As always, Caveat Lector!
The material presented in the linked articles does not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the editors. Research on your own and if you can validate any of the articles, or if you discover deception and/or an obvious agenda, we will appreciate if you drop us a line! We often post such comments along with the article synopses for the benefit of other readers.

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Laura Knight-Jadczyk
Sam Montgomery
Scott Ogrin
Joe Quinn
Henry See

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Columns

Laura Knight-Jadczyk

Mossad and Moving Companies:
Masterminds of Global Terrorism?

Let The Games Begin
May 16

Will the World End on Thursday?
May 13

Signs of the Times Archives

Articles

Esoteric Christianity

To Be or Not To Be

Splitting Realities

Something Wicked This Way Comes

Ascension

OPs: The Other Race

Cosmic COINTELPRO Timeline

Physics and the Mysterious

The Bogdanov Singularity

Quantum Future School

IMPEACH GEORGE BUSH!
Articles of Impeachment and the FAX number of your representative. Download, print and FAX.

"In the beginning of a change,
the patriot is a scarce and brave man, hated and scorned.
When his cause succeeds however,
the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot."
Mark Twain

"Fear not the path of truth,
fear the lack of people walking on it."
Robert Francis Kennedy

"I read the news today, oh boy..."
John Lennon

The most successful tyranny is not the one that uses force to assure uniformity but the one that removes the awareness of other possibilities, that makes it seem inconceivable that other ways are viable, that removes the sense that there is an outside.
Allan Bloom
The Closing of the American Mind

This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it.
Abraham Lincoln
First Inaugural Address

"It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong."
Voltaire

Faith of consciousness is freedom
Faith of feeling is weakness
Faith of body is stupidity.
Love of consciousness evokes the same in response
Love of feeling evokes the opposite
Love of the body depends only on type and polarity.
Hope of consciousness is strength
Hope of feeling is slavery
Hope of body is disease.
Gurdjieff

Life is religion. Life experiences reflect how one interacts with God. Those who are asleep are those of little faith in terms of their interaction with the creation. Some people think that the world exists for them to overcome or ignore or shut out. For those individuals, the worlds will cease. They will become exactly what they give to life. They will become merely a dream in the 'past.' People who pay strict attention to objective reality right and left, become the reality of the 'Future.'
Cassiopaea, 09-28-02

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1084996467|sogrin|PayPal Update|

On the May 5, 2004 Signs page, we wrote the following:

The final years of civilization as we know it promise to be exciting. In the years since Bush and cronies stole the last US presidential election, the road to chaos has been steamrollered and paved. Down that road at full throttle have come, internally in the US, the Patriot Act, which has abridged many rights that Americans had considered as fundamental and a theocracy where the Constitution of the United States takes a back seat to the Bible. In foreign policy, well, it amounts to do as we say or we'll bomb the hell out of you or use trade sanctions.

Maneuvers to impose full control over civilian populations are being implemented. The clampdown on free expression has started. Of course, all of these draconian measures are being imposed under the name of defending liberties.

And clearly, if they are going to want to impose as close to total control as possible, they are going to need to restrict the movement of money and the means people have to earn a living outside of "accepted channels."

We use the service PayPal to collect payment on orders of our books, cups, and t-shirts, as well as a means of accepting donations from people who wish to support our work.

The following arrived yesterday:

Date sent: Tue, 04 May 2004 06:02:43 -0700
From: service@intl.paypal.com
To: ***@cassiopaea.com
Subject: Notification of Limited Account Access

Dear Arkadiusz Jadczyk,

We regret to inform you that your PayPal account has been limited for violating the Offensive Material Acceptable Use Policy. PayPal, at its sole discretion, prohibits the sale of items which graphically portray violence or victims of violence, and lack substantial social, artistic or political value.

The policy related to this issue is listed at the following URL.

In order to reinstate your account, please either remove the graphic violence or products, or remove PayPal as a payment option from your website. Then, complete the on-line check list that appears on your PayPal account. Please note that disagreement with the Acceptable Use Policy is not an appeal.

Please understand that enforcement of our policies is not reflective of seller status or volume of sales. This action has been taken only after careful consideration of the severity of the violation, or your accounts history of previous offenses for this violation. We have reviewed each offense to verify that the correct action was taken by PayPal at the time.

If you have any questions, please email us at aup@paypal.com

We thank you in advance for your cooperation.

Sincerely,
PayPal Compliance Department

------------------------------------------------------------------

Please do not reply to this e-mail. Mail sent to this address cannot be answered. All of the information necessary to restore your account access is available on the PayPal website. For assistance, log in to your PayPal account and choose the "Help" link in the header of any page.

------------------------------------------------------------------

PayPal Email ID PP519

------------------------------------------------------------------

PayPal (Europe) Limited is authorized and regulated by the Financial Services Authority in the United Kingdom as an electronic money institution.

In other words, PayPal has frozen our account.

Their excuse: their policy "prohibits the sale of items which graphically portray violence or victims of violence, and lack substantial social, artistic or political value."

We tried contacting PayPal to find out which of our products or pages was the offensive item. They were unable to give us the answer. The woman who answered the phone read out the same blurb as in the email. When we asked for the specific items or pages, she informed us that she was not privy to that information. She told us to send in the appropriate form on their web site.

This we did, but having now done some research on PayPal, we are not confident that we shall we be hearing from them any time soon. Apparently, PayPal freezes the accounts of 2000 of its customers every day, as this story from a disgruntled former PayPal user discusses:

---

It turns out that we did hear from PayPal after all. The following e-mail arrived yesterday:

Date sent: Tue, 18 May 2004 19:28:10 -0700
From: service@paypal.com
To: ***@cassiopaea.com
Subject: Notification of Limited Account Access

Dear Laura Jadczyk,

The PayPal User Agreement states that PayPal, at its sole discretion, reserves the right to close an account for any violation of the User Agreement, including the Acceptable Use Policy. Under the Acceptable Use Policy, PayPal may not be used in the sale of items or support of organizations that promote hate, violence, or racial intolerance. This includes pictures showing victims of violence. The complete Acceptable Use Policy addressing Offensive Material can be found at the following URL.

Due to the violation of PayPal's Acceptable Use Policy, your account will be closed. If you have a remaining balance, we will be issuing this to you by check. Please be sure that your account information is accurate, as PayPal cannot be held responsible for incorrect information provided by the account holder.

Please note that accounts found in violation of PayPal's Offensive Material Policy will not be reinstated. Enforcement of our policies is not reflective of seller status or volume of sales. This action has been taken only after careful consideration and have reviewed each offense to verify that the correct action was taken by PayPal at the time.

You will need to remove all references to PayPal from your website(s) and/or auction(s). This includes not only removing PayPal as a payment option, but also the PayPal shopping cart and logo. We thank you in advance for your cooperation. If you have any questions, please contact the PayPal Compliance Department at aup@paypal.com.

Sincerely,
PayPal Compliance Department
PayPal, an Ebay Company

------------------------------------------------------------------

Please do not reply to this e-mail. Mail sent to this address cannot be answered. All of the information necessary to restore your account access is available on the PayPal website. For assistance, log in to your PayPal account and choose the "Help" link in the header of any page.

------------------------------------------------------------------

PayPal Email ID PP520

------------------------------------------------------------------

We also received a link to the The Free Network Project web site from a QFS member. It seems that Paypal has been very busy freezing the accounts of sites that it deems inappropriate:

17th May, 2004 : Paypal suspends Freenet donations account

Paypal has frozen the account we use to accept donations over the web, they refuse to give any reason other than "use of an anonymous proxy", which suggests that someone at Paypal took a dislike to the goals of our project, since I have never used an anonymous proxy to access Paypal (this being the activity I assume they sought to prevent). It is fortunate that Johann Gutenberg did not rely on Paypal to fund his work on the printing press, which also allowed anonymous publication of information, since his account would probably have been frozen too.

If you are concerned about whether your account might be at risk due to your political opinions you may wish to speak to their PR contact Hani Durzy at (408) 376 7458. If you are an investor and you would like to see what other political opinions Paypal doesn't like, you may want to speak to their Investor contact Tracey Ford at (408) 376 7205.

They have said that they will refund our outstanding balance ($550) by check, but all of the projects subscriptions have been canceled which is a significant setback. Other means of accepting donations, including E-Gold, are still active. Anyone wishing to make a donation by check should email me directly. Unfortunately neither of these methods are as convenient as Paypal, but we will do our best to find an alternative ASAP.

What is Freenet?

Freenet is free software which lets you publish and obtain information on the Internet without fear of censorship. To achieve this freedom, the network is entirely decentralized and publishers and consumers of information are anonymous. Without anonymity there can never be true freedom of speech, and without decentralization the network will be vulnerable to attack.

Communications by Freenet nodes are encrypted and are "routed-through" other nodes to make it extremely difficult to determine who is requesting the information and what its content is.

Users contribute to the network by giving bandwidth and a portion of their hard drive (called the "data store") for storing files. Unlike other peer-to-peer file sharing networks, Freenet does not let the user control what is stored in the data store. Instead, files are kept or deleted depending on how popular they are, with the least popular being discarded to make way for newer or more popular content. Files in the data store are encrypted to reduce the likelihood of prosecution by persons wishing to censor Freenet content.

