"Coincidences just aren't coincidences, there's some reason for it."

So said former FBI agent Danny Coulson in an April 17th Fox news report which investigates (to the extent that Fox news really investigates anything) the possiblity that McVeigh and Nichols were not alone in their alleged plot that blew up the Alfred P Murrah Building in Oklahoma on April 19th 1985, which killed 168 people.

The Fox report tell us:

One month after the bombing, authorities demolished what was left of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.

Officials said the implosion was a necessary part of the psychological recovery for the citizens of Oklahoma City. But critics question the FBI’s tactics and argue the building came down too soon and the implosion is one piece of a government cover-up.

Survivor VZ Lawton remembers the events after the attack.

“I was in my office at my desk signing papers and all of a sudden the building began to shake,” said Lawton. “The lights went out, debris started falling and then something hit me on the head and knocked me out before the truck bomb ever went off.”

The above paragraph is the most interesting of the entire Fox report, yet Fox completely ignores it, preferring to continue on with its implications that the "Aryan Republican Army" were the hidden accomplices and that the US government, for some reason, does not want this revealed to the public. The fact that a survivor of the explosion reported that the building began to shake and debris started to fall BEFORE McVeigh's alleged fertiliser truck bomb went off, is apparently not interesting to the pundits at Fox. The report reveals a number of other rather interesting facts which Fox either overlooks or attempts to use to further its "domestic terrorism" schtick. For example:

"Pictures made from surveillance video at the Regency Tower Apartments are the only images related to the attack that have been released to the public.

Oklahoma City attorney Michael Johnston said the FBI was not given all the tapes from as many as twenty-five cameras that he says were in and around the Murrah Building.

“If they're really non-consequential, it wouldn't hurt anything. If indeed they show something I think the American public, after a decade, has the right to know,” he said.

Johnston, on behalf of twenty-five victims’ families, filed a Freedom of Information (FOI) request for all of the surveillance videos. FOX News also filed a FOI request. The FBI has denied both cases on account that the case is still open.

We wonder how many other videotapes of defining "terror" moments in US history the FBI has stashed away. Yet it was not only video tape evidence that the FBI refused to release in the Oklahoma bombing case, they also refused to hand over more than 3,000 pages of documents to the defence lawyers of Timothy McVeigh, who was subsequently executed by the US government. Pat Shannan of American Free Press has done much research into the events of the Oklahoma bombing and we present below an excerpt of his article FEDERAL MURDER INC. TIED TO OKC TERROR BOMBING:

It has been nearly 10 years since Oklahoma City's Murrah building was blown apart one quiet April morning. Contrary to news reports, the persons found guilty and sentenced for the Murrah bombing atrocity could not have been solely responsible. An Oklahoma City police sergeant became aware of this before anyone else, apparently during the first hour of rescue. He paid for that discovery with his life.

Yeakey, an African-American hero if there ever was one, was a giant of a man with a heart as big as the rest of him. As the first cop on the Murrah building scene following the explosions, he became a crusader for truth.

There is a memorable news photo of his 6-foot, 3-inch, nearly 300-pound frame sprinting down NW 5th Street toward the building on one of the many rescue missions he performed that ugly day. He worked for 48 hours without sleep.

After numerous private investigators produced evidence of multiple explosions, unexploded bombs being hauled away by the authorities, and the incapability of an ammonium nitrate fuel oil bomb to cause the kind of devastation seen in downtown Oklahoma City, a giant government cover-up became obvious.

But Yeakey knew it long before the rest of us. Only a couple of hours into the rescue, Yeakey became painfully aware of something disturbing. Did he somehow figure out that the building had been blown from the inside and that the news reports were fabrications?

Did he overhear a strange conversation from some of the many Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) agents who were on the scene sooner than they should have been?

Whatever it was, Yeakey was upset. He called his wife that morning crying, “It’s not true. It’s not what they are saying. It didn’t happen that way.”

Yeakey ran back and forth into that concrete mess of bricks and mortar all day long and continued beyond exhaustion, far into the night.

In a cadre of heroes that day, Yeakey’s performance was outstanding. On May 11, the following year he was scheduled to receive the Medal of Valor from the Oklahoma City Police Department (OCPD). He never got it. He was murdered on May 8, 1996, in the country, two and a half miles west of the El Reno Penitentiary. His body was found a mile from his blood-soaked car.

The official report said “suicide.” However, many people who knew Yeakey have questioned that, as the inside of Terry’s private automobile was described by witnesses as looking like someone had “butchered a hog” on the front seat. There was much blood on the back seat, too, but little or none where his body was found a mile away.

More suspiciously, his private bombing reports were missing from his car and have never been found.

According to the report, while still inside his Ford Probe that he had parked on a lonely country road, Yeakey slashed himself 11 times on both forearms before cutting his throat twice near the jugular vein. Then, apparently seeking an even more private place to die, he crawled 8,000 feet through rough terrain and climbed a fence before shooting himself in the head with a small caliber revolver, which he apparently took with him to the hereafter.

Independent investigators speculated that had Yeakey shot himself with his own gun, a Glock 9mm, there would have been significantly more damage to his head than was evident.

What appeared to be rope burns on his neck, handcuff bruises to his wrists, and muddy grass embedded in his slash wounds strongly indicated that he had some help in traversing his final distance.

However, the information about the victim undergoing a violent beating prior to his “suicide” was left off the medical examiner’s report.

The bullet’s entrance wound was in the right temple, above the eye. It went through the policeman’s head and exited in the area of the left cheek, near the bottom of the earlobe line. The trajectory was from a 40-45 degree angle above his head. There were no powder burns.

According to unnamed officers, 40 or more law enforcement personnel were at the scene combing the area for the “suicide” weapon, but were unsuccessful for more than an hour.

But after an FBI helicopter landed at the scene carrying FBI SAC Bob Ricks, “Yeakey’s weapon” was suddenly discovered only five minutes later. Of course, it was not Yeakey’s police issue handgun, and the description of the weapon has never been made public, but the official record immediately became that of “suicide.”

Yeakey had told friends that he was going out of town to hide or secure “evidence of a cover-up of the bombing by federal agents.”

The case of Sgt. Terry Yeakey is only one of a myriad of dramatic stories that could be told—stories just waiting for Hollywood, but out of bounds for public consumption.

Amazing New Evidence Emerges in Oklahoma Bombing

A recent raid on the one-time home of Terry Nichols has uncovered more evidence implicating federal agents in the bombing of Oklahoma City’s Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building on April 19, 1995.

A source has told AFP that bomb components discovered at the former home of the OKC bombing accomplice have been linked to a federal informant who investigators believe lied during the trial of Timothy McVeigh, who was executed after his conviction in the bombing.

There are now serious allegations that the FBI, using an informer as a conduit, supplied McVeigh and Nichols with the blasting components the two used to construct explosive devices, one of which may have been employed in the tragic Oklahoma City bombing.

Although there was much recent media hoopla surrounding the March 31 FBI raid on Nichols’s vacant home in Herington, Kan., the entire story, which is not being told by the mainstream media, suggests evidence of federal government complicity in events leading up to the OKC tragedy.

While the media reported that previously undiscovered explosives were found on the raid at Nichols’s home, adding further fuel to widespread public belief that Nichols—and McVeigh—were solely responsible for the OKC bombing, there’s much more to the story than meets the eye.

In fact, AFP has learned that Nichols himself apparently leaked the information about the previously undiscovered cache in his Kansas home.

Why Nichols did so is the real story behind the story that the media seems to be keeping under wraps. Nichols’s apparent goal in sharing this information was to provide information not only to bust the man who allegedly supplied the material, an FBI informant named Roger Moore—Nichols being certain that Moore’s fingerprints would be on the material—but also to expose the FBI’s role in supplying Moore the material in the first place.

Those familiar with the details of the case say Nichols has evidently come to conclude—as have many independent investigators—that he (Nichols) and McVeigh were being manipulated prior to the bombing by federal authorities in what was intended to be a “sting” the feds would use as “proof” of their skill in tackling domestic “terrorist threats” from “radical right wing extremists.”

However, it is believed, the sting went awry, possibly manipulated by others outside the loop, and the bombing occurred.

Now, in prison for life, Nichols evidently hopes to expose the role that Moore and his live-in girlfriend, Karen Anderson, played in the events.

Moore and Anderson gave testimony in the federal trial, helping to convict Nichols. But independent investigators have said all along—contradicting the FBI’s reliance on Moore and Anderson—that their testimony was obviously perjured.

The problem for Nichols, though, is that the record has shown that Moore was an admitted FBI informant as long as a decade ago and may be still protected.

Moore, a Royal, Ark. gun dealer, claimed to have been robbed by McVeigh and Nichols of some 66 guns, cash and gold coins in November 1994. The FBI and federal prosecutors claimed that the proceeds were used to finance the OKC operation.

However, the defense team undermined that theory by producing a signed motel receipt proving McVeigh was in Akron, Ohio, on the date in question. This did not keep either the prosecutors or the news media from repeating the robbery story. It is still widely believed.

Moore, who used the alias “Bob Miller,” according to Nichols, later changed his story and said that it definitely was not McVeigh and Nichols who had robbed him, but he apparently was attempting to plant the opposite impression at the time. Townspeople remembered Moore going from barroom to barbershop the week of the alleged robbery, describing McVeigh and asking if anyone had seen him in the area.

At the time, Moore was a confidential informant for two FBI agents named Ross and Hayes, out of the Hot Springs office. The two were the same agents who discovered the “stolen” guns in a sack behind the house trailer of Michael Fortier in Kingman, Ariz., a few days after the bombing.

Fortier was later implicated in the conspiracy and is serving a 20-year sentence. AFP has learned that the FBI had the information as early as March 1. Agents had received this information purportedly from the mouth of Nichols through an oftused informant named Gregory Scarpa, who is a convicted mobster serving a long stretch with Nichols in Florence, Colo.

At first, FBI officials scoffed at the idea, but then sent a polygraph expert to the prison on March 4. He concluded that Scarpa was lying.

Scarpa then called private investigators he had worked with in the past and, during a seven-hour meeting on March 10, showed a letter in Nichols’s handwriting attesting to his claim.

Not trusting the FBI, the investigators worked through a contact, who had high-level Homeland Security connections.

Then, on March 11, Scarpa provided the authorities with the address of the house and detailed descriptions of the location of the explosives.

Nichols had allegedly told Scarpa that he hid this second cache 10 years ago to be used as a follow-up to the Oklahoma City blast.

On March 31, the FBI finally made its move—calling in the Topeka bomb squad, evacuating the immediate neighborhood, and cordoning off a three-block area.

They worked through the night and into the next day.

The FBI would not confirm that its agents found anything, but mainstream news organizations were told by Oklahoma City’s FBI office that explosive devices were found. What little surfaced in a period of predictable news frenzy, was that the FBI was embarrassed for not having found this material 10 years ago.

NEW YORK -- A secret FBI report, obtained by ABC News, identifies 22 domestic terror organizations as the current subjects of 338 active FBI field investigations.

