Why do you protect criminals instead of catching them?

In Ray Bradbury's famous sci-fi novel "Fahrenheit 451," firemen didn't put out fires, they started them. They burned books — which were banned — and the houses that held them, and then giggled salaciously as the dreams of innocent people went up in flames.

This is an apt portrayal of what today's FBI has become, a cowardly secret police protecting the evil interests of the powers that be at the expense of ordinary citizens trying to live decent and honest lives.

You trumpet your astute captures of spies such as Regan, Hanson, and Ames, but you ignore the real spies, who are Perle, Wolfowitz, and Kissinger, as well as the Democrats' golden Chinese geese, because you are too corrupted and too chicken to confront the people with the real money whose psychopathic agenda you preserve and protect.

To preserve and protect the rich and persecute the poor, that's your motto. Destroy the Constitution to increase profits of the wealthy? No problem for the FBI. Never has been.

Why else would Dick Simkanin be imprisoned for decades for merely trying to prove a relatively trivial point about withholding taxes, and Dick Cheney be running fat and free and still stealing billions from the American people?

Why else would you have ignored esteemed General Benton Partin, who proved conclusively that the courthouse in Oklahoma City was blown outward by bombs inside the building, and not by some ineffectual truck bomb that didn't even knock down a nearby tree?

Why else would you have the twisted temerity to pronounce the pre-9/11 investments as "not suspicious" when everyone in the world knows that the ruthless manipulators who made those investments know exactly who arranged the demolition of the World Trade Center towers that caused the deaths of 3,000 innocent people? Even you know they sure weren't Arabs. Nor Afghanis. Nor Iraqis.

There are thousands of people right now, members of the Council on Foreign Relations and trustees of the big banks and financial houses, who know exactly what happened on that terrible day, but you won't go after them because they sign your paychecks. You love your paycheck. To hell with the little people. Constitution vs. paycheck. No contest.

You played right along with all these ruses, and so many, many more.

You promoted Ricks, supervisor of the senseless Waco slaughter, and imprisoned Charles Sell, the hapless dentist who took those X-rays of the corpses of the children who had bullets in their brains.

You gave a medal to sniper Lon Horiuchi for putting a bullet through the head of Vicki Weaver while she was holding her baby in her arms, then paid off her husband to keep quiet and got a whore judge to say it wasn’t Horiuchi’s fault.

You didn’t say a thing when the Bushes and Scalia stole the 2000 election. Never an investigation into the minus-17,000 votes Gore received in Volusia County.

And never an investigation into the World Trade Center catastrophe. Quite an enviable record. America’s finest law enforcement agency. Just like the fire department in Fahrenheit 451! Let ’er burn.

I guess I’m writing this in hopes of reaching some young agent not yet curdled by the perverted protocol that enables the FBI to create Muslim terrorists in a Filipino terror training camp, where the Oklahoma City and World Trade Center bombing schemes were first hatched. But when Michael Meiring blew his legs off, the cat came out of the bag, and now millions of astute people around the world know that this bogus Muslim terror threat has really been created by certain special departments of the FBI, the CIA, the NSC, the NRO, MI-6, the Mossad, and other intelligence apparatuses privy to this demonic agenda.

Most intelligent people around the world have figured out that the bombings in Madrid, Bali, Istanbul, Yemen and elsewhere were not accomplished by Islamic terrorists, but by highly paid cynics from a number of different countries — Israel, South Africa, and Chile, to name three — working for the same group that invented the idea of false flag terror in Afghanistan, and perfected some techniques in the Philippines, under the watchful eye of the organization you work for.

Probably young FBI agents haven’t figured this all out yet. They haven’t reached that Faustian point where they either sell their souls to the devils incarnate named Ashcroft or Mueller, or get booted out of the bureau.

This is really who I’m trying to tweak, trying to penetrate the armor of their conditioning and make the point that if they don’t honestly try to defend freedom — and not this rhetorical George W. Bush zombie freedom concept, because that’s the lie that’s accounting for all these needless murders all over the planet .... if those young people who joined the FBI to do the right thing still retain a scintilla of integrity, I need to ask them: who is going to protect our liberty, pursue our justice, if you don’t? Does it matter to you?

You need to know Army intelligence killed Martin Luther King. You need to know Bobby Kennedy was shot by his bodyguard from behind. You need to know JFK .... well, there’s simply so much to say, a lot of it involving Israel, the Dulles brothers, and the Bush family.

You get brought into the FBI in a totally brainwashed state, believing the Bureau acts for the finest motives and highest ideals of law and order. It can’t be very long before you begin to realize a lot of the law enforcers act like crooks, including, very likely, a lot of your own supervisors. The anthrax killer was very likely one of your own.

You need to know one of your brethren could have stopped the 1993 World Trade Center truck bombing, but chose not to. You need to know a lot of your brethren are into drug-smuggling up to their shoulders.

Is this what you signed on for? To become part of America’s ruthless and heartless and brainless and spinless and gutless Gestapo? Well, in this day and age, perhaps you did.

But just in case you didn’t, we need to ask you this. We need your help.

We need courageous individuals who aren’t afraid of the consequences to blow the damn whistle on all these coverups. We need to know who made the pre- 9/11 investments, because those people know who planned the whole operation.

We need to know — as if we didn’t know — who started everyone lying about Iraq, and made it OK to kill 100,000 people in Iraq last year for reasons that we all know are lies.

Hundreds of questions like this are waiting for the right person to come and blow the damned whistle.

Will it be you, young agent? Do you dare risk everything for freedom, or will you keep silent and maintain the 9/11 hijacker fiction? Will you act on your conscience or sit on your wallet? And if you choose the latter, what kind of reputation will that earn you? And how will it mesh with the oath that when you first took it, you really believed?

Freedom is not what someone orders you to do. Freedom, as Ray Bradbury’s hero fireman Guy Montag eventually came to learn, comes up from inside you, and ultimately becomes more important than absolutely anything else.

Do you have the courage to do it? It is no exaggeration to say the future of the whole world depends on what you will do.

Guy Montag enjoyed his job. He had been a fireman for ten years, and he had never questioned the pleasure of the midnight runs nor the joy of watching pages consumed by flames ... never questioned anything until he met a seventeen-year-old girl who told him of a past when people were not afraid.

Then he met a professor who told him of a future in which people could think ... and Guy Montag suddenly realized what he had to do!

John Kaminski’s essays have appeared on hundreds of websites around the world and have been collected into two anthologies. The latest, titled "The Perfect Enemy," is available at http://www.johnkaminski.com/

Comment: When we find ourselves in a position where government officials, the security apparatus, the media, the judiciary and just about every other major institution are all either dedicated or complicit in ensuring that the real truth about our reality never reaches the light of day, what chance is there for those of us who yearn for the truth? Furthermore, what chance is there when vast numbers of the people themselves are willing to buy into the lie and believe that our leaders are inherently "good"?

