"Over the course of this war, we have learned that winning the battle for Iraqi cities is only the first step," Bush said. "We also have to win the battle after the battle by helping Iraqis consolidate their gains and keep the terrorists from returning."

Bush praised criticism from a key Democrat, Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, who, after touring Iraq recently, said "mistakes have been made."

Bush quoted Lieberman saying, "'what a colossal mistake it would be for America's bipartisan political leadership to choose this moment in history to lose its will,' and, in a famous phrase, 'to seize defeat from the jaws of the coming victory.'

"Senator Lieberman is right," Bush said.

"There's an important debate going on in our nation's capital about Iraq," Bush said. "And the fact that we can debate these issues openly in the midst of a dangerous war brings credit to our democracy." 'We adjusted our approach'

The president said U.S. strategy to rebuild Iraq's cities was shifted because the cities couldn't be controlled after U.S. forces left. "So we adjusted our approach," Bush said.

"We increased the amount of money commanders had at their disposal for flexible use. We worked with Iraqi leaders to provide more contracts directly to Iraqi firms," Bush said.

"In two and a half years, the Iraqi people have made amazing progress," the president said. "They've gone from living under the boot of a brutal tyrant to liberation, to free elections, to a democratic constitution."

Bush conceded reconstruction "has not always gone as well as we had hoped," but he vowed the United States would not abandon Iraq until "complete victory" is accomplished.

Despite Bush's concession, Democratic Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, an outspoken critic of the war, said the president failed to define "political, economic and military benchmarks that need to be met" in Iraq. "Democrats firmly believe that the U.S. can and must succeed [in Iraq] but the president's open-ended, ill-defined policy will not get us there."

Decorated Vietnam War veteran Rep. John Murtha, a 17-term Democratic hawk from Pennsylvania, repeated his call for U.S. troops to pullout of Iraq immediately, an idea Bush has rejected.

"The American public is thirsting for a plan -- they don't see a plan, a way out," Murtha said. "I had one of the generals tell us in a closed hearing ... 20 years it's going to take to settle this thing."

"The sooner we get out, in my estimation, the better off we'll be."

Najaf, Mosul cited as examples

As specific examples of U.S. successes in Iraqi reconstruction, Bush cited work in two Iraqi cities that he said had been devastated during Saddam Hussein's reign, Najaf, in south central Iraq and the north in Mosul, where relatively few insurgent attacks occur.

In Najaf, Bush said "virtually every element of infrastructure and basic services had been crippled by years of insufficient maintenance."

U.S. and Iraq officials "worked with Najaf's governor and other local officials to rebuild the local police force, repair residents' homes, refurbish schools, restore water and other essential service, reopen a soccer stadium, complete with new lights and fresh sod."

"In Mosul," Bush said, "Iraqis upgraded key roads and bridges over the Tigris River, rebuilt schools and hospitals and started refurbishing the Mosul airport. Police stations and fire houses were rebuilt."

Neither city lies in the Sunni Triangle in central Iraq, the area where most insurgent attacks have taken place.

Bush also said 30,000 new Iraqi businesses have registered since the March 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

The speech was the second in a series of addresses in advance of Iraq's December 15 national elections.

According to the latest CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll released November 30, nearly six in 10 respondents said U.S. troops should not be withdrawn from Iraq until certain goals are achieved. Just 35 percent wanted to set a specific timetable for their exit, as some critics of the war have suggested.

Hours before Bush's address last week, White House officials unveiled a 35-page plan to achieve success in Iraq.

About 160,000 American troops are in Iraq, according to the White House. The Pentagon says it hopes to reduce the number to 138,000 by the summer and 100,000 by the end of 2006.

Iraqis are set to select a permanent National Assembly on December 15, after choosing a transitional parliament in January and approving a constitution in October. U.S. military officials have predicted that insurgent attacks likely will escalate in advance of the election.

The Pentagon has said that the level of troops is likely to go back down to the summer's level after the election.

I [also] learned that John Negroponte, our previous ambassador to the UN when Iraq was invaded, is Jewish. I have learned that the Honduran Commission on Human Rights has a complaint against Mr. Negroponte. It is strange that our nation would have an alleged human rights violator as a UN Ambassador. It is [equally] strange that Negroponte, as well as Paul Bremer (both Jewish) would be placed in positions of authority in Iraq, especially given the sensitivities of Arabs to the Zionist State when it seems their trust for what our government is doing is so critical. I also note that under Bremer and Negroponte, almost 10 Billion dollars, belonging to US taxpayers, seems ‘lost’ to embezzlement; and that Israel, of all countries, is now in the oil business inside the borders of Iraq.

If we look at other cabinet positions in the US government we see that Jews have served us proudly, many times in the past, in positions as critical as the Secretary of Defense. But, there is also concern, as many have described, regarding the heavy weighting of Jewish participation in the so-called neo-con group at the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans. The OSP gave America the PNAC treatise, the invasion of Iraq, and a beating of the drums to invade Iran. And now we learn that a government official in the OSP, Larry Franklin, and two executives of the Israeli lobby, AIPAC, have been indicted for espionage, against the US, on behalf of Israel.

However, is has been difficult to get a read on Christian participation in the government of Israel. I cannot find information that breaks down high level advisors to Israel’s government or cabinet positions or ambassadorships, based on religious affiliations. It would be very easy to accept that Israel, a nation with the highest regard for American interests, a nation that [also] enjoys a very special fiduciary relation with the US taxpayer, would [also] place Christians (the de facto state religion of the US) in high and important positions (in the Israeli government) at least at a ratio that is par with the Jewish representation America enjoys in the US government. But alas, that information is difficult to locate.

So, Abby, are Christians in high level positions in the government of Israel?

Regards,

Confused


Dear Confused,

These are trying times and we are all struggling to understand how to make the world safer. The short answer is “No”. Christians do not participate [directly] at the policy level of the Israeli government. However you might find it comforting to know many of our Christian representatives in congress, at least as a measure of acceptance of political contributions from AIPAC, might, be it ever so indirectly, work “for” the government of Israel.

Confused, I hope this helps!

When I reached the legal voting age of 21 in 1936, I voted for Republican Alfred Landon against Franklin D. Roosevelt. I continued voting Republican through 1980, when I founded a PAC in San Diego with my own money to help Ronald Reagan defeat Jimmy Carter.

But I didn't vote for Reagan in 1984 because of his misguided trade and fiscal policies.