The network can be used in a number of different ways and isn't restricted to just sharing files like other peer-to-peer networks. It acts more like an Internet within an Internet. [...]

It appears that the lockdown of the internet is taking place under our very noses. Web sites such as Cassiopaea.org and Freenet have no recourse against the censorship that is quietly occurring right now. While many have been expecting a sort of "Internet 9/11" event, the powers that be have already begun clamping down. As we wrote above:

And clearly, if they are going to want to impose as close to total control as possible, they are going to need to restrict the movement of money and the means people have to earn a living outside of "accepted channels."

Perhaps we should all consider the possibility that the movement of money will not simply be restricted, but completely controlled to the extent that it will not be possible at all for web sites such Cassiopaea to accept any donations or payments from anyone. In the short run, there are other payment options available. We are working as fast as we can to set up an alternative payment system. But even if other payment mechanisms are not jammed by the puppet masters, the actual content of web sites devoted to the search for truth may itself become illegal very soon. It is already dangerous to criticize Israel's actions against the Palestinians. Even if one makes a distinction between Jews and the Zionists that seem to control the Israel/US alliance, one is still branded an anti-Semite.

We will continue to publish Signs of the Times as long as we possibly can. If information on the internet is controlled, one can bet that printed material on certain topics will be banned. Total control means total control.

Any readers that have not read Laura Knight-Jadczyk's groundbreaking work Ancient Science may wish to purchase a copy sooner rather than later.

Other anti-PayPal sites:

PayPalSucks

PayPalWarning.com

U-S military to release 472 prisoners from Abu Ghraib on Friday

AP
May 19, 2004

Baghdad, Iraq - The U-S military says it'll set another 472 prisoners free from Abu Ghraib (grayb) prison on Friday.

More than 290 detainees were released from the jail last Friday.

Abu Ghraib has been at the center of the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal. It's also known as the site of numerous executions and tortures during Saddam Hussein's reign.

The facility has been used to hold detainees considered security risks.

I work with a large number of people of Indian descent. They are, for the most part, disturbed by the results of the latest election. The reasons for their concern are many:

1) The result was a surprise (i.e. contradicted both polling results and exit polls the day of the election)

2) The current government was "doing well" with the economy expanding, jobs being created, relative peace with Pakistan, etc.

3) The winning coalition is highly influenced and supported by the communists who, generally speaking, wish to return to a more isolationist international set of policies (which fly in the face of the economic success)

4) This was a rather transparent power grab using the magical name "Gandhi" for its own marketability's sake, by someone who is essentially a foreigner.

There are other reasons I cannot easily capture because I do not fully understand, but it is relatively clear to me that something about this smells.

There are more registered voters in India than people in the population of the USA. Historically, votes were counted by paper ballot by local committees, and these results communicated up through government channels, etc. This process took days. In our Internet "instant gratification" era, this was perceived to be backwards. The solution was to convert the voting system largely over to the automated electronic voting machines. This eliminates the delay and allows such a massive vote to be presented as a result, essentially in near real time, but most importantly, does not yield an audit trail.

I cannot pin my finger on it, but I believe the Indian election results was actually an experiment. The experiment was to rig the election of an entire country using the electronic voting machines (and of a country where the side effects of the choice were not likely to be seen as strategically important) and to see if "anyone noticed".

If this is the case, the experiment seems to have been a wild success because I have not seen any serious consideration of the possibility that the election was rigged. Of extreme interest is that the person who started this process, Sonia Gandhi, has essentially stepped aside. To me, this is a bizarre result, but I do not claim to be able to appreciate the subtleties of government forming in the Parliamentary System.

Regardless of the particulars of the election outcome, it seems that overt manipulation is not widely suspected and the illusion of democracy remains. This does not bode well for the future of "democracy" in the good ole USA, but it does bode well for the preservation of the illusion.

¬2004 Pierre-Paul Feyte

New Article: Jupiter, Nostradamus, Edgar Cayce, and the Return of the Mongols - Laura Knight-Jadczyk

Part 1Part 2, Part 3, Part 4,Part 5, Part 6,Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13

www.chinaview.cn 2004-05-15 10:27:27

WARSAW, May 14 (Xinhuanet) -- Polish Prime Minister Marek Belka lost a parliamentary vote of confidence on Friday and resigned shortly after the vote.

The lower house of parliament voted 262-188 against Belka, who was appointed prime minister on May 2 after his unpopular predecessor Leszek Miller stepped down. No one abstained out of the 450 parliamentarians present.

www.chinaview.cn 2004-05-15 10:27:27

WARSAW, May 14 (Xinhuanet) -- Polish Prime Minister Marek Belka lost a parliamentary vote of confidence on Friday and resigned shortly after the vote.

The lower house of parliament voted 262-188 against Belka, who was appointed prime minister on May 2 after his unpopular predecessor Leszek Miller stepped down. No one abstained out of the 450 parliamentarians present.

The result was anticipated as Belka required 226 votes in the 460-seat lower house to gain the green light to rule. His ruling Democratic Left Alliance only occupies 172 seats in parliament.

Belka tabled a letter of resignation to President Kwasniewski shortly after the vote. The president accepted his resignation, but said he will re-appoint Belka.

Under Polish Constitution, the parliament now has 14 days to find another candidate and form an alternative cabinet. But if the new candidate fails to clear the parliament, the president will have another chance to designate a potential prime minister.

Belka will stay on leading a caretaker government during the time.

www.chinaview.cn 2004-05-15 15:43:29

BEIJING, May 15 (Xinhuanet) -- The United States must accept that its occupation of Iraq will end when it transfers power to an interim Iraqi government on June 30, even though U.S. troops will lead the force that stays in the country, the French foreign minister said.

Michel Barnier said the Bush administration needs to understand that there must be "a real break" and that the caretaker Iraqi government must be consulted about the movements and operational use of the multinational force.

www.chinaview.cn 2004-05-15 15:43:29

BEIJING, May 15 (Xinhuanet) -- The United States must accept that its occupation of Iraq will end when it transfers power to an interim Iraqi government on June 30, even though U.S. troops will lead the force that stays in the country, the French foreign minister said.

Michel Barnier said the Bush administration needs to understand that there must be "a real break" and that the caretaker Iraqi government must be consulted about the movements and operational use of the multinational force.

Barnier spoke Thursday at a news conference after a working dinner with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan which focused on efforts by U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi to put together an acceptable transitional government to assume sovereignty from the U.S.-led coalition.

He heads to Washington Friday for a meeting of foreign ministers of the Group of Eight major industrialized nations, where Iraq will also lead the agenda.

France was a staunch opponent of the war in Iraq, and Barnier ruled out sending any French troops to be part of the multilateral force. But he said France will work "in a constructive spirit" on a new U.N. resolution dealing with the transfer of sovereignty, and he stressed that France and America "have always been friends and allies."

The U.N. Security Council has been holding informal discussions on the elements that need to be in a new resolution. No draft is expected until after Brahimi returns from Baghdad and makes his final recommendations on the makeup of a caretaker government.

"We have to make sure that this government has all the levers of sovereignty and control," Barnier said. "What we need is for the Americans and the occupation forces to understand and accept this real break on July 1 — and the break will be confirmed with the elections in January."

"The Iraqi government has to be in a position to manage its affairs, to handle the economy, the justice, manage its natural resources, manage the internal security forces — at least the law enforcement officials. And also, it has to have a say in the use of the multilateral force that will be in Iraq from July until January," he said.

Barnier, making his first trip to the United States as foreign minister, said "the most sensitive issue" in the discussions on a new resolution is the relationship between the interim government and the multinational force.

After elections in January, when a "fully legitimate government" will be elected, he said, "it will be that government's duty to say whether the multilateral force should stay on or not."

But Barnier stressed that the period between July and January was a "blurred period" that the Security Council would have to discuss in depth.

Richard H. Curtiss, Arab News

WASHINGTON, 13 May 2004 — President George W. Bush met with King Abdallah II of Jordan on May 6, after the king had postponed their earlier meeting, scheduled shortly after the US president’s April 14 meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. At that meeting — and apparently without having previously consulted US allies — the American president endorsed Sharon’s unilateral “disengagement” plan, to the outrage of the Arab world. Right up to the start of his meeting with Abdallah, it was not certain exactly what Bush would say. Some Bush advisers hoped that he would provide a sweetener by making his previous assurances with Israeli prime minister less definite, given Sharon’s history of broken promises.

Richard H. Curtiss, Arab News

WASHINGTON, 13 May 2004 — President George W. Bush met with King Abdallah II of Jordan on May 6, after the king had postponed their earlier meeting, scheduled shortly after the US president’s April 14 meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. At that meeting — and apparently without having previously consulted US allies — the American president endorsed Sharon’s unilateral “disengagement” plan, to the outrage of the Arab world. Right up to the start of his meeting with Abdallah, it was not certain exactly what Bush would say. Some Bush advisers hoped that he would provide a sweetener by making his previous assurances with Israeli prime minister less definite, given Sharon’s history of broken promises.