The odds are indeed against us, but we cannot and will not give in. While it may seem foolhardy at this point, the truth can still prevail, but it depends on you.

Like most of the world and at least half the population of America, I was somewhat shocked and saddened by the "supposed" re-election of George W. Bush on Nov 3rd. Of course none of it came as any real surprise. I read the Signs everyday. I knew he would win, whether from rigged voting machines, a manipulated Supreme Court decision, or a fake terrorist attack. The result was never in doubt.

Still, in spite of the certain foreknowledge of his victory, watching it transpire in real time, and dealing the confusing emotional aftermath was something I hadn't counted on. I spent the whole of the next few days enveloped in a kind of dark fog of depression, carrying what felt like a heavy oppressive burden whose intesity is difficult to describe. No matter how much evidence there was to indicate that Bush would be re-installed to continue his warring ways, there was still some small hope left inside me that perhaps, if he had lost, things might be different.

Wishful thinking will get you every time.

Well, that hope is dead now, and I am left to face the stark reality of another four years (or more) of global rule by a ruthless, smirking psychopath. It has become apparant that all things we have brought to light on the Signs pages over the last few years are now coming to pass. It has moved beyond the realm of probable speculation into the arena of cold, hard fact, and this knowledge is what I've been trying to process over the last four days.

It can often feel literally incapacitating when our illusions die. It's so difficult and painful to let go of our programmed perceptions of reality, that most of us would rather retreat into the comfort of self-calming and wishful thinking rather than accept the awful truth of our world today.

When one comes face to face with this truth, and when that truth stands in direct opposition to all we've been conditioned to believe, shattering our hopes and dreams of the future, there are usually only two ways to respond. The first is to go into denial, to pretend that the situation is "not as bad as it seems", or "things are bound to get better." This approach does no one any good, and by denying that which is staring us in the face, we merely facilitate the entropic decline of the universe, leading to ever more chaos and strife.

The second response is to examine our internal state, to see where it is that our beliefs are being contradicted by the facts, and throw those beliefs away entirely. By following this approach we begin the process of aligning ourselves with objective reality and serving the creative forces of the universe, which in turn opens up the possibility, even if small in potential, of actually realizing a different future.

"Straight is the road and narrow is the gate", as they say. There is no easy way to get around it. The process of eliminating those belief systems that hinder us from seeing what is real may be the most important work we can do with what little time we have left. The recent "faux" re-election of Georgie and his gang presents us with the perfect opportunity to put these ideas into practice, for one of the most resistant and insidious programs we run is our identification with our "nation", and all it implies. To have "pride" in one's country results from carrying erroneous beliefs about it and can only lead to more and more difficult problems later on.

Sure, it's understandable to be disheartened when our illusions are shattered, but to wallow in such feelings, or to retreat into denial when things don't go our way, is to waste a valuable opportunity to really begin to SEE. The stunning "shock" of Bush's recent coronation can provide us with the necessary fuel with which to overcome our limiting belief systems, and put it to work in creative and helpful ways.

So, in a way, I write this message for all those anti-war activists, and die-hard Democrats who, in their justifiable disbelief and sorrow, may be looking ahead to Hillary or Arnie in 2008 as an answer to our present woes. The system is rotten to the core, and not even Kerry, Jesus, or Space Brothers can help us now. It is time to see beyond the contrived right/left dualism of American politics and take the fight for truth to the battlefield that really matters, our minds.

And this brings me to the point of this essay, the conclusion I arrived at after mulling over the events of the last few days; the question of what to DO now, knowing the dire situation to come.

I understood that the oppresive feelings and overwhelming depression I experienced following the election, (although perfectly understandable considering what's likely in store for us), could lead to a kind of stagnation or paralysis if over-indulged. Identifying with the dread and all those ominous feelings could prevent anything productive from being done.

What is emotion but a build up of "energy" after all. This energy can be channeled in any direction we choose. We can use this energy of emotion to further cement our illusions of freedom and democracy, or it can galvanize us to take a hard look within ourselves, and see where our perceptions are out of sync with what the universe is clearly telling us.

The choice, as always, is up to each of us individually. We can choose to retreat into denial, or shine the light of truth onto a world, that for the most part, seems completely devoid of it. Because if we don't take on this task ourselves, there will be no-one to do it for us.

What hope is there in the thought that no-one is going to come in at the last minute and save us? What strength of will is needed to become our own saviours? As incredible as it sounds, we may literally be humanity's last hope. You and I here, reading this page.

Bleak times indeed.

What will you do with your energy over the next four years?

For me, the choice couldn't be more clear. To keep on keeping on. To continue to read the "Signs" everyday, and try and give voice to the truth in my own life. To grow in awareness by applying what I'm learning directly to my interactions with others. To continue to work on my own limiting internal programs, with the help of a great group of folks also committed to the truth. And hopefully be able to share what knowledge I may have gained from this process with those who sincerely ask.

I do this because I can, because if I don't no one else will, because it is in me to do.

Creation loves the light of truth.

Entropy thrives in the darkness of lies.

The universe's prime motivation is simply "to BE".

It is up to each of us to respond in kind.

NEW YORK (AP) - It's a long way from the Manhattan office of psychoanalyst Sherman Pheiffer to the Cambridge, Mass., practice of psychologist Jaine Darwin. But both are in blue states that voted heavily for John Kerry, and on the day he conceded, they heard plenty of distress about the election.

"My patients were incredulous, depressed, angry, very frightened," Pheiffer said. "Everyone talked about feeling frightened (about) the future of this country."

Darwin heard the same kinds of reactions. At the end of the campaign, Massachusetts Democrats "kind of let themselves hope Kerry would pull it out," she said, so patients felt "the roller coaster had crashed. I think we all had a little post-Red Sox magical thinking."

And among Kerry campaign volunteers, of course, the loss was still stinging the day after the concession.

"If I happened to be on a tranquilizer or Prozac, I would have to triple my dose," joked Sam Feldman, a 75-year-old retired businessman who lives on Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts but who volunteered for Kerry in Florida.

Elizabeth Marshall, a volunteer at the Centre County Democrats headquarters in Pennsylvania, said people there showed "bereavement, almost. People feel that something they had, which was hope for imminent change, has been taken from them."

The good news, mental health experts say, is that most Kerry supporters will get over their disappointment on their own. In fact, maybe sooner than they think.

"Right now you've got them at the depths of their despair," said Daniel Gilbert, a Harvard psychologist who has studied voters' emotional reaction to elections. "They're not going to feel worse in a week. They're going to feel better." [...]

In fact, Gilbert said, his work has shown that voters get over their election-day disappointments faster than they predict they will.