Whereas the United States enjoyed a $28 billion trade surplus and only $700 billion in federal debt in the previous 36 years, in eight years Reagan piled up $1.042 trillion in trade deficits and $1.692 trillion in federal debt. That was 186 percent more than all 39 prior presidents.

I haven't voted for a Republican or Democrat candidate since because I have no desire to vote for the lesser of two evils. I retired in 1976 as a senior executive of General Motors, with responsibility for more than 35,000 employees, and have been a member of the World Affairs Council, the Institute for the Americas at the University of California, the Advisory Board of the School of Education at the University of San Diego, a Rotary Club president, etc. I've traveled widely and lived in many states.

Any CEO of a corporation who screwed up as many things as George W. Bush would have been fired by its board of directors. Here's a few of the ways:

# Invasion of Iraq, which is the biggest strategic blunder and scandal in U.S. history. Saddam Hussein never initiated a belligerent act of aggression or terrorism against us. The buildup to that war was based on fabrications, deception and lies.

# Death of 2,100 U.S. soldiers, wounding 15,000 more, and the death of 30,000 innocent Iraqi men, women and children.

# Immoral and unconstitutional trade policies that caused $2.824 trillion in trade deficits in just five years.

# The worst fiscal performance in our history, piling up $2.472 trillion in added federal debt in five years en route to a major economic collapse.

# Tax policies that are an insult to working people who make dividends possible but who are required to pay a higher marginal tax rate than those who collect dividends without working.

# Foreign policies that have alienated most of the rest of the world.

# A misguided attempt to turn future Social Security pensions over to Wall Street.

In typical arrogance, Bush said we must stay the course in the Iraq war, which means continuing his tragic record while killing and wounding more U.S. soldiers. That has no more credibility than to say a fox should be put in charge of maintaining order in a hen house after he has just created mayhem therein.

Earlier this year, Terri Schiavo lay in a permanent coma connected to a feeding tube. Her husband said she would have wanted that tube removed. But Republican members of Congress passed a resolution to maintain the tube, causing Bush to fly from his ranch in Texas to Washington to sign that legislation.

As his pen was poised to sign the document, Bush said, "If there is an error in this matter, it is best to err on the side of life."

Why didn't Bush make that same judgment in early 2003 when millions of Americans protested against a possible invasion of Iraq, as did many foreign leaders? Bush had no qualms about killing and wounding thousands of soldiers and innocent civilians.

In view of his miserable record, his arrogant lack of good judgment and his failure to understand the gravity of his record, President Bush (and Vice President Dick Cheney) should be shown the exit door with a proviso to never darken the Oval Office again.

That should be exit strategy No. 1!

I was a Republican, but never a knee-jerk Republican.

Federal officials in Washington expressed surprise at the verdict in a case they had pursued for years.

The trial, lasting more than five months, hinged on the question of whether Mr. Arian's years of work in the Tampa area in support of Palestinian independence crossed the threshold from protected free speech and political advocacy to illegal support for terrorists.

Prosecutors, who had been building a case against Mr. Arian for 10 years, relied on some 20,000 hours of taped conversations culled from wiretaps on Mr. Arian and his associates. Officials said he had helped finance and direct terrorist attacks in Israel, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, while using his faculty position teaching computer engineering at the University of South Florida as a cover for his terrorist activities.

But ultimately, the jury in Tampa that heard the case found him not guilty of the charge of conspiring to kill people overseas, and it deadlocked on three of the other most serious terrorism charges.

Justice Department officials said they were considering whether to re-try Mr. Arian on the counts on which the jury did not reach verdicts.

While expressing disappointment in the verdicts, the officials said the department had a strong track record of success in prosecuting terrorists, including the separate convictions last week of a Northern Virginia student and a Pakistani immigrant in New York on charges of supporting Al Qaeda.

"We remain focused on the important task at hand, which is to protect our country through our ongoing vigorous prosecution of terrorism cases," said Tasia Scolinos, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department. "While we respect the jury's verdict, we stand by the evidence we presented in court against Sami al-Arian and his co-defendants."

In bringing the case against Mr. Arian in 2003, the department relied on the easing of legal restrictions under the antiterrorism law known as the USA Patriot Act to present years of wiretaps on the defendants in a criminal context.

In the conversations cited by prosecutors, Mr. Arian was heard raising money for Palestinian causes, hailing recently completed attacks against Israel with associates overseas, calling suicide bombers "martyrs" and referring to Jews as "monkeys and swine" who would be "damned" by Allah.

But much of the conversation and activity used by prosecutors predated the 1995 designation by the United States of Palestinian Islamic Jihad as a terrorist group, a designation that prohibited Americans from supporting it. Several legal analysts and law professors said Tuesday that the government appeared to have overreached in its case.

"I think the government's case was somewhat stale because a lot of these events dated back 10 years, and the case was so complex that it was all over the board," said Peter Margulies, a law professor at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island who has studied terrorism prosecutions.

For the prosecutors, Professor Margulies said, "this is clearly embarrassing, and they were clearly outmaneuvered by some very good defense attorneys."

Most politicians "are interested not in truth but in power and the maintenance of that power", the 75-year-old said.

His speech was pre-recorded as Pinter was admitted to hospital this week.

'Live in ignorance'

Pinter, 75, whose plays include The Birthday Party and Betrayal, was announced the winner of the $1.3m (£740,000) cash prize in October.

On Wednesday his lecture, entitled Art, Truth and Politics, studied the importance of truth in art before decrying its perceived absence in politics.

He said politicians feel it is "essential that people remain in ignorance, that they live in ignorance of the truth, even the truth of their own lives".

Pinter said the US justification for invading Iraq - that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction - "was not true".

"The truth is something entirely different," Pinter added. "The truth is to do with how the United States understands its role in the world and how it chooses to embody it."

Pinter said that since World War II the US government "supported and in many cases engendered every right-wing military dictatorship in the world".

"I refer to Indonesia, Greece, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Haiti, Turkey, the Philippines, Guatemala, El Salvador and, of course, Chile."

'Bleating lamb'

He added: "You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good."

Referring to Blair's support for the US-led war on Iraq, Pinter described the "pathetic and supine" Great Britain as "a bleating little lamb tagging behind (the US) on a lead".

He called for President Bush and Prime Minister Blair to be "arraigned before the International Criminal Court of Justice".

"But Bush has been clever," Pinter said. "He has not ratified the International Criminal Court of Justice."