Unfortunately, their conversation seemed to result in nothing new. Bush showed the king extraordinary respect, and made it clear that he was listening — but failed to provide the assurances the king sought. Abdallah hoped to leave the White House with a presidential declaration that the Palestinians would be compensated for land and refugee trade-offs. Bush, however, said only, “The United States will not prejudice the outcome of the final status issues...all final status issues must still emerge from negotiations between the two parties.”

National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice is now scheduled to meet with Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qorei. According to a White House official, she will tell Qorei that “there are real opportunities here and the Palestinians should seize those opportunities.”

It is hard to believe, however, that Rice will be any more successful than Bush has been.

When Secretary of State Colin Powell met on May 4 with members of the Quartet — the US, United Nations, Russia and the European Union — there was a lot of repair work to do. Bush had just robbed the store to give Sharon whatever he wanted between now and the US elections in early November. Sharon then went back to his own Likud constituency to show how much he had stolen. But his constituency had different ideas. Or so it seemed — unless Sharon is even more Machiavellian than others in his party realized.

The Likud’s hard hard-liners insist that they must never give back anything to the Palestinians. They therefore ignored Sharon’s plan, and turned it down decisively. Having been definitively rebuffed, Sharon simply ignored the referendum outcome, saying he would make some modifications in his plan. He failed to indicate, however, whether it would be more or less extremist than the plan endorsed by Bush and rejected by Likud.

Meanwhile, at their May 3 meeting, the Quartet decided — in the absence of any indication of Sharon’s next move — simply to go ahead and continue on its path.

To make matters even worse — if that was possible — when Powell met with the press in New York following the Quartet meeting, all the American reporters wanted to ask about were the ghastly revelations breaking daily from Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison. The world was stunned by what US soldiers had been doing, generally between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m., when most of the prison personnel were off duty and the sadists went out to play. Powell, a former general and chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, obviously was deeply distracted, and didn’t put his usual tightly controlled spin on his words.

As The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler wrote, “Bush’s comments, made with Ariel Sharon at his side, had alarmed diplomats overseas because some perceived that the United States and Israel had cut their own deal on Sharon’s plan to unilaterally separate from the Palestinians.”

Diplomats warn, Kessler continued, that “Israel should not try to maintain control over Gaza’s air and sea access.”

“The US is committed to the basis upon which the peace process rests,” Powell said. “And we are in conversation with our other Arab friends to see what assurances and comments they may need from us to make sure that they know that the president has not abandoned them.”

Wrote Steven Weisman of The New York Times: “The lengthy (Quartet) statement had been hammered out over the past week in what diplomats said was a crosscurrent of tensions between the Bush administration and its Quartet partners.”

The statement represented an effort by the international community to reinsert itself into the peace process, including laying the groundwork for financial assistance to the Palestinian areas to be vacated by Israel.

Following Bush’s April endorsement of the withdrawal scheme, his aides have been trying to get the other Quartet partners to follow suit. According to Weisman, however, “Those partners balked because they charge that Israel is using the withdrawal as a substitute for negotiating with the Palestinians.

“Accordingly, they demanded that the statement put out Tuesday include language suggesting that Israel had to continue negotiating with the Palestinians and that the withdrawal had to amount to a complete end of the ‘occupation.’”

Europeans, Russians and the United Nations are furious with Bush for having endorsed some of Israel’s territorial claims at his meeting with Sharon. The Bush administration regards endorsement as a way to help ensure that the withdrawals go through. European and other diplomats, however, charge the president was motivated by US domestic politics. Sharon’s withdrawal plan itself is in disarray.

The backlash in Arab and European countries is particularly intense, but Bush administration officials argued that Sharon’s plan has the seeds of a breakthrough in the stalled peace process. The Likud Party’s overwhelming rejection of the plan, however, has left the administration’s credibility in the Middle East in tatters. The tilt toward Israel will not soon be forgotten in the Arab world, and will make it harder for the Bush administration to claim that the president’s support of Sharon has produced results. In fact, the Likud vote comes when the image of the United States already is greatly damaged by accounts of psychological and sexual abuse of Iraqi prisoners by some US soldiers.

— Richard H. Curtiss is executive editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs magazine.

Whew! Does anyone remember back to those heady days in April when Condi Rice was set to testify before the Congressional Committee investigating 9/11? Remember way back when the press was full of stories of Condi being on the ropes? There were sites discussing how she was on the way out, the sacrificial black lamb. Where is she now? Same place she was before: advising the idiot king.

Now it is Rumsfeld's turn to be subjected to a pseudo-media scrutiny...and are we expecting that the outcome will be any different? It is as if one by one the criminals in power in Washington will come under examination and will be absolved of any wrongdoing; one by one these butchers of Iraqis, Afghanis, and Americans will be subjected to their fifteen minutes of media "torture", only to be found innocent of their crimes before the ultimate court, US public opinion.

And what is the outcome? Not the material world outcome, the esoteric outcome. What effect does it have on your soul to participate in such a scam and to do nothing? We are not speaking of any esoteric consequences for Bush, Rummy, and their like. They appear to have made their choice to walk in the shadows. We are talking about the consequences for you and me, for the plebs who watch the spectacle in the Electronic Coliseum, and who do nothing.

"Oh, but Signs of the Times editors, we will throw them out in November! Just you wait! Look what just happened in India! Atal Bihari Vajpayee was defeated against all expectations! And look at Spain where Aznar was given the democratic justice he warranted!"

Trouble is, look who the opposition is in the US - John Kerry, the man who stated that Bush was only 99% in favour of Israel while he went that extra 1% and was 100% behind Israel! Well, who is being elected here, the president of the US or the PM of Israel? Given the US is in Iraq to defend Israeli interests, it looks to be the latter.

Not that there is a solution. Some Patriot sites have the fantasy that a group of "Patriotic" generals will step up and defend the Constitution. A means to bring the bloodletting home onto US soil?

Perhaps the current attempt to portray the US military in a bad light through the photos of US soldiers torturing Iraqi prisoners is a counter-move on Rummy's part against such an attempt. One must ask the question why the pictures came out when they did, to be followed so quickly by the video beheading of Nick Berg that so conveniently turned attention away from the question of torture. Many commentators are questioning the official story on the video. Some say the "terrorists" don't have the physical bearing of Arabs. Another mentions that the leader is wearing a gold ring, and suggests that Moslems are not supposed to wear gold. Others point to the accents, saying that it is not the accent of a Jordanian, therefore it can't be al-Zarqawi, while others report he was killed in battle. A list of some discrepencies can be found here.

The military trying to deflect attention? The CIA? Israeli intelligence?

Who is pushing the world further and further into chaos? Who is double-crossing whom?

We get the distinct feeling that there is a force at work in this world setting everyone against everyone, stoking the flames for a world-wide holocaust.

But, of course, that is absurd, isn't it?

The US, UK, Italy and Japan say they will pull their troops out of Iraq, if asked by a new Iraqi government.

The four countries made their position clear following a meeting of the Group of Eight (G8) foreign ministers.

It is the first time the members of the coalition have said what would happen if the new Iraqi government told them to pull out their troops.

But US Secretary of State Colin Powell said he did not think that prospect at all likely.

"I'm not losing any sleep over it," he said.

But he added that US would withdraw its soldiers if requested to do so.

Friday 14 May 2004, 15:59 Makka Time, 12:59 GMT

The US overseer for Iraq, Paul Bremer, has aired the possibility of an American pullout from the country, saying the United States did not stay where it was "not welcomed".

"If the provisional government asks us to leave we will leave," he said, referring to a post 30 June administration after the handover of sovereignty.

"I don't think that will happen but obviously we don't stay in countries where we're not welcome," he said at a working lunch in Baghdad with Iraqi officials from Diyala province.

[...] An opinion poll conducted for the CPA and quoted by Thursday's Washington Post showed that 80% of Iraqis mistrust the coalition authority and 82% disapprove of US and allied occupation forces in their country.

Comment: Of course, it isn't insurrection, civil war, or polls showing over 80% of Iraqis want them to leave that will convince the US to honour a statement such as that made by Bremer. After all, even though Spanish opinion was against the invasion, Aznar went anyway and Bush didn't sit down with him and say, "Gosh, do you really think this is a good idea, after, all, most of your countrymen are against it! Why don't you sleep on it?"

Combined Reports
Friday, May 14, 2004. Page 3.

U.S. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice arrives late Friday for talks with President Vladimir Putin, the U.S. Embassy confirmed Thursday.

The talks are expected to touch on the future of Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as well as issues considered central to the U.S.-Russia strategic relationship, like cooperation on the war on global terror, regional conflicts and economic ties, an embassy official said on condition of anonymity.

[...] France and Russia -- two main critics of last year's war -- want the Bush administration to grant the new Iraqi caretaker government greater control over the country's security forces. Washington, however, wants to place Iraqi and foreign armed forces in the country under the command of U.S. generals after the June 30 hand-over, The Washington Post reported Thursday.

04:55 AM EDT May 15
BETH GORHAM

WASHINGTON (CP) - The first American soldier to face trial in the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal says his colleagues joked around as they beat and sexually humiliated their captives but claimed that his superiors were unaware of what they were doing.