"They don't think they'll be over it in a month, but they will be," he said.

Even now, Pheiffer, Darwin and other mental health professionals said they weren't getting any new patients because of the Kerry defeat. And Dr. David Rissmiller, chairman of the psychiatry department at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey-School of Osteopathic Medicine, said there's been no election-related jump in calls at two New Jersey crisis centers he's familiar with.

Temporary sadness, anxiety and concern about the future are understandable responses among Kerry supporters, said Dr. Charles Goodstein, a psychiatrist at the New York University Medical Center.

So when is it time to call a mental health professional? "When something goes on longer than you're comfortable with, then talk to somebody," Darwin advised. "You don't have to have major depression to talk to somebody."

Healthy reactions to post-election disappointment include talking about it with others and becoming or remaining politically active, experts said.

"I think it's important to give yourself a little bit of time to grieve," said Mary McClanahan, a psychologist in State College, Pa., who volunteered along with Marshall at the local county Democratic headquarters.

She described herself as "incredibly disappointed" but also galvanized.

Her fellow volunteers felt the same way, she said. And for both civic and psychological reasons, she said, such people should re-invest that energy in politics.

"Whenever we suffer a disappointment, and there's a chance to have a future success experience and we don't take advantage of that, it leaves people with greater regrets in the long run," she said.

WASHINGTON (CP) - The bookies are already betting on Hillary Rodham Clinton to take the White House in 2008.

And she was the first person on everyone's lips as talk turned to who will win the next Democratic presidential nomination after John Kerry's narrow election loss this week to George W. Bush.

Not so fast, though. There's every indication that Kerry's vice-presidential running mate, John Edwards, is interested in the job.
Howard Dean and Wesley Clark, who lost the nomination to Kerry this time, could be in the mix.

And there's any number of Democratic governors, including New Mexico's Bill Richardson and Iowa's Tom Vilsack, who might give it a shot.

Barack Obama, who just became the sole black voice in the U.S. Senate, is a rising star who impressed the Democratic convention this summer with a passionate speech about self-reliance and the American dream.

At age 42, however, Barack is considered perhaps too young and won't have enough experience in national politics for a decent shot at the presidency. His fans are looking to 2012 or 2016.

Donna Brazile, who ran Al Gore's failed 2000 campaign against Bush, says the trick is to look at fresh faces with an open perspective, people who aren't in the political headlines now but could rise to the challenge.

"Too bad Oprah wouldn't stick her neck out. I think she'd be fantastic," Brazile said in an interview Friday. [...]

SACRAMENTO - Except for the accident of birth, Arnold Schwarzenegger would have awakened Wednesday to speculation that in 2008, when the White House comes open, he would be a likely Republican candidate for president.

But the Austrian-born governor, barred by the Constitution from running for the highest office, might yet find a way to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Schwarzenegger, who made one appearance on President Bush's behalf in the pivotal state of Ohio, remains coy about his future.

"I think that this is a debate people will have in America, all of America, and I hope to be out of the debate,'' he told reporters Wednesday. "Otherwise it becomes kind of a political debate, between Democrats and Republicans.''

That hasn't stopped the governor's supporters from dreaming. At his election night party in Beverly Hills, several people wore orange "Amend for Arnold'' buttons.

To succeed, the movement to allow foreign-born leaders to run for president probably needs to be tied to a personality. It needs a public face -- whether it's Schwarzenegger, Jennifer Granholm, Michigan's Democratic governor who was born in Canada, or former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, a native of Czechoslovakia.

Governor's options

Schwarzenegger's plans are a matter of widespread interest in Sacramento. As he ponders his future, the governor has several options:

• He could decide to make a quick exit after one term in the Capitol and mount a dual campaign to change the Constitution at the same time that he runs for president.

• He could run for the U.S. Senate and try to cajole his congressional colleagues in Capitol Hill's cloakrooms into amending the Constitution to make him eligible for the nation's top job.

• Or he could seek re-election and use his post as leader of the nation's most populous state -- with the highest number of Electoral College votes -- as his launching pad to higher office. [...]

A man who shot himself at the World Trade Center site was apparently distraught over President George W. Bush’s re-election, a newspaper reported today.

The body of 25-year-old Andrew Veal of Athens, Georgia, was found yesterday morning inside the off-limits site, said Steve Coleman, a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

A shotgun was found nearby, but no suicide note was found, Coleman said.

Veal’s mother said her son was upset about the result of the presidential election and had driven to New York, Gus Danese, president of the Port Authority Police Benevolent Association, told The New York Times.

Friends said Veal worked in a computer lab at the University of Georgia and was planning to marry.

“I’m absolutely sure it’s a protest,” Mary Anne Mauney, Veal’s supervisor at the lab, told newspapers.

“I don’t know what made him commit suicide, but where he did it was symbolic.”

Police were investigating how Veal entered the site of the World Trade Center, which was destroyed in the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

The site is protected by high fences and owned by the Port Authority.

Defence expert says America is likely to ignore treaty ban

America has begun preparing its next military objective - space. Documents reveal that the US Air Force has for the first time adopted a doctrine to establish 'space superiority'.

The new doctrine means that pre-emptive strikes against enemy satellites would become 'crucial steps in any military operation'. This week defence experts will attend a conference in London amid warnings that President Bush's re-election will pave the way to the arming of space.

Internal USAF documents reveal that seizing control of the 'final frontier' is deemed essential for modern warfare. Counterspace Operations reveals that destroying enemy satellites would improve the chance of victory. It states: 'Space superiority provides freedom to attack as well as freedom from attack. Space and air superiority are crucial first steps in any military operation.'

Theresa Hitchens, vice-president of a Washington-based independent think-tank, the Centre for Defence Information, said: 'These documents show that they are taking space control seriously.'

This week's meeting, held by the British-American Security Information Council (Basic), will also discuss whether Britain can restrain a US administration intent on strategic control of space.

Next year's budget for the US Missile Defence Agency includes funding for research into the development of 'space-based interceptors'. Although the funding allocated to develop lightweight ballistic missile parts is only £7.5m, further details have emerged of a more ambitious programme to site weapons in space.

Plans for a 'thin constellation of three to six spacecraft' in orbit, which would target enemy missiles as they took off or landed, are planned, according to Hitchens. The document, said Hitchens, signals that the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which outlaws the use of weapons in orbit, will be ignored. [...]

Comment: And the madness continues. It looks like the plans of those crazy PNAC boys are proceeding nicely.

Just in case any of our readers are unaware of what "PNAC" aka "Project for the New American Century" is, an article from their website from September 2000 entitled: "Rebuilding America’s Defenses - Strategy, Forces and Resources For a New Century" tells us:

"The Project for the New American Century was established in the spring of 1997. From its inception, the Project has been concerned with the decline in the strength of America’s defenses, and in the problems this would create for the exercise of American leadership around the globe and, ultimately, for the preservation of peace."