Nevertheless he added that "thousands, if not millions" of people in the US were "sickened, shamed and angered" by their government's actions.

"As things stand they are not a coherent political force - yet."

Publisher Stephen Page will accept the Nobel Prize for Literature on Pinter's behalf on Saturday.

The chaotic trial, marked by harrowing witness testimony of torture and angry tirades from Saddam, had been scheduled to resume with testimony from two more "complainants".

But proceedings were delayed Wednesday, first by a closed-door meeting between Saddam's defence lawyers and judges to discuss "procedural matters", then by the refusal of the fallen dictator to enter the dock.

"There been a delay because one of the defendants is refusing to come up to the court. That defendant is now meeting with his attorneys," a court official said.

"If he doesn't come they come up they will make other arrangements," the official added, subsequently using the name Saddam.

Saddam, 68, and seven of his former henchmen are on trial for the massacre of nearly 150 Shiite villagers after an attempt on his life in 1982.

They all pleaded not guilty at the opening of the trial in October but face the death penalty if convicted.

With only two witnesses to appear, Wednesday had been billed as a short session. The trial was then expected to be adjourned for at least a few weeks as the country concentrates on legislative elections set for December 15.

Amid persisitent security problems, 20 gunmen stormed a hospital in northern Iraq to free a detainee from an Islamist cell planning to assassinate the country's top investigative judge.

Three policemen were killed in the raid to free the man from an extremist cell linked to Al-Qaeda which planned to murder Raed Juhi, the top judge looking into the Saddam case.

During the fourth session on Tuesday, witnesses testifying behind a beige screen with electronically distorted voices described being beaten, pistol whipped and given electric shocks by Iraqi intelligence agents.

But their testimony was repeatedly challenged by defence lawyers and Saddam himself, who took the opportunity to make an outburst against the United States, Israel and the whole court.

"Go to hell!" were his parting words at the end of the hearing Tuesday after he complained of having dirty clothes and being unable to wash or smoke.

Saddam harangued the Kurdish presiding judge, Rizkar Mohammed Amin, accusing him of being taken in by American theatrics and chastising him for not being more concerned with the detention conditions of defendants.

Defence lawyers have said it will be very difficult for Saddam to be given a fair trial, have questioned the legality of the court and called for their client to be tried by an international tribunal.

The defendants, who have all pleaded not guilty to charges including murder and torture, face the death penalty if convicted in what the local media has dubbed the "trial of the century."

On Tuesday, a women identified only as "witness A" broke down as she told how she was stripped naked and whipped by intelligence agents, before being thrown into Baghdad's notorious Abu Ghraib jail in the early 1980s.

A parade of anonymous witnesses detailed the horrors visited upon them in the aftermath of the failed assassination attempt against Saddam in the village of Dujail in 1982.

They spoke of being beaten, given electric shocks and kept in uncomfortable conditions with insufficient food.

Saddam's half-brother Barzan al-Tikriti, who is suffering from cancer, interrupted the testimony, accusing one witness of not being clear on which security agency had interrogated them or in which building they were detained.

During a lengthy session on Monday, Saddam again announced he was unafraid of being executed as two witnesses appeared in full view and told tearful tales of arrest, torture and abuse -- including the use of a human meat grinder.

While many Iraqis, especially the Shiites and Kurds whyo were long oppressed by Saddam, have called for a speedier trial, officials close to the tribunal say the court's deliberate pace is to try to ensure there is a fair trial.

In Awja, the village where Saddam was born north of Baghdad, dozens of people demanded his release. "Our soul and our blood, we will sacrifice them for you Saddam," they shouted.

At her first stop in Berlin, Rice and the new German chancellor Angela Merkel generated more of the same old divisions between the two nations. Merkel called for greater transparency from the U.S., but Rice refused to say whether the U.S. had operated secret prisons in Europe.

The secretary's trip is aimed at reassuring European allies following recent reports that the CIA has been running secret prisons in Eastern Europe and secretly flying prisoners out of various European countries.

Rice said Monday that the United States is following all laws and treaties on the treatment of terrorism suspects and any debate about U.S. activities has to acknowledge the challenges it faces in fighting against those who choose to mount attacks, "as they have done in New York and in Washington and in London and in Madrid and in Casablanca and in Amman and all over the world. We have an obligation to defend our people and we will use every lawful means to do so," said Rice.

Comment: Can you say "paramoralism"?

Before leaving for her trip, Rice suggested European governments knew about and co-operated with CIA operations in their countries. She also said the U.S. has shared intelligence with its allies that has helped protect European countries from attack.

Comment: Can you say "Pathocracy"?

European leaders are calling on Rice to explain, but they are offering few explanations themselves.

Comment: Can you say "Pathocracy"?

None of it is making it any easier for Rice to smooth rough relations with Europeans, especially those who have long opposed the war in Iraq.

According to the report in which Berlusconi repeated the Italian government was in no way involved in this operation, neither him, nor ministers and undersecretaries, nor any Italian institutions were ever warned or informed about it by anybody.

"I absolutely deny every false reconstruction and indignantly reject any attempts to falsify the truth," Berlusconi added.

The premier was responding to an article in The Washington Poston Tuesday containing claims that Italy's military intelligence service Sismi was briefed about the operation and that the agency subsequently cleared it with Berlusconi.

Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, a former imam of Milan's main mosque also known as Abu Omar, disappeared mysteriously from the northern city of Milan on February 17, 2003.

Investigating prosecutors in Milan said Nasr was snatched off the streets by a team of CIA operatives who flew him to two US military bases and then on to Egypt where he was allegedly tortured by Egyptian security agents.

At the time of his abduction, Nasr was being probed by Milan investigators for suspected links to international terrorism.

Last month, the prosecutors requested the extradition from the United States of 22 CIA agents accused of abducting Nasr.

The case comes amid an international furor over allegations that the CIA has been carrying out covert operations in Europe with the possible knowledge or consent of local governments.

The CIA has been accused of "rendition", the practice of transporting suspects to other countries for interrogation, and using European airports for refueling stops during the secret transfers.

The agency is also accused of running secret prisons in Eastern Europe, where aggressive interrogation techniques outlawed in the United States can be used, and sending prisoners to countries like Egypt and Syria where torture is commonplace.

The European Union is seeking clarification from the United States over the reports.

BERLIN - German Chancellor Angela Merkel faced mounting domestic pressure and her first big foreign policy challenge on Wednesday after a messy diplomatic spat with the United States over a German man held as a terrorist suspect.

