Washington Post ombudsman Michael Getler used his June 19 column to respond to FAIR's June 14 Action Alert regarding Post reporter Dana Milbank's use of the term "wing nuts" to describe activists pressing the media to take the Downing Street memos more seriously.

The relevant portion of Getler's column is below, followed by FAIR's response.

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The Washington Post
June 19, 2005 Sunday

HEADLINE: Memos, 'Wing Nuts' and 'Hit Lists'
BYLINE: Michael Getler
BODY:

The bulk of the mail last week, by far, was focused once again on the "Downing Street Memo." This is the memo produced by a national security aide to British Prime Minister Tony Blair, based on notes taken in a meeting with Blair and his top advisers on July 23, 2002, eight months before the invasion of Iraq. It is marked "Secret and strictly personal--UK eyes only" but was leaked to the Sunday Times of London and published May 1.

Included in the note-taker's account was an assessment by the chief of British intelligence, after returning from a visit to Washington, that: "Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

The memo, and the coverage and interpretation of it, continue to generate contention, especially among critics of the war and Bush administration policy. The overwhelming majority of e-mails I received last week seemed to have been prompted by a write-in campaign sponsored mostly by Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), a liberal, self-described media watchdog organization.

Their target this time was a column by Post staff writer Dana Milbank on June 8 in which the term "wing nuts" was used. Many of the e-mailers said the reference disparaged the real concerns of many people that the administration misrepresented the situation that led the country to war.

Milbank is one of the paper's most talented and observant reporters. On the other hand, for the past several months he has also been serving as a columnist, frequently writing observations that go beyond straight reporting in a column labeled "Washington Sketch" that appears in the news pages of the A-section. On Friday, for example, The Post covered an unofficial antiwar hearing on Capitol Hill only in a Milbank column. Several readers found this inappropriate.

Unfortunately, it has never been announced or explained to Post readers that reporter Milbank is also now columnist Milbank. The reference to "wing nuts," as in left-wing nuts and right-wing nuts, appeared in the June 8 column, not a "news story," as many e-mailers wrongly stated. This is also understandable because FAIR neglected to tell its subscribers that this was clearly marked as a "Washington Sketch" and not a news story.

Milbank's column was about the June 7 Bush-Blair news conference in Washington and it reported that "Democrats.com, a group of left-wing activists" had sent e-mails offering a "reward" for anyone who could get an answer from Bush about the report that intelligence had been "fixed" around Iraq policy. Later in the column, Milbank wrote that a reporter who did ask such a question, and who had no idea of the activists' e-mails, "wasn't trying to satisfy the wing nuts."

Post Assistant Managing Editor Liz Spayd said "the term referred to one specific group" and not everyone who was questioning coverage of the memo. As for the term "wing nuts," she said "that word is probably sharper than it should have been." I agree. It was a needless red flag that undoubtedly would be read as disparaging beyond the group that Milbank was referring to. But columnists do get more leeway and the term has infiltrated political discussion in these heated times.

Here's Milbank's view: "While you have been within your rights as ombudsman over the past five years to attempt to excise any trace of colorful or provocative writing from the Post, you are out of bounds in asserting that a columnist cannot identify as 'wingnuts' a group whose followers have long been harassing this and other reporters and their families with hateful, obscene and sometimes anti-Semitic speech."

Much of the mail criticizing Milbank was also directed at op-ed columnist Michael Kinsley, who, in a June 12 column, said leftist activists' continued focus on the memo showed an ability to develop "a paranoid theory." Later in the week, The Post's editorial page also weighed in on the Downing Street memos (another has been leaked), saying: "They add nothing to what was publicly known in July 2002." That also brought mail.

I have a different view. The July 23 memo is important because it is an official document produced at the highest level of government of the most important U.S. ally. Its authenticity has not been disputed. Whatever some people said or wrote three years ago, there has never been--except for this memo--any official, authoritative claim or confirmation that "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." Blair denied that at the news conference. But could the secret minutes of such a meeting be wrong? Maybe there's a different interpretation, or maybe "fixed" means something different in British-speak.

Or maybe Blair could produce the former intelligence chief, and the note-taker, for a news conference or open parliamentary session and let reporters or legislators ask for an elaboration on the assessments in the memo.

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FAIR continues to be puzzled by Getler's persistent references to FAIR as a "self-described media watchdog organization," which seems to be an attempt to marginalize FAIR's work. One could just as easily call Post reporters "self-described" journalists working for a "self-described" newspaper.

Getler's attempt to rationalize Milbank's choice of words is also peculiar. Getler stressed that Milbank has a special status at the paper as a "columnist, frequently writing observations that go beyond straight reporting in a column labeled 'Washington Sketch' that appears in the news pages of the A-section." This could present problems, according to Getler: "Unfortunately, it has never been announced or explained to Post readers that reporter Milbank is also now columnist Milbank."

Indeed, the Post could do a much better job of explaining Milbank's status. It's worth noting that you get to Milbank's pieces through the "News" section of the Washington Post's website, not through the "Opinion" section. Milbank's latest piece (6/18/05) has a line at the end noting, "Staff writer Lila de Tantillo contributed to this report"--an odd thing for the Post to add to an opinion column.

Still, despite the Post's lack of clarity, the ombudsman blames FAIR for any confusion:

"The reference to 'wing nuts,' as in left-wing nuts and right-wing nuts, appeared in the June 8 column, not a 'news story,' as many e-mailers wrongly stated. This is also understandable because FAIR neglected to tell its subscribers that this was clearly marked as a 'Washington Sketch' and not a news story."

This comment suggests that "Washington Sketch" is a well-known category of opinion journalism, and not a name that the Post invented to label some of Milbank's writings starting in March. Similar labels are often put on "news analysis" pieces, such as Elizabeth Bumiller's "White House Letter" in the New York Times.

In the end, however, what category the Post thinks Milbank's writing should be placed in is beside the point. Whatever you want to call it, his piece used the slur "wing nuts" to describe people calling for coverage of a patently newsworthy controversy that was largely ignored by mainstream media--in other words, people calling on the media to do their jobs.

Getler notes that the term "wing nuts" "undoubtedly would be read as disparaging beyond the group that Milbank was referring to." But even the use of the term to refer only to Democrats.com is problematic. In back-and- forth emails posted on the Democrats.com website ( http://www.democrats.com/milbank ), Milbank provides no evidence that the group was responsible for any "hateful, obscene [or] anti-Semitic speech."

It is not unusual for people who work in the public eye to receive criticism, some of it intemperate, angry and abusive. FAIR receives such emails and calls on a daily basis, sometimes including anti-Semitic taunts and death threats. But to respond in kind to such hostility in one's journalism is a mistake-- in a news article or a "Washington Sketch" column. In the "wing nuts" piece, Milbank refers to another journalist as a "consummate professional." Milbank's use of name-calling removes him from that category.

Indeed, Milbank's displeasure with Downing Street Memo activists seems to be unprofessionally twisting his coverage of the issue. When Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) convened a panel to discuss the issue, Milbank ridiculed the event in what Getler correctly notes was the Post's only coverage of the event (6/17/05):

"In the Capitol basement yesterday, long-suffering House Democrats took a trip to the land of make-believe. They pretended a small conference room was the Judiciary Committee hearing room, draping white linens over folding tables to make them look like witness tables and bringing in cardboard name tags and extra flags to make the whole thing look official."

Milbank dragged Democrats.com into the story, misleadingly referring to the group as "the event organizer"; After Downing Street, a coalition of some 60 groups including Democrats.com, put together an off-site closed-circuit viewing of the panel for the overflow crowd, though the way Milbank refers to the "organizers" of the actual panel two paragraphs later a reader could easily conclude that Democrats.com were responsible for the panel itself. Milbank harped on stickers, T-shirts and leaflets seen at the overflow viewing; needless to say, the Washington Post does not usually cover congressional hearings by talking about the material distributed by random individuals on the Capitol steps.

Conyers wrote a letter in response to Milbank's article, noting that the meeting was held in a basement room for a reason: "Despite the fact that a number of other suitable rooms were available in the Capitol and House office buildings, Republicans declined my request for each and every one of them."

Milbank went to great lengths to mock the event, turning a Republican effort to block an investigation of a significant document into evidence of Democratic delusions. One can't help but wonder whether Milbank has allowed a personal grievance to slant his coverage of a major topic.

NOTE: Dana Milbank can be reached at sketch@washpost.com. As always, please remember that your comments have more impact if you maintain a polite tone.

The Washington Post is a joke.

In the past month I have watched the "venerable" institution run its Deep Throat/Watergate connection into the ground as it basks in the self-congratulatory glow only the media heaps upon itself. Countless interviews, editorials and debates have chronicled a descent into madness where news reports focus on how news was reported.

Fascinating.

Seriously, who cares? I don't think the universe stands redefined because of the actions of one whistleblower with questionable motives, nor do I consider Woodward and Bernstein a crack crime-fighting duo looking to unseat Richard Nixon. I did, however, respect the paper's act of taking a subversive story and nurturing it, particularly in the face of an administration loathe to reveal its secrets.

Now 30 years later history is repeating itself. The citizens of the United States live under the rule of an administration with so many well-documented lies and crimes no insider is even needed to blow a story open. Draconian laws strip us of our freedoms and warhawks send our friends and family to die in illegal wars. These kinds of issues cry out for fair and accurate reporting – or perhaps a vigilant voice that has long stood for holding government accountable?

Those cries will go unheeded. As the Post's sole piece – Dana Milbank's condescending piece of trash – on Representative John Conyers' (D-Michigan) Downing Street Memo hearings last week can attest, the Post has no desire to hold anybody accountable for anything. They just want to relive old glories, even in the face of appearing grossly hypocritical. The American people can't piece things together, can they?

If they've been raised on the mass media of the past two decades, not likely.

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The Downing Street Memo is not something that will go away. The consciousness raised by its emergence in May is growing, and it is only conspicuous by its absence in mainstream press and television.

While it shares the spotlight as a damning piece of evidence showing Bush's complicity in starting war at all costs, the memo is merely one of a dozen proofs that the president and his advisors lied to initiate combat in Iraq. Lies that were all propagated through mainstream media outlets in the United States, lies that were routinely forgotten or ignored when time for a retraction came.

Conyers' decision to hold a hearing outlining the lies that led the United States down the path to war should be an important and vital part of maintaining our democracy. It certainly demands more attention from one of the self-styled bedrocks of journalism than the drunken scribblings of a clearly biased columnist like Dana Milbank.

If you have not read Milbank's column, I invite you to do so now. Since its publication, the piece has been so thoroughly vetted as irresponsible journalism the Post rechristened it as a feature and not news.

In it you'll find members of Congress reduced to caricatures of kindergarten "playmates" engaged in a game of dress-up and running around like deluded patrons of the "land of make-believe." Snide, caustic remarks are made about everything and everyone; not even the décor of the room escapes unremarked. Veteran analysts and emotional parents alike were discredited as part of the lunatic fringe.

No accurate account of the hearings is present in Milbank's hatchet job. And this is the only account of the event the Washington Post chose to run.

It is so replete with inaccuracies Conyers wrote a letter to the paper refuting every silly and irresponsible point Milbank made. "Pravda on the Potomac" is a great read; Conyers truly is a dedicated servant of the People and his refrained rhetoric shows what class he has when dealing with an idiot.

All of this, however, raises the question: Why is the Washington Post trying to bury and discredit the kind of news it built its reputation on during the Nixon years? The Downing Street Memo paints President Bush in an even more unfavorable light than the money trail Woodward and Bernstein followed in the '70s – it proves undeniably that the tens of thousands of deaths in Iraq were for naught. It proves Bush is a war criminal more interested in the urban legend that Saddam tried to whack his daddy than in trying to keep American infrastructure from collapsing.

And, damn it, it makes for a great read.

I can understand why the hearings were broadcast on CSPAN-3 – the president obviously wants this downplayed as much as possible. But news outlets? Their reputations are already in the toilet after repeated flubbings of facts, plagiarism and attention to infotainment at the expense of actual news. Regardless of what they might lead us to believe, the media rely on people to buy it or watch advertisements. With declining ratings and readerships, how much of a profit margin are the executives willing to give up just to curry favor with the gang of thugs and miscreants in charge?

Forget even the profit line – how much respect is the Washington Post willing to toss in the Potomac in an attempt to dismiss truth from the public record? I know that Capitol Hill is one big orgy of power and persuasion, but look at what happened with Bob Woodward. By striking up a friendship with Mark Felt early in his career, Woodward inadvertently parlayed his dedication to the story into almost a celebrity career. What journalist nowadays climbs the ranks by investing in the trust of the disgruntled serfs in the White House? Those are the people with the best information, not the sycophants who tow the party line.

Better information, better work, more name recognition. It's win-win. But Washington, D.C. lives in its own little bizarro universe where fiscal responsibility means more spending, where red means go and green means stop, and mind-numbing idiocy is rewarded.

Looks like Dana Milbank is in for a promotion, then.

Appearing on MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews, former CIA Director R. James Woolsey repeated the false assertion -- which conservatives in the media have made and which Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice embraced during a previous interview with Matthews -- that the word "fixed," as used in the Downing Street memo, means something other than "cooking the books" in British parlance. [...]

When Hardball guest host David Gregory asked Woolsey about this line, Woolsey stated: "I think that's not what 'fixing' means in these circumstances. I think people are not listening to British usage. I don't think they're talking about cooking the books." But British sources have said that "British usage" conforms exactly to the interpretation Woolsey tried to reject:

* British Sunday Times reporter Michael Smith, the reporter who first disclosed the memo on May 1, ridiculed the notion that "fixed" has a different meaning in Britain in a Washington Post online chat: "There are number of people asking about fixed and its meaning. This is a real joke. I do not know anyone in the U.K. who took it to mean anything other than fixed as in fixed a race, fixed an election, fixed the intelligence. If you fix something, you make it the way you want it."