"If they saw what was going on, there would have been hell to pay," Specialist Jeremy Sivits says in two legal statements released to some U.S. newspapers. Sivits, who faces a court-martial next Wednesday in Baghdad, implicated some of his colleagues, saying they stripped prisoners and forced them to masturbate. One jumped on a pile of detainees, "then stomped on either the fingers or toes" as they screamed, he said.

A prisoner with bullet wounds in his leg was handcuffed to a bed while a soldier hit him with a police baton, said Sivits, who reportedly reach a deal with prosecutors and is expected to plead guilty.

Comment: Do any of our readers think for a moment that this is true? That this soldier was doing these without the knowledge of his superiors? What about the dual nationality professionals who were brought in, the ones who were specialised in humiliating, demeaning, abusing, and killing Arabs from years of experience with the Palestinians?

[...] It's also having an impact on the popularity of President George W. Bush as he seeks re-election this fall.

His approval rating in the most recent Gallup poll released this week fell to 46 per cent, the lowest of his presidency. A Pew Research Center survey released Wednesday suggested a 44 per cent rating.

U.S. government lawyers have advised against the release of hundreds of even more gruesome pictures and videos, some depicting corpses and several forms of sexual abuse, taken by U.S. soldiers.

Ironically, one reason they give is they would violate a Geneva Convention rule against revealing images that degrade prisoners.

Two top Pentagon officials admitted Thursday that interrogation tactics approved for use at Abu Ghraib violated the convention, which prohibits physical and mental torture of detainees.

They include putting prisoners in stressful positions, sleep deprivation, threats from dogs and isolation for more than 30 days.

Americans are no novices to inflicting pain and humiliation, says torture expert MILES SCHUMAN. U.S.-sanctioned torment has a long and diverse pedigree

By MILES SCHUMAN
Friday, May 14, 2004 - Page A19

The International Committee of the Red Cross has revealed over the past days that the gross human-rights abuses of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison were not confined to a few soldiers. Indeed, it appears they were well-known to U.S. government and military officials while they occurred. As a physician who has worked with many survivors of torture in Canada -- and has lived in Guatemala, Haiti and Mexico, working with survivors of state-sponsored violence -- the images of the detainees in Abu Ghraib represent a hauntingly familiar pattern of abuse.

The black hood covering the faces of naked prisoners in Abu Ghraib was known as la capuchi in Guatemalan and Salvadoran torture chambers. The metal bed frame to which the naked and hooded detainee was bound in a crucifix position at Abu Ghraib was la cama for a former Chilean patient who survived the U.S.-installed regime of General Augusto Pinochet. In her case, electrodes were attached to her arms, legs and genitalia, just as they were attached to the Iraqi detainee poised on a box, threatened with electrocution if he fell off. The Iraqi man bound naked on the ground with a leash attached to his neck, held by a smiling young American recruit reminds me of the son of peasant organizers who recounted his agonizing torture at the hands of the tonton macoutes, U.S.-backed Jean-Claude (Baby Doc) Duvalier's right-hand thugs, in Port-au-Prince, in 1984.

Americans are no novices to inflicting pain and humiliation, says torture expert MILES SCHUMAN. U.S.-sanctioned torment has a long and diverse pedigree

By MILES SCHUMAN
Friday, May 14, 2004 - Page A19

The International Committee of the Red Cross has revealed over the past days that the gross human-rights abuses of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison were not confined to a few soldiers. Indeed, it appears they were well-known to U.S. government and military officials while they occurred. As a physician who has worked with many survivors of torture in Canada -- and has lived in Guatemala, Haiti and Mexico, working with survivors of state-sponsored violence -- the images of the detainees in Abu Ghraib represent a hauntingly familiar pattern of abuse.

The black hood covering the faces of naked prisoners in Abu Ghraib was known as la capuchi in Guatemalan and Salvadoran torture chambers. The metal bed frame to which the naked and hooded detainee was bound in a crucifix position at Abu Ghraib was la cama for a former Chilean patient who survived the U.S.-installed regime of General Augusto Pinochet. In her case, electrodes were attached to her arms, legs and genitalia, just as they were attached to the Iraqi detainee poised on a box, threatened with electrocution if he fell off. The Iraqi man bound naked on the ground with a leash attached to his neck, held by a smiling young American recruit reminds me of the son of peasant organizers who recounted his agonizing torture at the hands of the tonton macoutes, U.S.-backed Jean-Claude (Baby Doc) Duvalier's right-hand thugs, in Port-au-Prince, in 1984.

The very act of photographing those tortured in Abu Ghraib to humiliate and silence parallels the experience of an American missionary, Sister Diana Ortiz, who was tortured in Guatemala in 1989. Before the U.S. Congressional Human Rights Caucus, she reported: "My hand was burned over 100 times with cigarettes. I was gang raped repeatedly. . . . My last few minutes in detention, I met Alejandro, whom the torturers referred to as their boss. He was tall and fair-skinned and spoke halting Spanish, with a thick American accent. His English was American, flawless, unaccented. When I asked him if he was American, his answer was evasive: 'Why do you want to know?' He reminded me that my torturers had made videotapes and taken photos of the parts of the torture I was most ashamed of. He said if I didn't forgive my torturers, he would have no choice but to release those photos and tapes to the press [Congressional Human Rights Caucus Briefing on Torture, June 25, 1988]."

The same sadistic choreography has taken place at the U.S. military base at Bagram in Afghanistan, where named witnesses informed The New York Times that detainees were stripped and hooded "with their arms raised and chained to the ceiling, their feet shackled."

This infernal landscape illustrates methods of torture consistent with U.S. military-intelligence teaching manuals. One example from the manuals produced by the U.S. Army's School of the Americas and declassified by the U.S. government, advises that in order to forcibly recruit spies, "The counterintelligence agent could cause the arrest of the employees' parents, imprison the employee, or give him a beating as part of the placement plan." It suggests that many other techniques could be used, limited only by the agent's imagination.

A 1986 report by the El Salvador Human Rights Commission, founded by Archbishop Oscar Romero, and smuggled out of the infamous Mariona Prison in San Salvador, refers to 40 kinds of torture inflicted on political prisoners, and the presence of Americans as supervisors. Graduates of the School of the Americas include military officers and leaders implicated in torture and mass murder in Guatemala, El Salvador, Chile, Argentina and Haiti, among other Latin American countries.

Two CIA manuals obtained by The Baltimore Sun in 1997, have specific relevance to the torture methods used on prisoners at Abu Ghraib. One manual written by the CIA in 1963, titled Kubark Counter-Intelligence Interrogation, states: "Interrogations conducted under compulsion or duress are especially likely to involve illegality. . . . Therefore, prior approval at the higher level must be obtained for the interrogation of any source against his will under any of the following circumstances: If bodily harm is inflicted; if medical, chemical or electric methods or materials are used to induce acquiescence."

Such methods could not have been far from the thoughts of those who applied electric wires to the Iraqi detainee pictured at Abu Ghraib. In his case, there was reportedly no potential current to cause shock. But as aptly noted by The Guardian in this connection, the CIA's 1983 Human Resource Exploitation Manual, used in Honduras, advises: "The threat of coercion usually weakens or destroys resistance more effectively than coercion itself. The threat to inflict pain triggers fears more damaging than the immediate sensation of pain."

The types of torture practised by individuals representing the U.S. government or their surrogates have varied slightly from place to place over time, depending on the particular social, cultural or religious norms that need to be subverted, in order to inflict the greatest pain and humiliation.

This subversion often goes hand in hand with gender-based violence. Examples include the rape of nuns such as Diana Ortiz by, and under the supervision of, male torturers, and the sexual assault of Muslim men by, and under the supervision of, enlisted women.

The ultimate purpose of torture, however, is always the same. It is not the extraction of information, which is notoriously unreliable under such conditions.

It is, rather, the destruction of one's voice and identity, the transformation of a human into an object (thus the hood over the face), like the Orwellian deconstruction of thousands of former lives into "collateral damage," or the "rendering" of individuals to another country for so-called interrogation.

From my experience as a physician, the Abu Ghraib images are not an exception to the rules. They represent the rules, I believe, by which the U.S. government and military exercise power over a non-servile population to optimize the economic and political interests of an elite few in the U.S. and abroad. What is not the norm, what is exceptional, is the graphic revelation to the world of these horrors. In his book A Miracle, A Universe, New Yorker writer Lawrence Weschler crystallizes the torturer's message to the tortured: "Scream. Scream as much as you like. It doesn't matter. No one is listening. No one will ever hear you. No one will ever know." The torturer, like the state sponsoring him, depends on the obscurity of the victim and silence of witnesses to continue his crimes.

We are all witnesses now.

Miles Schuman, a family physician in the Kivalliq region of Nunavut, counselled refugees, and documented torture for the Canadian Centre for Victims of Torture and the Clinique Santé Accueil in Guatemala, Haiti, Mexico, and in Cambodian refugee camps in Thailand.