The Aryan Nations, and other white supremacist groups, are cited in the report for hate crimes, fire bombings, threats via mail, as well as robberies and murders. The National Alliance, one of the largest neo-Nazi organizations in the world, is subject to 51 FBI investigations alone, according to the report.

In fact there are "ticking time bombs," said Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, "who have the capacity, skill and hatred to carry out acts worse than what Timothy McVeigh carried out 10 years ago."

Levin, and other terrorism experts, say that the Internet has become the principal recruitment tool, attracting the loners and the disturbed who boast of finding viable U.S. targets.

"We are likely to see more terrorist attacks by lone wolves, or small cells," Levin said, "They're in their bedroom accessing bomb-making information on the Net, and accessing hateful rhetoric which empowers them."

James P. Wickstrom, who calls himself the world chaplain of the Aryan Nation, uses "Death to the Jew" as a mantra of sorts. He also regularly calls for the deaths of government leaders, including the president.

"There is none of them in this Cabinet that damnably deserves to breathe the air in this country today," Wickstrom said in a speech given at the Aryan Nations World Congress in Pennsylvania in July 2002.

Federal officials say his calls to action are not unlike those of the leader of al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden. Wickstrom has declared himself an enemy of the United States government.

"I tell you we do not need this Congress and legislative body," he said in the same speech. "We don't need these vile bastards telling us what to do on our property and with our water and with our children. We don't need to tell them we have to wear a seat belt. We don't need have to be told anything."

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) does not list right-wing domestic terrorists and terrorist groups on a document that appears to be an internal list of threats to the nation's security.

According to the list - part of a draft planning document obtained by CQ Homeland Security - between now and 2011 DHS expects to contend primarily with adversaries such as al Qaeda and other foreign entities affiliated with the Islamic Jihad movement, as well as domestic radical Islamist groups.

It also lists left-wing domestic groups, such as the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), as terrorist threats, but it does not mention anti-government groups, white supremacists and other radical right-wing movements, which have staged numerous terrorist attacks that have killed scores of Americans. Recent attacks on cars, businesses and property in Virginia, Oregon and California have been attributed to ELF.

DHS did not respond to repeated requests for comment or confirmation of the document's authenticity.

The conspirators behind the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, which killed 168 people and wounded more than 500, were inspired by radical right-wing movements. Eric Rudolph, the man charged with carrying out the 1996 Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta, which killed one woman and injured more than 100, was a member of the radical anti-abortion group Army of God. Initially, Rudolph was the object of a massive North Carolina manhunt in connection with a Birmingham, Ala., abortion-clinic bombing that killed a police officer and seriously maimed a nurse.

Another Army of God member, James Kopp, was convicted in the 1998 shooting of a doctor who performed abortions.

Individuals affiliated with such groups have also been involved in many smaller terrorist acts, including mailing hundreds of bogus anthrax letters to abortion clinics, and in plots to obtain and use conventional, chemical and nuclear weapons against civilians. In 2003, for instance, a Texas man prosecutors say was a white supremacist and anti-government radical pleaded guilty to charges of possessing a weapon of mass destruction. Authorities had discovered enough sodium cyanide bombs to kill hundreds of people; machine guns and several hundred thousand rounds of ammunition; 60 pipe bombs; and remote-control explosive devices disguised as briefcases in a storage space he rented. The man, William J. Krar, was sentenced to 11 years in federal prison.

'Still a Threat'

Domestic terror experts were surprised the department did not include right-wing groups on their list of adversaries.

"They are still a threat, and they will continue to be a threat," said Mike German, a 16-year undercover agent for the FBI who spent most of his career infiltrating radical right-wing groups. "If for some reason the government no longer considers them a threat, I think they will regret that," said German, who left the FBI last year. "Hopefully it's an oversight."

James O. Ellis III, a senior terror researcher for the National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism (MIPT), said in a telephone interview Friday that whereas left-wing groups, which have been more active recently, have focused mainly on the destruction of property, right-wing groups have a much deadlier and more violent record and should be on the list. "The nature of the history of terrorism is that you will see acts in the name of [right-wing] causes in the future."

Focusing on Left-Wing Movements

Last year, following arson and vandalism sprees on both coasts attributed to radical left-wing groups such as ALF and ELF, the FBI made those movements its top domestic terror priority. But right-wing groups remained a concern, according to one FBI official.

"That doesn't de-emphasize our interest in other domestic terror groups," stressed the official, who would not be named discussing the bureau's counterterror strategy, during a phone interview Friday. "For us, the right-wing patriot movement remains a continuing threat." (The FBI considers militias, tax protesters, and anti-government groups part of the right-wing movement, the official said; the bureau considers violent anti-abortion extremists a separate movement.)

The DHS document, entitled "Integrated Planning Guidance, Fiscal Years 2005-2011," is dated January 2005. Its pages are marked "Sensitive - Do Not Distribute Outside the Department of Homeland Security - Draft." Each paragraph in the document is marked "(U/FOUO)," which typically indicates it has been reviewed by a government censor and determined to be unclassified, but "for official use only."

Under a section marked "Threat and Vulnerability Assessment," the document asks and answers the question "Who are the adversaries?"

First and foremost, the draft document says, are al Qaeda and its affiliates.

Second are new radical Islamist groups that arise overseas amid the rubble of the old al Qaeda organization. These organizations "could try to supplant" al Qaeda and "would see a Homeland attack as a way to attain that goal," the document states.

Domestic radical Islamic groups concern the department, because of their potential to support al Qaeda operations within the country, or to serve as a "recruiting pool" for the movement.

"However," the document reads, "we are not convinced that any of these organizations acting alone would pursue a major attack against the Homeland."

As a final item, the list notes the threat of eco-terrorists, who "will continue to focus their attacks on property damage in an effort to change policy." The document notes that although "publicly ALF and ELF promote nonviolence toward human life . . . some members may escalate their attacks."

Priorities Questioned

The document lists several groups or sources of radical violence that DHS does not consider threats to the homeland.

Lebanese Hizballah and various Palestinian groups, including Hamas and Palestine Islamic Jihad, are unlikely to attack the United States, the report's authors conclude.

Several high-profile terror prosecutions, including cases against the Texas-based Holy Land Foundation and Florida professor Sami al-Arian, rest on their connection to such groups.

"Why are we expending so many resources targeting people who have allegedly provided support to groups that don't threaten us?" asked David Cole, a professor of law at Georgetown University and a frequent critic of the U.S. government's war on terror. "How does that make us safer?"

State-sponsored terrorism also is not an immediate concern to the department, according to the document. "In the post 9/11 environment, countries do not appear to be facilitating or supporting terrorist groups intent on striking the U.S. homeland," it reads.

Comment: Weren't we told that Saddam had ties to al-Qaeda, and that he could have been planning to use his nonexistent WMD's to strike the US?

In fact, of all the countries designated state sponsors of terrorism, only Iran "appears to have the possible future motivation" to use terrorist groups to plot against the United States.

Comment: Gee, could the "possible future motivation" to strike the US come from a US and/or Israeli attack on Iran in the near future?

In the past few years, according to MIPT researcher Ellis, left-wing violence has overtaken right-wing violence as the primary form of domestic terror. "When a conservative government comes to power, you see more activity from the opposite side of the spectrum," he explained. At the same time, the membership and activity of right-wing groups has suffered since the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, and the broadcasting of images of the children who died in the building's second-floor day care center. [...]

The Pentagon is toying with the idea of black propaganda.

As part of George Bush's war on terrorism, the military is thinking of planting propaganda and misleading stories in the international media.

A new department has been set up inside the Pentagon with the Orwellian title of the Office of Strategic Influence.

It is well funded, is being run by a general and its aim is to influence public opinion abroad.

Black and white

It has been canvassing opinion within the Pentagon on what it should do. [...]

U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema in Alexandria is set to meet with Moussaoui this week to determine if he is mentally competent to enter a plea now, Washington Post cited the sources as saying.

Moussaoui tried to plead guilty in 2002 but withdrew his plea a week later. His mental state has been an issue in the case ever since.

The French citizen was indicted in December 2001, but his trial has been delayed three times. For most of the past two years, the case has been tied up in the appellate courts in a dispute over his access to key al Qaeda witnesses.

In recent letters to the U.S. government and to Brinkema, Moussaoui said he is willing to accept a possible capital punishment, Washington Post said.

If Brinkema accepts a plea, she would then probably set a death penalty trial, at which jurors would decide Moussaoui's fate.

White smoke from the top of the Sistine Chapel in Rome, perhaps reminiscent of the fumes that billowed from concentration camp chimneys during WWII, has announced the election of Cardinal Ratzinger as the next leader of the world's 1.1 billion Catholics.

"Read my lips, the holy spirit selected me."

Hidden away in their secret conclave for the past 2 days, the 115 Cardinals finally opted for 78 year-old Ratzinger, who will henceforth be known as Pope Benedict XVI. Ratzinger appeared on the balcony of the Vatican palace to the cheers of the thousands of deluded yet devoted Pilgrims that thronged St Peter's square.

The appointment of Ratzinger, who has been head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - the Vatican's guardian of orthodoxy since 1981, is unlikely to be good news for a world already suffering from a "war on terror" spawned by extremist and racist views.

The New York Post informs us:

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger joined the Nazi children's corps in 1941 as a 14-year-old and was later an anti-aircraft gunner.

At one point, he guarded a factory where slaves from a concentration camp were forced to work. He was later shipped to Hungary, where he reportedly saw Jews persecuted.

Ratzinger, a staunch conservative dubbed "God's Rottweiler," has said he joined the Hitler Youth when membership became compulsory. He and his brother were later drafted but deserted. The cardinal claims he never fired a shot and that resistance would have meant death.

Not so, Germans from his hometown of Traunstein told The Times of London.

"It was possible to resist, and those people set an example for others," recalled Elizabeth Lohner, 84. "The Ratzingers were young — and they had made a different choice."

As noted, Ratzinger is known as the "guardian of orthodoxy", which is just another way of saying that he is a religious despot, determined to perpetuate the type of existential lies upon which most organised religions are based. Lies that have served for millennia to constrict and control the truth about the nature and reason for human life on earth.

Four people were indicted today for the murder of Italian financier Roberto Calvi, a banker with close ties to the Vatican whose body was found hanging under a London bridge in 1982, reports said.

Businessman Flavio Carboni; his ex-girlfriend Manuela Kleinzig, and two men with alleged ties to the Mafia, Pippo Calo and Ernesto Diotallevi, will stand trial in October for Calvi’s murder, the Italian news agencies ANSA and Apcom said.

Calvi was dubbed “God’s banker” because of his ties with the Vatican’s bank and its former top official, the American Archbishop Paul C. Marcinkus.

Calvi’s body was found within days of the collapse of Banco Ambrosiano, where he was president and in which the Vatican’s bank held a significant stake. The collapse was Italy’s biggest post-war banking scandal.

Banco Ambrosiano fell apart following the disappearance of €1bn. The Vatican’s bank agreed to pay €190m to the Italian bank’s creditors but denied any wrongdoing. Marcinkus also denied wrongdoing.

Italian prosecutors issued a report in July 2003 concluding that Calvi did not commit suicide, but was killed.

British police announced in 2003 that they had begun a murder inquiry into Calvi’s death after a detailed review of the case.