* A British Broadcasting Corp. (BBC) documentary in March quoted the Downing Street memo more than a month before the Sunday Times published it. BBC reporter John Ware explained: "By 'fixed' the MI6 chief meant that the Americans were trawling for evidence to reinforce their claim that Saddam was a threat."

* When the Sunday Times first disclosed the memo on May 1, it noted the Bush administration's attempt "to link Saddam to the 9/11 attacks" as an example of "fixing" the intelligence around the policy: "The Americans had been trying to link Saddam to the 9/11 attacks; but the British knew the evidence was flimsy or non-existent. Dearlove warned the meeting that 'the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.' "

* David Hughes, political editor of London's Daily Mail, argued in a May 2 column that the meeting detailed in the Downing Street memo "led inexorably to the publication of the 'sexed-up' Iraq weapons dossier two months later," referring to a now-famous 2003 report by BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan alleging that a British dossier on Iraq had been "sexed up" to hype the Iraqi threat. [...]

It's bad enough that the Bush administration had so little international support for the Iraqi war that their "coalition of the willing" meant the U.S., Britain, and the equivalent of a child's imaginary friends. It's even worse that, as the British Downing Street memo confirms, they had so little evidence of real threats that they knew from the start that they were going to have manufacture excuses to go to war. What's more damning still is that they effectively began this war even before the congressional vote.

With Congressman John Conyers holding hearings, the media are finally starting to cover the Downing Street memo. [...]

The document is damning, particularly coupled with the testimony of former Bush ghost-writer Mickey Herskowitz that Bush was talking about invading Iraq as early as 1999. But it's even more disturbing as we start learning that this administration began actively fighting the Iraq war well in advance of the March 2003 official attack--before both the October 2002 US Congressional authorization and the November United Nations resolution requiring that Saddam Hussein open the country up to inspectors.

I follow Iraq pretty closely, but was taken aback when Charlie Clements, now head of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, described driving in Iraq months before the war "and a building would just explode, hit by a missile from 30,000 feet –‘What is that building?'" Clements would ask. "'Oh, that's a telephone exchange.'" Later, at a conference at Nevada's Nellis Air Force Base, Clements heard a U.S. General boast "that he began taking out assets that could help in resisting an invasion at least six months before war was declared."

Earlier this month, Jeremy Scahill wrote a powerful piece on the website of The Nation, describing a huge air assault in September 2002. "Approximately 100 US and British planes flew from Kuwait into Iraqi airspace," Scahill writes. "At least seven types of aircraft were part of this massive operation, including US F-15 Strike Eagles and Royal Air Force Tornado ground-attack planes. They dropped precision-guided munitions on Saddam Hussein's major western air-defense facility, clearing the path for Special Forces helicopters that lay in wait in Jordan. Earlier attacks had been carried out against Iraqi command and control centers, radar detection systems, Revolutionary Guard units, communication centers and mobile air- defense systems. The Pentagon's goal was clear: Destroy Iraq's ability to resist."

Why aren't we talking about this? As Scahill points out, this was a month before the Congressional vote, and two before the UN resolution. Supposedly part of enforcing "no fly zones," the bombings were actually systematic assaults on Iraq's capacity to defend itself. The US had never declared war. Bush had no authorization, not even a fig leaf. He was simply attacking another nation because he'd decided to do so. This preemptive war preempted our own Congress, as well as international law.

Most Americans don't know these prewar attacks ever happened. There was little coverage at the time, and there's been little since. The bombings that destroyed Iraq's air defenses were under the radar for both the American media and American citizens.

If coverage of the Downing St memo continues to increase, I suspect the administration will try to dismiss it as mere diplomatic talk, just inside baseball. But they weren't just manipulating intelligence so they could attack no matter how Saddam Hussein responded. They weren't only bribing would-be allies into participation. They were fighting a war they'd planned long before. They just didn't bother to tell the American public.

Paul Loeb is the author of The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear (Basic Books), named the #3 political book of 2004 by the History Channel and American Book Association. See http://www.theimpossible.org/ You can read more about the Downing St memo at http://www.afterdowningstreet.org

This is great investigative work, and further evidence that Bush and the neocons were planning pre-emptive military action long before September 11th, and no matter what WMD intelligence revealed--Chris

With a small ceremony on April 26, 2003, control of Prince Sultan Air Base was handed back to the government of Saudi Arabia. Since the mid-nineties it had been the premier US air base in the region and the nerve center for all air force operations in the Gulf. As the home of the Combined Air Operations Center (CAOC), the base was the primary command and control facility responsible for orchestrating the air campaigns for both Operation Southern Watch in Iraq and Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan.

The timing of the closing of PSAB seemed odd, coming just weeks after the official start of military actions in Iraq. It should have, at the very least, caused unwanted logistical problems for the Pentagon and regional commanders, but it didn't. A contingency plan had long been in the works, not only for Prince Sultan Air Base, but also for the entire map of the Middle East, including Iraq.

Long before the US pullout, a new home for the operations had secretly been built in the deserts of Qatar. What had been in October 2001 "nothing more than a runway and a field of sand covered by two-dozen tents and a few warehouses", the Al Udeid Air Base was transformed in a few short months into one of the largest air bases in the world.

Published reports and official DOD statements claimed that the amazing transformation was the result of the heroic response of US servicemen to the tragedy of 9-11. A determined military had beaten indeterminate odds to transform a barren wasteland into a state of the art military base in order to "take the war to the terrorists".

The true story of the building of Al-Udeid is actually quite different. The planning for the mammoth base had in fact taken place long before Sept. 11, and actual work on the base began as early as the spring of 2001. The building of Al Udeid turns out not to be a "miracle in the desert" in response to a heinous attack, as touted by the military, but rather a required step on the path to regime change in Iraq.

It has long been accepted knowledge that the Bush Administration was working feverishly towards regime change in Iraq during the 18-month period between 9-11 and the official start of the war in March of 2003. The Downing St Minutes confirmed that the Administration was set on a path to war at least as early as mid-summer of 2002. The accounts of Paul O'Neil and Richard Clarke verified that Iraq was a front burner issue for the Administration from the very first day, and only intensified after the attacks. Yet finding hard evidence to prove that planning for the war in Iraq was taking place prior to 9-11 has been hard to find. A look at the building of Al Udied can provide that evidence. [...]

Now try to work this one out. Before the war on Iraq, Britain witnessed a ferocious debate over whether the case for conflict was legal and honest. It culminated in the largest demonstration in the country's history, as a million or more took to the streets to stop the war. At the same time, the US sleepwalked into battle. Its press subjected George Bush to a fraction of the scrutiny endured by Tony Blair: the president's claims about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction and links to al-Qaida were barely challenged. While Blair had to cajole and persuade his MPs to back him, Bush counted on the easy loyalty of his fellow Republicans - and of most leading Democrats.

Yet now the picture has reversed. In Washington Iraq remains close to the centre of politics while in Britain it has all but vanished. So the big news on Capitol Hill is the Democrats' refusal to confirm John Bolton, the man Bush wants to serve as US ambassador to the UN, in part because of suspicions arising from the lead-up to war.

Meanwhile, RAF planes were involved last weekend in bombing raids in north-west Iraq - a marked escalation of their role - and British politics barely stirs. America has woken up; we are aslumber.

The best illustration of this strange reversal is the curious fate of the Downing Street memo. Leaked to the Sunday Times just before the election, it contained a slew of striking revelations. It minuted a meeting of Blair, Jack Straw, Geoff Hoon and a clutch of top officials back on July 23 2002 - when both Bush and Blair were adamant that no decision had been taken - and confirms that, on the contrary, Washington had resolved to go to war. Despite Straw's insistence that the case against Saddam was "thin", the course was set. According to the memo, Richard Dearlove, then head of MI6, explained that "Bush wanted to remove Saddam through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

As if that were not devastating enough - vindicating one of the anti-war camp's key charges, that the decision for war came first and the evidence was "fixed" to fit - the leaks have kept coming. In the past fortnight, six more documents have surfaced, their authenticity not challenged. One shows that Britain and the US heavily increased bombing raids on Iraq in the summer of 2002 - when London and Washington were still insisting that war was a last resort - even though the Foreign Office's own lawyers had advised that such action was illegal. These "spikes of activity" were aimed at provoking Saddam into action that might justify war. Other documents confirm that Blair had agreed to back regime change in the spring of 2002, that he was warned it was illegal and that ministers were told to "create the conditions" that would make it legal. Other gems include the admission that the threat from Saddam and WMD had not increased and that US attempts to link Baghdad to al-Qaida were "frankly unconvincing".

Taken together, these papers amount to an indictment of the way the British and American peoples were led to war. In Britain they have scarcely made a dent, but in America they have developed an unexpected momentum. Initially circulated on left-leaning websites, they have now broken out of the blogosphere and into the mainstream. The big newspapers have editorialised on the topic; last week Democratic congressmen held unofficial hearings into the memos; whole campaigns have formed solely to publicise their existence. (Now downingstreetmemo.com is there as an alternative to thankyoutony.com, where Americans are invited to signal their gratitude to their staunchest ally.) The memos have earned the two definitive accolades of a hot political issue: their own abbreviation - the DSM - and a customised line of T-shirts. ("Read the memo or die" is available in extra-large.)

The administration has been put on the defensive, lamely insisting that the decision for war was only taken in February 2003. Some Democrats believe the distance between that claim and these memos supplies the vital element of any scandal: proof that the president lied. They argue that if a fib about a dalliance with an intern was enough to see Bill Clinton impeached, lies that led to the deaths of 1,600 US troops and hundreds of thousands of uncounted and unnamed Iraqi civilians deserve at least the same treatment.

That's not going to happen - at least not while Republicans control both the House and Senate, chairing the committees that are meant to investigate such matters. It's also true that, while the mainstream US press has given space to the DSM issue, much of the coverage has sought to play down the documents' importance. (Having failed to expose the holes in the administration's case before the war, the American media is perhaps embarrassed to show how gaping those holes were.) One senior Democrat I spoke to yesterday suggested that the lead-up to war will never become a pivotal question because "it's not in Americans' nature to look backward". The focus now, he says, even among opponents of the war, is on "how to get out of this mess - not how we got into it".

Comment: And yet, as the author pointed out, most Democrats were complicit in the invasion of Iraq - so why should we bother listening to "one senior Democrat's" claim that opponents of the war aren't focusing on how we got into this mess? The truth about how Bush and the Neocons pulled a fast one on the American public regarding both 9/11 and Iraq is the key issue. The Democrat's statement is like saying, "Well, Bush murdered my son, but I don't care why or how it happened - I just want to figure out some way that we can convict him so I can get on with my life." Obviously, the motive involved and especially the evidence of the crime are essential to any prosecution. Otherwise, the murderer walks free.

For all that, the awkward questions linger. Last week Harry Reid, the Democrats' leader in the Senate, explained his opposition to Bolton's nomination partly in terms of the Downing Street memo: that document had established that "hyping intelligence" happened and he wanted to know if Bolton had ever been involved in similar exercises.

Even when the past is put to one side, Iraq continues to have a salience in the US that it lacks here. Coverage of the daily cost of the occupation remains intense, with a constant gaze on the insurgency that refuses to fade away.

What explains this contrast? Part of it is bad timing. The first memo was leaked in the dog days of a British election campaign after a week dominated by the publication of the attorney general's famed advice. Journalists decided that voters were Iraq-ed out and so gave the memo much less coverage than it deserved. The election itself has played a role too. The assumption is that Britons delivered their verdict on Iraq by cutting Labour's majority and therefore the reckoning has, at least partially, happened. That is certainly how the government likes to play it: privately, ministers will hint that the whole Iraq business was a bit of a nightmare but it's behind us now and we can all move on.

The trouble is, it is not behind us. The occupation continues and people are still dying, daily, in substantial numbers. In the US the realisation seems to be dawning that this episode represents, at the very least, a case of maladministration, of desperately poor governance. That failure should be investigated, by Commons committees as much as by congressional ones, not because some of us cannot let go of the past - but because there is no other way to ensure such folly never happens again.

When the Watergate scandal was unfolding, our nation was justifiably outraged. We were justifiably outraged that the Nixon Administration was involved in the burglary of the offices of their political opponents. We were justifiably outraged that the Nixon Administration was attempting to cover up this crime.

However, it seems to me that the Watergate scandal pales in comparison to the George W. Bush Administration's lying to the American people and the world about the reason to attack and invade another sovereign country.

Where is the outrage?

Where is the outrage the the so-called weapons of mass destruction had absolutely nothing to do with why the Bush Administration wanted to invade Iraq? The Bush Administration was not deceived about weapons of mass destruction--the Bush Administration did the deceiving.

Where is the outrage that innocent Iraqi citizens and American soldiers are dead or crippled for life because of the lies of the Bush Administration?

Kirk Muse
Mesa, AZ - USA

"To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve." -- Attorney General John Ashcroft - in defense of the USA Patriot Act (Source: Press Report, Center for Public Integrity)

"The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger."-- Hermann Goering, cabinet member under Adolf Hitler (Source: Transcript of Nuremberg Trials)

Talk about two peas in a pod… Sounds to me like two brothers in mission and creed. I found these quotes in a must read article by Chuck Baldwin entitled Remembering the Lessons of Germany's Past at www.newswithviews.com. It's an article about a set-up. Read.

Today I've been thinking about vulnerability. I am a vulnerable person. I'm old, I can't run, I don't have wealth, riches, social connections, cabal connections, genetic perfections, genius, an army, weapons, globalist aspirations, acreage, non-profit status, or any status for that matter. I'm just an ordinary commoner, and that makes me vulnerable.

But as a commoner, and with 99% of the world's people along side of me, I do not like to be threatened by the likes of the 1%, such as Mr. Ashcroft, who speaks as if I am a criminal. So, to you, Mr. Ashcroft, I have an absolute right to disagree with anything you say, because you are my employee and you work for me. You need to rescind that arrogant, elitist comment, whereby you just demeaned, insulted, and threatened American citizens. In fact, you need to step down because you do not represent the American citizenry. You represent the agenda of the 1% and therefore YOUR RESOLVE is the real danger to OUR way of life and country.