And just who was it that was saying such things way back in the late 90's and early 00's? Why if it wasn't old Jeb Bush, brother of the current wingnut President and, hey look! It's Dick Cheney, the current Vice President, and, no! It can't be! Why...yes! It's Donny Rumsfeld! the current Secretary of Defense and, wouldn't ya know it, it's your favorite and mine, Paul Wolfowitz the current Deputy Secretary of Defense. Also hanging loose with the posse is I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby currently Assistant to the President and Chief of Staff to Vice President and Dov Zakheim, chief Rabbi and one time CFO at the Pentagon (see here for more on this particular bad boy).

So how's that for a coincidence! Who would have thought that those guys would all have been hanging out together talking "smack" about the state of America's foreign policy and how it needed revolutionising while Clinton was President, only to later find themselves all in government together under Bush with a mandate, provided by 9/11, to revolutionise American foreign policy. What amazing luck!

So just what was it that these guys were muttering about back in the late 90's and early 2000?

"At present the United States faces no global rival. America’s grand strategy should aim to preserve and extend this advantageous position as far into the future as possible."

Say what? Did we really just read that? This group of Washington and Pentagon insiders all with their fingers on the pulse of world politics knew for sure that in September 2000 the US had "no global rival"? But what about Osama and al-Qaeda and all the other "Arab terrorists"? Weren't they a threat to the US?

Apparently not.

So did our leaders know something that we did not?

Apparently so, and you heard it from the horse's mouth (no offence Mr Cheney).

Anyway, in their article, the little incestuous, cultic cabal continued:

"Preserving the desirable strategic situation in which the United States now finds itself requires a globally preeminent military capability both today and in the future."

"Although it may take several decades for the process of transformation to unfold, in time, the art of warfare on air, land, and sea will be vastly different than it is today, and "combat" likely will take place in new dimensions: in space, "cyber-space,” and perhaps the world of microbes.

Air warfare may no longer be fought by pilots manning tactical fighter aircraft sweeping the skies of opposing fighters, but a regime dominated by long-range, stealthy unmanned craft. On land, the clash of massive, combined-arms armored forces may be replaced by the dashes of much lighter, stealthier and information-intensive forces, augmented by fleets of robots, some small enough to fit in soldiers’ pockets.

Control of the sea could be largely determined not by fleets of surface combatants and aircraft carriers, but from land- and space-based systems, forcing navies to maneuver and fight underwater. Space itself will become a theater of war, as nations gain access to space capabilities and come to rely on them; further, the distinction between military and commercial space systems – combatants and noncombatants – will become blurred. Information systems will become an important focus of attack, particularly for U.S. enemies seeking to short-circuit sophisticated American forces. And advanced forms of biological warfare that can "target" specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool."

So there ya have it folks, "the future" as outlined by a bunch of self-obsessed fruit loops back in 2000. Sadly these same "fruit loops" have now been "elected", or rather, they have "elected" themselves, for another four years of pushing ahead with the Orwellian techno-nightmare that they so cherish.

Yes indeed, these guys really take the "human" out of "humanity" and replace it with "insan".

How did it come to this? Well, the PNAC boys had that one all thought out as well. In the same document they stated:

"Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor..."

Everyone should prepare themselves for the very distinct possibility that, over the next four years, reality will become increasingly surreal. War is peace, freedom is slavery, life is death, all of these and more will be shoved in our faces and we will be asked to choose. We will be regularly challenged to discern and pick the nuggets of truth from among the detritus of the scrap heap which our planet is set to become, and it's all thanks to a certain small group of half-baked individuals who nevertheless have succeeded in deceiving the majority of American people.

Freaked out yet? You should be.

A spokesman for Iraq's interim prime minister Ayad Allawi has announced that the country's government has declared a 60-day state of emergency, in response to escalating violence.

fashion.telegraph

Thaer al-Naqib said the state of emergency, which is equivalent to martial law, will apply to the whole of Iraq except Kurdish areas in the north.

The announcement comes ahead of an expected offensive by US and Iraqi forces on the city of Falluja.

Comment: So there it is, Martial Law, is that what the Bushites meant by "Freedom and Democracy". Of course, there will be people who blame this on the "insurgents", but tell us, who is in the wrong here? 200,000 civilians massacred, a country in ruins and all for the purpose of stealing oil. If it happened in the US, would you blame American "insurgents" for taking action to protect their livelihoods and families?

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The U.S.-led occupation authority is taking initial steps toward selling off the first of Iraq's scores of state-owned companies to investors, but will stick to small enterprises until a sovereign Iraqi government takes over the job, the American privatization chief said Friday.

Thomas Foley said the privatizing of Iraq's government-dominated economy will begin with service companies, such as a taxi-limousine service and an architectural design firm.

"We selected a small group, fewer than 10 SOEs (state-owned enterprises) that are very small and very simple, low-asset businesses to begin initial privatization steps," said Foley, in charge of private-sector development under the Coalition Provisional Authority.

The U.S. plan for Iraqi privatization is controversial. Some critics interpret Article 47 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, protecting civilians in wartime, as outlawing major alterations in an occupied country's economic system, through its prohibition of annexation of occupied territory.

Comment: We don't need to tell you who the Iraqi-owned companies were being sold to, do we?

I cannot say for you, but if the Iraqis invaded the United States and started privatizing the assets of my home state, literally stealing what is the economic backbone of my state and my nation, I think I would pick up a gun and be an "insurgent".

You see, there is a big difference in a Patriot standing up for their nation, and a "terrorist insurgent" when the nation has been invaded by a trespasser, a thief. The more I look at what Bush-Cheney are up to, the more I am coming to the conclusion that most of the Iraqi insurgency is a legitimate opposition to our occupation of their nation and systematic theft of their national assets by deceit and subterfuge. [...]

Are you aware of Israeli firms that are setting up shop in Iraq? With the hatred towards Israel, what role do you think that lunacy would produce in a nation that does not like Israel at all? The only reason Israel is there is because we are there and think we can change 1,000 to 2,000 years of seething hatred with the wave of a Bush or Rumsfeld wand.

I see many lies, no truth. It does not matter how Bush - Cheney spin it, thievery is still thievery.

People resent being robbed and plundered. You would, so put
yourselves into the shoes of others and look at things from both sides before making up your mind.

Aiding and abetting theft of property is not one of those proper uses of our military in my mind. We have done it in Afghanistan in the military forced removal of the Taliban and Bridas Corporation of Argentina to get control of a pipeline that is necessary to make the landlocked Caspian Basin un-land-locked $10 trillion oil deal and about $3 trillion in natural gas, and we are now doing it in Iraq
on a national basis.