In December 2003, a 42-year-old woman was arrested on suspicion of conspiring to pervert the course of justice, and of perjury.

Aid worker Marla Ruzicka was photographed the day before she died in Baghdad.

Californian Marla Ruzicka was the head of an NGO whose blend of tenacity and optimism kept her in Iraq long after almost every other humanitarian aid organization had left.

Marla and her Iraqi driver died Saturday when their car was tragically caught between a suicide car bomber and a US military convoy.

Marla was more than a source for a story, she was one of those quiet cheerleaders that kept me - and the Iraqis she touched - going almost from the moment that I arrived here three years ago.

I first met her in Jordan, just before the war. A reporter friend told me that I should get to know this young activist who made a name for herself working for Global Exchange, the US organization that sent field workers to Afghanistan to count civilian casualties.

After the Iraq war, she moved her push for an accurate count of civilian casualties to Baghdad. At a time when the International Committee of the Red Cross and United Nations were leaving Iraq, Marla started the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict. Through that, she helped Iraqi families navigate the process of claiming compensation from the US military for injuries and deaths.

When she died Marla was traveling to visit some of the many Iraqi families she was working to help. Lately, she had been attempting to aid the relatives of a toddler whose parents were killed after the mini-bus they were traveling in was hit by what was believed to be an American rocket. The baby was thrown out of a window to save her life.

It's still unclear exactly how Marla and her driver, Faiz, were killed. But early reports indicate that they were traveling on the dangerous route between Baghdad and the airport when a suicide car bomber tried to attack a military convoy. Faiz was an Iraqi Airways pilot, who at one time worked as an interpreter for Monitor correspondents in Iraq.

I was always amazed at how composed Marla remained amid the violence and confusion of Iraq. One of my favorite memories of her was when I was sitting in the middle of the Palestine Hotel lobby in Baghdad, surrounded by a confusing swirl of soldiers, officials, and reporters. Fear swept over me. What was I doing here? I had come as a freelancer, with no experience covering a war. Just as I was quietly freaking out, Marla appeared in the dusty, harried scene. She was the picture of calm in a perfect French braid and long blue dress. She was like a breeze blowing through, so tranquil, so clean.

Later in the fall of 2003 when I moved here and was despairing of my sputtering freelance work she would always say, "Jill, good for you. You're working so hard. I'm so proud of you." She was the eternal supportive cheerleader. One night she slipped a note in my hotel mailbox. It was a small essay of encouragement and praise from out of the blue, scribbled in black ink on a scrap of notebook paper.

I found out that Marla had died several hours after she didn't show up for a party that she planned at the Hamra, a hotel occupied mostly by foreign journalists. I was tired and wasn't going to go. My friend Scott went and called me about 11 p.m. He said no one had heard from Marla since about 2 o'clock that afternoon. The other journalists and I all feared a kidnapping. I went over to the Hamra lobby and asked at the reception desk if they knew Marla's driver's family. They said his brother had just called because they were worried they hadn't seen him. A bad sign.

Then we got a call from the US military saying a woman fitting her description had been in an accident, but that she was in the military hospital and in good condition. We were relieved. In Baghdad's strange logic, we all thanked God it was a car accident and not a kidnapping. Then we received another call. It was the military again. This time they said the woman was dead on arrival.

The only thing we can say now is at least she died doing what she wanted, doing what she really, really believed in. If she were still here, she'd be most worried now about her driver's family and who will take care of all the other Iraqi families she was working with.

She would point out, this happens to Iraqis every day and no one notices or even cares. There are no newspaper articles or investigations into what happens to them. For most of them, there was only Marla.

The ordeal of journalists caught in the Iraq conflict has intensified over the last four days with reports of five killings of journalists, says the International Federation of Journalists. The IFJ says that safety and security for media staff and civil society must be a "top priority" for the new government.

Two Al-Hurriya television journalists were killed in suicide bombings while on their way to an assignment in Baghdad on April 14th. Producer Fadhil Hazim and cameraman Ali Ibrahim Isa were killed en route to an event honouring the new president, Jalal Talabani. They were in a car when the bombs exploded outside the Interior Ministry. Two other Al-Hurriya employees in the car, Shakir Awad and Mohammed Ibrahim, were injured.

Al-Hurriya, a station financed by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, has now lost three journalists in the war. Fadhil and Isa are both Iraqi; their deaths continue a 16-month trend in which the vast majority of journalist fatalities in Iraq have involved local people.

The day after this attack, the IFJ affiliate in the region, the Kurdistan Journalists Syndicate, reported the killing of another two television journalists, Shadman Abdulla, working for Kirkuk TV, and Laiq Abdulla, from Kurdistan Satellite TV (KTV).

The Syndicate also reported that at the weekend another journalist, Ahmed al-U'badi, working for al-Sabah newspaper, was beheaded in Baghdad, apparently by a group known as al-Jihad and al-Tawhit.

"The death toll among Iraqi journalists continues to rise," said Aidan White, IFJ General Secretary. "Some 75 journalists and media staff have been killed since the US invasion in March 2003 - and around 55 of them have been local Iraqis. It is an appalling level of loss. The new government must give top priority to the protection of media staff."

The IFJ backs a statement from the Kurdistan Syndicate protesting over the killings and terrorist acts and calling on the Iraqi authorities to ensure safety for journalists. The Syndicate is working with the IFJ and other Iraqi groups in a programme to assist and protect media staff in the country.

The IFJ represents over 500,000 journalists in more than 110 countries.

BEIJING, April 19 (Xinhuanet)-- Many U.S. soldiers - some recently returned from Iraq, others still there - have set up their own Web logs or "blogs" and chat rooms to communicate with their families and friends. This has raised discussions about morale and discipline.

With the easy access to high-speed Internet connections and phone service in Iraq, American soldiers and military families can communicate freely and in real time via e-mail and cellphone, and follow closely the situation in Iraq, The Christian Science Monitor reported on Tuesday.

"The Internet and digital communications devices have democratized the global flow of information for friend and foe alike," the report quoted military analyst Loren Thompson as saying.

"Information democratization" has had both positive and negative impacts on the "good order and discipline" that the U.S. military demands in its regulations and traditions. Morten Ender, a sociologist at the US Military Academy at West Point calls it a "double-edged sword."

It facilitates communication between soldiers and society and yet "creates new leadership challenges, an explosion of information fostering multiple truths, information overload, and the potential for operational security issues," The Christian Science Monitor quoted Dr. Ender, a researcher on military personnel communication, as saying.

Earlier this year, coalition spokesman Lt. Col. Steven Boylan said "sometimes a blog might contain subtle nuances from which you can put together a complete picture of our operations, which insurgents can use to attack us."

Another concern is that a soldier may become distracted by or worried about something back home and make a mistake that could put his own life or the lives of his companions at risk.

That concern can work in the other direction as well, especially with many websites on the Internet that can tell a dire story in Iraq.

Robert Zoellick, former trade-rep and current Deputy Secretary of State, "toured" Fallujah:

"It was a wonderful opportunity to see a city coming back to life in part through a town council, which just took office at the beginning of April, and have a sense of the Iraqi people determining their own destiny," he told reporters.

Well, "toured" because this is how it was done:

Yet Zoellick, who wore body armor under his suit jacket, was told by military commanders he could not leave his armored Humvee because of security concerns during his quick tour of the shattered downtown. His heavily armored motorcade briefly paused before a restarted water-treatment plant -- within view of the Euphrates River bridge where the charred bodies of American security contractors were suspended after four of them had been ambushed and killed in Fallujah a year ago.

Then the motorcade moved so quickly past an open-air bakery restarted with a U.S.-provided micro loan that workers tossing dough could be glimpsed only in a blink of an eye.

And the town council he attended? That took place in a fortified military compound:

Zoellick had expected to tour a water pumping station and a bread-making factory to observe signs of the city's progress.

But Zoellick was confined to a caravan of armored transport vehicles -— except for a meeting with Fallujah's civic leaders at a fortified military compound. Marines said the security situation in the city remained tenuous, although daily attacks were down.

Still, the people at the town council complained bitterly about their destroyed homes, about their undrinkable water, and about the non-construction reconstruction. Not that it matters. All is well because we say so:

Despite inhabitants' complaints about the destruction of their homes, Zoellick insisted that "most of the fighting took place in more industrial and commercial areas".

Here's a bit more of what they said about how their city was "coming back to life":

Mounds of debris from crumpled structures filled each city block, and interim city council members expressed frustration about how long it was taking for residents to get reimbursement checks for their damaged homes. Some officials said residents weren't being paid enough compensation for all that had been destroyed.

They also complained of unsafe drinking water, an inadequate sewer system and little food aside from rationed goods. Residents fretted about not having enough jobs.

Now, now. Repeat after me: all is well. All is well.

"Things are almost back to normal here. We have teachers and books. Things are getting better."

New York Times 3-26-05 "Vital Signs of a Ruined City Grow stronger in Falluja"

"I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today"my own government."

Rev. Martin Luther King

Cameras aren't allowed in Falluja; neither are journalists. If they were then we would have first-hand proof of America's greatest war crime in the last 30 years; the Dresden-like bombardment of an entire city of 250,000. Instead, we have to rely on eyewitness accounts that appear on the internet or the spurious reports that sporadically surface in the New York Times and Associated Press. For the most part, the Times and AP have shown themselves to be undependable; limiting their coverage to the details that support the overall goals of the occupation. For example, in the last few weeks both the NYTs and the AP ran stories on the alleged progress being made in Falluja. The AP outrageously referred to the battered city as "the safest place in Iraq"; a cynical appraisal of what most independent journalists have called nearly total destruction. One can only wonder if the editors at the AP would approve of similar security measures if they were taken in their own neighborhoods.

The NYTs also ran a lengthy story, "Vital Signs of a Ruined City Grow stronger in Falluja", which portrayed Falluja as a city on the mend' after a healthy dose of imperial medicine: "Classes have started again two months ago and the cheerful shrieks of children can be heard in the hallways." This was just one of the more contemptuous quotes lifted from the NYT's story of "rebirth" from the epicenter of American devastation. The quote was accompanied by a picture of a Marine in full-combat gear bending over to tie the shoe of a seven or eight year old Iraqi boy; a threatening image used to convey the spirit of American generosity.

The truth about Falluja is far different than the bogus reports in the AP and Times. The fact that even now, a full 6 months after the siege, camera crews and journalists are banned from the city, tells us a great deal about the extent of America's war crimes. Just two weeks ago, a photographer from Al Aribiyya news was arrested while leaving Falluja and his equipment and film were confiscated. To date, he is still being held without explanation and there is no indication when he will be released. This illustrates the fear among the military brass that the truth about Falluja will leech out and destroy whatever modest support still exists for the occupation. Journalists should realize that Falluja may turn out to be the administration's Achilles heel; a My Lai-type atrocity that turns the public decisively against Bush's war.