By Charles D. Smith
Special to The Daily Star
Tuesday, May 11, 2004

In early 2003, I lectured to army reservists at Fort Huachuca in Arizona, the center for army intelligence in the United States and the training facility for the army's interrogators. They were being trained to replace regular army interrogators at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, who had been sent to Iraq. Two reservists (one possibly from my group) are now under investigation for abuses of prisoners at Guantanamo in 2002 and 2003. Colonel Thomas Pappas, the former head of a planning section at Fort Huachuca and commander of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade, has been cited in the much-publicized report by General Antonio Taguba for abuses inflicted by members of that brigade at the Abu Ghraib prison.

My role was to introduce reservists to Arab and Islamic culture and history and, I thought, to explain to them why many Middle Easterners, though they admired proclaimed American values, hated US policy in the Middle East. The reservists ranged in age from the early 20s to 50s, came from all sectors of society and included several women. They were accompanied by an army supervisor who was familiar with basic Middle Eastern history and who interrupted me occasionally to correct statements he thought were too sympathetic to Islam or Arab culture.

By Charles D. Smith
Special to The Daily Star
Tuesday, May 11, 2004

In early 2003, I lectured to army reservists at Fort Huachuca in Arizona, the center for army intelligence in the United States and the training facility for the army's interrogators. They were being trained to replace regular army interrogators at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, who had been sent to Iraq. Two reservists (one possibly from my group) are now under investigation for abuses of prisoners at Guantanamo in 2002 and 2003. Colonel Thomas Pappas, the former head of a planning section at Fort Huachuca and commander of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade, has been cited in the much-publicized report by General Antonio Taguba for abuses inflicted by members of that brigade at the Abu Ghraib prison.

My role was to introduce reservists to Arab and Islamic culture and history and, I thought, to explain to them why many Middle Easterners, though they admired proclaimed American values, hated US policy in the Middle East. The reservists ranged in age from the early 20s to 50s, came from all sectors of society and included several women. They were accompanied by an army supervisor who was familiar with basic Middle Eastern history and who interrupted me occasionally to correct statements he thought were too sympathetic to Islam or Arab culture.

None of the reservists showed animosity toward Arabs before me. However, a regular soldier did make openly racist references to Arabs during a break between lectures. He may have represented small a minority, but his role in a supervisory position could have easily influenced behavior during interrogations.

I had wrongly assumed a certain awareness of the Middle East among my students. This was corrected after my first talk, when two women admitted they had no background on the subject and asked me if Iranians were Arabs. Redrafting my lectures to a more basic level, I also showed films to offer an understanding of US Middle East policy as viewed by Arabs and Muslims generally.

I showed Gilberto Pontecorvo's classic film "The Battle of Algiers," on the French suppression of the first stage of the Algerian revolt in 1954-55. I used it to explain why people rebelled, in the context of lecturing on European imperialism and nationalist responses to this following World War II. I also noted that many Muslims regarded the United States as imperialist, particularly because it favored Israel in the conflict with the Palestinians. The reservists' supervisor told me he liked the film because it showed how the French had crushed the Algerian revolt - the opposite lesson from what I intended.

"The Battle of Algiers" includes scenes of French soldiers torturing Algerians to get information on the mastermind of the revolt. At the time I naively assumed that Fort Huachuca, as a base for military intelligence, was responsible for gathering information through technology and that interrogations meant asking questions based on an awareness of the general historical background of prisoners. With University of Arizona colleagues, I believed it was better for an academic to offer such information rather than government specialists possibly lacking sufficient expertise - or under pressure to distort information. Now, given the public scrutiny afforded by the Abu Ghraib scandal, I have learned much more.

For example, all interrogators at Fort Huachuca are instructed in the Geneva Conventions and the laws forbidding physical or mental torture during interrogations. But the institution's manual also states that applications of some interrogation techniques "may approach the line between lawful and unlawful actions." Given this, it is not surprising that some interrogators in the field may cross that line if under pressure to acquire information - or that they develop a sense of unrestricted power that their superiors may allow, or indeed encourage.

In a 1971 Stanford University psychology experiment, students were randomly assigned as "guards" or "prisoners" in an imaginary detention facility for two weeks to test their behavior. Supervisors canceled the experiment after three days because the "guards" began placing bags over the heads of their "prisoners," forced them to strip and encouraged them to perform sexual acts. The "guards" no longer viewed their "prisoners" as fellow students.

If this was possible at an elite university, how much more likely was such behavior on the part of military personnel with little education or training and with no knowledge of their prisoners' backgrounds? Clearly, at Abu Ghraib a lack of education and contempt for people of a different culture were important factors. Consider the photo of a female soldier with a leash around the neck of a naked Iraqi, or the sexual overtones of the prisoner with women's panties on his head.

Still, officers from military intelligence, a number of whom are in the photos, supervised the soldiers. These individuals ordered the "softening up" of prisoners before interrogation, and knew what they were doing. The officers share responsibility for the abuse of Iraqi prisoners, as do those in the higher echelons of the Pentagon and the administration. Neither Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld nor Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Richard Myers read the full Taguba report when it was completed, and President George W. Bush only learned about the Abu Ghraib photos from watching CBS News in April.

To be sure, such torture (and far worse) is practiced by many countries, including Arab countries and Israel. The US is not alone in "crossing the line" in interrogating prisoners - Americans or foreigners. Yet will anything be learned from this experience? I wonder. Despite praise for my efforts from personnel at Fort Huachuca, I was not invited back and, now, would not do so if asked. Government employees were hired instead, and one of them asked me if I would review his material to see if it was accurate. The incident suggested that at least some of the new lecturers are uneasy about their levels of expertise.

More broadly, Bush participated last Thursday in a National Day of Prayer. Instituted in 1952, the event has been taken over by evangelical Christians. Muslims and persons of other faiths were excluded from the ceremonies on Capitol Hill and in state capitals nationwide. One Christian spokesperson justified this exclusion on the grounds that Muslims were "outside the Judeo-Christian tradition."

Such ignorance of Islam as a monotheistic religion that is part of the Judeo-Christian tradition is not surprising. More serious is the lack of sensitivity of an avowedly Christian president who claims he is reaching out to the majority of the world's Muslims, while partaking in ceremonies that exclude American Muslims at the national level. Perhaps it was to be expected, then, that Bush did not initially apologize for Abu Ghraib, and later only did so under pressure from advisers. Such attitudes suggest that future incidents like those in Iraq are possible not because the military ignores the rules, but because American leaders display exclusionist principles, if only for political purposes, which many citizens absorb.

Charles D. Smith is professor of Near Eastern studies at the University of Arizona. He wrote this commentary for THE DAILY STAR

Given the way it treats its own inmates, America shouldn't be shocked at the abuse of Iraqis, by Christopher Reed
May 10, 2004. 01:00 AM

For a nation founded on slavery and genocide, Americans retain an astonishingly enduring faith in their continuing righteousness. They are sounding this note again as the prison torture scandal continues in Iraq.

In a column in the New York Times last week, Middle East analyst Thomas Friedman warned that the revelations created the "danger of losing America as an instrument of moral authority and inspiration in the world."

Does he not read the world's newspapers? Uncle Sam as moral authority?

Given the way it treats its own inmates, America shouldn't be shocked at the abuse of Iraqis, by Christopher Reed
May 10, 2004. 01:00 AM

For a nation founded on slavery and genocide, Americans retain an astonishingly enduring faith in their continuing righteousness. They are sounding this note again as the prison torture scandal continues in Iraq.

In a column in the New York Times last week, Middle East analyst Thomas Friedman warned that the revelations created the "danger of losing America as an instrument of moral authority and inspiration in the world."

Does he not read the world's newspapers? Uncle Sam as moral authority?

Other U.S. pundits similarly harrumphed about America's endangered integrity and leadership. President George W. Bush himself said the prison mistreatments were not the American way.

But they were, and they are.

Friedman's column was headlined, "Restoring our honour," but the abuse of prisoners surprises nobody who reads newspapers or scans the Internet. Americans have been mistreating and torturing their fellow Americans in their own lock-ups for decades. What honour is there to restore?

In "liberal" California, horror stories have appeared for years from hellholes such as Pelican Bay prison, where they house "the worst of the worst" — and also inflict the worst brutalities. A prisoner dumped in scalding water so his skin peeled off like old varnish; prisoners left naked outside in rainy and bitter weather for days; multiple beatings and rapes; several unexplained deaths.

In Corcoran prison, California, guards held their own Roman gladiator games with prisoners pitted against each other in fights to the near death. A disliked and defenceless prisoner was placed in the same cell as the biggest and baddest sex criminal — known as the Booty Bandit — to be duly raped to the amusement of the prisoner's supposed guardians.

Pelican Bay is such a fearful place, with prisoners kept under perpetual scrutiny while unable to see any other human being, a psychiatrist told a court that many were going insane.

A federal judge finally ordered reforms, as did another over Corcoran, but there is little evidence that either have become proper places even to house the worst.

Similar reports surface across America. Texas is especially bad.

Significantly, private, for-profit prisons have some of the worst records.

They often have such poor medical facilities that prisoners die from curable conditions, as Harper's magazine revealed in an exhaustive inquiry last year.

California holds more prisoners than Britain, France, Germany, and Canada combined, yet jails are still grossly overcrowded. Conditions in many southern U.S. prisons resemble some of the worst of the developing world, with prisoners sleeping on filthy floors overrun by rats.