In a little reported event, President Bush appointed Tom Foley of Connecticut as the Privatization Czar of Iraq and although most Americans have not followed that trail as I have, and our media has completely kept this quiet, our President is privatizing the Iraqi power, oil, gas, water and other national assets of Iraq straight into the hands of his wealthy elite campaign backers. It is - in a word -
a despicable and systematic act of theft [grand larceny] from the Iraqis. [...]

The hospital was run by an Islamic charity

A hospital has been razed to the ground in one of the heaviest US air raids in the Iraqi city of Falluja.

Witnesses said only the facade remained of the small Nazzal Emergency Hospital in the centre of the city. There are no reports on casualties. [...]

'Ruined'

US troops using 155mm howitzers pounded a number of pre-planned targets in Falluja on Saturday.

Along with air strikes - one of the heaviest in recent days - this is all part of what appears to be a steadily increasing pressure on the insurgents, says the BBC's Paul Wood, who is with US marines outside Falluja.

Overnight, a column of armoured vehicles and humvee jeeps carried out attacks in the outskirts of Falluja designed to draw out the rebels and provide fresh targets for the air power and artillery.

These are the kind of preliminary operations which would be carried out before a full-scale assault on Falluja, our correspondent says.

The air strikes reduced the Nazzal hospital, run by a Saudi Arabian Islamic charity, to rubble.

Hospital officials quoted by Reuters news agency say all the contents were ruined.

Comment: Reducing a civilian hospital to rubble - is that what the "war on terror" is all about? Denying doctors and nurses the facilities to bring care and comfort to the sick injured and dying? Those innocent civilian victims of the US Marine core - "trained to kill - anything that moves".

Ah yes, a report such as this would surely fill all of those bible-thumping Bush supporters with pride, if they had access to it. Sadly, due to the partisan (to say the least) nature of the US media, they do not and never will.

JENIN, West Bank (AP) - Six Palestinians, including a 14-year-old boy, were killed and three Israelis were wounded Saturday in West Bank and Gaza Strip violence, the army and Palestinian sources said.

Israeli soldiers shot and killed Ala Samara, 14, during a clash in the West Bank town of Jenin. Samara was unarmed and was standing near a group of stone-throwing youths when troops shot him, Palestinian residents and hospital officials said.

Israeli military officials said the youths threw a firebomb at the troops, and soldiers fired at a youth who was about to throw a second firebomb.

The latest violence erupted as Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, 75, remained in a hospital outside Paris in critical condition from an undisclosed ailment. [...]

RAMALLAH, West Bank—A dying Yasser Arafat is in the midst of a last historic battle with Israel, one he is not even well enough to know he's waging.

As the 75-year-old Palestinian leader hovers in a coma in a Paris hospital — somewhere "between life and death," in the delicate words of one aide — his loyalists are locked in a struggle to bury him near Jerusalem's Al Aqsa Mosque, Islam's third-holiest shrine. The location, which Jews call the Temple Mount, symbolizes the very heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

For Israel, the answer is a non-negotiable No, a stance emphasized yesterday by notably pugnacious Justice Minister Yosef Lapid, who declared Jerusalem a city "where Jewish kings are buried and not Arab terrorists."

For Palestinians, Arafat's stated wish to be buried near the Al Aqsa Mosque is no less carved in stone, as the city's top Muslim cleric explained yesterday.

"President Arafat wants to be buried in Jerusalem. Under sharia law, the righteous thing is to obey his will. We must abide in full," said Ekrima Sabri, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, in an interview with the Toronto Star.

"We are expecting Israel to refuse. They have already said so.
"But I am not willing to ask permission. To so much as ask confirms Israel as the owner of land. And the land is ours."

French and Egyptian diplomats were last night working urgently to broker a solution to the impasse, mindful that under Muslim custom Arafat is to be buried within 24 hours of death. With each passing hour, as Arafat continues clinging to life in hospital, the dispute takes on greater import.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, for decades Arafat's strongest single adversary, vows to prevent Arafat's burial within the area Israel claims as Municipal Jerusalem, according to a source privy to the details of negotiations. Instead, Israel is urging Palestinians to consider a cemetery in the southern Gaza Strip town of Khan Younis, where several of Arafat's ancestors are buried.

Israel's preference for burial in Gaza is based on the logic that under Sharon's plan to unilaterally withdraw from the coastal territory next summer, Arafat's shrine will soon be in exclusively Palestinian hands.

A Gaza burial would also spare Israel and diplomats from throughout the Arab world the embarrassment inherent in an expected state funeral, the first of its kind in the territories since the onset of Israeli occupation following 1967's Six-Day War.

Located just a few kilometres from the Egyptian border, the Khan Younis site is the least problematic destination for the Arab world, a short journey that avoids much of the awkwardness of stepping inside the umbrella of Israeli control.

The West Bank, by contrast, involves a far more complicated and politically sensitive journey in which Arab diplomats would be duty-bound to blatantly break their own boycott by trekking through multiple Israeli army checkpoints, whether to East Jerusalem, the suburb of Abu Dis or the de facto Palestinian capital of Ramallah.

Analysts in Ramallah said yesterday the interim Palestinian leadership is leaning toward compromise, if only because it is in no position to bargain.

"If Israel refuses, what choice do we have?" said Mohammed Yaghi, executive director of the Palestinian Centre for Mass Communication, a Ramallah-based think-tank.

"It is not as if thousands of Palestinians will raise Arafat's body on their shoulders and march him to Jerusalem. The new Palestinian leadership will not let the street rise up. This would be insane," he said.

"The new leaders want to clutch this moment of Arafat's burial as a way to ease things with Israelis, not to increase the uprising."

Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia, who together with his predecessor Mahmoud Abbas has assumed the day-to-day affairs of Palestinian leadership, denied any such negotiations were under way.

Cabinet minister Saeb Erekat, another longtime Arafat loyalist, told Associated Press, "It's premature at this stage to talk about burying or not burying."

Grand Mufti Sabri rejected Israeli suggestions that Arafat's body could be entombed temporarily, pending the outcome of any possible future peace negotiations with Palestinians.

"This is not acceptable to Islam. The way to honour the dead is to leave him where he is buried, and not to move him later," said Sabri.

"We want our dead to have the respect and dignity they had in life."

Crucial tests to establish whether Yasser Arafat is brain dead have not been carried out by a Paris hospital, a French newspaper reported yesterday, leading to claims that doctors are under pressure to delay tests to determine his condition.

Amid conflicting reports of the Palestinian leader's health, there were rumours on the West Bank that he was being kept alive in order to buy time for a political deal on his succession to be hammered out.