Opposition politicians accused Merkel of failing to get answers from visiting U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on the case of the German man, Khaled el-Masri, and on wider concerns about U.S. methods in the war on terrorism.

"We heard only general explanations...I don't think yesterday brought us a single step forward," Heinz Lanfermann, a liberal member of parliament, told n-tv news.

His Free Democrat party and the fellow opposition Greens called for a parliamentary debate on Wednesday next week on the case of Masri, who was held for five months as a terrorist suspect by the United States in an Afghan prison last year.

A visit from Rice on Tuesday, intended as a bridge-building trip with Merkel's new government, veered badly from the intended script when the Masri case was raised.

While Merkel told reporters Washington had acknowledged it made a mistake in detaining him, a senior U.S. official said Rice had said no such thing.

"We are not quite sure what was in her head," he said, referring to Merkel.

German media seized on the embarrassing contradiction.

"CIA Affair: Chancellor Merkel angers the USA," headlined the Berliner Morgenpost.

The Financial Times Deutschland said: "Not only is there no apology, but even the word 'mistake' is too much for the United States when it comes to a concrete case."

The disagreement soured Merkel's first foray into transatlantic diplomacy since taking office two weeks ago.

She had hoped to open a new chapter in relations with the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush, which has not forgiven her predecessor, Gerhard Schroeder, for his outspoken opposition to the invasion of Iraq.

ABUSE ALLEGATIONS

The Masri affair has become an explosive political issue in Germany and attracted world attention as the United States faces renewed allegations of illegal tactics and human rights abuses while waging its war on terrorism.

Prominent members of Merkel's coalition government, including her foreign minister, were also senior figures in Schroeder's administration and are coming under pressure to say what they knew about the Masri case and how they acted on it.

Former interior minister Otto Schily denied hushing up the affair and said he had pressed for a U.S. explanation.

"Unfortunately, this did not happen in an adequate manner," Schily told Die Zeit newspaper.

The Lebanese-born German, who was flown to Afghanistan after being arrested in Macedonia on December 31, 2003, filed a lawsuit in the United States on Tuesday against former CIA director George Tenet and other officials, alleging wrongful imprisonment.

He said he was beaten, kicked, photographed naked and confined to a cement cell with a filthy blanket for a bed, brackish drinking water and boiled chicken bones for food.

Masri said in a German television interview that his interrogator in Afghanistan had told him: "You are in a country where there aren't any laws. We can forget about you here for 20 years or bury you here and no one will know anything about it."

"When a president falls below 40 percent approval in public opinion polls--as President Bush has done twice in the past two months--it's usually a sign of serious political danger," writes Richard Benedetto in USA Today. "Since 1950, five of the eight other presidents who fell below 40 percent--Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush--lost their bids for reelection or opted not to run again. A sixth, Richard Nixon, was overwhelmed by the Watergate scandal and resigned. Only two,
Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, turned things around." But even Clinton never regained his former appeal. His hand-picked successor, vice president Al Gore, won the 2000 election by such a narrow margin that Republicans were able to steal it away.

The "political capital" Bush claimed after the 2004 election has vanished over the last year. Dead Americans piled up in
Iraq and New Orleans, his closest political allies were indicted for corruption and treason, gas prices soared and his party's right-wing Christianists stabbed him in the back over the Harriet Miers' nomination. All of Bush's best-laid plans--to privatize Social Security, pass another round of tax cuts for the wealthy and possibly expand his wars to
Syria and Iran--lie in ruins. And it's only going to get worse now that his moderate and centrist Republican allies in Congress are beginning to peel away: some to appeal to swing voters in next year's midterm elections, others to align themselves with John McCain's incipient 2008 presidential campaign and some simply because Bush's poll numbers make him radioactive.

George W. Bush, a tiger who so recently assigned himself the right to assassinate American citizens at will, has been defanged. He's as pathetic and powerless as
Saddam Hussein. He is done.

"Lame duck" doesn't cut it. Unless Bush resigns, the world's sole superpower faces the dismal prospect of three long years under a dead duck president. Who will extract us from two losing wars? How will we pay off the $8 trillion national debt he ran up? America needs a strong president yesterday.

Bush could save himself and the nation three years of marking time by resigning. Or Congress could do the right thing and impeach him for his countless crimes. Maybe Bush and Cheney will get indicted for their roles in outing
CIA agent Valerie Plame. But our constitutional system only allows for impeaching individuals, not whole administrations.

If Cheney is indicted and forced to quit, Bush will appoint a replacement -- Washington scuttlebutt points to secretary of state Condi Rice. If Bush falls, Rice ascends. If something happens to Rice, the person she chose as vice president succeeds her. All the political hacks who lied and schemed and whose incompetence led to the current crisis of leadership -- Donald Rumsfeld,Stephen Hadley, Karl Rove -- stay in place. The hydra lives. More young men and women die in Iraq.

One solution is to establish a California-style recall system on the national level. If a significant percentage of Americans loses confidence in the president and his administration to the extent that they're willing to sign a recall petition, a special election should be held within three months. The number of required signatures should be high enough -- California's system calls for 12 percent of the number of people who cast votes in the preceding election -- to ensure that recalls are only held as the result of widespread disgust among the citizenry.

To avoid disruption, the constitutional amendment creating the recall provision could prevent such elections from being held more often than, say, annually. And a recall won't automatically result in a new party taking over the White House -- just a new administration. But it would replace our current system of political stagnation with a more dynamic democracy.

The threat of recall would make sitting leaders responsive to the people more often than the current four-year election cycle, and would allow disastrous and unpopular leaders like Bush to be replaced posthaste. Of course, national recall elections wouldn't guarantee that the people would always be happy with their leaders.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, the man who replaced Gray Davis after the recall, currently "ranks among the most unpopular governors in modern California history," reports the San Francisco Chronicle. But Californians don't have to wait until the next election to get rid of him.

Zawahiri also called on the Al-Qaeda fighters to attack oil installations in Islamic countries "because most of the revenues of this oil go to the enemies of Islam," Al-Jazeera quoted him as saying.

In parts of the videoclips screened by the satellite channel, Zawahiri said "Al-Qaeda for holy war is still, thanks to God, a base for jihad. Its prince Osama bin Laden, may God protect him, still leads the jihad."