The fairytales in the Times and AP are typical wartime propaganda; no different from the fabrications about Jessica Lynch's heroics or the Dear Leader larking-about in Baghdad with a plastic turkey in tow (Bush's "surprise" Thanksgiving day visit) The articles suggest that the administration has settled on a strategy for concealing the unpleasant facts about the obliteration of the city. Along with an active disinformation campaign featured in the nation's leading newspapers, the administration has put together a PR operation to shape public perceptions. This explains why the State Dept's number two official, Robert Zoellick, popped up in Falluja last week for a photo-op at a bread-making factory and a water-pumping station. Zoellick's visit was supposed to draw attention the progress being made in Falluja's restoration. Instead, his plans were disrupted by threats to his personal safety and he was hustled-off to a fortified military compound in the center of town. There he was beset by the cities tribal leaders' complaining about the dismal pace of reconstruction.

Zoellick's appearance was intended to highlight the alleged return of 90,000 Fallujans to the city and the reparations that have been made to the city's water system. In fact, there's no way to verify the administration's claims about the numbers of returning residents, and its doubtful that there have been any measurable improvements to the water-treatment plants, sewage facilities, electrical grid or hospital; all of which were intentionally bombed during the siege.

Zoellick's "confidence-building" trip turned out to be just another in a long list of bungled public relations gambits. If anything, it only further proved that the US still has no control over the security situation on the ground, and that the majority of Iraqis were better off under Saddam.

The Bush administration claims that the military is slowly providing compensation to the people whose homes were destroyed during the Falluja offensive but, again, there's no independent source that can verify those claims and it seems inconsistent with the existing policy. Zoellick summarized the Bush policy succinctly in his remarks to the Fallujan leaders, "I know it won't be easy. There will be many days of frustration, even threats. We can help, but YOU have to make it happen."

Zoellick's comments are little more than a distillation of the Bush ethos, "You're on your own;" the underlying theme of "compassionate conservatism".

It's doubtful that anyone in Falluja is so naïve that they believe the administration will actually help-out with the reconstruction. Two years have passed since the initial invasion and Baghdad is still limited to three or four hours of electricity per day. The problems with water and sewage systems are equally grave. Only one in five Iraqis has access to clean water and there are still many places in Baghdad where raw sewage can be seen on the city streets. As a result there have been reports of outbreaks of cholera, diarrhea and other more obscure water-borne illnesses.

Falluja is undoubtedly doomed to the same fate as Afghanistan. The media will create the illusion of improvement for the American public; celebrating the meaningless trappings of democracy (sham elections, claims of sovereignty, and the writing of a constitution) while the nation remains fractured and under the brutal rule of the regional war-lords. Afghanistan is a lawless, drug-colony run by gangsters and narco-smugglers. By any standard of measurement, our involvement there has been a complete failure. The real Afghanistan bears no resemblance to the flourishing democratic republic that graces the pages of American newspapers.

Falluja and the rest of Iraq can expect the very same treatment. There is no Plan B; the Bush strategy for toppling regimes and replacing them with the Neoliberal model is a cookie-cutter approach to governance; a one-size-fits-all formula for global rule.

In Naomi Klein's article "The Rise of Disaster Capitalism", Klein points out that there really is no intention on the part of the US to rebuild Iraq or anywhere else for that matter. When the State Dept gets involved, through its Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) "the mandate is not to rebuild any old states, but to create democratic and market-oriented' ones". That entails selling off "state owned enterprises that created a nonviable economy" and, thereby, "changing the very social fabric of a nation."

There it is! Deregulation, privatization and control of resources; the same model applied over and over again. The real goal is a radical, fundamental change to the system; "shock therapy", the all-purpose antidote prescribed by the global banking and financial establishment. These changes are facilitated through their political surrogates in the Bush administration, and executed by their own private security apparatus (aka; the US Military). After Iraq has passed through this vicious transition from semi-socialist government to deregulated capitalist colony, it will be entered into the new world order of American protectorates; stripped of its resources and subjected to the tyranny of foreign rule. All government properties and services will be controlled by multi-national corporations and all assets will be held by the foreign lending institutions that own the majority shares of the Iraqi National Bank.

The real story of Falluja will never appear in the pages of the New York Times; the banned weapons, the bloated corpses, the thousands of dead animals killed by illicit chemicals, the wasteland of rubble and ruined lives. The magnitude of the crime simply won't fit within the paper's glib account of benign intervention. Rather, the Times is focused on promoting a credible story of "rebirth amid the ruins"; of lives patched together by a kindhearted father in Washington and his heavily-armed disciples.

They're wasting their time. The cruelty of the siege and the vastness of devastation will eventually be brought to light and the Time's feeble apologetics will amount to nothing.

The Times remains the command center of the imperial chronicle; the indispensable shaper of the colonial digest. Its pages furnish the muddled logic for the invasion of defenseless nations, the rationale for continued repression, the requisite smokescreen for American war crimes, and the dubious justification for the ongoing occupation. Their work in Falluja is just one of many services they carry out as the information-annex of the defense establishment. They perform subtler assignments others as well. They continue to be an invaluable cog in the machinery of state-terror; executing their function with extraordinary skill.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - An Iraqi lawmaker accused a U.S. soldier of grabbing him by the throat and shoving him to the ground Tuesday after he parked his car in Baghdad's Green Zone.

Fattah al-Sheikh, an independent, said he had parked his car before a session of parliament when U.S. troops approached him and told him he didn't have the right permit.

He said a soldier then kicked his car, insulted him and grabbed him by the throat with both hands as others looked on, before tying his hands behind his back with white plastic cuffs and shoving him to the ground.

"I don't speak English and so I said to the Iraqi translator with them, 'Tell them that I am a member of parliament,' and he replied, 'To hell with you, we are Americans,"' Sheikh told parliament, fighting back tears as he recounted the story.

The U.S. military said it was investigating the incident.

In a fresh counterattack, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay told supporters in a mailing made public Monday that he has "never been found to have violated any law or rule by anyone" despite numerous allegations.

"Democrats have made clear that their only agenda is the politics of personal destruction, and the criminalization of politics," the Texan's campaign added in a defiant rebuttal.

"They hate Ronald Reagan conservatives like DeLay and they hate that he is an effective leader who succeeds in passing the Republican agenda."

A spokesman for the Texas lawmaker said the letter and accompanying multipage rebuttal were sent last week to supporters and donors. [...]

DeLay wrote supporters that he was contacting them after receiving requests for a "fact versus fiction briefing document."

"It should come as no surprise that following the 2004 election-year attacks on the president that the Democrats, their syndicate of third-party organizations ... and the legion of Democrat-friendly press would turn their attention to trying to retake Congress," he wrote.

The accompanying summary said, "Tom DeLay does not stand accused of any violation of any law or rule in any forum and has never been found to have violated any law or rule by anyone." [...]

The White House yesterday stepped up its defense of embattled House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, dispatching political strategist Karl Rove to deride Democratic attacks as "drivel."

"They're just desperate," Mr. Rove said of Democrats on CNN.

"They're not offering ideas in the debate, they're not being constructive, and so some of their members are taking potshots at Tom DeLay."

The broadside came in response to Republican complaints that President Bush has been too tepid in his defense of Mr. DeLay, the Texas Republican who is being accused by Democrats and the press of ethical lapses.

"I'm looking forward to working with Tom," Mr. Bush told newspaper editors on Thursday. "He's been a very effective leader. We've gotten a lot done in the legislature, and I'm convinced we'll get more done in the legislature." [...]

The president did not have any comment yesterday in support of his fellow Texan, but Mr. Rove went on television to defend Mr. DeLay.

"We strongly support Tom DeLay," he told CNN from the White House North Lawn. "He's a good man; he's a close ally of this administration.

"He was down here last week, visiting with the president a couple of times," he added. "Tom DeLay's going to continue to be a strong and effective majority leader for the Republicans in the House."

Mr. Rove criticized Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean for saying recently that his party would exploit Mr. DeLay's support for Terri Schiavo, the brain-damaged Florida woman who died last month after her feeding tube was removed amid a bitter family dispute.

"This is going to be an issue in 2006, and it's going to be an issue in 2008, because we're going to have an ad, with a picture of Tom Delay, saying, 'Do you want this guy to decide whether you die or not?' " Mr. Dean said.

Yesterday, Mr. Rove returned fire.

"I'm sorry that the Democratic Party has been reduced to this kind of drivel," he said. "If you don't have ideas, if you're not articulating a vision for America, if you're doing nothing but obstructing as Dean and others in his party seem to be intent upon doing, I guess you're stuck doing this kind of thing." [...]

Some Democrats and the press have criticized Mr. DeLay for hiring his wife and daughter to help run his political campaigns. Yesterday, Mr. Rove said he suspected "partisan reasons" were behind such attacks.

"Think about it: They're attacking him for having his wife and daughter on the campaign payroll," he said. "Many Democrats have relied upon their family members to help campaign for them and serve as members of their staff."

As for other complaints against Mr. DeLay, including those arising from overseas trips he has taken, Mr. Rove said they will be adjudicated by the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct.

"I'm very confident that this issue's going to be resolved to everybody's satisfaction - well, to Tom DeLay's satisfaction and those of the Republicans," he said. [...]

WASHINGTON - The top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee will ask the panel's Republican majority to delay a vote scheduled for Tuesday on the nomination of John R. Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations, according to Democratic Senate officials.

The Democrat, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, will urge Republicans to allow the panel more time to review allegations that Mr. Bolton has acted abusively toward subordinates and others, the Democratic officials said.

However, the panel's Republican chairman, Senator Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, plans to urge the panel to vote in favor of Mr. Bolton. "I do not think the concerns raised about Secretary Bolton warrant our rejection of the president's selection for his own representative to the U.N.," Mr. Lugar said in a statement.

Mr. Lugar has said he expects all 10 Republicans on the panel ultimately to vote in favor of the nomination. But Senator Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island has said he is uncommitted, and over the weekend, Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska said he had some reservations. The panel's eight Democrats are expected to oppose the nomination.

On Monday, one of former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's top aides spoke out in opposition to Mr. Bolton.

"Under Secretary Bolton was never the formidable power that people are insinuating he was in terms of foreign policy, or blocking the policies that Secretary Powell wished to pursue," Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as Mr. Powell's chief of staff, said in a telephone interview.

"But do I think John Bolton would make a good ambassador to the United Nations? Absolutely not," Mr. Wilkerson said. "He is incapable of listening to people and taking into account their views. He would be an abysmal ambassador." [...]

WASHINGTON - House Democrats have decided to quit emphasizing that they will not negotiate changes to Social Security until President Bush drops his idea for private accounts. The switch in strategy comes after Democrats learned from focus groups that people frown on the lawmakers for being obstinate.

"People feel like it doesn't show a good-faith effort," said a top House aide, who like several others spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the internal data. "It makes us seem like we're 'typical politicians.'"

The shift in tactics comes with Democrats and Republicans unsure what will happen after the end next month of a campaign-style, 60-day travel blitz by the president and administration officials who are promoting his plan. [...]

MESA, Ariz. - The Mesa Police Department is looking to add some primal instinct to its SWAT team. And to do that, it's looking to a monkey.

"Everybody laughs about it until they really start thinking about it," said Mesa Officer Sean Truelove, who builds and operates tactical robots for the suburban Phoenix SWAT team. "It would change the way we do business."