In 1999, it was reported that 13 women at California's state-run Chowchilla female detention centre had died the previous year from negligent, or non-existent, medical care. Amnesty International reported in 1999 that male guards in several U.S. states routinely raped female prisoners.

In a book published in 2001, Going Up The River, former Wall Street Journal reporter Joseph Hallinan told of visiting a prison in Alabama where chained inmates still broke boulders with sledgehammers.

The sheriff of Phoenix, Ariz. was re-elected by loyal voters after bringing in female convict chain gangs. All this has been going on since Saddam Hussein was a young man.

It has worsened in recent years, despite a massive prison-building program that now incarcerates 2 million, the world's largest prison population.

Yet Americans have mostly ignored the disgrace of their penal system.

They became so fearful of crime, they lost consideration for the lives of criminals. Any idea of rehabilitation has been abandoned. Even when scandals over mistreatment do emerge, many say the inmates deserve it.

This does not excuse commentators such as Friedman, or the shocked, shocked, demeanour of U.S. news anchors and commentators.

Yet the details from Iraq itself support the view that prisoner abuse in Iraq was inevitable.

At Abu Ghraib prison, the alleged main perpetrator is staff sergeant Ivan "Chip" Frederick, 37, the senior of six non-officers charged with cruelty and other mistreatment. He is a part-time military policeman called up last year for service in Baghdad — and was a prison guard for six years in Virginia.

Another reflection on the role of private enterprise in U.S. incarceration is the background of Brigadier-General Janis Karpinski, also a military police reservist in Iraq.

When she was put in command of Abu Ghraib and its thousands of Iraqi inmates last year, she had never done penal work before. In the army she was an intelligence officer and in private life, a business consultant.

Shortly before her suspension from duty she told a Florida newspaper that her prisoners were living so well, she was worried they wouldn't want to return home.

Another American living in dreamland.

Christopher Reed is a Los Angeles-based reporter who has written extensively on prison conditions in the United States.

By Ali Abunimah
Special to The Daily Star
Tuesday, May 11, 2004

CHICAGO, Illinois: The head of the American defense contracting firm implicated in the torture of Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison has close ties to Israel and visited an Israeli "anti-terror" training camp in the occupied West Bank earlier this year.

Jack London, chairman, president and CEO of CACI International Incorporated, traveled to Israel in January this year as part of a high-level delegation of US Congressmen, defense contractors and pro-Israel lobbyists, sponsored and paid for in part by the Jerusalem Fund of Aish HaTorah, a pro-Israel lobbying and fundraising group, and Greenberg Traurig, LLP, a prominent Washington law and lobby firm.

The purpose of the visit, according to a CACI press release, was "to promote opportunities for strategic partnerships and joint ventures between US and Israeli defense and homeland security companies."

By Ali Abunimah
Special to The Daily Star
Tuesday, May 11, 2004

CHICAGO, Illinois: The head of the American defense contracting firm implicated in the torture of Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison has close ties to Israel and visited an Israeli "anti-terror" training camp in the occupied West Bank earlier this year.

Jack London, chairman, president and CEO of CACI International Incorporated, traveled to Israel in January this year as part of a high-level delegation of US Congressmen, defense contractors and pro-Israel lobbyists, sponsored and paid for in part by the Jerusalem Fund of Aish HaTorah, a pro-Israel lobbying and fundraising group, and Greenberg Traurig, LLP, a prominent Washington law and lobby firm.

The purpose of the visit, according to a CACI press release, was "to promote opportunities for strategic partnerships and joint ventures between US and Israeli defense and homeland security companies."

As one of the highlights of the visit, London was presented with the Albert Einstein Technology Award by Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz at a gala dinner at Jerusalem city hall, for "achievements in the field of defense and national security."

Delegates also spent several hours in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights with Housing and Construction Minister Effie Eitam, a former Israeli general, who is notorious for his view that Israel should "transfer" - that is, expel - all the Palestinians.

According to the official itinerary for the Jan. 11-17 Defense Aerospace Homeland Security Mission, obtained from the Jerusalem Fund of Aish HaTorah, London's trip included a visit to Beit Horon, "the central training camp for the anti-terrorist forces of the Israeli police and the border police," in the occupied West Bank. The visitors were also "briefed by top experts," and were able to "witness exercises related to anti-terror warfare."

Two CACI employees, Steven Stephanowicz and John Israel, were named in the leaked report by US Major General Antonio M. Taguba on the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison. Taguba wrote that Stephanowicz, a "contract US civilian interrogator," "allowed and/or instructed MPs (military police), who were not trained in interrogation techniques, to facilitate interrogations by 'setting conditions' which were neither authorized or in accordance with applicable regulations/policy. He clearly knew his instructions equated to physical abuse."

John Israel, an interpreter, did not have the appropriate security clearance, according to Taguba.

Although Taguba recommended that Stephanowicz be terminated and his security clearance revoked, a May 5 statement from CACI confirmed, "at present, all CACI employees continue to work on site providing the contracted for services to our clients in that location." It added: "We have not received any information to stop any of our work, to terminate or suspend any of our employees."

Although no evidence has emerged directly linking CACI's involvement in the Abu Ghraib atrocities to Israel, it has long been known that the US military has been interested in "learning" from Israel's experience attempting to suppress the Palestinian uprising. In March 2003, for example, the AP reported that the "the (US) military has been listening closely to Israeli experts and picking up tips from years of Israeli Army operations in Palestinian areas and Lebanese towns."

This cooperation has included briefings of US personnel by Israeli officers, and, according to AP, "In January and February (2003), Israeli and American troops trained together in southern Israel's Negev Desert ... Israel has also hosted senior law enforcement officials from the United States for a seminar on counterterrorism."

Meanwhile, more evidence has emerged undermining the US thesis that the abuses at Abu Ghraib was the work of a "few bad apples." The Guardian reported that the "sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison was not an invention of maverick guards, but part of a system of ill-treatment and degradation used by special forces soldiers that is now being disseminated among ordinary troops and contractors."

This system, known to insiders as "R2I," short for resistance to interrogation, also includes such methods as "hooding, sleep deprivation, time disorientation and depriving prisoners not only of dignity, but of fundamental human needs, such as warmth, water and food." These are all techniques long employed by Israel.

The visit of the US delegation that included the CACI head exposes a rarefied web of influence sharing in which US government officials and congressmen, defense contractors and lobbyists parcel out huge contracts, and siphon significant portions off to Israel.

As Batya Feldman of Israel's Globes financial news service put it, the visit provided Israeli companies with "an excellent opportunity to encounter big bucks in homeland security."

To help Israeli companies pry some of these "big bucks" loose, the visit included seminars for Israeli companies given by US pro-Israel lobbyists called "How to Approach the Homeland Security Department," and "How to Sell to the US Defense Department."

Israeli participants would have had a chance to test the helpful tips, since present on the trip were Assistant Secretary for Homeland SecurityRobert Liscouski and many leading US legislators, including top members of the US House and Senate Armed Services Committees, which jointly oversee tens of billions of dollars in military spending.

Israeli helicopter gunships have carried out strikes in Gaza City, apparently targeting the militant group Islamic Jihad.

The attacks early on Saturday hit a building on the seafront, and then offices in the city.

However, both buildings were empty and casualties are thought to be light.

The raids came after two Israeli soldiers and at least two Palestinians died in clashes at Rafah refugee camp, in the southern Gaza Strip.

The fighting occurred as troops moved in to demolish homes and expand a buffer zone along the Egyptian border.

Toll from latest violence

• 14 May - Two Israeli soldiers and one Palestinian killed in the Rafah refugee camp
• 13 May - 12 Palestinians reported dead in Israeli raids on Rafah refugee camp
• 12 May - Five Israeli soldiers killed by a rocket fired by Palestinian gunmen near Rafah
• 11-12 May - 14 Palestinians killed during Israeli incursion in Gaza City
• 11 May - Six Israeli soldiers killed by an anti-tank bomb in Gaza City

Comment: Look what has been happening while world attention has been focused on the beheading of Nick Berg. Israel has been killing even more Palestinians, razing even more Palestinian homes. This comes the week after Bush tells the Jordanian king that the Palestinians will receive a letter of assurances, too. What a joke. Unfortunately, it is the sort of frat boy joke that goes bad and kills someone...only in this case it is thousands.

Last Updated Fri, 14 May 2004 23:51:48

OTTAWA - Record high gas prices are hitting consumers across the nation, and like the weather, people keep complaining about it. But no one seems willing to fix it.

15/05/2004 18:30:32 | ABC Radio Australia News

Hundreds of people on an eastern Indonesian island have reportedly been forced from their homes by a volcanic eruption.

Mount Sirung on Pantar Island in East Nusa Tenggara province began spewing smoke and dust about two days ago.

A local government official said hundreds of residents within one or two kilometres of the volcano had been moved further away.

No damage had yet been reported.

In February more than 5,000 people were forced from their homes when Mount Egon on nearby Flores island began spewing smoke.

TOKYO (AP) - A volcano erupted in southern Japan on Saturday, shaking the nearby area with an explosion and spewing smoke high into the air, an official said. There were no reports of damage or injuries.