Now, with that said, let us consider other facts. Everywhere I turn, I see behavior modification in action. I see it on television, in ecology and other sciences, in the pharmaceutical and health industries, all schools and universities, all laws and hidden legislation, all executive orders, all deed-restricted communities, all transportation issues, all law enforcement powers, all food and water issues, and in every other system that has anything, whatsoever, to do with homo sapiens.

We are constantly told what to do, where to go and not go, what to eat and not eat, how to die, what pets to keep and not keep, how to raise our children, what gods we can and cannot worship, what to say and not say, how to be sane, what to wear, what to buy, where to buy, where to live and not live, on and on… We are also told that American-style freedom is being spread across the globe. American freedom?

At this stage of the game, I would like to know precisely what I am free to do. I'd like to see that list, for liberty and freedom contradict all the above AND all the following:

· ELF technology
· RFID technology
· Verichips
· Real ID
· Compulsory Mental Health Screening of ALL people
· COPS (Community Oriented Policing Service)
· COMPASS
· Psychotronic/electromagnetic weapons technology
· Partnership/Stakeholding bureaucracies
· Eminent Domain
· GPS
· GIS
· Global Mapping
· Digital Video Recording Systems
· Stun Guns
· Internet Monitoring
· Spy Camera Technologies
· S. 517 (109th Congress, 1st Session), "To establish the Weather Modification Operations and Research Board, and for other purposes."
· Detention Camps
· Operation TIPS
· TIA – Total Information Awareness

This list could go on for pages, but you get the picture. So again, I repeat, what am I free to do amidst the behavior modification brainwash and the police state, which is operational, today, in America?

Wouldn't it be something if one, just one, politician would come forth and say to us, "Okay, I will tell you the truth. You are to be totally controlled by the elite, because if you don't do what they tell you to do, they can destroy you in many, many ways. You are totally powerless and 'we' changed the way that you think, the way that you live, and now you are slaves because we purposefully destroyed your Constitutional rights and freedoms. The wealthiest people in the world desired total, physical ownership of the planet, including all natural resources, and they desired that you become a managed species. Having the money and the weapons to enforce these wishes, their goals were accomplished. You, the commoners, who are not in their leagues, nor their ballparks, are looked upon as an invasive profit-taking species, and you are therefore to be controlled by drugs, incarceration, or by any other means necessary. If you cause any problems, whatsoever, or if you are a 'useless eater,' you are to be removed from the general population and/or eliminated." [...]

With the Downing Street Minutes that unmask his lies, with his wars in Afghanistan and Iraq lost, with his poll numbers tumbling, with Republicans jumping ship, with the economy tanking and with parents shielding their children from his military recruiters, why is George W. Bush still smiling, swaggering and acting like the dictator he hopes to become?

The friction from the grinding wheels of unintended consequences have lit a fire, the flames of which need to be fanned until they consume Bush, his whole administration, and the worthless whores and pimps in Congress.

But neither the flames nor the smoke in the reality-based community have yet gotten through to Bushworld, where reality is whatever he and his necons says it is. Bush's delusional thinking allows him to believe that the Planning Scenarios dreamt up by the Homeland Security Council, coupled with making permanent, and adding to, the dreadful Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act, better known as the USA PATRIOT Act, will provide him with all the tools and protections he needs against dissidents (terrorists in his parlance) foreign and domestic.

In his article, Orwellian "Scenarios": Emergency Preparedness Against the "Universal Adversary", Michael Chossudovsky brilliantly lays out how the Planning Scenarios call for labeling all who oppose the Bushistas as "Universal Adversaries" and using every apparatus of the federal, state and local governments in dealing with "foreign terrorists," "domestic radical groups," "state sponsored adversaries" and "disgruntled employees."

Then there is the latest attempt to repeal the 22nd Amendment, which limits a president to two terms in office. If the bill, H.J. Res. 24 - sponsored by Congressman Steny D. Hoyer (D-Md.) and co-sponsored by Congressmen Howard L. Berman (D-Cal.), Frank Pallone, Jr., (D-NJ), Martin Olav Sabo (D-Minn.) and F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr. (R-Wisc.) - gets a two-thirds vote in both houses of Congress this time and is ratified by three-quarters of the states before the 2008 election, George W. Bush can be president for life.

Shoot, he's stolen two presidential elections and with a majority of voting machines now controlled by his corporate friends and supporters, why not go for the third and final time? That's less embarrassing - if a Bush is ever embarrassed by anything - than pulling a Papa Doc or Baby Doc Duvalier and just up and declaring himself "president for life." Of course, if the amendment fails, he could go that route.

With these thoughts dancing in Bush's nearly empty skull, you can see why he is still smiling. In Bushworld, war can be declared on any nation at any time for any reason or no reason and "Universal Adversaries" can be disappeared into gulags, tortured and killed. There is no punishment for the inhabitants of Bushworld: not for stealing elections; not for the attacks they perpetrated on September 11, 2001; not for waging illegal wars on Afghanistan and Iraq; not for torture, murder, destruction of other people's countries and heritage; not for stealing other people's wealth and resources; not for squandering their own nation's wealth or depriving Americans of their freedoms.

In the reality-based community, however, the wheels of unintended consequences have not only started a fire, as the American people awaken from the corporate media induced slumber, but, once in motion, the wheels can't be stopped.

Bush can ignore the Downing Street Minutes, and corporate media harpies, such as Dana Milbank, can make fun of hearings such as the one Rep. John Conyers conducted last Thursday, but the American people are beginning to realize how they were snookered into an illegal war on Iraq and the word impeachment grows louder by the day from every corner of the land: Impeach Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Gonzales!

George W. can go on the radio every Saturday, as he did this past one, and falsely tie 9/11 to Iraq, but only his deluded diehard supporters will believe him. Condoleezza Rice can continue to utter the lie, as she did on Fox News Sunday, that her boss's administration said before the criminal invasion of Iraq "that this is a generational commitment," but the people haven't forgotten that Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld said it would be a cakewalk and the Iraqis would greet the invaders with hugs and flowers.

Watergate, too, started off with a little smoke about a "third-rate burglary," which was brushed off by most of the news media at a time when not all the major media were yet in the hands of a few corporations. Then came a small flame when it was revealed the burglars had long-standing ties to the CIA.

The flame wasn't big enough to deprive Richard Nixon of reelection, but it continued to grow, forcing him to stand before the American people and disingenuously declare, "Your president is not a crook." Ah, but he was worse than a crook, which we will get to in a minute.

Despite what was later written in Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's "All the President's Men," about Nixon taking to the bottle, as the flames grew higher and higher; wandering the corridors of the White House at night, talking to portraits of dead presidents; forcing the criminal, Henry Kissinger, to get down on his knees with him to pray in the Oval Office, Nixon still had a sense of self-preservation and listened to his advisors and the members of Congress who told him to resign before a Bill of Impeachment was passed. It would be surprising if Bush and his gang did likewise.

For those who believe Nixon was the victim of a bloodless coup d'état, perhaps he was. For Watergate and the cover-up were not his biggest crimes. His biggest crime was committed during his 1968 election campaign, when, on the one hand, he was telling the American people he had a "secret plan" to end the Vietnam War, while, on the other hand at the urging of Kissenger, he illegally sent Anna Chenault to tell South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu not to attend the peace negotiations in Paris; that the US would give him a better deal.

Given the fact that Donald Graham, the late publisher of the Washington Post, was CIA and his widow, Katherine, who became publisher upon his death, was either CIA herself or just soft on the agency, might explain why she allowed then cub reporters Woodward (who also has CIA ties) and Bernstein to keep on the Watergate story when newspapers, such as The New York Times, were dismissing it as a non-story. And how helpful it was to have the aid of Mark Felt, who claims he was Deep Throat; Felt who was a great admirer FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and who, as number two man in the FBI, was the boss of the illegal COINTELPRO operation. Perhaps, in their minds, it was better to throw Nixon to the wolves over Watergate than have the sordid mess come out about a presidential candidate that had gotten away with disqualifying himself for office by interfering in foreign policy and, thereby, causing the deaths of thousands more American troops and Vietnamese.

With the Bush family's ties to the Washington Post, this time around the Post seems bent on protecting George W. by either not reporting, dismissing or making light of his crimes.

But the filth keeps leaking like pus from a gangrenous limb and all the lies cannot stem the stench or stop the rot.

Yes, George W. may be smiling, when he's not snarling and acting like king of the mountain, which is why we, in the reality-based community, must keep fanning the flames of impeachment until they consume him and all in his rotten administration.

Those who attempt to caution or contradict Bush Washington about even the smallest matter are doomed. They are the Unbelievers, and for their independence will be mercilessly attacked by the psychopathic charlatans who wield great power in an administration that has deteriorated into a monstrous circus of arrogance, self-deception and malevolence. The onslaughts of the zealots are aimed at destroying the careers and reputations of those who dare question the deceit and knavery of the Head Charlatan. It does not matter how distinguished the victims might be; it is of no consequence that they may have been for decades loyal servants of the American Constitution; and it is irrelevant that they might have a world-wide reputation for honesty.

The Cheney-Bush imperium has dictated that neither dissent not challenge can be permitted.

Irrespective of harm to individuals, or to their organizations, colleagues, friends and families, the unbelievers must be destroyed. The fact that most of the unbelievers are foreigners adds a surreal dimension of shrill self-righteousness to the process of demolition. The American psyche is now in such a tailspin of hysterical xenophobic suspicion that anything foul will be believed of a foreigner, especially if the foreigner is -- Oh, Horror -- a Muslim associated with the United Nations.

Much persecution by the fundamentalist quasi-Christians in Washington begins at home, where the case of the CIA deep-cover agent Valerie Plame has been forgotten by the US media. In Britain there would have been investigative journalists crawling all over the place revealing the foulness of those who betrayed (forget the word 'leaked', for this was a matter of high policy) her identity, thus placing her in physical danger -- but not as much danger as all the contacts she made over the years in some exotic and evil places. We'll never know how many of them have died horribly because her identity was made public by traitors. Her anti-Bush crime was to be married to a man who questioned the ludicrous Bush lies about non-existent nuclear weapons in Iraq which formed the basis of the nuclear "mushroom cloud" claptrap by Cheney and Rice.

But Plame's husband, a former ambassador, had told the truth, and therefore had to be punished. They couldn't lay a hand on him, personally, and although he was investigated to the hilt there was nothing that the sleazy knaves around Bush could do to him, officially. So how else could they make him pay and suffer for his insolence to The Great Leader?

That's a simple matter - providing you have a mind like a festering dungheap that has been shat on by a troop of rabid baboons suffering from terminal diarrhea. What you do is to destroy his wife's career, which they did. As I've written before, any independent FBI team could have discovered within days the identity of the rancid filth who betrayed Ms Plame. But the investigation has dragged on for over a year and it is most unlikely that there will be legal proceedings against the rats who have been traitors to their country, because they are loyal to Bush.

With regret we'll pass over the matter of the many CIA analysts who have been sacked in the last year or so because they refused to cook the books for Cheney-Bush. They would forfeit every last cent of their pensions were their stories to be told. (But one of them -- at least -- is writing a memoir to be published after his death.) So let's go to the revolting Bolton and his mean and petty destruction of Mr Jose Bustani, former head of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).

Nobody remembers Mr Bustani, but he was the man who advocated sending UN chemical weapons' inspectors to Iraq in 2002. President Cheney-Bush didn't want this, because it would have shown -- and did show, eventually -- that Iraq had not a grain or drop of chemicals that could have been delivered by missiles which it didn't have, either. (The really funny thing is that Bush has stated on record that Saddam Hussein would not permit weapons inspectors to enter Iraq, which is an out-and-out lie, and that Bush himself has forbidden UN weapons inspectors to enter the country since he invaded it. Up is down; black is white; lies are truth in Bushland.) So Bolton, the man that Bush is foisting upon the world as his personal representative to the United Nations (which would also be funny were it not so sick) phoned Mr Bustani and was "menacing".

It was claimed that Mr Bustani "was not responsive to US and other countries' positions". For 'other countries' read the prime minister of Britain, one Tony Blair, a lying, manipulative, devious little two-faced creep who fits well in Bush Washington.

Bolton had demanded that Bustani appoint Americans (approved by Bolton) to his staff and that the (eventual) UN inspection results be altered, but got no satisfaction. So Washington threatened to withdraw its financial support for the OPCW if Mr Bustani remained its chief. Then the US insisted on a special session of the OPCW, having bribed and bullied its members beforehand to vote its way. They managed to get Mr Bustani sacked a year before the end of his tenure. (I'm happy to say that his country made him ambassador to the UK, although I doubt he'll be seeing many of Blair's politicized officials.)

It was an easy victory for Bush and Blair. Exit another little problem. Easy peasy, says Washington: now that we have got rid of one embarrassment, let's look for another Unbeliever to victimize.

So here is the barely believable tale of another decent man who was sacked because Bush Washington knew he was honest. And the man wasn't only sacked, but his appointment was eliminated. Let's begin with his brief biography:

"Cherif Bassiouni, Professor of Law at DePaul University College of Law [in Chicago] serves as president of DePaul's International Human Rights Law Institute, the International Institute of Higher Studies in Criminal Sciences in Siracusa, Italy, and the International Association of Penal Law in Paris . . . From 1995-1998, he was vice-chairman of the UN General Assembly's Committee for the Establishment of an International Criminal Court and in 1998 was elected chairman of the [Committee]. Professor Bassiouni is the author and editor of 54 books and 176 law review articles . . . He has received numerous honors, including the Order of Merit of the Austrian Republic (1990) [etc, etc. . . ] In 1999, he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for his lifelong work to establish an International Criminal Court."

Mr Bassiouni is a truly distinguished international figure.