"All the lies that (US President George W.) Bush tries to delude the Americans with, saying that he destroyed half, or three quarters of Al-Qaeda are but nonesense merely in his own head," said Zawahiri.

Al-Jazeera said the tape appeared on a website. There was no date for the videotape.

US officials believe that Bin Laden, Zawahiri and other key militants have been sheltering somewhere along the mountainous border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The Al-Qaeda network has claimed terror attacks around the world, including the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

November 18, 2005

Andres Martinez
Editorial Page Editor
Los Angeles Times
202 W. 1st St.
Los Angeles, CA 90012

Dear Mr. Martinez,

This letter is to inform you that I am canceling my subscription to the LA Times, and here is the reason why:

The greater Southern California community is one that not only proudly embraces its diversity but demands it. Your publisher's decision to fire Robert Scheer is a great disservice to the spirit of our community.

I'm almost embarrassed for you in seeing the LA Times being referred to as the "Chicago LA Times" on the myriad of internet sites I've visited in the last few days. It seems, however, an aptly designated epithet, representing the feeling among many of your readers that your new leadership, especially that of Jeff Johnson, is entirely out of touch with them and their desire to be exposed to views that stretch them beyond their own paradigms. So although the number of contributors to your op-ed pages may have increased, in firing Robert Sheer and putting Jonah Goldberg in his place, the gamut of voices has undeniably been diluted, and I suspect this may ultimately decrease the number of readers of those same pages.

In light of the obvious step away from the principals of journalistic integrity, which would dictate that journalists be journalists, editors be editors and accountants be accountants, I am now forced to carefully reconsider which sources can be trusted to provide me with accurate, unbiased news and forthright opinions. Your new columnist, Jonah Goldberg, will not be one of those sources.

Robert Scheer's column, with its often singular voice of dissent and groundbreaking expositional content, has been among the most notable features that have sustained my interest in subscribing to the LA Times for many years now. Apparently, previous leadership at the LA Times had no trouble recognizing Mr. Scheer's journalistic prowess in that they nominated him for the Pulitzer Prize.

My greatest fear is that the underlying reason for Mr. Scheer's termination is part of a larger trend toward the corporatization of our media, a trend that we, as American citizens, must fervently battle for the sake of our swiftly diminishing free press.

Sincerely,

Barbra Streisand

And this is what ultimately got printed in the Op-Ed section of their November 23, 2005 issue...

LETTERS

Singing the Op-Ed blues

Re "Times Plans New Op-Ed Lineup," Nov. 11

The greater Southern California community is one that not only proudly embraces its diversity, but demands it. Your decision to fire Robert Scheer is a great disservice to the spirit of our community. It seems that your new leadership, especially Publisher Jeff Johnson, is entirely out of touch with your readers and their desire to be exposed to views that stretch them beyond their own paradigms. So although the number of contributors to your Op-Ed pages may have increased, in firing Scheer and hiring columnists such as Jonah Goldberg, the gamut of voices has undeniably been diluted. I suspect this may ultimately decrease the number of readers of those same pages.

My greatest fear is that the underlying reason for Scheer's termination is part of a larger trend toward the corporatization of our media, a trend that we, as American citizens, must fervently battle for the sake of our swiftly diminishing free press.

BARBRA STREISAND

Santa Monica

As his job approval rating dipped below 40 percent in a recent Gallup poll, Bush went on the offensive last week, with speeches on the Iraq war -- unveiling a 35-page National Strategy for Victory in Iraq -- immigration and the economy.

But these addresses are only part of this administration's strategy to shape public opinion.

The U.S. military last week acknowledged paying Iraqi newspapers to publish pro-American stories written by an "information operations" task force. Then on Monday, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld blamed the mainstream press for dwelling on "the worst about America and our military."

This bad news, Rumsfeld told an academic audience, is "reported and spread around the world, often with little context and little scrutiny, let alone correction or accountability after the fact."

A secretive White House Iraq Group, or WHIG for short, set strategy for selling the Iraq war to the public. The group's work became a focus of the investigation into who leaked CIA agent Valerie Plame's name to the media.

UNNFILTERED MESSAGES

This is hardly the first U.S. administration bent on getting its unfiltered message to the world. It is not even the first time there has been a WHIG: President Lyndon Johnson had a White House Information Group in the 1960s that aimed to sell the U.S. public on the Vietnam war.

What may be different is the use of new technologies to sell the president's message, set against this particular administration's generally chilly attitude toward the media, according to Stephen Hess, who has worked for both Republican and Democratic administrations from the 1950s to the 1970s.

"I don't think they're necessarily better than some past administrations in terms of the spin," said Hess, now a professor at George Washington University. "What they have done which distinguishes them ... is how close-mouthed they are."

As a result, Hess said, "Their side of the story seems more dominant because at the same time there's not the usual interplay between government and the press."

The Internet makes it easier now to bypass the Washington media. For example, to get out the government's message on hurricane relief, the Federal Emergency Management Agency offers the Recovery Channel, which can be seen on local government access television stations in the United States.

Activated periodically for the largest disaster relief operations dating back more than a decade, the Recovery Channel drew some criticism this year for an apparent failure to clearly mark the broadcasts as a government product.

In streaming video available online at http://www.fc-tv.com/clients/recoverychannel/prime.asx, there are high-gloss pieces on such matters as dealing with children's fears after a disaster, but they feature a crawl at the bottom of the screen showing it is a product of FEMA and the Homeland Security Department.

Other administration influences in the media have been less clear cut. The Bush administration came under fire earlier this year for paying a conservative commentator to praise its "No Child Left Behind" education policy and for producing video news releases that some television stations aired without identifying their origin.

"There is a fine and sometimes a stark line between public relations and meaningful information and misinformation and disinformation," said Bob Steele, the Nelson Poynter scholar in journalism values at the Florida-based Poynter Institute. "If government officials are disingenuous in the way in which they go about providing information to news organizations or to the public, then that is far from ideal."

The word propaganda has radically changed during the 20th Century. In the Introduction to the re-release of Edward Barnays’ Propaganda, Mark Crispin Miller explains, “Prior to World War One, the word propaganda was little-used in English, except by certain social activists, and close observers of the Vatican; and, back then, propaganda tended not to be the damning term we know today.”

Many people see propaganda as marketing. Many Americans are waking up from a propaganda-induced coma yelling things like, “They lied! They packaged a lie and they sold it to me.” Great. Many of these same folks then rant about the evils of propaganda. Their anger is long overdue. But, bashing propaganda strengthens the control of the world’s greatest oppressor, our present form of world government, Corporatocracy.