Truelove is spearheading the department's request to purchase and train a capuchin monkey, considered the second smartest primate to the chimpanzee. The department is seeking about $100,000 in federal grant money to put the idea to use in Mesa SWAT operations.

The monkey, which costs $15,000, is what Truelove envisions as the ultimate SWAT reconnaissance tool.

Since 1979, capuchin monkeys have been trained to be companions for people who are quadriplegics by performing daily tasks, such as serving food, opening and closing doors, turning lights on and off, retrieving objects and brushing hair.

Truelove hopes the same training could prepare a monkey for special-ops intelligence.

Weighing only 3 to 8 pounds with tiny humanlike hands and puzzle-solving skills, Truelove said it could unlock doors, search buildings and find suicide victims on command. Dressed in a Kevlar vest, video camera and two-way radio, the small monkey would be able to get into places no officer or robot could go.

It has been a little over a year since Truelove filed a grant proposal with the U.S. Department of Defense under the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and he is still waiting for word.

If the grant goes through, Truelove plans on learning how to train the monkey himself and keeping the sociable monkey at home, just like a K-9 officer would. He projects that $85,000 in grant money would outfit the monkey with gear and pay for veterinarian care, food and habitat for three years.

WASHINGTON - Computer-security flaws at the U.S. tax-collection agency expose millions of taxpayers to potential identity theft or illegal police snooping, according to a congressional report released on Monday.

The Internal Revenue Service also is unlikely to know if outsiders are browsing through citizens' tax returns, because it doesn't effectively police its computer systems for unauthorized use, the Government Accountability Office found.

The report was released three days after the deadline for filing personal income-tax returns, and at a time when concerns about identity theft and computer security are running high.

"This lack of systems security at the IRS is completely unacceptable and needs to be corrected immediately," said House of Representatives Judiciary Chairman James Sensenbrenner, a Wisconsin Republican.

The IRS promised to fix any problems and find out if tax returns had been exposed to outsiders.

The IRS over the past several years has taken steps to protect the information it collects, the report found. The agency has fixed 32 of the 53 problems that turned up in a 2002 review, the GAO said.

But the GAO found 39 new security problems on top of the 21 that remain unfixed. [...]

WASHINGTON - The United States and Spain opened a "new phase" in their cooperative fight against terror and organized crime, Spain's visiting interior minister said after meeting top US security officials.

Interior Minister Jose Antonio Alonso met with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, and FBI chief Robert Mueller.

Relations between Washington and Madrid have been cool since Spain's Socialist Party swept into power in March 2004. Incoming Prime Minister Jose Luis Zapatero then honored a campaign promise and withdrew Spanish troops from the US-led military force in Iraq.

The troops had been sent by the previous, conservative Spanish government, a close ally of US President George W. Bush.

The meetings "inaugurate a new phase in which relations for something so important as the fight against terrorism and organized crime will be deepened and substantially improved," Alonso told reporters.

"The level of relations is very good and will continue to improve in the future, no doubt about it," said Alonso, who held a 20-minute closed-door meeting with Gonzales before having lunch with him.

Spain's Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos met Friday with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice with the goal of improving relations, especially when it came to differences over relations with Venezuela and Cuba.

Spain's ministers of defense and of justice are scheduled to travel to the United States in early May.

PARIS - Infighting over the EU constitution erupted in the French government, amid clear signals that Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin will lose his job if opponents of the text win a referendum next month as polls currently predict.

Tensions over the continuing failure of the government's "yes" campaign spilled over at a weekly ministerial breakfast meeting with what officials described as a "very violent argument" between Raffarin and Interior Minister Dominique de Villepin.

Raffarin was reportedly furious with remarks made by Villepin in a radio interview Sunday that were openly critical of the way the government has handled the run-up to the May 29 vote and hinted at the prime minister's approaching replacement.

More than 15 opinion polls over the last month have shown that the "no" camp will win the referendum on the European constitution with a majority of between 51 and 55 percent -- an outcome which would have enormous repercussions inside both France and the European Union.

According to an official who witnessed the incident at the prime minister's residence Monday morning, Villepin told Raffarin that what he had said the day before had been under orders -- in other words, that his message had been authorised by President Jacques Chirac.

Villepin -- a staunch Chirac loyalist -- held a private meeting with the president early Sunday, before telling Europe 1 radio that there will be a change of political direction after the May vote, whichever side wins.

"You don't have to have second sight. You just have to look around. We will need policies that are much more determined, bolder and more socially-conscious ... in order to take into account the feelings, aspirations and frustrations which are being expressed," Villepin said.

The interior minister, who made his name as foreign minister in the run-up to the Iraq war, also dropped the latest in a series of hints that he would himself like to take over from Raffarin as prime minister -- even though he has never once stood for elected office.

"All one's life one prepares to take on certain tasks, which are sometimes difficult or unpredictable ... After that it is destiny -- it is those above us who decide," he said.

Chirac said during a television debate last Thursday that he will not personally resign if the constitution is rejected by the electorate, but the dismissal of a prime minister is the standard way for a French president to extricate himself from political difficulties.

Adding to the internecine tensions, the influential president of the ruling Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) Nicolas Sarkozy weighed into the row -- taking Raffarin's defence and accusing Villepin of "losing his cool."

"Looking for a scapegoat suggests we're already resigned to defeat," Sarkozy said.

Raffarin took office in 2002 with the reputation of an economic liberal and has succeeded in passing reforms of the pension and social security systems, but his popularity ratings are among the lowest ever recorded for a prime minister. The latest, for a Sunday newspaper, put him at 29 percent.

Hopes that Chirac could revitalise the fortunes of the "yes" camp in last week's two-hour appearance before a group of 80 young people have come to nothing, with 55 percent of the public still intending to vote against the constitution, according to an opinion poll for Le Figaro released late Monday.

The biggest growth in support for the "no" vote has been on the political left, with the PS now evenly split between the two camps. By contrast voters for Chirac's UMP are largely in favour of the constitution.

Rejection of the constitution is seen as the by-product of a widespread social malaise in France, feeding on high unemployment, fears of competition from foreign low-cost economies, and a chronic mistrust of the political elites in Paris.

Drawn up by former French president Valery Giscard d'Estaing, the constitution is meant to simplify decision-making in the expanding European bloc but it must first be adopted by all 25 member states. A rejection in so important a country as France would throw the whole process into confusion.

Inside France a "no" vote would gravely undermine the standing of Chirac's government. But it would also set off a bitter internal war among the Socialists, whose leadership is campaigning in favour of the constitution.

ROME - Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said on Monday he did not resign during a meeting with Italy's president, creating confusion over whether a government crisis was over.

Earlier in the day, government allies said Berlusconi had agreed to demands from a rebel coalition party for a major reshuffle -- a process that would require him to step aside temporarily before presenting the new cabinet to parliament.

After meeting coalition leaders and reportedly agreeing the changes, Berlusconi drove to see President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, apparently to tender his resignation as required under the Italian constitution before a major cabinet reshuffle.

But after the hour-long meeting, he told reporters he had not resigned and there had been no agreement on a reshuffle -- leaving confusion over whether the crisis, the worst in Berlusconi's four-year tenure, was over.

Talking briefly to reporters before going into Italy's lower house of parliament to meet the speaker of the Chamber, Pier Ferdinando Casini, Berlusconi was in playful mood.

"A surprise? This time it was me who surprised you," he said. When asked whether there was an agreement on a reshuffle, he answered: "We will see how parliament reacts."

In a statement, Ciampi said Berlusconi should address parliament but did not clarify the situation further.

The government has been on the verge of collapse since the Union of Christian Democrats (UDC) party quit the coalition on Friday demanding major policy changes after the center-right suffered heavy losses in regional elections.

Ciampi accepted the resignations of the four UDC ministers, but Berlusconi left open the possibility that they may not be replaced.

Berlusconi said last week he would call a snap general election, a year ahead of schedule, if the UDC did not agree to return.

WASHINGTON - James Wolfensohn, newly named to represent the Quartet in coordinating Israel's planned withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, said Sunday he plans to visit Israel and Gaza as early as next week.

Wolfensohn, the departing president of the World Bank, said he would focus in his new role on economic and social development in Palestinian territories and on marshaling international support.

"What I am hoping to do is to help them, particularly on the issues of economic and social development, and trying to bring the international community together in support of both restoration of hope in the Palestinian territories and new outlook for people in terms of jobs, in terms of opportunities," he said.

Wolfensohn spoke to reporters on the sidelines of World Bank meetings in Washington. He is due to leave the World Bank post at the end of May, but the bank's board has given him permission to begin work early in his new role.

Asked when he would travel to Israel and the Gaza Strip, he said, "Very possibly next week."

Wolfensohn said he would rely on a World Bank analysis released in December on rebuilding the Palestinian economy. The report said the Palestinian economy was unlikely to shake off stagnation unless Israel eased the movement of goods and people to and from the Palestinian territories, and there was a Palestinian commitment to security reform.

The World Bank chief has acknowledged spending his last five years in the bank mostly at odds with the Bush administration, which kept him at arm's length.

Wolfensohn clashed with administration officials over how the bank gave out funds to poor countries. Washington wanted more evidence that development aid was not wasted on ill-conceived programs or bureaucracy.

He said he had earlier had discussions "of a general nature" with the Bush administration about the possibility of playing a role for the United States, but "that idea didn't progress." But he said U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice telephoned him last week to ask if he was interested in representing the international Quartet.

Wolfensohn has long had a special interest in the Middle East and knows the players.

JERUSALEM - The Israeli and US armies wrapped up a lengthy joint exercise Monday held to put their air defence capabilities to the test, an Israeli army spokesman said.

During the course of the exercise which lasted several weeks, anti-aircraft defence missiles were fired while Patriot missile systems were placed at a number of sites across Israel.

"The exercise had been planned during the last two years and was part of a routine series of exercises meant to examine the joint operation of the defence systems of both nations," said the spokesman.

Israel is the United States' closest ally in the Middle East and the two countries' militaries regularly hold joint exercises.

THE world says nothing. There are hundreds of Palestinian children imprisoned in the gaols of the State of Israel [1]. They are in extrajudicial detention. Considered as "administrative detainees" by Israel, they are crammed into cells infested by insects.

There are thousands of children on the "wanted" lists who will tomorrow suffer the same fate. To this day, no State in the world has had the courage to force Israel to stop this violation of these young lives.

Arresting a child, mutilating a child and killing children, are an integral part of the military strategy of Israel : it comes back to getting rid of resistants in the cradle.

Who are the statesmen who are moved by this ? These children, deprived of schooling, deprived of affection, deprived of freedom and subjected to traumatising torture, are the victims of a denial by public opinion. It is as if these Palestinian children had no right to a normal life and upbringing !

Kidnapped on their way to school, or in the middle of the night under the very eyes of their mothers, brothers or sisters, who are powerless to protect them, they find themselves, without knowing why, in total darkness. They are beyond the reach of help.

The instructors from the Shabak who interrogate them and subject them to the same tortures as the adults, have a terrifying power over them. After having humiliated them and broken them psychologically, they try to make them into collaborators, in exchange for tiny periods of respite. It happens that, under the threat of rape and blows, they can end up by accusing themselves of acts which they have not committed or denouncing their father or mother, signing statements drawn up in Hebrew, a language which they do not understand.

