Mars?' They are not
going to show us...
A: Won't be revealed, what do you think happened with Mars
Explorer?
Q: (L) Well, what did happen with the Mars Explorer? (T) Now, now,
now, let me...
A: Hoagland forced their hand.
Q: (T) What do we think happened to the Mars Explorer? I think they
switched channels. They just moved it from one communication post
to another, and it's doing exactly what it's supposed to be doing.
And they did it in such a way, that the NASA people really didn't
know what happened, so that when they were asked, they could say,
'We don’t know what happened to it!' Because they really
don't know what happened! (L) When we're talking about attack, as
we were before, as in plane crashes, the Olympics, all these
different things - this dealing with these Mars Explorers - is all
this stuff, or most of this stuff, coming from the 4th density
manipulations of human minds, rather than...
A: Yes.
Q: (L)... rather than actual, physical entry and doing of deeds? Is
that it?
A: Yes. [...]
Q: (T) I have a question. They're going to display live organisms,
like, how did they put that 'Living organisms'? How big are these
living organisms going to be? How advanced?
A: Teeny-tiny.
Q: (T) So, we're still talking about microscopic organisms
here?
A: Yes.
Q: (J) So, they won't wave at us!
A: But these will be alive. Can't you see the progression here?
"Don't want to scare Grandma Sally Bible Thumper/Stockmarket
Investor!"
Is our planet really being bombarded with life from
outer space?
Ian Sample
Thursday May 29, 2003
The Guardian
It most certainly is, says Chandra Wickramasinghe at the Cardiff
Centre for Astrobiology. It most certainly isn't, say the
overwhelming majority of other scientists.
In the 1970s, Wickramasinghe and the late astronomer Fred Hoyle
proposed the theory that life was originally brought to the barren
Earth by comets. The comets, they said, shed organic molecules and
alien microbes as they passed by the Earth and some of those became
established once they hit the ground. Last week, Wickramasinghe
wrote in the Lancet that the Sars virus, still causing havoc in
south east Asia, might have dropped to Earth in such a way.
Not likely, says William Grant at the University of Leicester
who studies microbes in extreme environments. The very act of
tolerating space would make alien microbes, should there be any
nearby, hopeless human pathogens. Suppose a clump of alien microbes
were hurtling through space on a comet. The bacteria would only
survive if evolution resulted in their adapting to the intensely
cold, radiation-rich vacuum of space. The process itself might take
millions of years. If they did survive, they would be so well
adapted to living in space, they could never thrive on Earth, let
alone have the necessary molecular machinery to invade human cells
and cause disease, says Grant.
On Earth, new human viruses tend first to linger in animals with
at least similar physiology to humans. Then, as the virus evolves
to dodge the animal's immune system, a chance mutation might just
make it capable of jumping species into a human. That evolutionary
process would not take place if the virus was flying through space
on a lump of rock.
"In the case of Sars, the virus needs a specific protein to bind
to human cells and enable it to enter them. It's extremely
complicated. The idea that it could just have evolved without being
in a very similar environment, an animal, is nonsense," says Ian
Jones, a virologist at the University of Reading. "The evolutionary
pressure would never be there for the protein to form."
Scientists have long known that complex molecules can form in
space, and meteorites discovered on Earth have been found to
contain amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. But these are
a far cry from living organisms, says Jack Cohen, a biologist at
the University of Warwick and part-time 'alien creature designer'
for science fiction writers. "Some scientists think that if you can
get complex molecules, some of them might be diseases. They don't
understand how complicated something has to be before it can be an
effective disease," he says.
Wickramasinghe says his critics reject his theory because they
are convinced life originated on Earth. If life came from
elsewhere, then organisms on different planets would evolve
together, he says, making the chance of alien microbes able to
infect humans more likely. "The only way it works is that evolution
is not restricted to Earth, but happens on a huge cosmic scale.
Life on Earth is connected with life everywhere in the universe,"
he says.
Students will scan for meals: Akron school board OKs
fingerprint system
By
Stephanie Warsmith
Beacon Journal staff writer
Akron students will be fingerprinted beginning this fall to
identify them in school lunch lines.
After a lengthy debate,
school board members voted 5-2 Tuesday to spend $700,000 on a
controversial, modernized cafeteria system.
Board members Rebecca
Heimbaugh and Mary Stormer voted ``no,'' mirroring the concerns of
parents about the cost and privacy issue involved with
fingerprinting students. [...]
Students' fingerprints will
be put into a scanner that will make a template of binary numbers
corresponding with the unique swirls and arches of each print. When
students go through the lunch line, they will place their finger on
a scanner that will identify them based on the stored
template.
Comment:
$700,000?!?! It seems clear that the American education system is
not primarily concerned with education. This project sounds like a
conditioning program for children to get used to big
brother.
And Finally...
Homer Simpson
to become an honourary Winnipegger
ArtsCanada
WINNIPEG - The patriarch of the animated Simpson's family will be
made an honourary citizen of Winnipeg Friday.
City hall will honour the beer-guzzling, doughnut-loving Homer
Simpson, who was named after Homer Groening - the father of The
Simpsons creator Matt Groening.
Last year, Matt Groening revealed his father was a native of
Winnipeg. But controversy has begun to swirl about Homer Groening's
true origins.
According to the Winnipeg Sun, some have questioned his Winnipeg
roots, saying that Homer Groening is actually from the tiny village
of Main Centre, Sask.
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