He leaves Cheney, Rice, Bush, Rumsfeld and the rest of the weird bunch at the starting post. For a start he speaks foreign languages. (And remember how Rice, that supposed expert on Russia with supposedly fluent Russian, somehow mixed up the words for "yes" and "no" during an interview with a Russian TV station. I doubt Professor Bassiouni would do that in either English, Arabic or French, the languages he speaks most fluently.) But the Bush people managed to get him sacked from his appointment as the UN's independent investigator into human rights in Afghanistan. It wasn't easy for them to get him out, of course. The process went through various stages, and the beginning of the saga was as bizarre as the rest of it.

First, Washington tried to stop any investigation whatever into human rights violations in Afghanistan. Then when it became obvious that this demand was preposterous, because the place is a sink of hideous persecution, especially against women, the fallback position -- stand by to shriek with laughter -- was to demand that US troops be excluded from all investigations into human rights violations. And this -- it becomes even more surreal -- was after it was revealed that there had been torture by American soldiers of illegally detained inmates at the Abu Ghraib hellhole.

But Professor Bassiouni had offended the zealots well before he went to Afghanistan. He had, after all, been a staunch advocate of the International Criminal Court. This organization is feared and detested by Cheney-Bush people because it might at some stage be able to hold US soldiers accountable for atrocities and war crimes if the US justice system refuses to indict them on such charges. In the eyes of the Cheney-Bush people (and of many millions of American citizens) it is not permissible for US soldiers to be judged by foreigners, no matter their atrocities.

Therefore Professor Bassiouni was by definition a major enemy of the Cheney- Bush Imperial project. An Unbeliever. He had to be eradicated.

His report on human rights violations in Afghanistan wasn't even mentioned by most US media (so what's new?), but the Independent newspaper in the UK recounted that "The [Bassiouni] report, based on a year spent traveling around Afghanistan interviewing Afghans, international agency staff and the Afghan Human Rights Commission, estimated that around 1,000 Afghans had been detained and accused US troops of breaking into homes, arresting residents and abusing them."

That was in April. Since then we have been told about horrifying torture and even murder of Afghans by US soldiers. I've written about this before, but think it appropriate to repeat one paragraph:

"It was a joke to these US soldiers that their helpless Afghan captives died lingering deaths, suffering hellishly for days from soldiers' fists and feet and dogs before merciful release. The documents given to the New York Times include one terrifying quotation concerning one of the tortured and murdered men : "Everyone heard him cry out and thought it was funny." We are now told that the men were "young and poorly trained", as if this could be justification for torture and murder. "Oh, excuse me while I ram this broomstick up your ass, but I'm young and poorly trained". Tim Golden's opening sentence in the Times sums it up : "Even as the young Afghan man was dying before them, his American jailers continued to torment him". Can you imagine this? Are we really talking about soldiers of the American Army?"

Can anyone be human who actually torments a dying human being and laughs at him? Who were the dozens of Americans who were so vile, so grotesquely barbaric as to think it 'funny' that a despairing man is crying out from the pain they have inflicted on him?

There could be no justification for this, even on the fatuous Cheney/Rumsfeld grounds that they would obtain information from what was left of the agonized minds in the wrecked bodies that had been deliberately crippled by giggling military degenerates. By no stretch of the imagination can this treatment be called other than violation of human rights.

The torturers were US soldiers whom Bush is determined to protect from independent investigation. Little wonder the commander-in-chief and his people go to any lengths to pervert the course of justice, because, according to the US official report into the atrocities : "Military spokesmen maintained that both men died of natural causes, even after military coroners had ruled the deaths homicides."

The US military has plumbed the depths of deceit. It has descended to the very bowels of deception and dishonesty. Nobody can ever trust the US military, ever again, to tell the truth. Until, at least, there is a cleansing of the filth, as happened in the traumatic post-Vietnam years, when the US Army was set again on the track of honor from which it has since strayed in the most disgraceful fashion.

So Professor Bassiouni (an American citizen as well as Egyptian) had to be discredited, vilified and sacked. Which he was. And the reasons for his dismissal and for eradication of the position of Human Rights Investigator in Afghanistan came from the usual US source "who preferred not to be named". The anonymous official said that the "human rights situation in Afghanistan is no longer troubling" and that in any case Bassiouni was "grandstanding" "to bolster his resume".

That sort of fatuous lie and malevolent vilification plays well almost everywhere in America, and is spread assiduously by the psyops machine of the snake oil salesmen in Washington.

Contrary to the fetid vomit of the tame Cheney-Bush mouthpiece, the human rights situation in Afghanistan is appalling. Living there is grim unless you are a warlord or a drug baron (usually combined) or an associate of same, or in a government appointment, or a highly paid (as they all are) member of a foreign aid or consultancy organization. There is no law, save that of local chieftains; there are no rights, except for the powerful and their adherents. The place is a human rights' cesspit. And the US military has been up to its eyeballs in keeping up the good old Afghan traditions of torture and merciless persecution of weak individuals in secret prisons to which they forbid entry by such as Professor Bassiouni. No wonder they wouldn't let him in to the hideous jails where US soldiers torment and laugh at dying men.

And as for the allegation that Professor Bassiouni produced his Report in order to flesh out his CV . . . . This could be thought up only by the cruddiest of the cruds; the most putrid of guttersnipes; the foulest of all serpentine pestilence that slithers from beneath the flattest rock into a welcoming sewer. It beggars belief that even the Bush courtiers could stoop to such depths as these. But they do.

Professor Bassiouni wrote that " . . . the Coalition [read US - there are no other foreign troops involved in torture and murder] forces' practice of placing themselves above and beyond the reach of the law must come to an end." But it was Professor Cherif Bassiouni who came to an end. Which goes to show that nobody dare question the Cheney-Bush imperial project without being subjected to retribution by the demented zealots whose holy mission is to destroy the Unbelievers.

Brian Cloughley writes on military and political affairs. He can be reached through his website www.briancloughley.com

By the end of the year, America's bubbling housing prices will likely flatten or pop, causing an economic slowdown, economists warned in a flurry of reports yesterday and today.

Red flags issued by such diverse sources as the Merrill Lynch investment firm, the University of Maryland and the UCLA Anderson Forecast warn that a stumble in housing prices could take a major bite out of economic growth, damaging the already weak job market.

Other signs of economic trouble also loomed yesterday. The price of oil surged to a 20-year high of almost $60 a barrel and the nation's leading economic indicators fell twice as much as had been projected.

But the economists warned that the most serious problem is in the overpriced housing market.

"Policy-makers need to reckon with the end of the housing boom, which has been holding up consumer spending and the economy," said Peter Morici, economist at the University of Maryland. "With so many buyers benefiting from creative and highly questionable mortgage schemes, and regulators expressing concern about those practices, a pullback in the housing sector seems inevitable. When that happens, growth will skid."

In the past several years, housing has been a key engine of the economy, with home equity loans, refinancings and other forms of creative borrowing helping to fuel retail sales as well as construction activity.

But in a report to be issued today, the Anderson Forecast warns that the construction of new homes is outstripping the natural growth of the population.

The report notes that current population growth supports about 1.5 million to 1.6 million new houses being built throughout the nation. But 1.9 million units were built last year and 2 million are slated for construction this year, indicating that a slowdown is in order.[...]

But it may not take an actual decline in housing to put the economy on the skids.[...]

Other economists say that the predictions of economic decline are overly dire. But they add that if a decline in the housing market is combined with another economic hurdle, such as a spike in the price of oil, the effect could be serious.

Yesterday, the price of oil surged to $59.37 per barrel, up 90 cents on the day. It was the highest closing price for oil since the energy crisis of the early 1980s, when prices spiked above $80 per barrel, after adjusting for inflation.[...]

"I don't think a price rise of an additional $5 a barrel will be all that life-threatening to the economy," said economist Morici. "But if housing prices decline at the same time that oil prices rise, then the whole economy's in the soup."

In the meantime, the nation's leading economic indicators, as tallied by the Conference Board in New York, fell by 0.5 percent, more than double the 0.2 percent that economists had been forecasting.

Only one of the indicators rose in May: stock prices. Building permits, vendor performances, consumer expectations, manufacturing orders, consumer goods and unemployment claims were all negative indicators.

The indicators suggest that growth will slow over the next three months worldwide, said Ken Goldstein, labor economist for the board, which is a corporate-funded research agency.

In a prepared statement, Goldstein warned that the sluggishness is "not just a domestic phenomenon."

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - Bankrupt supermarket chain Winn-Dixie said Tuesday it will cut 22,000 jobs, or 28 percent of its work force, as it shutters 326 stores in an attempt to emerge from bankruptcy.

The company is closing 35 percent of its outlets under a proposed Chapter 11 reorganization plan. An additional 500 workers will lose their jobs at its Jacksonville headquarters.

Winn-Dixie Stores Inc. will cease operations in four states - Tennessee, Virginia and North and South Carolina - and trim businesses in Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. It will exit the Atlanta market. [...]

Since 1973, Israel has cost the United States about $1.6 trillion. If divided by today's population, that is more than $5,700 per person.

This is an estimate by Thomas Stauffer, a consulting economist in Washington. For decades, his analyses of the Middle East scene have made him a frequent thorn in the side of the Israel lobby.

For the first time in many years, Mr. Stauffer has tallied the total cost to the US of its backing of Israel in its drawn-out, violent dispute with the Palestinians. So far, he figures, the bill adds up to more than twice the cost of the Vietnam War.

And now Israel wants more. In a meeting at the White House late last month, Israeli officials made a pitch for $4 billion in additional military aid to defray the rising costs of dealing with the intifada and suicide bombings. They also asked for more than $8 billion in loan guarantees to help the country's recession-bound economy.

Considering Israel's deep economic troubles, Stauffer doubts the Israel bonds covered by the loan guarantees will ever be repaid. The bonds are likely to be structured so they don't pay interest until they reach maturity. If Stauffer is right, the US would end up paying both principal and interest, perhaps 10 years out.

Israel's request could be part of a supplemental spending bill that's likely to be passed early next year, perhaps wrapped in with the cost of a war with Iraq.

Israel is the largest recipient of US foreign aid. It is already due to get $2.04 billion in military assistance and $720 million in economic aid in fiscal 2003. It has been getting $3 billion a year for years.

Adjusting the official aid to 2001 dollars in purchasing power, Israel has been given $240 billion since 1973, Stauffer reckons. In addition, the US has given Egypt $117 billion and Jordan $22 billion in foreign aid in return for signing peace treaties with Israel.

"Consequently, politically, if not administratively, those outlays are part of the total package of support for Israel," argues Stauffer in a lecture on the total costs of US Middle East policy, commissioned by the US Army War College, for a recent conference at the University of Maine.

These foreign-aid costs are well known. Many Americans would probably say it is money well spent to support a beleagured democracy of some strategic interest. But Stauffer wonders if Americans are aware of the full bill for supporting Israel since some costs, if not hidden, are little known.

One huge cost is not secret. It is the higher cost of oil and other economic damage to the US after Israel-Arab wars.

In 1973, for instance, Arab nations attacked Israel in an attempt to win back territories Israel had conquered in the 1967 war. President Nixon resupplied Israel with US arms, triggering the Arab oil embargo against the US.

That shortfall in oil deliveries kicked off a deep recession. The US lost $420 billion (in 2001 dollars) of output as a result, Stauffer calculates. And a boost in oil prices cost another $450 billion.

Afraid that Arab nations might use their oil clout again, the US set up a Strategic Petroleum Reserve. That has since cost, conservatively, $134 billion, Stauffer reckons.

Other US help includes:

• US Jewish charities and organizations have remitted grants or bought Israel bonds worth $50 billion to $60 billion. Though private in origin, the money is "a net drain" on the United States economy, says Stauffer.

• The US has already guaranteed $10 billion in commercial loans to Israel, and $600 million in "housing loans." (See editor's note below.) Stauffer expects the US Treasury to cover these.

• The US has given $2.5 billion to support Israel's Lavi fighter and Arrow missile projects.

• Israel buys discounted, serviceable "excess" US military equipment. Stauffer says these discounts amount to "several billion dollars" over recent years.

• Israel uses roughly 40 percent of its $1.8 billion per year in military aid, ostensibly earmarked for purchase of US weapons, to buy Israeli-made hardware. It also has won the right to require the Defense Department or US defense contractors to buy Israeli-made equipment or subsystems, paying 50 to 60 cents on every defense dollar the US gives to Israel.

US help, financial and technical, has enabled Israel to become a major weapons supplier. Weapons make up almost half of Israel's manufactured exports. US defense contractors often resent the buy-Israel requirements and the extra competition subsidized by US taxpayers.

• US policy and trade sanctions reduce US exports to the Middle East about $5 billion a year, costing 70,000 or so American jobs, Stauffer estimates. Not requiring Israel to use its US aid to buy American goods, as is usual in foreign aid, costs another 125,000 jobs.

• Israel has blocked some major US arms sales, such as F-15 fighter aircraft to Saudi Arabia in the mid-1980s. That cost $40 billion over 10 years, says Stauffer.

Stauffer's list will be controversial. He's been assisted in this research by a number of mostly retired military or diplomatic officials who do not go public for fear of being labeled anti-Semitic if they criticize America's policies toward Israel.

The Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, and the Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, have failed to make progress at a summit aimed at resolving issues crucial to a smooth Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and furthering the peace process.

"It was a difficult meeting and it did not meet our expectations," the Palestinian Prime Minister, Ahmad Qureia, said, after a tense two-hour meeting that was clouded by renewed violence and confrontation.

Mr Sharon renewed his calls for the Palestinians to curb the bombers and gunmen. "Israel won't endanger itself, or its citizens," an official quoted him as saying. "Israel is willing to be flexible. It is willing to take steps to move the peace process forward. But we have to see Palestinian action on the terrorist issue." [...]

The Palestinians, who arrived with a list of leaders they want freed, left disappointed. They complained that the meeting produced too many statements of position and not enough deeds.