TOKYO (AP) - A volcano erupted in southern Japan on Saturday, shaking the nearby area with an explosion and spewing smoke high into the air, an official said. There were no reports of damage or injuries.

The explosion of Mount Sakurajima registered as "large'' on the Meteorological Agency's scale for both the sound and the strength of the tremors it caused, an official at the local agency office in Kagoshima said.

Officials could not tell how high the smoke rose due to cloudy weather, he said.

The 1,117-meter (3,686-foot) high Sakurajima is one of Japan's most active volcanoes. Clouds of ash constantly drift from its crater. It sits in Kagoshima Bay, about 950 kilometers (590 miles) southwest of Tokyo.

An eruption in October 2000 blew ash five kilometers (three miles) into the air and blanketed a nearby city in dust.

Japan is among the most seismically active countries in the world, with 108 active volcanoes. The nation lies in the "Ring of Fire'' _ a series of volcanoes and fault lines that outline the Pacific Ocean.-AP

By BRIAN HARMON
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Pumping gas and gabbing on the cell phone can be a combustible mix - and Matthew Erhorn is singed proof of that.

Erhorn, a 21-year-old SUNY-New Paltz student, caught on fire Thursday night at a Mobil station near the college when his ringing cellular phone ignited vapors near the gas pump, firefighters said.

He escaped with just minor burns, but his mishap fuels the debate over whether a cell phone can really set off an explosion at a gas station.

¬2004 Pierre-Paul Feyte

Nick Berg decapitation video declared "a fraud" by medical doctor

"The first casualty of war is the truth and this one has been no exception. La Voz de Aztlan obtained a copy of the video showing the beheading of American Nick Berg of Philadelphia and immediately something very odd was readily apparent. Not only were the purported screams of Nick Berg not in synchrony with the decapitation but their was also a total lack of blood spurting out as his jugular and other veins and arteries were being cut.

We forwarded the video to Doctor Raul Castro Guevara, a surgeon and forensic expert in Mexico City for his expert opinion. He wrote back and commented, "No hay manera que el individuo en el video estaba vivo y su corazon funcionando cuando le estaban cortando la cabeza. En estos casos, el corazon impela sangre con gran presion, y se corta las arterias del cuello, hay una gran cantidad de sangre que salpica por todos lados. En mi opinion el video es un fraude."

Doctor Raul Castro Guevara is saying that there is no way that the individual in the video was alive and his heart pumping while his neck was being cut. The doctor adds that in these cases, while the heart is pumping, cutting a person's artery in the neck, would cause copious amounts of blood to spurt all over the immediate environment. He says that in his opinion the video is a fraud.

We hope that our readers view the video and see for themselves. We will provide a copy to any of our subscribers that have been supportive of our publication. Send a request to La Voz de Aztlan at Fake_Video@Aztlan.Net

If you are able to view the video, please pay close attention to the five so called Al queda terrorists making the political statement. Look at their height, weight, skin color and their mannerisms. Do you think these people are Arabs or Iraqis?"

¬2004 Pierre-Paul Feyte

New prisoner abuse images 'far worse'

Thursday 13 May 2004, 8:13 Makka Time, 5:13 GMT

New images of Iraqi prisoner abuse have left members of the US Congress horrified and shaken.

After viewing them on Wednesday in a presentation organized by the Pentagon at Capitol Hill, members said the photos contained disturbing images of torture and humiliation.

Some top Republicans urged the pictures not to be released publicly, saying they could endanger US forces overseas.

"I would state, though, from at least my perspective, that what we saw is appalling," said Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist.

"There were some awful scenes. It felt like you were descending into one of the wings of hell and sadly it was our own creation," said Senator Richard Durbin.

Special viewing

Senators and members of the House of Representatives had a chance to look at more than 1,200 images in separate secure rooms during the presentation.

Republican Jane Harman said the new pictures showed "cruel and sadistic torture."

"I expected that these pictures would be very hard on the stomach lining and it was significantly worse than anything that I had anticipated" said Senator Ron Wyden. "Take the worst case and multiply it several times over."

Some photos showed military dogs snarling at cowering prisoners while others depicted Iraqi women prisoners being forced to disrobe.

"There were several pictures of Iraqi women who were disrobed or putting their shirts up. They were not smiling in the pictures, thatÆs for sure," said Ben Nighthorse Campbell after the viewing.

Rumsfeld defends methods

A few hours before the pictures were screened, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld defended military interrogation techniques, rejecting complaints that they violate international rules and may endanger Americans taken prisoner.

Rumsfeld told a Senate committee hearing that Pentagon lawyers had approved methods such as sleep deprivation and dietary changes as well as rules permitting guards to make prisoners assume stressful positions.

But Senator Durbin said some of the approved techniques "go far beyond the Geneva Convention," a reference to international rules governing the treatment of prisoners of war.

CIA interrogations 'too brutal'

US officials have said the CIA's methods of interrogating suspected al-Qaeda leaders are too brutal, the New York Times reports.

Unnamed counter-terrorism officials told the paper that CIA methods were so severe, the FBI had directed its agents to stay out of many of the interviews.

The techniques are said to have been authorised by the Bush administration after the 9/11 attacks on the US.

None of the detainees, held in secret locations, are thought to be in Iraq.

The paper cites one case of a detainee who was subjected to a technique known as water boarding, in which a prisoner is strapped down, forcibly pushed under water and made to believe that he might drown.

Some have been hooded, soaked with water, roughed up and deprived of food, light and medication.

At least one CIA employee was disciplined for threatening a detainee with a gun during an interrogation.

Secret rules

The paper says FBI officials have advised their director, Robert Mueller, that the techniques would be prohibited in criminal cases.

Defenders of the secret interrogation rules say the methods stop short of torture and serious injury.

Current CIA officers are said to be worried that public outrage at the treatment of detainees in Iraq might lead to a closer examination of their treatment of al-Qaeda prisoners.

"Some people involved in this have been concerned for quite a while that eventually there would be a new president, or the mood in the country would change, and they would be held accountable," one was quoted as saying.

"Now that's happening faster than anybody expected."

The whereabouts of high-level al-Qaeda detainees is a closely guarded secret, and human rights groups have been denied access to the prisoners.

Officials say some have been send abroad.

"There was a debate after 9/11 about how to make people disappear," a former intelligence official told the paper.

The government was advised that if the CIA was considering procedures which violated the Geneva Convention or US laws prohibiting torture and degrading treatment, it would not be held responsible if it could be argued that the detainees were in the custody of another country.

Berg family points finger at FBI

Thursday 13 May 2004, 11:46 Makka Time, 8:46 GMT

Family and friends of slain Nicholas Berg are angry that the US government denied he was in their custody in Iraq.

As the body of Berg arrived back home, mystery surrounded not only his disappearance but also why he had been held by Iraqi police for about two weeks and questioned by FBI agents three times.

Berg's family disputed US officials' claims that he was never in US custody.

"The Iraqi police do not tell the FBI what to do, the FBI tells the Iraqi police what to do. Who do they think they're kidding?" Berg's father, Michael, told reporters from his home in a Philadelphia suburb on Wednesday.

Devastated family weep at release of brutal tape

[...] Mr Berg was in Baghdad from late December to 1 February and returned to Iraq in March. He did not find any work and planned again to return home on 30 March, but his daily communications home stopped on 24 March. He later told his parents that he had been jailed by Iraqi officials at a checkpoint in the northern city of Mosul.

On 5 April, the Bergs filed a lawsuit in federal court in Philadelphia, contending that their son was being held illegally by the US military.

The next day Mr Berg was released. He told his parents he had not been mistreated.

The Bergs last heard from their son on 9 April, when he said he would come home by way of Jordan, Turkey or Kuwait. But by then, hostilities in Iraq had escalated.

Mrs Berg said the family had been trying for weeks to learn where her son was, but that federal officials had not been helpful.

"I went through this with them for weeks," she said. "I basically ended up doing most of the investigating myself."

[...] The killing was reminiscent of the kidnapping and videotaped beheading of Daniel Pearl, a Wall Street Journal reporter, in 2002 in Pakistan. Four Islamic militants have been convicted of kidnapping him, but seven other suspects - including those who allegedly slit his throat - remain at large.

Finally, there is a fourth reason, which complicates everything, and of which LTvy is less admittedly less certain. LTvy speculates that Daniel Pearl died because he knew too much; specifically, he had uncovered certain secrets that none of the parties involved in his murder, specifically the ISI and Al Qaeda, could afford to let Pearl publicize. After carefully retracing Daniel Pearl's last steps, LTvy hypothesizes that he had uncovered hard evidence that Pakistan had assisted Bin Laden with his attempts to acquire the technology to make nuclear weapons. The evidence he presents, though far from conclusive, certainly gives one pause for thought.

WASHINGTON - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld defended military interrogation techniques in Iraq on Wednesday, rejecting complaints that they violate international rules and may endanger Americans taken prisoner.

Rumsfeld told a Senate committee that Pentagon lawyers had approved methods such as sleep deprivation and dietary changes as well as rules permitting prisoners to be made to assume stress positions.

Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, also noted that the rules require prisoners to be treated humanely at all times.

But Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill. said some of the approved techniques "go far beyond the Geneva Convention," a reference to international rules governing the treatment of prisoners of war. [...]