In France, a patient can be declared brain dead only after a series of strict clinical tests. They include two brain scans - either two EEGs performed four hours apart or an EEG and an artery scan showing no blood flowing to the brain.

According to the newspaper, Liberation, Mr Arafat, 75, underwent only one brain scan on Thursday, which showed a blood-flow failure. The required second scan was reportedly not carried out.

Earlier last week, unidentified French medical officials said that Mr Arafat was brain dead but being kept alive on life-support machines.

The Percy military hospital, where the ailing leader was taken from the West Bank on October 29, did not respond yesterday to queries from the Telegraph about the second scan. But a senior Palestinian adviser, Nabil Abu Rudeina, denied that Mr Arafat was beyond recovery, saying that his condition remained critical but not hopeless.

As confusion over Mr Arafat's condition grew, a Palestinian legislator last night called for his financial adviser, Mohammed Rashid, who controls a multi-billion dollar network of Palestine Liberation Organisation accounts, to be investigated.

Over the past 40 years, Mr Arafat's PLO has built up a global empire of investments, worth an estimated $4.2 billion to $6.5 billion. (£2.3-£3.5 billion). Meanwhile the Palestinian Authority, which administers the territories, is virtually bankrupt.

Abdul Jawwad Saleh, a leading independent member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, wants Mr Rashid to be questioned at the organisation's Ramallah headquarters. His demand reflects concern that very few people will know the whereabouts of more than £2 billion of PLO funds if Mr Arafat dies. Mr Rashid left Ramallah some months ago, and is currently in Paris. Hassan Khreishe, another legislative council member, said Mr Rashid would be held to account. "We will follow him, don't worry," he said.

Mr Saleh is also calling for Mr Arafat's wife, Suha, who is said to be a business partner of Mr Rashid, to be questioned. "Mr Arafat's situation has presented a chance for us to question Mohammed Rashid," he said. "He knows better than anyone else the whereabouts of all the money, all the secret accounts. This is the people's money."

A confidential report last month by the Palestinian finance ministry shows that the Palestinian Authority is running a deficit of about £73 million a month.

Last year, the International Monetary Fund said Mr Arafat had diverted $1 billion or more of Palestinian Authority funds from 1995 to 2000.

A Palestinian lawyer who has investigated PLO corruption, and who wished to remain anonymous, said he knew of three or four Arafat loyalists who held secret bank accounts. "He paid a lot of this money to buy loyalty, squandering millions of dollars," he said.

"The corruption was huge. The PLO had monopolies on cement, petrol, construction, taxes and cigarettes. It has investments everywhere. Nobody knows what has happened to all these assets."

Conflicting reports about Mr Arafat's condition have fuelled rumours that he was poisoned by Israeli agents.

Dr Hisham Ahmed, a member of Mr Arafat's Fatah faction, said a bodyguard told him that the Palestinian leader had whispered to him: "This time they got me."

Comment: Israel made no secret of its desire to see Arafat dead, yet Sharon realised that neither he not Bush would be able to weather the political fallout if Arafat was "taken out" by Israeli agents. Thus a slower yet equally effective plan was formulated. Today, the prone almost lifeless figure of Arafat in a Paris hospital is further testimony to not only the success of the Israeli plan but to the callousness and deviousness with which Israel has always pursued it goals.

LOS ANGELES - Explosives were looted from the Al-Qaqaa ammunitions site in Iraq while outnumbered U.S. soldiers assigned to guard the materials watched helplessly, soldiers told the Los Angeles Times.

About a dozen U.S. troops were guarding the sprawling facility in the weeks after the April 2003 fall of Baghdad when Iraqi looters raided the site, the newspaper quoted a group of unidentified soldiers as saying. U.S. Army reservists and National Guardsmen witnessed the looting and some soldiers sent messages to commanders in Baghdad requesting help, but received no reply, they said.

"It was complete chaos. It was looting like L.A. during the Rodney King riots," one officer said.

The eyewitness accounts reported by the Times are the first provided by U.S. soldiers and bolster claims that the U.S. military had failed to safeguard the powerful explosives, the newspaper said.

Iraqi officials told the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency last month that about 380 tons of high-grade explosives, a type powerful enough to detonate a nuclear weapon, had been taken from the Al-Qaqaa facility.

Soldiers who belong to two different units described how Iraqis snatched explosives from unsecured bunkers and drove off with them in pickup trucks.

The soldiers who spoke to the Times asked to remain unidentified, saying they feared retaliation from the Pentagon.

The soldiers said they could not confirm that looters took the particularly powerful explosives known as HMX and RDX. One soldier, however, said U.S. forces saw looters load trucks with bags marked "hexamine," which is a key ingredient for HMX.

One senior noncommissioned officer said troops "were running from one side of the compound to the other side, trying to kick people out" and that at least 100 vehicles were at the site waiting for the military to leave so that they could loot the munitions.

The Pentagon has offered accounts that suggest the explosives were removed before the U.S.-led invasion to oust Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and not during the chaos following the fall of Baghdad.

A Pentagon statement last week said the removal of the explosives would have required dozens of heavy trucks moving along the same roads as U.S. combat divisions. [...]

NEAR FALLUJAH, Iraq, Nov. 6 -- More than 30 people were killed and more than 60 wounded in a rash of suicide bombings and mortar and rocket attacks in the Sunni Triangle on Saturday, as U.S. Marines and soldiers prepared for a possible assault on the rebel-held city of Fallujah.

The wounded included at least 16 U.S. soldiers injured when a suicide bomber rammed a car into their convoy in Ramadi, 60 miles west of Baghdad, U.S. officials said.

The deadliest violence occurred Saturday morning in Samarra, a city about 65 miles north of Baghdad that U.S. and Iraqi forces retook from insurgents early last month. A series of closely coordinated attacks killed about 30 people, according to tallies by news services, which canvassed hospitals. More than half of the casualties were Iraqi police officers killed in mortar attacks or ground assaults on police stations. [...]

Samarra residents said the violence threw the city into turmoil. Helicopters roared overhead, gunfire echoed through much of the day and U.S. forces imposed a curfew starting at noon. U.S. and Iraqi forces also closed down the main bridge leading into the city, firing toward boats that attempted to cross the Tigris River.

Hours after the attacks began, Fallujah's mujaheddin shura, or council of holy warriors, which governs the city, issued a statement in which it threatened to "launch wide military operations within the first hours of the U.S. attack on Fallujah, to open several fronts at the same time." The statement said insurgents were standing by in the cities of Baghdad, Kirkuk, Basra and Samarra.

In Baghdad, at least one Iraqi civilian was killed when a roadside bomb exploded near a military convoy in the western part of the city, the military said. Three U.S. soldiers were wounded in the attack.