Where Israel talked of terrorism, they talked about house demolitions and their destroyed security apparatus. [...]

The talks were overshadowed by a resurgence of Palestinian attacks and a renewed Israeli declaration of war against Islamic Jihad.

Comment: For perhaps the 80 millionth time, the Palestinians appear to shoot themselves in the foot...

With missiles and mortars hitting Israel's Gaza settlements every day, the truce that was agreed at the last Sharon-Abbas encounter in Sharm el-Sheikh four months ago was looking more fragile than ever.

Israeli troops arrested 52 Islamic Jihad activists on the West Bank after its gunmen shot dead an Israeli sergeant-major on the Gaza-Egyptian border on Sunday and a civilian motorist in the West Bank a day later. A military spokesman indicated that Israel was no longer restricting itself to "ticking bombs", planning specific attacks. [...]

Israel was also incensed by an attempted suicide bombing on Monday by a Gaza woman, aged 21, who was on her way for medical treatment in an Israeli hospital. After suspicious guards at the Erez crossing asked her to stop, CCTV cameras caught her trying to detonate 10kgs of explosives hidden in her clothes.

Wafa Bass had been sent by the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, an offshoot of Mr Abbas's al-Fatah. She told reporters from prison that she had intended to blow herself up in Beersheba hospital, where she has been treated for burns suffered when a cooking gas cylinder exploded in her kitchen.

For what purpose has President Bush sent 1,741 US soldiers to be killed in action in Iraq (as of June 19, 2005)?

For what purpose have 15,000 - 38,000 US troops been wounded, many so seriously that they are maimed for life?

Why has the US government thrown away $300 billion in an illegal and pointless war that cannot be won?

These questions are beginning to penetrate the consciousness of Americans, a majority of whom no longer support Bush's war.

Bush's Iraq war is the first war for which Americans have not known the reason. The reasons they were given by their president, vice president, secretary of defense, national security advisor, secretary of state, and the sycophantic media were nothing but a pack of lies.

The top secret British government memos leaked to a reporter at the London Sunday Times make it completely clear that prior to the invasion President Bush knew that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction.

The memos make it completely clear that Saddam Hussein had no responsibility whatsoever for the September 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

The memos make completely clear that the British government regarded the invasion of Iraq as a war crime. The memos show the British government scrambling to find some way of creating "cover" in order to obfuscate the illegality of the invasion that Prime Minister Tony Blair had promised Bush to support.

One of the cover plans was itself illegal. According to yet another leaked top secret British memo in the Sunday Times on June 19, Bush decided to sharply increase the US bombings of Iraq in the hopes it would goad Saddam Hussein into a response that could be used as a pretext for invading Iraq.

According to the Sunday Times, the British Foreign Office advised the British Cabinet that legally "the allies had no power to use military force to put pressure of any kind on the regime."

The Bush administration falsely claimed that the bombing was legal in order to enforce compliance with UN resolutions 688 and 687. However, the British Foreign Office advised Bush's poodle, Tony Blair, that the American view "is not consistent with resolution 687, which does not deal with the repression of the Iraqi civilian population, or with resolution 688, which was not adopted under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, and does not contain any provision for enforcement."

In his June 18 weekly radio address last Saturday, Bush again lied to the American people when he told them that the US was forced into invading Iraq because of the September 11 attack on the WTC. Bush, the greatest disgrace that America has ever had to suffer, actually repeated at this late date the monstrous lie for which he is infamous throughout the world:

"We went to war because we were attacked, and we are at war today because there are still people out there who want to harm our country and hurt our citizens."

Whoever the "people out there who want to harm our country and hurt our citizens" might be, they were not Iraqis, at least not until Bush invaded their country, killed tens of thousands and maimed tens of thousands more, detained tens of thousands others, destroyed entire cities, destroyed the country's infrastructure, and created mass unemployment, poverty, pollution and disease.

The only reason Iraqis want to harm the US is because George W. Bush inflicted, and continues to inflict, tremendous harm on Iraqis.

If the Bush administration has its way, the Iraqi insurgents will be joined by the Iranians, Syrians, Saudis, Egyptians, Pakistanis, Jordanians and Palestinians. The "people out there who want to harm our country and hurt our citizens" will increase exponentially.

In print and on TV, Bush's neocons have made clear their desire to see the US at war with the entire Muslim world: Today Iraq, tomorrow the Middle East. That the neocons believe the US can win such a war when the US cannot even occupy Baghdad or control the road to the airport indicates a frightening insanity at the center of the Bush administration and a criminal disregard for the lives of Americans and Muslims.

The neocons assured Americans that the war in Iraq would be a cakewalk over in three weeks!

The neocons told us that only 70,000 troops were needed to bring Iraq to heel!

Neocons fired the top generals who had truthfully told Congress that several hundred thousand troops, at least, would be needed!

Neocons told Congress that Iraqi oil would pay for the invasion and that America did not have to worry about the cost! So far that is a $300 billion mistake.

And Bush has retained and promoted these morons!

No one has been held accountable for this enormous disaster.

How many more American troops are going to be killed and maimed for Bush's lies? How many more Iraqi civilians must be killed, maimed, and locked up?

Bush's Iraq policy is based on lies, and force based on lies cannot bring democracy to Iraq or to any other country.

Bush's lies are discrediting and destroying democracy in America. His "Patriot Act" alone has done more damage to Americans' freedom than Osama bin Laden.

Why did Bush invade Iraq?

Cynical Americans say the answer is oil. But $300 billion would have bought the oil without getting anyone killed, without destroying America's reputation in the world and without stirring up countless terrorist recruits for al Qaida.

Congress gave Bush the go-ahead for the invasion because Congress trusted Bush and believed his word that Iraq had fearsome weapons that would be unleashed on America unless we preempted Saddam Hussein's attack by striking first. Congress did not give Bush the go-ahead for initiating a war in order to spend hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of American lives "building democracy in Iraq."

Will President Bush ever tell us the real reason why he committed America's treasure, the lives of American soldiers and the reputation of our country to war in Iraq?

Does he even know?

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has offered to hand over two more West Bank towns to Palestinian control within two weeks, according to Israeli officials.

Bethlehem could be one of the towns, Israeli television reported after a two-hour summit meeting between Sharon and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Jerusalem on Tuesday.

It was the first meeting of the two leaders since a February truce between the historic enemies.

But Abbas must the quash militant-sponsored violence that has escalated in recent days for the transfer to occur and for Israel to consider releasing more prisoners, Israeli officials said.

Israel will also allow preparations to reopen the Gaza airport and harbour if the conditions are met, according to Israel Radio.

However, Palestinian officials said little progress was made in the co-ordination of Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, slated to begin in mid-August.

"Overall, what was presented to us was not convincing, was not satisfying to us at all," said Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia, who was also present at the meeting.

"None of the issues had improved or progressed up to the expectations of the people, and what was presented to us was not equally genuine or serious as the issues we raised."

However, Qureia said the summit "can be seen as a preliminary meeting for further steps."

The leaders met for longer than expected at Sharon's home in Jerusalem, despite a round of arrests on the morning of the summit that some predicted would threaten the discussions.

Israel picked up 52 Islamic Jihad activists linked to recent violence, which included the killing of two Israelis this week.

So far in these talks, Israel has agreed to destroy the houses of settlers after they move out, but it's unclear who will pay to clean up the mess left behind.

Also, the freedom of movement of Palestinians back into Gaza has yet to be resolved.

Sharon's broader message at the summit was expected to be that Abbas must get militant Palestinians under control, or face more Israeli crackdowns.

Abbas was expected to counter that Israel has not made good on its pledge made in Egypt in February to hand over the remaining West Bank towns to Palestinian control and release prisoners.

Palestinian militants declared an informal ceasefire this year. But the Israeli military says recent killings by Islamic Jihad, the smaller of two Palestinian militant groups, has pushed its forces to take the offensive.

"Islamic Jihad has taken itself absolutely out of the [ceasefire] agreement with its attacks, and so from our view, we are operating fully against them, as we did before," Israeli commander Lt.-Col. Erez Winner said.

Hamas, the larger of the two groups, has been comparatively inactive, attempting to consolidate its political appeal in the run-up to Palestinian elections due this year.

Jerusalem - Palestinian gunmen killed an Israeli motorist in a West Bank ambush Monday and Israeli troops nabbed a would-be female suicide bomber with explosives hidden in her pants, escalating a wave of violence that has strained an already shaky ceasefire.

Palestinian officials condemned the violence, which also included the shooting death of a Palestinian man by Israeli troops, but Israel angrily demanded tougher action.

The growing tensions cast a cloud over a meeting set for Tuesday between Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, where they are expected to discuss co-ordination for Israel's upcoming withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and part of the West Bank.

The violence has raised doubts over whether Mr. Abbas can keep his pledge to maintain calm during the Gaza withdrawal, which is scheduled to begin in mid-August.

Tuesday's summit is just the second time the two leaders have met since Mr. Abbas' election in January. At their first meeting, in February, the two men declared an end to more than four years of fighting.

While the truce has brought a drop in bloodshed, sporadic violence has persisted. Monday marked the third consecutive day of deadly incidents.

Early Monday, Palestinian gunmen hiding in an alley ambushed an Israeli minivan driving through the northern West Bank near the town of Jenin, killing one passenger and slightly wounding a second, the army said. The gunmen escaped.

The Islamic Jihad militant group claimed responsibility for the attack, though it said it remained committed to preserving the ceasefire.

The U.S. State Department criticized the renewed violence.

"We strongly condemn the terror actions of the last several days directed at taking the lives of Israelis and sabotaging efforts for peace. Now is the time for the Palestinian Authority to act against terrorists," said the statement, issued by spokesman Sean McCormack, travelling with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in the Middle East. Ms. Rice had talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders on Sunday.

Also Monday, Israeli troops stopped a Palestinian woman with 10 kilograms of explosives hidden on her body who unsuccessfully tried to blow herself up at a crossing from Gaza into Israel.

The woman was severely burned on her neck, hands and feet from what she said was a cooking accident months earlier when her stove exploded. She had been given permission to cross into Israel to receive treatment for her injuries, said Major Sharon Feingold, an army spokeswoman.

When she approached the Erez crossing, suspicious soldiers asked her to raise her hands and she attempted to detonate the bomb, Major Feingold said.

The army released a video showing the woman in an isolated area of the checkpoint.

The woman appeared distraught - screaming and raising her arms in the air - as she removed some clothes, before taking an object out of her pants and throwing it onto the ground. The woman then retrieved the object, before the video cut away to images of a robot moving into the area to detonate the explosives.

The woman's family identified her as Wafa al-Biss, 21, from the Jebaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza. The family said they did not know she was planning a suicide bombing.

At the Shikma Prison in Israel's Negev desert, the Shin Bet security service made the unusual move of letting Israeli television and foreign reporters interview the woman just hours after she was captured.

The young woman with large brown eyes and curly dark hair pulled back in a short ponytail explained to reporters that she wanted to attack Israel over its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.

"My dream was to be a martyr," she said. She said she was recruited by the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a violent offshoot of Mr. Abbas' Fatah movement. "I believe in death."

Major Feingold expressed outrage that Palestinian militants used a humanitarian case as a suicide bomber.

"These terror organizations are not only the enemies of the Israelis, but also of the Palestinian people themselves, who suffer as a result of this abuse of the young, the sick, the wounded," said Major Feingold.

Also Monday, Israeli soldiers shot and killed a Palestinian man and wounded another as they tried to climb over the fence from the Gaza Strip into Israel, Palestinian hospital officials said.

The men were unarmed civilians, hospital officials said. The army said soldiers fired at the men's legs after they ignored warning shots. [...]

To: National Desk

Contact: Jim Colbert of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, 202-667-3900

WASHINGTON -- The ongoing effort by John Bolton's Senate detractors to hold up his confirmation as UN ambassador is especially offensive to the Jewish community, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs declared today.

"It was Bolton's determined leadership and diplomatic mastery that, in 1991, caused the United Nations to finally revoke one of its most outrageous resolutions - equating Zionism with racism," said JINSA executive director Tom Neumann. "It was a truly Herculean task, but Bolton succeeded where many predecessors had failed because he made the effort and took the time to engage the UN members one by one.

"The Jewish community will always be grateful," Neumann noted. "We should remind our elected representatives of that."

Neumann described the Senate delay as "a blatantly orchestrated effort to destroy a dedicated, highly qualified public servant. Bolton's career is an open book, his achievements a matter of record. His style is a mix of diplomacy and resoluteness, with a strong moral sense of right and wrong. There is no valid reason that he should not have been confirmed weeks ago.

"John Bolton at the UN would continue the proud, standup tradition established by our two foremost past UN ambassadors, the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Jeane Kirkpatrick. The latter has warmly endorsed Bolton for the post, as have former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger, Senator John McCain, and many others who clearly understand the need for UN reform."

The Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs is an independent, non-partisan educational organization established in 1976 to educate the public on national and international security issues, including the importance of an effective U.S. defense capability and the key role of strategic allies to promote democratic values in the Middle East.

We implore and beseech our Jewish brethren to realize that the Zionists are not the saviors of the Jewish People and guarantors of their safety, but rather the instigators and original cause of Jewish suffering in the Holy Land and worldwide. The idea that Zionism and the State of "Israel is the protector of Jews is probably the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the Jewish People. Indeed, where else since 1945 have Jews been in such physical danger as in the Zionist state?! [...]

It has been the age-old intention of Zionism to intentionally stir up anti-Semitism anywhere possible, and even more commonly, to take advantage of any Jewish suffering anywhere in order to enhance its cause. Indeed, hatred of Jews and Jewish suffering is the oxygen of the Zionist movement, and from the very beginning has been to deliberately incite hatred of the Jew and then, in feigned horror, use it to justify the existence of the Zionist state this is, of course, Machiavellianism raised to the highest degree. Thus, the Zionists thrive on hatred and suffering of Jews, and seek to benefit thereby through keeping Jews in perpetual fear, causing them to ignore the true nature of Zionism, and instead to consider the Zionist state is their salvation. [...]