Comment: "Stress positions"?! And how about "dietary changes" - one might imagine that Rumsfeld was not talking about changing the type or quality of food, but rather about withholding food entirely. It is certainly interesting to see how the US government believes that humane treatment includes sleep deprivation, starvation, and the shackling of prisoners in painful positions for hours on end - otherwise known as torture.

British stargazers are praying that bad weather will not scupper their chance of witnessing one of the rarest events in astronomy - last seen 721 years ago.

Amateur observers and schoolchildren are hoping to watch the six-hour transit of Venus across the sun on June 8.

Venus will appear as a small black disc as it moves in an angular orbit across the bottom of the sun - but will be seen in the UK only if there are no clouds between 6am and 12.30pm.

Though the planet last made a transit in December 1882, it could not be properly observed from the UK and the event has not been seen clearly since 1283.

Transits of Venus across the sun are among the rarest of planetary alignments and have occurred only six times since the invention of the telescope, in 1631, 1639, 1761, 1769, 1874 and 1882.

The events occur in irregular pairs and though another is scheduled for 2012, it will not be visible in Britain.

A group of libertarian-minded Republicans in Congress is blocking President Bush’s effort to strengthen domestic counterterrorism laws and reauthorize the USA Patriot Act, which the president has made one of his top domestic priorities this year.

As a result of this opposition, Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, was forced last week to cancel panel consideration of legislation that would have given law-enforcement officials more tools to pursue suspected terrorists. [...]

Jeff Lungren, a spokesman for the Judiciary Committee, said work on the Sensenbrenner bill was canceled last week because committee Democrats had demanded more time to examine it. Lungren emphasized that it was not related to the Patriot Act.

But a group of lawmakers, including some Republicans, saw it differently.

One GOP lawmaker on the panel — who asked to remain anonymous to avoid angering the chairman — said Republicans had also objected to the legislation. The lawmaker added that Sensenbrenner had informed his GOP colleagues the panel would consider the measure shortly before the scheduled markup. [...]

WEST CHESTER, Pa. (AP) — The family of an American civilian shown beheaded on an Islamic militant Web site huddled in in tears Tuesday after learning of the existence of the graphic videotape.

The video showed Nick Berg, 26, in a staged execution carried out by an al-Qaida affiliated group. The video said the killing was to avenge the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers.

"My name is Nick Berg, my father's name is Michael, my mother's name is Suzanne," the man said on the video before being killed. "I have a brother and sister, David and Sara. I live in ... Philadelphia."

Berg's family said U.S. State Department officials on Monday had told them Berg was decapitated. The family, though, had wanted that information to remain private.

When told about news of the Web site Nick Berg's father, brother and sister, collapsed to the ground in a tearful hug in their front yard.

"I knew he was decapitated before," said the father, Michael Berg. "That manner is preferable to a long and torturous death. But I didn't want it to become public."

Michael Berg lashed out at the U.S. military and Bush administration, saying his son might still be alive had he not been detained by U.S. officials in Iraq without being charged and without access to a lawyer.

Nick Berg, a small telecommunications business owner, spoke to his parents on March 24 and told them he would return home on March 30. But Berg was detained by Iraqi police at a checkpoint in Mosul on March 24. He was turned over to U.S. officials and detained for 13 days.

His father, Michael, said his son wasn't allowed to make phone calls or contact a lawyer.

FBI agents visited Berg's parents in West Chester on March 31 and told the family they were trying to confirm their son's identity. On April 5, the Bergs filed suit in federal court in Philadelphia, contending that their son was being held illegally by the U.S. military. The next day Berg was released. He told his parents he hadn't been mistreated.

Michael Berg said he blamed the U.S. government for creating circumstances that led to his son's death. He said if his son hadn't been detained for so long, he might have been able to leave the country before the violence worsened.

"I think a lot of people are fed up with the lack of civil rights this thing has caused," he said. "I don't think this administration is committed to democracy."

The Bergs last heard from their son April 9, when he said he would come home by way of Jordan.

Berg had traveled several times to Third World countries to help spread technology, his family said. He had previously traveled to Kenya and Ghana, where they said he had purchased a $900 brick-making press for a poor village, the family said.

Berg's mother, Suzanne Berg, said her son was in Iraq to help rebuild communication antennas.

"He had this idea that he could help rebuild the infrastructure," she said.

Michael Berg described himself as fervently anti-war, but said his son disagreed with him.

"He was a Bush supporter," Berg said. "He looked at it as bringing democracy to a country that didn't have it."

Suzanne Berg said she was told her son's body would be transported to Kuwait and then to Dover, Del. She said the family had been trying for weeks to learn where their son was but that federal officials had not been helpful.

"I went through this with them for weeks," she said. "I basically ended up doing most of the investigating myself."

Comment: The alleged Al-Qaeda video includes the following statement:
"For the mothers and wives of American soldiers, we tell you that we offered the U.S. administration to exchange this hostage with some of the detainees in Abu Ghraib and they refused. So we tell you that the dignity of the Muslim men and women in Abu Ghraib and others is not redeemed except by blood and souls. You will not receive anything from us but coffins after coffins ... slaughtered in this way."
First we have the release of torture photos by the mainstream US media, which appears to have suppressed such information in the past. Now the decapitation of an American citizen who supported Bush is the latest headline, and his family is decrying the Bush administration. Are we to assume that Al-Qaeda would not have known about the torture occurring in Iraq if they were indeed involved in the recent "resistance" in Iraq? Several of the detainees who were allegedly tortured were released well before the photos hit the American presses. The Red Cross voiced its concerns back in February. So, why now? If one considers that Al-Qaeda seems to be a CIA/Mossad creation, the picture becomes more clear. Bush may not have as many friends as he thought. On the other hand, a huge event - such as another terrorist attack on US soil - could be used to "justify" the actions of Shrub and his administration.

¬2004 Pierre-Paul
Feyte

ANTIOCH, Calif. - Long before the world saw shocking photos of U.S. soldiers abusing Iraqi detainees, Sgt. Michael Sindar and other military police serving at the Abu Ghraib prison saw all they wanted of them.

Pictures of abuse and humiliation of Iraqis, taken with digital cameras, were burned onto CDs that circulated widely among prison personnel, said Sindar, 25. Peeks could be had in the chow hall.

"It was like a commodity," Sindar explained. "Whatever pictures you had, whoever had the most foul picture out there, everyone wanted to see what it was."

Brutality was also in the air. Sindar recalled a 14-year-old Iraqi with a broken arm being hurled to the ground and then mocked by U.S. soldiers as the boy wept and wet himself in the prison intake center. [...]

Sindar and other MPs who served at Abu Ghraib now blame weak senior officers for failing to restrain American bullies there, let alone set clear standards for treating Iraqi detainees. From the MPs' accounts, it's clear that problems at Abu Ghraib extended beyond just a few bad apples to a leadership system that failed to temper the outbursts of poorly trained and war-wearied soldiers.

"The thing with the soldiers there, they think because we're Americans, you can do whatever you want," said Spc. Ramon Leal, 25, of San Jose, Calif. [...]

Strong, who treated both soldiers and Iraqi inmates for injuries, said he would watch soldiers for violent tendencies or signs of combat stress.

"You can see these guys messed up ... running up and down the halls naked, or when they're not eating, losing weight," Strong said. "There were probably 30 people that went on medication while they were over there - Prozac, Zoloft, those kind of drugs."

Alcohol was widely available: cans of vodka or bottles sent from home. Soldiers would pay translators to buy beer or whiskey. Soldiers who complained said their gripes were dismissed.

One 870th soldier started Alcoholics Anonymous meetings inside Abu Ghraib.

"A.A. meetings in the prison," mused Master Sgt. Greg Rayburn, a medic. "Obviously there was a need for it."

Strong, 50, said he found himself hitting Iraqi prisoners and recognized in himself how anger could turn into brutality.

"You get a burning in your stomach, a rush, a feeling of hot lead running through your veins, and you get a sense of power," Strong said.

"Imagine wearing point-blank body armor, an M-16 and all the power in the world, and the authority of God. That power is very addictive." [...]
|||8|| 1084277012|hsee|US Senate to probe military on Iraq abuse|Tuesday 11 May 2004, 11:20

A Senate committee is set to question the army general who reported on abuses of Iraqi detainees by US occupation soldiers.

Following on from Friday's all-day grilling of Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the Senate Armed Services Committee will first hear from US Army Major General Antonio Taguba on Tuesday, who wrote a report outlining the abuses.

On Tuesday afternoon, the committee will question Under Secretary of Defence Stephen Cambone, who is in charge of intelligence, and other Pentagon officials about the scandal that has sparked international outrage and calls from Democrats for Rumsfeld's resignation.
|||2|| 1084276503|hsee|Earthquake jolts northwest China|BEIJING, May 11 (Xinhuanet) -- An earthquake measuring 5.9 on the Richter Scale hit Delhi City in northwest China's Qinghai Province at 07:27 am Tuesday, according to China's Seismological Forecast Network.

The epicenter of the earthquake was about 60 kilometers west ofthe urban area of Delhi City at north latitude 37.4 degrees and east longitude 96.7 degrees.
|||11||

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