The division between government and corporations is blurry at best and illusory at worst. Evidence of corporate influence on government continues to mount. Corporate contributions to politicians is regularly reported. The payouts appear to extend beyond campaign contributions: in the ’05 Halloween issue of The New Yorker James Surowiecki reported that the average portfolio of a Senator grew twelve percent annually, four-times the growth of money managers described as genius for their performance during the same period. The deepest division between government and corporations is in the minds of consumers holding a distinction between propaganda and marketing.

Statements defining marketing as propaganda are regularly dismissed as “merely semantics.” This perspective either ignores the meaning of the word semantics or how marketing works.

Semantic - adj: of or relating to the study of meaning and changes of meaning; “semantic analysis” (WordNet ® 2.0, © 2003 Princeton University)

Influencing meaning and changes in meaning is the goal of marketing. Behaviors are changed by altering perceptions. When we see things differently we act differently. Beliefs, attitudes and constructions of categories are the primary levers of shifting perception. Marketing manipulates the meaning of symbols, images and associations. Marketing affects changes in meaning or it’s not good marketing. Marketing is applied semantics, either actively changing perceptions or staving-off potential changes.

In business, semantic analysis is often called consumer research, a $100,000,000,000/year business. That expenditure does not include the trillions of dollars required to leverage the insights garnered through consumer research.

The business community is obliterating the distinctions between propaganda and marketing. Paul B. Farrell of Investor’s Business Daily warns, “Wall Street’s ‘Fabulous Brainwashing, Mind-Control, Propaganda & Hype Machine’ is in full swing. Call it the ‘Brainwashing Machine’ for short. And you’re the target. They want your money.” (Wall Street’s ‘Brainwashing Machine’; October 31, 2005) Farrell is pointing out that businesses will communicate anything to help the big players make more money. Farrell is calling business communications propaganda.

In America’s spreading economy, money makes right. Isn’t that the goal of spreading Capitalism? Let the market correct itself. Money will dictate who gets what. Money is the essence that bonds propaganda and marketing. When you influence people, you redirect the flow of money. It is less expensive to market an idea to a population than to take the region by force.

Unless we can create a mutually exclusive distinction, distinguishing propaganda from marketing is like holding a distinction between drugs and alcohol, it’s a semantic distinction. There are billions of dollars to be lost if alcohol is lumped in with drugs, and there are trillions of dollars to be lost if Corporatocracy is held accountable for crimes against humanity. Semantics is the heart of marketing. While semantics is the analyses of change in meaning, marketing is about controlling the change. Meaning is not limited to words, but words are a common way we discuss meaning. Wittgenstein asserts he can only know things for which he has a word:

“The limits of my language are the limits of my mind. All I know is what I have words for.”—Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosopher (1889 – 1951)

But, language works the other way, too. Having two words can blind people from seeing that separate labels represent the same idea. Distinguishing drugs and alcohol is an obvious example. A subtle example can be found in mathematics: elliptic curves and modular forms. Having two separate labels so blinded the mathematical community that the original conjecture by Taniyama and Shimura was universally ridiculed by the their professional community, compelling Taniyama to commit suicide. Why is this important? Because, math is supposed to be immune to psychological tricks and politicking. Because, suicide is only a particular of the stakes of this discussion. Genocide is the real stake of this game.

Propaganda is the feel-good pill of a fascist agenda. That’s what these words mean today: “Religion is the opiate of the masses.” Propaganda is what facilitates fascist citizens to believe they’re supporting what’s good and right. The keystone of manufacturing these beliefs is in controlling meaning. Words become the crux of this control. “The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words.” Philip K. Dick, Novelist (1928-1982)

This is a war for reality. Consensus reality is held in place by the masses. The commonly used words and their common meanings have great impact. Monitoring these meanings, and affecting the change of these meanings, is the dynamic implicit in Lippman’s phrase, “manufacturing consent.”

Who will help us fight propaganda? Corporations. Corporations are not only willing to help us fight propaganda, if we reach a critical mass they’ll flame the passions of the fight. As they market the need to fight propaganda, they’ll sell us all the equipment we need. As they investigate our fight against propaganda, they monitor and affect its usage.

Bashing propaganda is akin to demonizing street drugs, gerrymandering the mental landscape to favor corporate products. Are street drugs evil, worse than what is for sale at grocery stores? It is difficult to prove that illegal drugs do less harm to society than alcohol and tobacco. So, what is the difference? Illegal drugs are sold by pirates, moneymakers outside of the official control of government and taxation.

Propaganda is employed by governments to garner consensus while advertising is the marketing of corporations, to make money? This is a vacuous distinction. This distinction ignores the impact that corporations have on what we traditionally call a government. Moreover, this distinction ignores that governments are incorporated.

Generally, the American public won’t call product advertising propaganda even when the advert lies about itself or a competitive product. The word propaganda is reserved for “political” or “military” communications, and this selective use reinforces a mental distinction between companies and governments, a distinction that is questionable given their intimate relationship and revolving-door staffing.

Propaganda is a tool. Propaganda is a weapon in the war for reality, but holding propaganda as inherently evil is like saying that TNT is evil. TNT and Propaganda are both strong forces. They can be used to construct or destroy. Many times, something needs to be destroyed before something new can be built.

Maintaining a mental distinction between corporations and governments can fabricate a virtual consensus. There are three primary faces of corporations: governments, churches and companies. There are plenty of ancillary faces: non-profits, cities, NPOs among others. One type of corporation can quote the other as if they were distinct institutions, creating an echo chamber where one voice appears as a chorus of consensus, a concert performed by mass media.

Propaganda is the marketing of an engineered reality. Relegating the word “propaganda” to the subset of corporations called government fuels the engine of Corporatocracy.

Edward Bernays’ 1928 seminal work entitled Propaganda binds all social endeavors with propaganda, “Whatever of social importance is done today, whether in politics, finance, manufacture, agriculture, charity, education, or other fields, must be done with the help of propaganda. Propaganda is the executive arm of the invisible government.”

If propaganda is any intentionally persuasive communication, then all marketing is propaganda. Those who control the media have a great deal to lose if mass media is suddenly perceived as a propaganda mechanism. Their preemptive strike was to label mass media as liberal and opposing big business. Mass media requires sponsorship, usually in the form of advertisements. The only mass media today without corporate or government sponsorships is the occasional website.