As far as Zionism is concerned, the founder of Zionism and apostate, Theodor Herzl, sought to intensify hatred of the Jew in order to enhance the cause of political Zionism. Here are some of his "pearls:

"It is essential that the sufferings of Jews. . . become worse. . . this will assist in realization of our plans. . . I have an excellent idea. . . I shall induce anti-semites to liquidate Jewish wealth. . . The anti-semites will assist us thereby in that they will strengthen the persecution and oppression of Jews. The anti-semites shall be our best friends." (From his Diary, Part I, pp. 16)

Additional words from the vivid imagination of this dreamer, from p. 68 of Part I of his Diary.

"So anti-Semitism, which is a deeply imbedded force in the subconscious mind of the masses, will not harm the Jews. I actually find it to be advantageous to building the Jewish character, education by the masses that will lead to assimilation. This education can only happen through suffering, and the Jews will adapt." [...]

There is a huge amount of literature describing how the Zionists made it very difficult to save Jews during and after World War II. As various individuals and organizations were trying to arrange departures of Jews to western countries, the Zionists worked overtime to prevent this from happening. They expressed the opinion that building up the Jewish population of Palestine was more important than enabling Jews to go to third countries, and they insisted to western powers that Jews should not be accepted anywhere other than Palestine. Indeed, Yitzchak Greenbaum, a famous Zionist, proclaimed that "one cow in Palestine was worth more than all the Jews in Poland. The infamous David Ben-Gurion said in 1938:

"If I knew it was possible to save all the children in Germany by taking them to England, and only half of the children by taking them to Eretz Israel, I would choose the second solution. For we must take into account not only the lives of these children but also the history of the people of Israel."

For more information about the brutal Zionist role during World War II, Click Here.

After the war, a Zionist 'religious' leader, Rabbi Klaussner, who was in charge of displaced persons presented a report before the Jewish American Conference on May 2nd, 1948 :

"I am convinced people must be forced to go to Palestine...For them, an American dollar appears as the highest of goals. By the word "force", I am suggesting a programme. It served for the evacuation of the Jews in Poland, and in the history of the 'Exodus'... To apply this programme we must, instead of providing 'displaced persons' with comfort, create the greatest possible discomfort for them...At a second stage, a procedure calling upon the Haganah to harass the Jews."

It is ironic that the Zionists proclaim their State as the safe haven for the Jewish People, when since World War II no place on earth has been as dangerous for Jews, both spiritually and physically, as the Zionist state.

The Zionists worked relentlessly to create fear among Jews in the Arab countries after the Zionist state was established. Their tactic work most successfully in Yemen, Morocco, Iraq, Algeria, Libya, Tunisia.

Contact: Executive Director Matthew Brooks

Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) should retract and apologize for remarks he made on the Senate floor on June 14th comparing American treatment of enemy combatants held at Guantanamo Bay with what was done "by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime - Pol Pot or others."

Once again, a Democratic leader has misused the memory of Nazi atrocities to make a political point. It is unacceptable and it is deeply distressing that Senator Durbin refuses to apologize for his outrageous remarks.

The RJC agrees with the Anti-Defamation League, which wrote to Senator Durbin that "it is inappropriate and insensitive to suggest that actions by American troops in any way resemble actions taken by Nazis in their treatment of prisoners. Suggesting some kind of equivalence between their interrogation tactics demonstrates a profound lack of understanding about the horrors that Hitler and his regime actually perpetrated." [Click here to read the ADL's statement in full.]

We urge RJC members to contact Senator Durbin's office at (202) 224-2152 or to go online to his web form and send him email asking him to apologize for his offensive remarks.

WE MUST STOP FUNDING THE ENEMY AND THE ENEMY IS OUR CORPORATE MEDIA!

We cannot continue to battle the beast while we finance its very existence!

Successful mobilization of the masses by organizations such as Moveon.org has proved two things:
1. Congress does not represent its constituency; and
2. Protests and petitions do not work!!!

During these past 5 years, the American people have spoken out time and time again only to be completely ignored by those who are supposed to represent them in this republic that we so inaccurately call a democracy. It is painfully obvious that the people who are in office use their power for their own personal purposes. They represent only their sponsors, the corporations and other money-based centers of influence that finance their careers. As a result, the collective voices of the people are irrelevant and have no impact, no matter how loud or organized they are. Currently, the corporate media and the easily manipulated voting machines can keep politicians in power so that they need no longer fear an Election Day revolt from the people whom they ignore and undermine on a daily basis.

We are not going to use this space to list the surreal state of media affairs as it exists today. This web site has more than 350 pages of reference material if you need a refresher course. Suffice it to say that it has become frightening to watch the level of deception taking place on out TV sets each day. The amount of information that has been withheld from or misrepresented to the public is beyond criminal at this point. Our democracy, our environment, our economy and our humanity can not survive if the people of this nation continue to be drawn into the fictional world created by the corporate media.

The time has come to use the only legal and non-lethal tool left available to the public. We must counter the weapons of the power elite that has hijacked our democracy and taken control of the nation. Believe it our not, that tool is MONEY! In this case, however, we are not asking you to spend your money; we are asking you to withhold it!

WE MUST STOP FUNDING THE ENEMY - AND THE ENEMY IS OUR CORPORATE MEDIA!

TvNewsLIES is calling for an all out, 100% boycott of corporate news. We are asking our readers to do the following:

1. Cancel all subscriptions to the corporately owned newspapers & magazines that have been complicit in deceiving the public about the many crimes committed by the Bush administration and about the many outrageous actions taken by our Congress to undermine our democracy, our environment and our civil rights while they put forth an agenda that is designed to hand ownership of our nation to a few wealthy individuals and corporations.

2. Call your cable company and cancel the following news channels: all CNN networks (CNN Headline News and CNN International), all FOX networks that air news including your local FOX affiliate. (It is all right to keep the entertainment based channels. Trash TV never resulted in fascism!), and all network and local stations that purport to air news, including ABC, NBC (including MSNBC), & CBS.

NOTE: You can have your cable company block any channel you request. You need not cancel the rest of your service. If there are massive cancellations our voices will be heard.

Where will you get your information if you comply with our request? You can replace the cherry picked news that is spoon fed to you by the corporate media with the news harvesters on the Internet who collect important news items from around the globe and compile them in one place so that you can get a real sense of what is going on.

Suggested sites for real news: (we apologize to the many other good sites not mentioned here ) : Whatreallyhappened.com, Buzzflash.com, Rense.com, Informationclearinghouse.com, uruknet.com, and our TvNewsLIES.org’s news portal.

What else must you do? Search the Internet for organizations or websites that list the corporate sponsors of the news networks. Make every attempt to boycott goods and services produced by these companies. Seek out progressive, socially and environmentally conscious businesses and direct your business to them.

It is time to act! Stop supporting our enemies. Start supporting the people who have dedicated their lives to making this world a better place. If it inconveniences you, so be it. Make the sacrifice. If it costs you an extra dollar to subscribe to an independent newspaper, make the sacrifice and help us to regain our nation.

We are proud of the fact that TvNewsLIES is one of the many individuals and groups who have sacrificed a great deal to fight for this nation by acting as its troops of truth. Support the troops of truth! Support us! Stop supporting your enemies!

IT'S TIME TO STOP TALKING AND TO START DOING SOMETHING. STOP COMPLAINING AND ASKING WHAT YOU CAN DO! TVNL JUST TOLD YOU HOW YOU CAN HELP. ACT NOW TO HELP FIGHT THE LIES AND DECEPTIONS OF THE CORPORATE MEDIA! STOP PAYING THE MEDIA TO BRAINWASH THIS NATION!

HELP RECLAIM THE NATION BY WITHHOLDING YOUR MONEY FROM THOSE WHO DO US HARM! IT IS THE MOST EFFECTIVE WEAPON WE HAVE!

WE CANNOT CONTINUE TO BATTLE THE BEAST WHILE WE FINANCE ITS VERY EXISTENCE!

NOTE TO BLOGGERS AND WEBMASTERS: Please copy or link to this article. This has to be widely distributed in order to be effective. If you copy this you do not have to link back to this site or credit TvNewsLIES.org, although it would be deeply appreciated. The important thing is to get people to stop financially supporting our enemies in the media! We encourage all webmasters and bloggers to copy this message. We seek no credit as long as we have helped the cause.

TEHRAN, June 22 (Xinhuanet) -- Iran has cracked down on a network that defames presidential candidates for Friday's runoff, the official IRNA news agency reported Wednesday, quoting a senior Iranian official.

"Interior Ministry officials working with security and judiciary forces succeeded in identifying a large organized network working to defame candidates of the presidential election ahead of the runoff on Friday," Interior Minister Abdolvahed Mousavi Lari said.

The network managed to produce and distribute millions of copies of CDs and letters containing "reactionary" issues about contenders of the upcoming runoff election, he said.

Iran's pragmatist former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and ultra-conservative Tehran Mayor Mahmood Ahmadinejad will vie for presidency on Friday as they emerged as top two vote-getters in the first round of polling last Friday.

Lari did not explicitly say who was targeted by the defaming propagandas or what their contents were, only revealing that they portrayed the candidate as individual whose acts were contradictory to his words.

"There is no doubt that some foreign hands from outside the country were involved in producing and distribution of the CDs and letters," Lari added.

There have been reports of fraud in the election since the result of the first round was announced, in which Ahmadinejad won a surprising second place following Rafsanjani.

Wednesday is the last day for their legal campaignings to win supporters for Friday's race, which will elect a new president to succeed outgoing President Mohammad Khatami.

Saddam Hussein loves Doritos, hates Froot Loops, admires President Ronald Reagan, thinks Bill Clinton was "okay" and considers both presidents George Bush "no good". He talks a lot, worries about germs and insists he is still president of Iraq.

Those and other details of the deposed Iraqi leader's life in US military custody appear in the July issue of GQ magazine, based on interviews with five Pennsylvania National Guardsmen who went to Iraq in 2003 and were assigned to Saddam's guard detail for nearly 10 months.

The story said that once, when Saddam fell during his twice-a-week shower, "panic ensued. No one wanted him to be hurt while being guarded by Americans." One GI had to help Saddam back to his cell, while another carried his underwear.

Saddam was friendly toward his young guards and sometimes offered fatherly advice. When one soldier told him he was not married, Saddam "started telling me what to do", recalled the soldier. "

He was like: 'You gotta find a good woman. Not too smart, not too dumb. Not too old, not too young. One that can cook and clean.'"

Then he smiled, made what was interpreted as a "spanking" gesture, laughed and went back to doing his laundry in the sink.

The magazine said Saddam told his guards that when the Americans invaded Iraq in March 2003, he "tried to flee in a taxicab as the tanks were rolling in" and US planes struck the palace he was trying to reach instead of the one he was in.

"Then he started laughing," recalled one soldier. "He goes: 'America, they dumb. They bomb wrong palace.'"

Saddam also said his capture in an underground hideout on December 13, 2003, resulted from betrayal by the only man who knew where he was, and had been paid to keep the secret.

"He was really mad about that," the soldier said. "He compared himself to Jesus, how Judas told on Jesus. He was like: 'That's how it was for me.' If his Judas never said anything, nobody ever would have found him, he said."

The magazine said Saddam prayed five times a day and kept a Quran that he claimed to have found in rubble near his hideout. "He proudly showed (it) to the boys because it was burned around the edges and had a bullet hole in it," GQ said.

BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) - Iraq's justice minister on Tuesday accused the United States of trying to delay Iraqi efforts to interrogate Saddam Hussein, saying "it seems there are lots of secrets they want to hide."

Justice Minister Abdel Hussein Shandal also told The Associated Press he was confident that Saddam's trial on war crimes charges would be over by the end of the year, underlining the Iraqi government's determination to try the ousted leader soon.

"This trial will be accomplished within 2005 - and this will only be in Iraqi courts," he said in an interview on the sidelines of an international conference on his country's future.

U.S. officials had no immediate comment on Shandal's remarks, but the Americans privately have urged caution about rushing into a trial, saying the Iraqis need to develop a good court and judicial system - one of the main topics of discussion at the conference in Brussels, Belgium.

An official at the press office of the Iraqi Special Tribunal that is overseeing the court proceedings in Baghdad stressed it was an independent body and was not bound by the minister's comments. He said no date had been set for Saddam's trial.

"The interrogation of Saddam is taking place regularly and almost daily and neither the justice minister nor the Americans have anything to do with it because the IST is an independent court," the official said.

"Saddam's trial will start as soon as the investigation finishes," added the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of security concerns.

Saddam, 68, has been jailed under American control at a U.S. military detention complex near Baghdad airport named Camp Cropper, which holds 110 high-profile detainees.

Shandal alleged that U.S. officials deliberately are trying to limit access to Saddam because they have their own secrets to protect, including funnelling money and support to Iraqi leader during his rule.

"It seems there are lots of secrets they want to hide," Shandal said.

"There should be transparency and there should be frankness, but there are secrets that if revealed, won't be in the interest of many countries," he said. "Who was helping Saddam all those years?"

Shandal said he was speaking with the authority of a cabinet minister who personally nominated several of the judges on the tribunal and was in close contact with the investigators.

It is widely known that the United States provided Saddam with much support during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war. It was not clear whether Shandal was referring to that support, or to some other details that have yet to come to light.

Saddam has been interrogated by the Iraqi tribunal, which recently released a video of his questioning - without sound.

The tribunal, which was appointed by the now-defunct U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority, has released a total of three such videotapes showing the ousted dictator and two others giving testimony and signing statements before the panel.

The tribunal in the past has criticized government officials, including Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari's spokesman, Laith Kuba, for suggesting that a timetable had been set. Kuba said in early June that Saddam's trial would start in two months.