Explosions echoed across the capital after dark, and residents said they were bracing for insurgent attacks when the U.S. assault on Fallujah begins.

The U.S. military has stepped up operations around Fallujah in advance of an expected offensive to retake the city, which has been controlled by insurgents since April. U.S. warplanes pounded enemy positions and stockpiles of weapons in the city Friday night and into Saturday, while Marine and Army units on the outskirts of the city staged a moonlit battle rehearsal that one Army officer described as a "boxing match" to see what kind of punch the insurgents would throw back.

The U.S. military cordoned off the city and threatened to arrest anyone younger than 45 who tried to flee.

Commanders have said they would not enter Fallujah until Iraq's interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, gave the word. Allawi, who returned to the country Friday night from a diplomatic trip, was scheduled to give a news conference in Baghdad on Sunday.

At least 23 people, mostly policemen, have been killed in attacks against police stations in the western Anbar province for the second day in a row.

In Haditha, 200km north-west of Baghdad, fighters with rocket-propelled grenades and mortars attacked a police station at dawn on Sunday.

After a 90-minute battle in which six policemen were wounded, the attackers took 21 captured policemen to the K-3 oil-pumping station area and shot them dead. [...]

(What's the betting that the company commander, mentioned in the report below, had joined the newly formed Iraqi security forces with the intention of playing exactly this sort of trick? In other words, he joined up as a double agent whose real loyalty lies with the Iraqi resistance. Which begs the question: how many more are there in Iraq’s newly formed security forces? Ed.)

NEAR FALLUJA, Iraq -- A company commander of the Iraqi security forces who received a full briefing on the expected Falluja assault is missing from a military base where U.S. and Iraqi troops are preparing for the possible operation.

The captain, a Kurd with no known ties to the Sunni city of Falluja, is thought to have taken notes from the battle briefing late Thursday. U.S. Marines and his fellow Iraqi officers found no sign of him Friday morning, except for his uniform and a weapon on his cot.

Marines are concerned that the information he knows could be passed along to insurgents. U.S. military sources believe insurgents have friends in the military and government.

The captain commands a company of about 160 men. He is among 10,000 U.S. and Iraqi forces expected to take part in the operation.

Marines say the captain's disappearance won't alter the tactics or timing of the Falluja operation.

Coalition officials hope the missing captain, who was not named, has merely headed home.

Most Kurds in Iraq live in the northeast corner of the country, several hundred miles from Falluja.

Comment: The above report has since been pulled from the CNN website and can now be found here

BEIRUT (AP) - Prominent Saudi religious scholars urged Iraqis to support militants waging holy war against the U.S.-led coalition forces as American troops prepared Saturday for a major assault on the insurgent hotbed of Fallujah.

The 26 Saudi scholars and preachers said in an open letter to the Iraqi people that their appeal was prompted by "the extraordinary situation through which the Iraqis are passing, which calls for unity and exchange of views." The letter was posted on the Internet.

"At no time in history has a whole people been violated . . . by propaganda that's been proved false," Sheik Awad al-Qarni, one of the scholars, told Al-Arabiya TV.

"The U.S. forces are still destroying towns on the heads of their people and killing women and children. What's going on in Iraq is a result of the big crime of America's occupation of Iraq."

In their letter, the scholars stressed that armed attacks by militant Iraqi groups on U.S. troops and their allies in Iraq represent "legitimate" resistance.

The scholars were careful to direct their appeal to Iraqis only and stayed away from issuing a general, Muslim-wide call for holy war. They also identified the military as the target, one that is considered legitimate by many Arabs who view U.S. troops and their allies as occupiers.

The independent scholars - some of whom have been criticized in the past for their extremist views - apparently did not want to antagonize the Saudi government, a U.S. ally, or appear to be flouting its efforts to fight terrorism.

Saudi Arabia has sealed off its long border with Iraq and bars people from crossing into that country. Its most senior clerics issued a statement last year saying the call for jihad - or holy war - should come only from the ruler and not be based on edicts issued by individual clergy.

Saudi officials did not comment on the latest statement.

The clerics' appeal came as U.S. troops, backed by air and artillery power and Iraqi security forces, were gearing up for a major assault on Fallujah.

The clerics issued a fatwa, or religious edict, prohibiting Iraqis from offering any support for military operations carried out by U.S. forces against insurgent strongholds.

"Fighting the occupiers is a duty for all those who are able," the letter said. "It is a jihad to push back the assailants. Resistance is a legitimate right. A Muslim must not inflict harm on any resistance man or inform on them. Instead, they should be supported and protected."

Besides al-Qarni, the scholars signing the letter included Sheik Safar al-Hawali, Sheik Nasser al-Omar, Sheik Salman al-Awdah and Sheik Sharif Hatem al-Aouni.

Al-Hawali, who was jailed in the 1990s for five years without trial because he criticized U.S. involvement in the 1991 Gulf War against Iraq, once was close to Saudi-born al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden. He opposed the presence of U.S. troops in the kingdom.

His name appeared this month on a list issued by a group of Arab intellectuals seeking to prosecute prominent clerics for encouraging terrorism.

The scholars said inter-Iraqi fighting would cause "great damage to the Iraqis and give a free service to the Jews who are infiltrating into Iraq and to the coalition forces which exploit differences to consolidate their domination."

Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam and home to its two holiest cities, has launched a campaign against militants. The crackdown began after al-Qaida-affiliated operatives attacked three residential compounds in Riyadh in May 2003 and killed dozens of people, bringing terrorism to the kingdom for the first time since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

ABIDJAN (Reuters) - Loud explosions rocked Ivory Coast's main city of Abidjan early on Sunday and heavy gunfire could be heard as thousands of anti-French demonstrators marched toward a French military base.

A witness said a French military helicopter fired warning shots into a lagoon crossed by two bridges that lead from the city center toward the French base and the airport.

Red tracer bullets streaked across the night sky, coming from the residential district of Cocody in the commercial capital of the world's top cocoa grower.

The witness said Ivorian army soldiers appeared to be shooting at the helicopter from positions in Cocody, which is just across the lagoon from the two bridges and the city center.

On Saturday, Ivorian warplanes killed nine French peacekeepers in a bombing raid during the fiercest clashes with rebels for 18 months.

France hit back by destroying most of the West African country's small air force, sparking anger in Abidjan against French troops based in the city.

Thousands of stick-wielding youths marched past the French embassy in the city center and headed toward the airport, which was under French army control.

U.N. spokesman Jean-Victor Nkolo said there had been shooting at a crossroads near the airport for about 45 minutes but it had died down.

The Immigration Service website had 10,300 hits from the United States the day after the election, compared to the daily norm of 2,500.

Thousands of North Americans have migrated to New Zealand in recent years -- attracted by the country's small population, clean, green image of bush-clad mountains, and isolation from world trouble spots -- but the number now looks set to soar.