They come out, after one year, or even three years, shattered.

This is pure barbarism. We have to react to this violence done to children. These children will never come out unharmed. They will come out in a state of deep post-traumatic stress, closed in on themselves and with a need to play with death, which possibly explains the number of candidates for suicide ?

We must do all in our power - and our power is great if we know how to make good use of it - to haul these children away from the hands of the torturers before they have been completely broken.

Israeli occupation forces in the southern Gaza Strip have resumed a controversial method of screening Palestinians travelling through the Rafah border crossing. 

The method, known as the "naked spy machine", allegedly emits large doses of radiation which Palestinians say could cause cancer to those exposed to it. 

The Israeli army has been using the controversial machine, known in technical parlance as Safe View Millimeter Wave Radar, for more than six months now, drawing protests from Palestinian and human-rights groups.

The Israeli army suspended the use of the machine for one week earlier this month due to intense lobbying by these activists. But for the past one week, the device has been back in operation.

Harm to health

The Gaza-based Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) has denounced the use of the device.

In a press statement, it said its use could cause serious harm to the health of those being screened, while also invading Palestinians' privacy by virture of the machine operators being able to see through civilian clothing to the naked body.

The statement described the practice as "another insidious form of collective punishment" given that the Israelis indiscriminately target Palestinian commuters for screening.

Palestinian officials in Rafah condemned the re-introduction of the screening technique in the strongest terms, saying it underscored the "brutal ugliness" of the Israeli mentality.

"They are using our people as guinea pigs to test the efficacy of their machines," Umar Ali al-Naga, deputy-governor of Rafah, told Aljazeera.net. 

He blamed exposure to the machine for several reports of Palestinian commuters experiencing recurrent headaches, blurred vision, fatigue and nausea after being subjected to the screening procedure. 

More hazards

Asked what he thought the Israeli army wanted to achieve, al-Naga said "they only want to torment us".

The Israeli army did not return Aljazeera.net's telephone calls inquiring why the same screening machine was not being used at Israeli airports, harbours and other border crossings.

In an unrelated development, the Palestinian press on Monday accused Israel of dumping large amounts of solid and chemical wastes in the vicinity of the town of Yatta, 10km southwest of Hebron. 

The Ram Allah-based newspaper al-Hayat al-Jadida said in a report that an unusually high level of cancer cases among the inhabitants of the town was attributable to the dumping of carcinogenic materials by local occupation authorities. 

A spokesman for the Israeli civil administration denied the charge, saying the dump did not pose any health hazards to the nearby Palestinian population centres. 

Israeli response

"This is part of Palestinian incitement against Israel," Dan Avidan, spokesperson for the civil administration, told the Arabic service of the Israeli state-run radio on Monday. 

Last month, the Israeli government and army allowed private Israeli companies to dispose of solid wastes from the greater Tel Aviv area in the northern West Bank. 

Palestinians and environmentalist groups said the dumping of tens of thousands of tonnes of solid and chemical wastes near Nablus would be a threat to underground water reserves in particular and public health and environment in general.

JERUSALEM, Israel, - Sixty percent of Israeli factories are in violation of national air quality standards, according to a report issued today by the Ministry of the Environment. The Southern region had the greatest number of industrial plants checked and the greatest number exceeding pollution standards.

In 2004, the ministry carried out surprise spot checks, including stack sampling, in industrial plants throughout the country. Out of 156 spot checks conducted in 34 industrial plants, 21 plants - about 60 percent - were found to violate air quality standards.

Environment Minister Shalom Simhon said after the report was published that enforcement measures, including warnings, hearings were initiated against all of the factories found to exceed pollution emission standards. In some cases, criminal investigations are underway and criminal charges might result. [...]

NEVE DEKALIM, GAZA STRIP - Gabi Glasser and his wife, Rotem, were so horrified by Israel's plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip this summer they pulled their five young children out of school, found a cramped house in a small settlement and moved in.

Glasser says he hopes his family's move from the West Bank to Gaza will help stop the withdrawal, and he is far from alone.

As Israel works to persuade some of the 8,500 Gaza settlers to leave voluntarily before the pullout begins July 20, more people keep moving in.

Sympathetic families are coming with moving vans, hawkish politicians are renting homes and busloads of ultra-Orthodox students are establishing new religious schools, or yeshivas.

It is unclear how many people have moved in so far, but local activists expect many more to arrive during the weeklong Passover holiday beginning Saturday night. Some predict as many as 100,000 sympathizers could come.

The government says it is aware of the problem, but it does not want to stop families from traveling to the area, especially during the week of Passover.

None of those moving in, nearly all of them religious Jews, spoke of physically resisting the pullout, but they said they hoped their presence would complicate the withdrawal.

"We decided to be with our good friends who are going through a very difficult time," said Ilit Eitam, 52, who moved here two weeks ago with her husband, Effie, a hard-line parliamentarian. "If there will be many people like us here, (the pullout) will not happen."

The US wants Israel to explain plans to build new homes in the West Bank, which were announced days after Washington urged an end to settlement expansion.

Israel said on Monday that it expects work to begin soon on 50 new homes in the northern West Bank town of Elkana.

The proposal comes days after President Bush warned Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to halt any such building.

Mr Sharon has also said he favours delaying until mid-August Israel's planned withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.

He wants to avoid the move overlapping with a Jewish mourning period marking the destruction of the biblical temples.

The pullout of all 8,000 Israeli settlers had been due to start on 20 July, but now Mr Sharon wants to delay it by three weeks until 16 August.

No action specified

The international community considers all settlements in Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, as illegal under international law. Israel disagrees.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the US "will be seeking clarification from the government of Israel" over the plan for new homes in Elkana.

"Israel should not be expanding settlements," he said.

The Israeli authorities invited companies to bid for the contract to build the new houses.

An official said construction of the homes could start in eight to 12 weeks.

At a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon last week, President Bush said the expansion of West Bank settlements - particularly in East Jerusalem - violated the "roadmap" peace plan.

"I told the prime minister of my concern that Israel not undertake any activity that contravenes roadmap obligations or prejudices final status negotiations," he said.

He did not specify what, if any, action might be taken against Israel if it construction continued.

Mr Bush also praised Prime Minister Sharon for spearheading the plan to withdraw settlers and soldiers from Gaza this year.

A "protection racket" is a scam where an aggressor instigates an attack, blames it on a bogeyman, and then offers to protect the victim from this bogeyman in return for money and power.

The "War on Terror" is a protection racket. The aggressor is the world financial elite known as the "Crown" based in the City of London. Their instrument is the Zionist project, specifically the Mossad and its US allies.

The victim is the people of the United States and the West in general. The goal is the overthrow of Western Civilization, and the establishment of a world police state called the "New World Order."

"Zionism is but an incident of a far reaching plan," said leading American Zionist Louis Marshall, counsel for bankers Kuhn Loeb in 1917. "It is merely a convenient peg on which to hang a powerful weapon."

The head of the Department of Homeland Security is Israeli dual citizen and Zionist Michael Chertoff. He was the New Jersey State Attorney when five Mossad agents were arrested after witnesses saw them congratulating themselves on the destruction of the World Trade Center. Their van tested positive for explosives. (See Chris Bollyn article below.) Speculators who shorted airline stocks before 9-11 have been identified as Israelis apparently.

"ANTI SEMITISM" THE ORIGINAL PROTECTION RACKET

The Jewish elite regards the Jewish rank-and-file as pawns to be manipulated. "Anti Semitism is indispensable to us for the management of our lesser brethren," says the author of Protocols of the Elders of Zion (9-2) a "forgery" that reads like the blueprint of the New World Order.

Jews had to be terrorized into setting up Israel as a "national home," i.e. colonizing the Middle East and creating a centre of world government. World Finance funded the Nazis. Zionists actively collaborated with them. See "The Holocaust as Mental Paradigm." See also "Zionism: A Conspiracy Against Jews"

Zionist betrayal is the reason Jews went passively to their deaths, says Rabbi Moshe Shonfeld in his book "Holocaust Victims Accuse." Non-Zionist Jews were worth more dead than alive to the Zionist leadership who, Shonfeld says, reaped the moral and financial capital from their "sacrifice." See my "Zionism: Compulsory Suicide for Jews."

The Jewish elite has a long history of manipulating Jews in this manner. For example, in 1950 a wave of anti Semitism and terrorism in Iraq made Naeim Giladi, 21, join the Zionist underground. Giladi was imprisoned, tortured and sentenced to death by Iraqi authorities.

He escaped and fled to Israel only to discover that the anti Semitism and bombings had been engineered by his fellow Zionists to dupe Iraqi Jews into going to Israel. An ancient community was deprived of its wealth and reduced to second-class citizen status in Israel, replacing Palestinian labor. See my "Zionists Double Crossed Iraqi Jews".

"ANTI SEMITISM" BECOMES "ANTI AMERICANISM"

A pogrom like 9-11 was designed to stampede Americans into forfeiting their civil rights and invading the Middle East.

There is a drumbeat in the media to convince Americans that they are victims of Muslim fanatics. This propaganda campaign is carried out by Neo Cons (a.k.a. Zionists.) In an otherwise disappointing new book, "The New Jerusalem: Zionist Power in America," Michael Collins Piper writes:

"In the build-up to the Iraq war, Zionist propagandists and the media increasingly began touting the message to Americans that "the whole world is against us"... and the Israelis are our only real solid dependable ally ...The theme that anti Americanism had run rampant was instilled in Americans for the very purpose of making them "anti" everyone who refused to support the...Iraq war...and the more broad ranging Zionist agenda." (157)

Sound familiar? This is the tactic they use on Jews. See my "How Jews are Brainwashed and Manipulated."

Piper says that Zionism is being equated with Americanism. Zionist agents like Nathan Sharansky crafted the overblown and specious rhetoric of Bush's second inaugural speech that committed the US to advancing the Zionist agenda using force.

History provides a sobering warning as to where this could be leading. In his essay, The Nature of Zionism, Russian author Vladimir Stepin writes,

"During the civil war in Russia, the Zionists also performed another task. Using some units of the Red Army - Trotsky was the chairman of the country's Revolutionary Military Council - they organized the Jewish pogrom in Seversk.

The result of this was the "Law on Those Involved in Pogroms" of 27 July 1918. In accordance with this law, a monstrous Zionist terror raged in Russia for ten years: a person accused of anti-Semitism was, without any argument being allowed, declared to be involved in pogroms and placed against the wall to be shot.

Not only anti-Zionists, but the best representatives of the intelligentsia of Russia, could be accused of being anti-Semitic, and so too could anyone one felt like accusing of it. People saw who was exercising power in Russia and expressed their discontent with it. 90% of the members of the Cheka - the Soviet security organ, 1918-1922 - were Zionists.

Apart from the law on those involved in pogroms, the Zionists practised genocide against the ethnic groups inhabiting Russia, and they did so by accusing people of counter-revolutionary activities, sabotage, and so on, irrespective of whether or not the people in question really had conducted such activities. It was standard practice merely to put them against the wall to be shot."