The tribunal also has sought to stress its independence from the government. "Any date to start the trials belongs to the judges," the tribunal said in a June 6 statement.

U.S. officials say Iraqis will decide on Saddam's trial but there are concerns that a trial could interfere with the key process of writing a constitution and inflame sectarian tensions. The Iraqi government must finish a draft by mid-August so they can hold a referendum on the charter ahead of December elections for a full-term government.

Shandal acknowledged Tuesday that no trial date would be set until interrogators complete their investigation and send their findings to the tribunal. But he said he was confident it would be completed before the end of the year.

Saddam was captured in December 2003. He and 11 of his top lieutenants will be tried by the tribunal, which was set up in late 2003 after Saddam was toppled in the U.S.-led invasion.

Saddam faces charges that include killing rival politicians over 30 years, gassing Kurds in the northern town of Halabja in 1988, invading Kuwait in 1990, and suppressing Kurdish and Shiite uprisings in 1991. Shandal said he also would face charges related to the destruction of Iraq's infrastructure.

If convicted, he faces the death penalty.

Political scientists have long held that people's upbringing and experience determine their political views. A child raised on peace protests and Bush-loathing generally tracks left as an adult, unless derailed by some powerful life experience. One reared on tax protests and a hatred of Kennedys usually lists to the right.

But on the basis of a new study, a team of political scientists is arguing that people's gut-level reaction to issues like the death penalty, taxes and abortion is strongly influenced by genetic inheritance. The new research builds on a series of studies that indicate that people's general approach to social issues - more conservative or more progressive - is influenced by genes.

Environmental influences like upbringing, the study suggests, play a more central role in party affiliation as a Democrat or Republican, much as they do in affiliation with a sports team.

The report, which appears in the current issue of The American Political Science Review, the profession's premier journal, uses genetics to help answer several open questions in political science.

They include why some people defect from the party in which they were raised and why some political campaigns, like the 2004 presidential election, turn into verbal blood sport, though polls find little disparity in most Americans' views on specific issues like gun control and affirmative action.

The study is the first on genetics to appear in the journal. "I thought here's something new and different by respected political scholars that many political scientists never saw before in their lives," said Dr. Lee Sigelman, editor of the journal and a professor of political science at George Washington University.

Dr. Sigelman said that in many fields the findings "would create nothing more than a large yawn," but that "in ours, maybe people will storm the barricades."

Geneticists who study behavior and personality have known for 30 years that genes play a large role in people's instinctive emotional responses to certain issues, their social temperament.

It is not that opinions on specific issues are written into a person's DNA. Rather, genes prime people to respond cautiously or openly to the mores of a social group.

Only recently have researchers begun to examine how these predispositions, in combination with childhood and later life experiences, shape political behavior.

Dr. Lindon J. Eaves, a professor of human genetics and psychiatry at Virginia Commonwealth University, said the new research did not add much to this. Dr. Eaves was not involved in the study but allowed the researchers to analyze data from a study of twins that he is leading.

Still, he said the findings were plausible, "and the real significance here is that this paper brings genetics to the attention to a whole new field and gives it a new way of thinking about social, cultural and political questions."

In the study, three political scientists - Dr. John Hibbing of the University of Nebraska, Dr. John R. Alford of Rice University and Dr. Carolyn L. Funk of Virginia Commonwealth - combed survey data from two large continu ing studies including more than 8,000 sets of twins.

From an extensive battery of surveys on personality traits, religious beliefs and other psychological factors, the researchers selected 28 questions most relevant to political behavior. The questions asked people "to please indicate whether or not you agree with each topic," or are uncertain on issues like property taxes, capitalism, unions and X-rated movies. Most of the twins had a mixture of conservative and progressive views. But over all, they leaned slightly one way or the other.

The researchers then compared dizygotic or fraternal twins, who, like any biological siblings, share 50 percent of their genes, with monozygotic, or identical, twins, who share 100 percent of their genes.

Calculating how often identical twins agree on an issue and subtracting the rate at which fraternal twins agree on the same item provides a rough measure of genes' influence on that attitude. A shared family environment for twins reared together is assumed.

On school prayer, for example, the identical twins' opinions correlated at a rate of 0.66, a measure of how often they agreed. The correlation rate for fraternal twins was 0.46. This translated into a 41 percent contribution from inheritance.

As found in previous studies, attitudes about issues like school prayer, property taxes and the draft were among the most influenced by inheritance, the researchers found. Others like modern art and divorce were less so. And in the twins' overall score, derived from 28 questions, genes accounted for 53 percent of the differences.

But after correcting for the tendency of politically like-minded men and women to marry each other, the researchers also found that the twins' self-identification as Republican or Democrat was far more dependent on environmental factors like upbringing and life experience than was their social orientation, which the researchers call ideology. Inheritance accounted for 14 percent of the difference in party, the researchers found.

"We are measuring two separate things here, ideology and party affiliation," Dr. Hibbing, the senior author, said.

He added that his research team found the large difference in heritability between the two "very hard to believe," but that it held up.

The implications of this difference may be far-reaching, the authors argue. For years, political scientists tried in vain to learn how family dynamics like closeness between parents and children or the importance of politics in a household influenced political ideology. But the study suggests that an inherited social orientation may overwhelm the more subtle effects of family dynamics.

A mismatch between an inherited social orientation and a given party may also explain why some people defect from a party. Many people who are genetically conservative may be brought up as Democrats, and some who are genetically more progressive may be raised as Republicans, the researchers say.

In tracking attitudes over the years, geneticists have found that social attitudes tend to stabilize in the late teens and early 20's, when young people begin to fend for themselves.

Some "mismatched" people remain loyal to their family's political party. But circumstances can override inherited bent. The draft may look like a good idea until your number is up. The death penalty may seem barbaric until a loved one is murdered.

Other people whose social orientations are out of line with their given parties may feel a discomfort that can turn them into opponents of their former party, Dr. Alford said.

"Zell Miller would be a good example of this," Dr. Alford said, referring to the former Democratic governor and senator from Georgia who gave an impassioned speech at the Republican National Convention last year against t he Democrats' nominee, John Kerry.

Support for Democrats among white men has been eroding for years in the South, Dr. Alford said, and Mr. Miller is remarkable for remaining nominally a Democrat despite his divergence from the party line on many issues.

Reached by telephone, Mr. Miller said he did not see it quite that way. He said that his views had not changed much since his days as a marine, but that the Democratic Party had moved.

"And I'm not talking about inch by inch, like a glacier," said Mr. Miller, who makes the case in a new book, "A Deficit of Decency." "I'm saying the thing got up and flew away."

The idea that certain social issues produce immediate unthinking reactions comes through in other political research as well. In several recent studies, Dr. Milton Lodge of the State University of New York at Stony Brook has shown that certain names and political concepts - "taxes" or "Clinton," for example - produce almost instantaneous positive or negative reactions.

These intensely charged political reflexes are shaped partly by inheritance, Dr. Lodge said.

It may be the clash of visceral, genetically primed social orientations that gives political debate its current malice and fire, the study suggests.

Although the two broad genetic types, more conservative and more progressive, may find some common ground on specific issues, they represent fundamental differences that go deeper than many people assume, the new research suggests.

"When people talk about the political debate becoming increasingly ugly, they often blame talk radio or the people doing the debating, but they've got it backward," Dr. Alford said. "These genetically predisposed ideologies are polarized, and that's what makes the debate so nasty.

"You see it in people's eyes when they talk politics. You can hear it their voices. After about the third response, we all start sounding like talk radio on some issues."

The researchers are not optimistic about the future of bipartisan cooperation or national unity. Because men and women tend to seek mates with a similar ideology, they say, the two gene pools are becoming, if anything, more concentrated, not less.

MOUNT DORA, Fla. -- Mount Dora police say a man fabricated a robbery story.

Ken Nestor is charged with grand theft and filing a false police report. He has admitted to police that he stabbed himself to go along with a story that he was attacked by a robber.

Police say they found Nestor the night of the reported robbery in the
parking lot holding a blood-soaked paper towel on his forearm.

Officials say they have recovered all but about $300 of the money that was missing. Police say the man also admitted to stealing several hundred dollars.

Rita Bender had waited more than four decades to see the man who organised the killing of her husband and his two colleagues brought to justice.

Yesterday, exactly 41 years after three civil rights activists were pulled from their car and shot dead on a back-country road in Mississippi, a sick and ageing former member of the Ku Klux Klan was convicted over their deaths.

Edgar Ray Killen, 80, sat almost motionless as the jury's verdict convicting him of three counts of manslaughter but clearing him of murder was read out in the courtroom in Philadelphia, Mississippi. He sat with an oxygen tube attached to his nose and mouth as his wife hugged him in sympathy. [...]

He faces 20 years in jail and will be sentenced on Thursday.

"The window is open, the light, has not come in completely," Mrs Bender said after the verdict was delivered. "The fact that some members of that jury have sat through that testimony and could not bring themselves to admit that those were murders, with malice, indicates that there are still people among you who choose to look aside and not see the truth and that means there is a lot more yet to be done. I would hope that this case is just a beginning and not the end."

She added: "Killen didn't act in a vacuum. The state of Mississippi was complicit in these crimes and all the crimes that occurred, and that has to be opened up." [...]

Immortalised by the 1988 film Mississippi Burning, the killing of the three activists - one local black man and two white Jews - took place in a state that had few equals when it came to opposing such integration. Mrs Bender's husband, though only 26, had been identified by the Klan as a target as a result of his tireless work to register voters in Meridian.

Killen, a sawmill owner and part-time preacher who was once a senior official or Kleagle with a local chapter of the KKK, was one of 18 men originally charged over the killings. Their trial in 1967 - which followed three years of investigation and legal efforts by the federal authorities - resulted in the conviction of seven of Killen's friends but in his case a hung jury.

Killen might have lived out his years on his home outside Philadelphia, where a sign bearing the words of the Ten Commandments stands in his front garden, but for fresh evidence gathered by the state prosecutor. That emerged from an interview that another senior Klan official gave in prison and was subsequently published by the Clarion-Ledger newspaper. Subsequent inquiries led to the charging of Killen last January with one of the most high profile remaining cases from the civil rights era.

The decision to prosecute Killen four decades after the killing brought divisions to the local community.

Some argued that, for the community to put the past behind it, justice had to be seen to be done. Others - while not condoning the killings - said a trial would simply stir up old antagonisms.

PHILADELPHIA -- Violence between biotech protesters and police in Center City Philadelphia turned tragic on Tuesday, after a Philadelphia police officer died after a scuffle in Center City on Tuesday.

Officer Paris Williams, 52, an 18-year department veteran, was pronounced dead at Hahnemann University Hospital shortly after 1 p.m., Cpl. Jim Pauley said.

Williams collapsed and died of an apparent heart attack Tuesday as police skirmished with protesters outside a biotechnology convention, officials said.

Williams was on duty as a plain-clothes officer and was helping to control the skirmish when he dropped to the ground in a large crowd.

However, authorities did not think Williams was directly involved in a confrontation.

Authorities closed the street in front of the Pennsylvania Convention Center to traffic as hundreds of protesters chanted and pounded on drums. A small number of demonstrators scuffled with police.

"I don't think Officer Paris Williams was involved in the scuffle, but anyhow, he saw the scuffle, he went toward the scuffle, he collapsed," Police Commissioner Sylvester Johnson said outside the hospital.

"We're not blaming anybody for what happened," Johnson said. "At this point, unfortunately, we have an officer that died today in the line of duty."

About a half-dozen people were taken away by police.

Groups opposed to biotech research methods, biological weapons, genetically modified crops and other issues had announced plans to disrupt traffic and events in the city throughout the day. About 18,000 people are in the city for the convention, which runs through Wednesday. [...]

IT might be over budget and years late but the Eurofighter Typhoon has shown that it can shake off America's best fighter plane and shoot it down.

A chance encounter over the Lake District between a Eurofighter trainer and two F-15 aircraft turned into a mock dogfight, with the British plane coming off best - much to the surprise of some in the RAF. The episode was hushed up for fear of causing US blushes.

For a project 10 years late and $8bn over budget, it is a welcome piece of good news.

The 'clash' took place last year over Windermere when the two-seater RAF Eurofighter was 'bounced' from behind by the two F-15E fighters.

The US pilots intended to pursue the supposedly hapless 'Limey' for several miles and lock their radars on to it for long enough so that if it had been a real dogfight the British jet would have been shot down.

But much to the Americans' surprise, the Eurofighter shook them off, outmanoeuvred them and moved into shooting positions on their tails.

The British pilots themselves were almost as surprised at winning an encounter with an aircraft widely regarded as the best fighter in the world.

WINNIPEG – An investigation is underway after float plane crashed near Thompson on the weekend, killing its pilot.

The plane crashed into the Burntwood River in about two kilometres north of the seaplane base around 4:30 Saturday afternoon.

Two passengers survived the crash but were unable to free the pilot. They swam ashore to get help, then walked a kilometre though thick forest before they reached a home. [...]

A vintage World War II airplane based in Peachtree City crashed Thursday morning in Pike County, killing the pilot and his only passenger.

According to a press release from the Commemorative Air Force, the Fairchild PT-26 Cornell, a single-engine plane, took off from Falcon Field at approximately 10:30 a.m. Thursday and landed one hour later at Peach State Airport in Williamson. Almost immediately after repositioning and taking off again, the plane struck a tree and crashed, the report stated. [...]

CRIVITZ, Wis. - A 62-year-old pilot died when his ultra-light plane crashed near an airport, the Marinette County Sheriff's Department said Monday. [...]

OKLAHOMA CITY -- Federal investigators were working Monday to determine the cause of a weekend plane crash in Florida that killed an Oklahoma man.

Eyewitness News 5 confirmed Monday that the pilot of the plane that crashed near Sarasota, Fla., was Wilford Frost, of Newalla. Frost's experimental plane went down Saturday after it clipped an elementary school building, officials said.