Phones at the Immigration Service offices in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Portland have been ringing constantly since the vote outcome, Marketing Manager Don Badman told the Dominion Post newspaper on Saturday.

There have been up to 300 telephone calls and emails a day compared to six-to-eight calls a day before the election.

"It's exploded. It really started picking up from 11:00pm the night of the election," he said.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported that Americans were also looking to Australia and Canada as well as New Zealand following the election.

READING, ENGLAND - Six people died and dozens were injured Saturday night when a British high-speed passenger train crashed into a car at a level crossing near a town west of London.

The evening train, which was headed for Plymouth, was carrying 300 passengers. It flew off the tracks upon impact, said British transport officials. The train had departed London's Paddington Station.

Eleven people were seriously injured in the accident and some victims were trapped for hours before they were pulled out past midnight. [...]

Saturday's accident is the latest in a long series of train accidents in Britain.

In May seven people died in a train accident north of London. In 2000, there were six train crashes in England.

Critics blame privatization for the shoddy upkeep of the British rail system.

EVERY school in Singapore will be patrolled by security guards and fitted with up to 12 closed-circuit TV cameras over the next few months, as part of enhanced security measures announced yesterday.

The new measures will be implemented at all of the nation's 351 schools, from primary level to junior college, after a government security review to beef up the country's schools against terrorism. [...]

Speaking at a dialogue on national security with around 400 young Singaporeans at the National Junior College yesterday, Mr Tharman stressed that the measures were necessary, even though there was no immediate threat against schools. [...]

The guards will take a little longer to be put in place - six to eight months - while screening procedures are carried out. Already, at least 10 per cent of schools here have security guards, and slightly over half have closed-circuit TV cameras 'because over the last year they have all stepped up their level of alertness', Mr Tharman told reporters after the dialogue. National Junior College principal Virginia Cheng welcomed the announcement.

Her school spends about $3,500 a month on two guards, and has two closed-circuit TV cameras. Madam Kymberlie Chong, 33, who has two children in Red Swastika Primary School, also supported the extra measures, but asked that security guards be thoroughly screened.

Deputy Prime Minister Tony Tan, who is also Coordinating Minister for Security and Defence, told students at the dialogue that while the Government could provide security hardware, young people also had a part to play. The police and Home Affairs Ministry receive calls every day about people loitering outside sensitive buildings and taking photographs, and the authorities follow up every lead, Mr Tan said.

Warning that they were now facing 'a long-term ideological war', Mr Tan said students had to be resilient and determined, but not fearful, in ensuring the country's security. 'It's necessary to be vigilant and to be prepared, but we don't want to become paranoid. Life must go on. Students must go to school, adults must go to work, people have to go to the market,' he said. National Junior College student Praseetha Nair, 17, said she never thought that terrorist attacks would happen here, but learnt yesterday that she could not take security for granted.

SINGAPORE : Singapore plans to increase the use of closed circuit TVs around street corners islandwide soon.

Home Affairs Minister Wong Kan Seng said the move was not a result of a specific threat against Singapore, but is part of an on-going security review in a bid to fight crime and terrorism.

Elite police officers have started patrolling Singapore's streets. This was an idea from Mr Wong after seeing a similar deployment in New York.

And school security will be stepped up over the next few months with CCTVs and security guards in every school.

Mr Wong, who was at a community event in Bishan on Saturday, explained why these measures had to be taken.

Mr Wong said: "The threat is real but there is no specific threat that we are being a target. There is no particular plan that we know of at this time that they are going to hit Singapore. We know we are a target, we don't know when it may happen. If it happens, we do not know, but we cannot take chances, we cannot afford to be complacent and wait for it to happen before taking measures." [...]

A new scientific study says the Arctic ice cover will disappear in summer by the end of this century unless carbon dioxide emissions are significantly reduced.

The study, to be released next week, says the Arctic ice melt will cause sea levels to rise and could lead to the extinction of some species such as polar bears.

"The melt has begun," said Jennifer Morgan, director of the Climate Change Campaign for the environmental organisation WWF, which published excerpts of the upcoming Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA) report.

Commissioned by the Arctic Council and compiled by more than 250 scientists, the report concludes that climate change is happening in the Arctic and that it will get worse unless emissions of carbon dioxide are cut.

Grim predictions

The report presents several potential scenarios which would occur if the Arctic ice were to disappear in summertime by the end of the 21st century.

It said sea levels could rise by one metre, noting that there are currently 17 million people living less than one metre above sea level in Bangladesh. It said places such as Florida and Louisiana in the United States and the Asian cities of Bangkok, Calcutta, Dhaka and Manila were also at risk.

However, on the positive side, rising sea levels could create a northern passage for shipping between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, and would open up new areas for fishing, mining and oil and gas exploration.

The melting of the Greenland ice sheet, which is expected to take hundreds of years, could ultimately lead to a seven-metre rise in sea levels, the report said. [...]

[AUSTRALIA] - A SHORTCUT on a shopping trip went tragically wrong yesterday when floodwaters claimed the lives of two young sisters west of Maryborough in central Queensland.

The girls, aged 8 and 11, drowned when the Toyota LandCruiser in which they were travelling was swept off a causeway in Degilbo Creek near Biggenden at 8.30am.

The girls were unable to escape the vehicle – driven by a male family friend – after it sank near a road crossing in the swollen creek, which had been nearly dry 24 hours before.

For 60 years the skeletal remains of more than 200 people, discovered in 1942 close to the glacial Roopkund Lake in the remote Himalayan Gahrwal region, have puzzled historians, scientists and archaeologists. Were they soldiers killed in battle, royal pilgrims who lost their way and succumbed to hypothermia, or Tibetan traders who died of a mysterious illness?

Flights & Hotels

Now, the first forensic investigation of one of the area's most enduring mysteries has concluded that hundreds of nomads - whose frozen corpses are being disgorged from ice high in the mountain - were killed by one of the most lethal hailstorms in history.

Scientists commissioned by the National Geographic television channel to examine the corpses have discovered that they date from the 9th century - and believe that they died from sharp blows to their skulls, almost certainly by giant hailstones. "We were amazed by what we found," said Dr Pramod Joglekar, a bio-archaeologist at Deccan College, Pune, who was among the team who visited the site 16,500ft above sea level.

"In addition to skeletons, we discovered bodies with the flesh intact, perfectly preserved in the icy ground. We could see their hair and nails as well as pieces of clothing."

The most startling discovery was that many of those who died suffered fractured skulls. "We retrieved a number of skulls which showed short, deep cracks," said Dr Subhash Walimbe, a physical anthropologist at the college. "These were caused not by a landslide or an avalanche but by blunt, round objects about the size of cricket balls." [...]