This is a political issue. Sustaining a distinction between politics and business requires continual marketing. Like every political issue, today, the preliminary skirmishes will be fought with images and ideas on the battlefield for your mind known as television.

The anti-Semitic activities are directed by MAUP's President, Georgy Tschokin, and a number of his colleagues. In addition, Tschokin is the head of another body called the "International Personnel Academy" (IPA), which he also uses to issue anti-Semitic statements.

White supremacist David Duke has close links with MAUP: he "teaches" a course on history and international relations, has been awarded a doctorate for a thesis on Zionism and was a key participant in MAUP's June 2005 conference on "Zionism: Threat to World Peace".

On November 22, Tschokin issued a statement of solidarity with Iranian President Ahmadinejad's threat to wipe out Israel. The statement blended traditional Christian anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism: "We'd like to remind that the Living God Jesus Christ said to Jews two thousand years ago: 'Your father is a devil!'…Israel, as known, means 'Theologian', and Zionism in 1975 was acknowledged by General Assembly of UNO as the form of racism and race discrimination, that, in the opinion of the absolute majority of modern Europeans, makes the most threat to modern civilization. Israel is the artificially created state (classic totalitarian type) which appeared on the political Earth map only in 1948, thanks to good will of UNO…Their end is known, and only the God's true will rescue all of us. We are not afraid, as God always together with his children!"

MAUP's June 2005 anti-Zionist conference was attended by anti-Semites from all over the region, as well as Duke, French Holocaust denier Serge Thion and Israel Shamir, a Russian Jew who converted to Christianity and is notorious for publishing anti-Semitic essays on the internet. The Palestinian Authority representative in Ukraine, Walid Zakut, was also reported to have attended.

MAUP's anti-Semitic activities can be traced back to at least 2002. MAUP's leading figures have been at the root of attempts to bar Jewish organizations in Ukraine and, more recently, a call to ban "The Tanya", a classic work of Hassidic Jewish literature, on the grounds that it promotes racism against non-Jews.

MAUP: Context and Responses

At the Auschwitz liberation ceremonies in January 2005, Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko declared that his country had adopted a policy of "zero tolerance" towards anti-Semitism. Yet over this year, there has been a sharp spike in anti-Semitic incidents, including the brutal beating in August of a Yeshiva student in Kiev, who remains hospitalized in Israel in a coma. Following this attack, 30 Ukrainian rabbis declared: "Calls to violence against Judaism and Jews are published in the press, freely distributed and sold. On the walls of synagogues, buildings, bus stops and along the road, anti-Semitic symbols appear more and more often."

Critically, Mr. Yushchenko has done nothing against MAUP, aside from resigning from its Board.

Ukraine needs to take decisive action now. Measures could include the following:

1. Invoking anti-incitement laws against Tschokin and his colleagues
2. The Education Ministry revoking recognition of MAUP diplomas

3. A statement of condemnation by Mr. Yushchenko

4. A ban on David Duke entering Ukraine

"What's the boundary between legitimate political criticism and racist propaganda? It is difficult to determine. But I think it's a question of using the same language," said Simon Cohen, the doctor who is putting his collection on display.

Cohen had been thinking for years about mounting an exhibition of his collection to show the public how persistent anti-Semitic images have been over the centuries.

The Sharon cartoon by artist David Brown of The Independent helped persuade him: to Cohen, anyone who failed to see the cartoon as anti-Semitic must be ignorant of the history of such images.

Cartoonists say it is acceptable to target individual politicians, even with strong imagery, as long as they do not malign Jews as a group.

"It doesn't use a stereotype. It's about an individual person, not a race," Brown said of his work, which he says is based on Francisco de Goya's painting of Saturn eating one of his sons.

"Because some people are offended does that automatically mean it's anti-Semitic? No," Brown added.

Intimidating critics

The artist said he feared some people used the charge of anti-Semitism to intimidate political critics.

"Some people might have been genuinely offended. Other people might have used this to force cartoonists to censor themselves," he said.

When the cartoon appeared in 2003, the Israeli embassy said it repeated the charge of "blood libel", a mediaeval anti-Semitic myth that Jews used non-Jewish children's blood in rituals.

But Britain's Press Complaints Commission ruled the cartoon was not anti-Semitic, and the Independent's editors said any offence was unintentional.

But the furore grew louder when Brown was later given the top prize at the Political Cartoon Society's annual awards.

Disagreement, cooperation


After Brown received the award, the Political Cartoon Society's gallery received furious e-mails. One called the gallery "a bunch of Nazi swine" while another dubbed its prize "the Joseph Goebbels award" after the Nazi propagandist.

Several compared Brown's drawing to the cartoons of Der Stuermer, the Nazi propaganda newspaper. Bound volumes of Der Stuermer will appear in Cohen's exhibition.

Brown says the comparison is unfair.

"These people must never have seen those cartoons," he said. "The Stuermer cartoons are littered with stars of David and Hebrew writing, whereas I make a specific point about an individual and his policy," he said.

He deliberately avoided drawing the Israeli flag in his cartoon, since it bears the star of David, a religious symbol.

Benson said the controversy showed the power of cartoons to stoke passions.

"I did this exhibition on the Middle East and the history of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and because it was scrupulously fair, nobody gave a damn about it."

So this week the fringe 9/11 movement takes its “forces and soldiers of truth” to Tampa and Miami, Florida, staging a five day assembly starting Dec 7 with the intent to spark a larger public debate and bring the “enemy within” to justice.

Millionaire Jimmy Walter is footing the bill and hosting the event with speakers to include Dave von Kleist, Joyce Riley, Morgan Reynolds, Eric Hufschmid, William Rodriguez and others. There is an $11 entry fee and it will be interesting to see the turn-out, including the media coverage which in the past has been sporadic at best for 9/11 truth events.

Although the speakers bring to the table interesting facts discounting the official story, Rodriguez will be the most compelling, telling his tale of hearing explosions in the basement prior to the airplane hitting the North Tower.

But one person in attendance not on the speaker’s list is commercial pilot and aeronautical engineer, Nila Sagedevan. And the reason he should be speaking, at least about the Pentagon crash, is because once he gives his technical rendition of why the government story is bogus, it’s like someone finally held up, for the whole world to see, the round peg fitting perfectly into the round hole.