CONCLUSION

My hunch is that the world financial elite, using Masonic secret societies and intelligence agencies, is responsible for 90% of terrorism. The purpose is to manipulate people into advancing the goals of the New World Order, which includes destroying true religion, nation states, democracy, race and family.

They are running a protection racket. They are empowered to protect us from this "terror." Zionists or Americans who carry out their agenda could end up holding the bag if something goes wrong, or as I should say right.

Remember they are challenging the greatest power in the universe: God, or Truth as witnessed in the souls of all human beings. They are most vulnerable now on the 9-11 attack which they perpetrated. If we rise up as one to demand the truth about this atrocity, their obscene criminal enterprise will start to unravel.

Victor Ostrovsky (1945- ) is a Canadian-born Jew, from a Zionist family who emigrated to Israel when Victor was 5 years old. There, in 1984, he became an agent of the Mossad (HaMossad leModi'in veleTafkidim Meyuhadim), the Israeli equivalent of the CIA. He did this, he says, in the spirit of good faith to Zionism, to the Jewish cause, and to Israel, which he originally considered a virtuous nation. He worked for the Mossad for four years, at which time he resigned in contempt.

Ostrovsky claims that on the night of February 17, 1986, Israeli commandos from the Mossad surreptitiously entered Tripoli, Libya, from the Mediterranean in mini-submarines they called "pigs", and planted in an apartment rented by a confederate there a device called a "Trojan". Following is Ostrovsky's own description of the Trojan.

"A Trojan was a special communication device that could be planted by naval commandos deep inside enemy territory. The device would act as a relay station for misleading transmissions made by the disinformation unit in the Mossad, called LAP {footnote: LAP: Lohama Psicologit--Psychological Warfare, or, as it's known in the West, Disinformation}, and intended to be received by American and British listening stations. Originating from an IDF navy ship out at sea, the prerecorded digital transmissions could be picked up only by the Trojan. The device would then rebroadcast the transmission on another frequency, one used for official business in the enemy country, at which point the transmission would finally be picked up by American ears in Britain."

Once the device had been planted in the apartment in Libya, according to Ostrovsky, messages in Arabic were directed to it from Israel and rebroadcast from Tripoli, to make it look as if Moammar Qaddafi had been communicating with his agents about upcoming terrorist attacks. In March of 1986, the US, France and Spain began intercepting and translating the broadcasts, but France and Spain dismissed them as counterfeit, firstly, because Libya had not theretofore made use of this too obvious means of communication, and secondly, because it was unlikely that Libya would advertise such terrorist intentions beforehand.

The bombing of La Belle, a discotheque in East Berlin, which took place on April 5, 1986, resulted in the deaths of two Americans, with 79 Americans, along with scores of Europeans, injured. Then-President Ronald Reagan blamed Libya, arguing that the attack was a reprisal for the US's having sunk two Libyan patrols in March, and adducing as evidence transcripts of the intercepted fraudulent broadcasts.

On April 15, 1986, the US began bombing Libya. Some believed this was a deliberate attempt to eliminate Qaddafi.

In 1990, with the reunification of West and East Germany, the East German archives were opened and provided evidence pointing to the complicity, in the bombing, of one Musbah Eter, who had worked in the Libyan embassy in East Berlin. In 1996, Eter and four others were brought to trial, the trial lasting four years and leading to convictions and lengthy imprisonments. However, it was never shown that Moammar Qaddafi was behind the bombing.

In the meantime, Ostrovsky had returned to Canada, where he suffered much harassment and persecution from Jews sympathetic to Israel. Josef Lapid, an Israeli journalist, even appeared publicly requesting that some Canadian Jew assassinate Ostrovsky for his revelations, concerning the Trojan and other machinations of the state of Israel.

I didn't really follow the matter at the time. I got interested only later, when I read Ostrovsky's version. Perhaps I missed it all. But what ever became of Israel's involvement in what may have been a false-flag operation? I can't find anywhere that any investigations of Ostrovsky's claims were made by Congress or anyone else. I cannot even find a whole array of articles denouncing him as a liar, crackpot or conspiracy theorist.

According to Ostrovsky, Israel and its American Israel shills have such a "stranglehold" on the US media, that they can merely squelch any stories that would show Israel up to be what it is--a deceitful and treacherous nation.

The cult of criminal celebrity has a way of distorting reality and substituting disinformation as a means of subversion.  The idol son Jonathan “Star of David” Pollard is a convicted traitor of the highest magnitude.   Israeli’s and Israel First Zionists treat this collaborator as a national hero for a simple reason.  Their own loyalty to America is conditional and subordinate to their true allegiance.  The drumbeat for his release from a life sentence in federal prison has never ceased.  The victim card is played as usual and the facts of history falsified to advance their precious country of choice.  The politics of disloyalty is rooted in the identity of Zionism and it’s political objectives.  The only faith involved is one in a regime that comes above the United States.
 
The main reason that the Pollard saga raises its ugly head is that another trial balloon is being floated to pardon the mole. Reported in Arutz Sheva Israel Broadcasting Network:  “Sources in the Sharon's office have leaked to the media that U.S. President George W. Bush hinted to the Prime Minister that he might pardon Pollard if Sharon follows up with a withdrawal from most of Judea and Samaria following this summer's planned evacuation of Jews in Gaza and northern Samaria.
 
It was not clear whether the leaks from Sharon's office were a publicity stunt to win sympathy from the Israel public for the evacuation or whether it is true that the planned visit of Ambassador Ayalon is linked to a Bush promise to free Pollard in return for further evacuations.”
 
Supporters to free Pollard use the most tortured arguments to liberate their hero.  Ponder this little gem of sophistry from Aish.com...

 “Pollard had supposedly given Israel a list of every American spy inside the Soviet Union. On several occasions Soviet agents in New York had posed as Israelis. The CIA reasoned that that was also true in Israel: The Mossad had been infiltrated by one or more Soviet spies. In the trade this is called a "false flag" operation: Your enemy poses as your ally and steals your secrets. In this case, the CIA reasoned in attempting to explain its horrendous losses, Pollard had passed the information to Israel he had stolen, which in turn fell victim to the "false flag" operation. Soviet agents in Israel, posing as Israeli intelligence agents, passed the information to Moscow, which then wiped out American human assets in the Soviet Union.”

The only factual reference in this statement has the Freudian slip - Your enemy poses as your ally and steals your secrets . . .
  
If you have doubts about the commissions of Pollard’s crimes, examine his admissions as stated by Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker Magazine:

“Pollard was paid well by the Israelis: he received a salary that eventually reached twenty-five hundred dollars a month, and tens of thousands of dollars in cash disbursements for hotels, meals, and even jewelry. In his pre-sentencing statement to Judge Robinson, Pollard depicted the money as a benefit that was forced on him. "I did accept money for my services," he acknowledged, but only "as a reflection of how well I was doing my job." He went on to assert that he had later told his controller, Rafi Eitan, a longtime spy who at the time headed a scientific-intelligence unit in Israel, that "I not only intended to repay all the money I'd received but, also, was going to establish a chair at the Israeli General Staff's Intelligence Training Center outside Tel Aviv."

The central issue isn’t about a disgusting traitor rooting in his cell, but lies in the enmity of Israel towards the national interests of America.  Consider the severe ramifications and direr consequences from the maintaining favorable status with Israel.  Mr. Hersh continues:

“At the time of Pollard's spying, select groups of American sailors and soldiers trained in Hebrew were stationed at an N.S.A. listening post near Harrogate, England, and at a specially constructed facility inside the American Embassy in Tel Aviv, where they intercepted and translated Israeli signals. Other interceptions came from an unmanned N.S.A. listening post in Cyprus. Pollard's handing over of the data had a clear impact, the expert told me, for "we could see the whole process" -- of intelligence collection -- "slowing down." It also hindered the United States' ability to recruit foreign agents. Another senior official commented, with bitterness, "The level of penetration would convince any self-respecting human source to look for other kinds of work."
 
A number of officials strongly suspect that the Israelis repackaged much of Pollard's material and provided it to the Soviet Union in exchange for continued Soviet permission for Jews to emigrate to Israel. Other officials go further, and say there was reason to believe that secret information was exchanged for Jews working in highly sensitive positions in the Soviet Union. A significant percentage of Pollard's documents, including some that described the techniques the American Navy used to track Soviet submarines around the world, was of practical importance only to the Soviet Union. One longtime C.I.A. officer who worked as a station chief in the Middle East said he understood that "certain elements in the Israeli military had used it" -- Pollard's material -- "to trade for people they wanted to get out," including Jewish scientists working in missile technology and on nuclear issues.”

The movement to release Pollard has a long record, going back to the Clinton Presidency.  Even the Marc Rich pardoner couldn’t stomach clemency for this turncoat.  Eric Margolis wrote in 1999 the following: “Pollard's defenders claim he, like French Capt. Alfred Dreyfus in 1894, is a victim of anti-Semitism in the military. They maintain Pollard was "only" spying for a friendly country, motivated solely by concern for Israel's security.  These assertions are patently false ...

With remarkable chutzpah, Israel, which receives up to $5 billion in U.S. aid annually, refuses to return documents stolen by Pollard, or allow U.S. intelligence to debrief Mossad agents who ran Pollard in order to learn the full extent of the disaster. While Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu kept calling for Pollard's release on "humanitarian" grounds, he refused to free prisoner of conscience Mordechai Vanunu, now serving 18 years in solitary confinement in Israel for telling a British newspaper about Israel's nuclear arsenal.”
 
If President George W. Bush makes a deal with Ariel Sharon to release Jonathan Pollard, he will prove once and for all that his devotion to America is wrapped in a kosher lox.  The stench of dead fish is all over his administration.  Make no mistake about it.  Bush is an empire worshiper with an erroneous “Dispensational” belief that will drag down America for the benefit of Zionism.  The American public needs to express their outrage with the distorted foreign policy that favors a treacherous comrade.  If Bush really was a man of courage and integrity he would be advocating that Mordechai Vanunu has a right to leave Israel.  He is a man of conscience and peace, while Pollard is a traitor of the highest order. 
 
Those who champion Pollard and the country that he enshrines above all others need to dissect their own support for a bogus government.  The State of Israel is not identical or interchangeable with Judaism.   The ‘false flag’ that waves in Palestine has a scandalous profile that rewards the illicit and punishes the honorable. The United States is complicit in making Israel a nuclear power.  Now we are being prepared to ignore the most grievous of treason as the price for pleasing an alien country that wheels control over our own foreign policy.  When will this real treason stop?

JERUSALEM - Israel's interior minister said on Tuesday he would ban nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu from leaving the country for a further 12 months due to concerns he could harm national security.

Interior Minister Ophir Pines-Paz told Army Radio he would prevent Vanunu from obtaining an Israeli passport necessary to leave the country for another year, saying Vanunu had more nuclear secrets to spill.

"He collected enormous amounts of information, a large part of which is still relevant, I am sorry to say ... (and) he says 'the moment that I can, I will publish it', Pines-Paz said.

"When a man says that he will harm national security, where does that leave us? ... (This is) a preventive step and we have no choice but to use it."