No one at the school was hurt. [...]

SENATH, Mo. - Authorities have identified the pilot killed in a weekend crop-dusting plane crash in the Missouri Bootheel.

Howard Joshlin, 45, of Dallas, was killed about 7:45 p.m. Saturday when his cropduster struck a cable used to support a 1,080-foot tower near Senath, Mo., in Dunklin County. The tower collapsed and the plane burst into flames upon impact. [...]

MOUNT SHASTA, Calif. -- A 69-year-old Washington man was presumed dead after the small plane he was piloting crashed on the east side of Mount Shasta, the Siskiyou County Sheriff's Department said Monday. [...]

Crews have been unable to get to the crash scene because of strong winds and extremely high avalanche danger. But the sheriff's department said that based on photos from the scene there appeared to be no survivors.

MISSOULA -- A twin-engine airplane crashed into a hay field shortly after taking off from the airport here Tuesday morning, injuring the two men on board, Missoula County Undersheriff Mike Dominick said.

A fire after the crash destroyed the Cessna 320E.

One man was taken to the hospital by helicopter and the other by ambulance. [...]

Coast Guard units searching since Monday for two possible downed aircraft have altered their search patterns this morning to look for people in the water.

The Federal Aviation Administration in Miami notified the Coast Guard at approximately 11:40 a.m. Monday of a single-engine Piper plane with three people on board had possibly crashed 25 miles east of Port St. Lucie. [...]

BEIJING, June 22 (Xinhuanet) -- A US U-2 spy plane has crashed in south-west Asia on Tuesday night, the US military said.

"The cause of the crash and status of the pilot are not known at this time," said the US Central Command Air Forces, or CENTAF, in a brief statement.

The U-2, a single-seat jet able to fly at high altitudes on surveillance missions, has been flown by the U.S. Air Force for over 50 years.

The military has not disclosed the location of the crash or any of the circumstances.

KIRYAT GAT, Israel : At least seven people were killed and 189 injured when a packed commuter train hit a lorry in southern Israel, the emergency services and police said.

Medics had initially estimated the number of injured to be around 100, but later increased the toll after more victims arrived at the seven hospitals treating the wounded around the country.

Four people were said to be in critical condition, with 11 seriously injured and another another 27 in moderate condition after the crash near Kiryat Gat in southern Israel.

Medics and hospital sources said the lorry driver was among the dead and the train driver was fighting for his life.

Police quoted by Channel 2 private television said the train, which was heading for the southern city of Beersheva, hit a lorry which was crossing the tracks in the middle of fields belonging to a kibbutz.

Other police sources said the train had hit a heavily-laden cement mixer which had become stuck on the tracks.

Health Minister Danny Naveh told Channel 10 television that 70 ambulances had been dispatched to the scene to evacuate the injured, while the army said helicopters had airlifted the more seriously wounded to the seven hospitals involved in treating the victims.

Israeli broadcasters interrupted scheduled programming to report the crash.

Channel 2 said the collision occurred when the train hit a construction lorry, which had involved in tarmacking a new road being built just adjacent to the tracks.

Police sources told the channel the lorry had most likely stalled or somehow become stuck on the tracks just before the train approached.

The train driver apparently tried to make an emergency stop but smashed into the truck at around 90 kilometres per hour. [...]

Scientists say that tiny, shelled amoebas may help provide early warning for large earthquakes five to 10 years before they happen, giving communities time to plan for high-magnitude quakes that can cause tsunamis.

Evidence suggests that the type of amoebas change in certain shallow coastal areas five to 10 years before a megathrust earthquake occurs, a study in the July issue of the Geographic Society Bulletin says.

Megathrust quakes are destructive earthquakes that occur where two plates of the Earth's crust collide. One such area, the Cascadia Subduction Zone, lies off the Northwest coast where the Juan de Fuca plate dives beneath the North American plate.

A magnitude-9 megathrust earthquake in the Indian Ocean last December caused a massive tsunami that killed more than 200,000 people.

The study is based on core samples taken before and after the 9.2-magnitude Alaskan earthquake in 1964, and from Netarts Bay on the Oregon coast, where scientists have found evidence of large earthquakes and tsunamis 300 to 3,000 years ago.

The samples show a change in amoeba populations caused by slight elevation decreases along the coast in the years before a large earthquake, said David Scott, professor of Earth sciences at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and one of the study's authors.

When the elevation dropped, sometimes by just a few centimeters, the single-celled organisms that lived in seawater increasingly mixed with those in fresh water in certain locations, Scott said.

"We see the same precursor mechanisms in microorganism populations five to 10 years before a megathrust earthquake, whether it happened more recently or in the prehistoric past," he said.

Scott said there are several low-lying areas on the Washington coast where such microorganisms could be monitored.

Washington state's Emergency Management Department is working with communities such as Willapa Bay and Grays Harbor to promote public awareness and evacuation plans in areas at risk for tsunamis caused by megathrust earthquakes.

"Were making sure communities in hazard areas are developing mitigation plans," said George Crawford, technical adviser on seismic activity for the state Emergency Management Department.

In Long Beach, Pacific County, Crawford is working with community leaders to protect coastal-dune ridges that may serve as natural barriers to a tsunami wave. He also is helping Aberdeen plan evacuation drills in areas where roads may be washed out by a tsunami.

"I've got to get communities prepared, so we're making sure communities in hazard areas like Long Beach are developing mitigation plans," Crawford said. "However, a few years warning may spur legislation to fast-track more direct funding to those areas that will be most affected by earthquakes."

Scott and his co-authors recommend that tiltmeters, which measure elevation movement down to the millimeter, be placed in areas where changes in the amoeba populations are found. Or scientists could regularly monitor the populations to look for evidence of elevation change.

The organisms, called foraminefera, are barely visible, single-celled creatures with shells the size of a grain of sand. In fact, sand from many beaches is made up in part from the shells of foraminefera.

Peter Ward, professor of biology and of Earth and space sciences at the University of Washington, said using the organisms and their fossilized remains is a radically different yet simple way to understand subtle elevation changes.

Some scientists, though, are skeptical that changes in such organisms could warn of a possible earthquake.

The organisms change when the salinity of the water changes, said Ian Hutchinson, professor of physical geography at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia. And salinity can change without an elevation drop, he said.

Also, tidal records in Alaska before the 1964 earthquake show no evidence of sea-level change, Hutchinson said.

U.S. Geological Survey geologist Brian Atwater at the University of Washington also is cautious about using the organisms to warn of earthquakes. He said the location of the creatures in sediment may be the result of burrowing rather than elevation changes.

"But this is a tantalizing result that deserves to be looked into further," Atwater said.

"There are a whole range of warning systems out there. Technology has gotten a lot of attention recently, but geological history is also a warning on a different time scale."

A minor earthquake registering 5.0 on the Richter scale rattled northern Chile Tuesday, the same area shaken by a much stronger quake earlier this month.

There were no reports of injury or damages caused by Tuesday's tremor, unlike the June 13 quake in which 11 people were killed.

Dozens of homes collapsed and power was lost along Chile's northern coast. The quake was also felt in neighboring Bolivia.

In May 2004, a quake with a magnitude of 6.6 on the Richter scale shook Chile, its epicenter 330 miles south of the capital, Santiago, in the province of Arauco.

Bordering the Pacific Ocean and resting on an area of high seismic activity, Chile often experiences minor quakes. The nation's strongest earthquake of the 20th century hit Valdivia, Chile, in May 1960, registering 9.5 on the Richter scale. An estimated 2,000 were killed and another 2 million lost their homes in that quake.

QUIT, June 21 (Xinhuanet) -- Reventador Volcano in Ecuador has resumed eruption, which is expected to affect two major oil pipelines, said Hugo Yepez, director of Geophysics Institute of the National Polytechnical School (IGEPN) on Tuesday.

"Reventador is in the second phase of the eruption process which only consists of a lava flow circulating in the volcanic crater," said the expert.

A thin ash layer could fall over the inter-Andean zones and cover the Heavy Crude Pipeline and the Trans-Ecuadorian Oil-Pipeline System, causing maintenance problems.

"We have to take into account that the volcano is generating some ashes and if the activity increase, there could be consequences in the inter-Andean valley," said Yepez.

In Ecuador eight volcanoes have erupted since 1534 and volcanologists believe there exist at least 13 or more potentially active volcanoes.

Reventador, 3,485 meters above sea-level, is a symmetrical conevolcano which on November 3, 2002 expelled into the air millions of tons of ashes that reached Quito and covered the capital city with a thick layer of ash.

The cleanup is underway in Manitoba's Red River region in the wake of a major thunderstorm on Sunday.

A number of hydro lines were downed, trees were uprooted and the winds were so strong that train cars were pushed from their tracks.

Environment Canada is looking into several reports of tornado sightings.

In parts of Winnipeg winds were clocked at around 140 km/h. A number of homes, businesses and garages sustained damage but remarkably no one was hurt.

The National Weather Service is still trying to determine whether Saturday's severe thunderstorm that downed utility poles, knocked out power for 1,400 and ripped off part of a restaurant's roof west of Delray Beach was a tornado.

A meteorologist isn't expected until today to inspect the storm-hit area along West Atlantic Avenue just west of Florida's Turnpike, where authorities feared a tornado touched down during the 5:19 p.m. storm. [...]

The Tube is hotter and more humid than Hong Kong and Miami, an Evening Standard investigation has found. The combination of soaring temperatures and moist air means London commuters are enduring worse conditions than residents in sub-tropical zones. [...]

BEIJING, June 22 -- A heatwave gripped 13 provinces and regions across the country yesterday with the mercury hitting 42 C in some parts, meteorolical officials said. China's north, central, east, southwest and northwest regions were all sizzling hot.

CHONGQING, June 22 (Xinhuanet) -- About 30,000 had been evacuated by 5:00 p.m. Wednesday after a reservoir collapse blocked a river in Wuxi County in southwest China's Chongqing Municipality on Tuesday.

The water level in Xixi River, a major tributary of Daning River, rose to 536 meters in altitude inside the reservoir, about two meters below the dam's top and 26 meters from the river bed, according to the local government.

The water is still rising, posing a great threat to about 30,000 residents in eight townships at the lower reaches. The residents have all been evacuated, the local government said.

Some water is filtering through the dam, slowing down the rising of the water, and the dam itself shows no signs of breakdown, according to the rescue headquarters.

The collapse occurred when workers were operating at Zhongliang Reservoir at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, involving about 100,000 cubic meters of rocks, according to local rescue headquarters.

The reservoir is about 60 kilometers away from Wuxi County. Rescuers have rushed to the site and more engineers are expected to arrived at the site by Wednesday night.

In less than two months, 11 people have died from rabies transmitted by vampire bats in the northern Brazilian state of Para, according to health officials.

Authorities said the victims were bitten near the small town of Augusto Correa, about 1,500 miles northeast of Rio de Janeiro.

Josefa Ferreira has lost five children -- all under the age of 5 years old -- because of rabies caused by bites from the vampire bats. According to her, none of her children received the vaccine.

More than 1,300 people from 20 small communities around Augusto Correa and Vizeu have been vaccinated. And more than 700 cats and dogs have also received the vaccination.

Health officials attempting to catch the vampire bats have nabbed about 300 in the area, according to the report.

Some residents believe that deforestation has driven the bats from their natural jungle habitat and led to the increased number of bites.

Rats are being blamed for crippling New Zealand's telecoms network yesterday leaving thousands of punters without phone or internet access.

Rodents are now thought to have been responsible for severing a fibre on a bridge in the Rimutaka area on New Zealand's North Island.

"Services through that fibre were able to be routed through different parts of the network until the second incident occurred in south Taranaki where a post-hole digger damaged a fibre," New Zealand's telco Telecom said in a statement yesterday.

Although no rodent has actually admitted the crime, engineers reckon the fury little critters may well have nibbled through important cables carrying the country's telecom's traffic.

New Zealand's telco Telecom was able to cope with this outage, but when a contractor severed a cable shortly after while drilling a post hole, much of the telco's network collapsed.

Telecom spokesman John Goulter told AP that it "could not rule out the possibility" that rats had chewed the cables.

"I think getting two accidents of this type at the same time is a freak occurrence," he said.

BANGKOK, Thailand -- A young Thai man with a history of moodiness has killed himself by gluing his mouth and nose shut with super glue.

Bangkok police say the young man's body was found Thursday morning in his bedroom, apparently after suffocating overnight. They say a small amount of cash and a note saying "Here is all that I have, take what you please" were also found on the bed.

The man's family told police he had argued with his sister Wednesday over some money she'd borrowed and not repaid. He went into his bedroom, where his body was found ten hours later.

Nairobi - A cobbler suspected of sorcery was attacked and nearly lynched by outraged villagers in central Kenya on Tuesday after being caught having sex with a female sheep, witnesses and officials said.

Joshua Kiplagat, 36, sustained a serious head wound when the sheep's owner threw a machete at him after finding him in flagrante delicto with a prize ewe in the Rift Valley district of Bomet, they said.

He was then tied to a tree stump for five hours before being frogmarched naked with the violated ovine in tow to a police station where he confessed to several acts of bestiality that he blamed on the devil, they said.

"I was sent by the devil to do that," Kiplagat told the angry crowd which included several people who accused him of being a warlock and one disgusted woman who claimed to have seen him engaging in sex acts with a dog.

"I saw this man mounting a dog two weeks ago at around seven in the evening and I was so surprised," said the woman, who gave her name as Leah.

The bloodied shoe repairer adamantly denied allegations that he was a wizard and insisted that his affection for animals was limited to sheep.

"I only made love to the ewe twice using two condoms but I never do it regularly," he said in his defence.

Bomet assistant district chief Paul Kikwai, who was present at the police station, expressed shock at the incident and vowed that Kiplagat would be punished although he made no comment on the villagers' actions.

"We have never seen such incidents here and we are just wondering how many people around here engage in this kind of acts," he lamented.