Vanunu was released from prison last April after serving an 18-year sentence for revealing to Britain's Sunday Times newspaper nuclear secrets collected from years of work as a technician at Israel's Dimona atomic reactor.

The 50-year-old former nuclear technician has said that he has no additional information about Israel's nuclear program and wants to leave the country and start a new life abroad.

Vanunu is also on trial for violating the terms of his release in which he was forbidden from speaking to foreign reporters. If convicted, he could be jailed for up to two years.

The information and photographs of the Dimona reactor that Vanunu passed on to the Sunday Times has led foreign experts to conclude that Israel has as many as 200 nuclear warheads.

Israel maintains a policy of nuclear ambiguity in which it refuses to confirm or deny whether it has nuclear weapons.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice expressed concern over press freedom in Russia.

En route to Moscow for negotiations with the Russian President Vladimir Putin, she said the Kremlin’s tightening grip on power and Russia’s pliant media are “very worrying,” Reuters reported.

“Trends have not been positive on the democratic side,” Rice told reporters. “The centralization of state power in the presidency at the expense of countervailing institutions like the Duma (parliament lower house) or an independent judiciary is clearly very worrying. The absence of an independent media on the electronic side is clearly very worrying.”

Earlier, Reporters Without Borders asked Rice to raise the question of press freedom in Russia during her negotiations. In an open letter to Rice, the organization noted serious threats to press freedom in Russia. Journalists in Russia are being subjected to a rising spiral of violence with many suffering brutal attacks, the letter said.

A Japanese court rejected a compensation lawsuit filed by 10 Chinese survivors of Japanese atrocities including the 1937 Nanjing massacre, amid tension between the two nations over Tokyo's wartime past.

The decision by the Tokyo High Court is consistent with repeated rulings in Japan, which says any compensation for World War II crimes is a bilateral issue between countries rather than a case an individual can bring before the courts.

The Tokyo High Court refused to hear an appeal by the women, whose case had already been dismissed by a district court. They can still go to the Supreme Court.

Plaintiffs left the courtroom holding a banner that read, "Unjust verdict."

The plaintiffs had sought 100 million yen (930,000 dollars) for atrocities including the Nanjing massacre, bombings by Japanese forces and the "Unit 731" that performed medical experiments on humans.

Japan this month enraged China and South Korea by approving a textbook that downplays atrocities such as the Nanjing massacre -- a week-long orgy of murder, rape and destruction by Japanese troops in the occupied city.

China says some 300,000 civilians were butchered in the massacre. US-led trials of Japanese war criminals documented 140,000 victims. The nationalist textbook only says that "many" Chinese died in the "incident."

China for the past three weekends has seen some of its biggest demonstrations in years with thousands taking to the streets, pelting Japanese diplomatic missions with bottles and cans and trashing Japanese businesses.

China has refused to apologize for the damage and said the real issue was Japan's alleged whitewashing of its bloody 1931-1945 occupation including the approval of the textbook.

Japan stresses it has apologized for its atrocities and points out that Chinese textbooks are no example of balance, vilifying the Japanese while making no mention of dark chapters in communist China.

A bus fell off a bridge in south-western China’s Chongqing region early today, killing 27 people and seriously injuring four others, the government reported.

The tour bus was carrying 31 passengers, most asleep in berths when the vehicle veered off a bridge on a mountain highway, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

The Chinese Sanxiang-brand bus fell apart on impact and 25 people were killed instantly, it said.

Two others died later. The report did not say what caused the accident.

China’s roads are among the world’s deadliest, with traffic accidents killing 23,411 people in the first three months of this year alone.

Investigators say they have begun questioning survivors of Sunday’s coach crash in southern Switzerland in which 12 people died.

The cause of the tragedy – the country’s worst road accident in almost 25 years – remains a mystery.

Investigating magistrate Dominique Lovey told Swiss radio on Monday that he was pursuing a number of lines of inquiry.

Experts will examine the shattered vehicle to see whether the accident may have been due to a technical fault.

Lovey said the coach, which fell 250 metres, would probably have to be cut in half and lifted by helicopter from the accident scene.

Volcanic ashes forced thousands of people in Sumatra Islands flea the active volcanic region, currently experiencing harmonic tremor and other signs of an eminent mega volcano in that region soon.

Recent series of volcanoes in the same area are alarming, and has made many geologists run to their computer model seeking clues and validation of facts.

Toba in Sumatra experienced the massive volcano of VEI 8.0 – super volcano 74,000 years back.

The deep Java trench marks the line where the Indo-Australian plate subducts, i.e. slips under, the section of the Eurasian plate on which Indonesia sits.

According to computer models, somewhere near Toba, another super volcano is getting ready for eruption. 3.1 mile sinking of Indo-Australian plate under the Eurasian Plate in the last 74,000 years has created enough magma for a super volcano.

Volcanic activities in the region during the past week have signaled an eminent mega volcano a sort of repeat of what happened 74,000 years back. It is noteworthy that this area is just on the opposite side in the globe from the “Yellow Stone Hot Spot” in America.

Experts say that if a mega volcano erupts in Sumatra of VEI 8.0, lashes will engulf the whole world with serious reparation on livelihood, agriculture and weather, causing a real catastrophe to our civilization. Last time it erupted, it wiped out almost 75% of all living beings on the land surface on the earth.

At least 10,000 people fled their homes in the Comoros archipelago Monday after lava started flowing out of a volcanic peak.

According to a United Nations Children’s Fund official said, ash and dark smoke started pouring out of Mount Karthala on the main island of Grand Comore, then hours later lava was spotted on its east and southeastern slopes at 1:30 a.m. local time.

But no deaths or injuries have been reported on the three-island republic, but the biggest risk will be lung injuries from breathing in toxic gases and ash, according to officials.

The volcano is overdue for an eruption. Mount Karthala erupts about every 11 years, but its last significant activity was in 1991.

The Comoros are located in the Indian Ocean between Madagascar and Mozambique.

Tokyo, April 19. (AP): A magnitude 6.2 earthquake occurred in the Pacific Ocean south of Tokyo and shook parts of northeastern Japan, but no injuries or damage were reported.

The quake was centered in the Pacific Ocean about 600 kilometers south of Tokyo, at the depth of 420 kilometers, the Meteorological Agency said, adding that there was no danger of a tsunami.

Despite the size of the magnitude, the shaking in Tokyo and nearby prefectures (state) were minor because of the quake's focus was very deep and far from the shore.

A magnitude 6 earthquake can inflict widespread damage in a populated area. Last October, Japan suffered its deadliest quake in a decade when a magnitude 6.8 tremor rocked the northern Japanese region of Niigata, killing 40 people and injuring more than 2,700.

Japan, which rests atop several tectonic plates, is among the world's most earthquake-prone countries.

SEOUL - South Korea's state weather agency said on Tuesday it is considering issuing a nationwide alert from Wednesday as it forecasts a strong sandstorm will blow in from China over coming days.

The Korea Meteorological Administration said the "yellow dust" dust storm expected to be the heaviest one so far this year will likely hit South Korea on Wednesday morning.

The storm, which is approaching from China's inner Mongolian region, has a dust density of 9,068 micrograms per cubic meter, KMA said.

KMA issues a yellow dust alert when the dust density in the air surpasses 1,000 micrograms per cubic meter for more than two hours.

The alert advises senior citizens, children and people with breathing difficulty to stay indoors.

The yellow dust storms, which carry sand and industrial pollution, originate from the Gobi Desert in the Chinese-Mongolian border region and, driven by strong spring winds, affects regions as far west as Japan.

Video

There has been a Bigfoot sighting in northern Manitoba. Residents have been flocking to Georgina Henry's house in Norway House, Manitoba to watch nearly three minutes of video shot be her son, Bobby Clarke.

The video was shot just after dawn Saturday morning on the banks of the Nelson River. Clarke says he was on duty at his job as a car ferry operator when he saw a "big, black figure" on the opposite bank, about 300 meters away. He grabbed his video camera -- which he says he always has with him -- and started filming. Clarke says the creature was "massive." He says he has been nervous ever since seeing the creature, especially when he takes the ferry to the side of the river the creature was on.

Several people are talking about taking a boat to that side of the river to look for tracks, but Clarke says he's not anxious to join them.

FOUR-TIMES killer Mark Hobson was revealed yesterday as a flesh-eating monster who savagely murdered his girlfriend, her twin and an aged couple.

A month earlier, former binman Hobson, 35, had got probation for stabbing a love rival to the point of death. Last night, amid astonishment at the decision, the victim's mother said: "Where is the justice in that?"

Hobson - on up to 36 cans of lager a day and using drugs - inflicted 17 hammer blows on girlfriend Claire Sanderson, 27, Leeds crown court heard.

With her body in the attic, he lured twin Diane to their flat a week later. She was savagely beaten and had chunks of flesh bitten off. Hobson who was a Hannibal Lecter fan, may have eaten her left nipple, the court heard. Diane, who suffered 15 minutes of torture, had her body shaved and was sexually mutilated - possibly while still alive.

She was found at the flat in Camblesforth, North Yorks, with severe injuries to the genital area.

Hobson, who often beat Claire, had earlier told a work colleague he "picked the wrong sister".

He had a hit-list which included the twins' parents and the mum and dad of his ex-wife. But his third and fourth victims, a day after Diane died on July 17 last year, were James Britton, 80, and wife Joan, 81, at home in Strensall, near York.

Mr Britton, who had a Parkinson's-type illness, was stabbed several times and beaten with his walking stick.

His wife, who walked with a frame, was stabbed so viciously the blade's wooden handle snapped off.

Hobson was on the run for a week. He told police of his apparently psychopathic killings: "I'm a f***ing murderer, aren't I? Then I'll take my punishment." Hobson - obsessed with violent rap songs and Eminem's My Dad's Gone Crazy - admitted four murders and sentence was adjourned until May 27 for reports.

His probation "escape" last June followed the stabbing of William Brace, 33. He was the former lover of a girl who jilted him, Samantha Batley. Mr Brace had life-saving surgery for five knife wounds.

Hobson later jumped bail and was dealt with in June 2004, getting probation and 100 hours community work. Brace's mother Margaret, of Selby, said: "This man tried to murder my son...he walked out virtually a free man."

A motorist is recovering today after his nose was broken when a frozen sausage was thrown through the open window of his car, ambulance service officials said.

The 46-year-old man was driving near his home in South Woodham Ferrers, Essex, when the “bizarre incident” occurred, said a spokesman for the Essex Ambulance Service.

“He was driving his car when the offending item came through his open window and hit him on the nose,” said the spokesman.

“The man said he was making his way home after work and had the window down because it was such a nice afternoon.

“He said he saw a car coming the other way and felt a searing pain in his nose. He managed to stop his car without hitting anyone else at which point passers-by came to his aid.

“His nose was undoubtedly fractured and he had lost quite a lot of blood … he decided not to go to hospital but has been left with a very painful and swollen nose.

“I feel very sorry for him – it must have been an incredibly lucky or unlucky shot to get the sausage through a moving car window. I have never seen or heard of anything like this before.”

Police said they were investigating the incident on Monday afternoon and wanted to hear from anyone with information.