In the past, many pilots and other experts have tried to communicate the impossibility of the flight pattern taken by an inexperienced Arab terrorist in the cockpit, but none have done a better job than Sagedevan, telling the story from an expert’s pint of view but communicating so the layman has no trouble understanding.

Recently, Sagadevan spent two hours on Greg Szymanski’s radio show, The Investigative Journal, on the Republic Broadcast Network at www.rbnlive.com, leaving the audience nodding their heads in agreement that the Pentagon crash couldn’t have happened the way the government contends.

“Let’s look at it plain and simple,” said Sagadevan in an extended telephone conference this week from his home near San Diego. “The government wants us to believe that a person who couldn’t even solo a small Cessna took over the controls of a Boeing 757 jetliner and performed complicated maneuvers even myself or other experienced pilots could have never performed.

“It’s just not going to happen and, from my point of view, is impossible. If this was fabricated by the government so was the rest of the 9/11 story.”

But staying on point, Sagadevan wanted to further illustrate the absurdity of a small, inexperienced 5’8” Arab terrorist, taking over the controls of the jetliner from a burly, well-trained former military pilot.

“You mean to tell me, the supposed terrorist overpowered the pilot, who weighed more than 185 lbs and trained in the military. And then after that overpowered the co-pilot in the same manner, a person who also weighed upwards of 185 lbs,” said Sagadevan, emphasizing experts aren’t needed to explain the absurdity of this portion of the government story.

“I am not sure if anyone has been in the cockpit of one of one of these big jets, but I will tell you there isn’t much space. How in the world would one man pull out two big pilots in cramped quarters while, at the same time, maintaining control of the airliner. Again, it’s just not going to happen.

“In the beginning right after 9/11, like most people, I believed most of what I heard about 9/11, not really giving much thought to a government conspiracy. However, about a year ago when I began gathering information related to my expertise as an aeronautical engineer and pilot, I began to see clearly how the government story regarding the four flights, their paths and their pilots didn’t make sense.

“Now I am firmly convinced after looking at an enormous amount of evidence, as well as using well-establishing aviation principles, that something else crashed into the Pentagon since it couldn’t have been a commercial jetliner.”

Besides calling attention to the impossibility of a untrained pilot performing complex flight maneuvers and navigation, Sagadevan said the flight path taken near the Pentagon was also impossible for a large jetliner to perform without crashing before reaching the Pentagon.

“First of all, the supposed pilot would have been overwhelmed just looking at the complexity of the cockpit controls,” said Sagadevan. “He would have had no idea what to do, but we are led to believe that he was able to turn the jet around, head back to Washington D.C. and then bank at high speeds and at a low altitude, hitting a target which would have looked as small as thimble from the air. Again, it’s impossible and you don’t really need an expert to make this final determination.”

Sagadevan was quick to point out one of the main problems with the government story is the low trajectory of the airplane, flying at high speeds and roughly only 20 feet off the ground for a long distance, another impossibility defying the standard principles of aviation.

“The evidence indicates that the airplane was flying low before it reached the Pentagon lawn since several light poles were sheared off several hundred yards away form the building,” explained Sagadevan. “With that in mind, the plane was traveling at about 400 knots at about 20 feet off the ground for a long distance prior to hitting the Pentagon.

“This in itself is an impossibility since the airplane would have been kept from hitting the ground by a cushion of air termed 'ground effect.' No pilot in the world would have been able to control the plane while maintained that air speed at 20 feet off the ground for that long a distance. Again, it’s just impossible but here I will admit that an expert is needed in order to explain the standards of lift and drag associated with flying a large airliner.

From the beginning of the supposed hijacking of Flight 77 and to its eventual crash into the Pentagon wall, Sagadevan presents a compelling case, essentially crushing the official story. He also mentioned the what's also overlooked is the 'jet wash' from the airplane would have caused tremendous ground damage on the approach, something not evident in the aftermath of the Pentagon crash.

“I really don’t understand how anyone could give the government’s story any credibility after seeing the original pictures taken of the small hole left in the Pentagon wall by whatever flew into it,” said Sagadevan. “I am not totally sure what the military used but one thing for sure, it wasn’t a 757 jetliner.”

Sagadevan is referring to the tiny circumference of the hole left in the Pentagon wall, illustrated on pictures taken right after the crash scene, but immediately taken out of circulation and never widely distributed by the news media to the American people.

“I think if someone just looks at the hole left and then looks at the size of 757, experts aren’t needed to determine it was an impossibility that a big jet hit the Pentagon wall, especially when there was very little wreckage visible after the crash,” added Sagadevan.

Regarding the Pentagon crash, as Sagadevan aptly points out, there are “so many holes in the story” that it becomes, as the English say, rather a laughing matter, making one believe even the bungling Inspector Clouseau, made famous by Peter Sellers, could crack the case wide open if given half a chance.

But the problem is Inspector Clouseau, Sagadevan and every other independent investigator haven’t been given the chance, leaving the case to be investigated and tried in the court of public opinion, a place where politicians like it and know they are safe from prosecution.

The days of the American free press are over but Douglas Herman isn’t throwing in the towel.

Herman, author of a novel called ‘The Guns of Dallas’ about a truth-seeking journalist banished from the mainstream press, is now delving into the ‘real world,’ a world he says is ‘stranger than fiction.’

After fictionalizing the demise of the American press through the eyes of news reporter, David Pilgrim, Herman decided to find out just how bad things really are inside newsrooms of America’s major daily newspapers.

So Herman put on his ‘real journalistic hat” and fashioned a four question survey to be sent to 100 prominent big city editors, delving into their coverage of 9/11 and asking whether coverage was fair and honest in their respective publications.

“I am conducting a brief, four question survey of 100 prominent editors about the 911 attacks and news coverage of the event. The findings will be published online and in print,” said Herman, including in his query several 9/11 stories printed in the alternative/internet press.

“The stories I am sending are really pretty tame stuff for those already in the ‘911 Truth Movement.’ I mean there is no need to overwhelm them with the WTC-7 controlled demolition right away!

“But for many of these news editors, guys who go to work for the mainstream, this stuff might be as hot as DU. Fear not, conscience makes cowards of all of us. At least if these news editors take the time to open the story links, they'll be in for a very, very disturbing but thought-provoking day.”

Besides getting the editors to search inside their ‘journalistic souls,” Herman is asking some tough questions, at least tough questions for editors who have obviously been hiding the truth about 9/11. Herman’s questions, however, ask for clear-cut answers from the nation’s top editors, answers they may find difficult to answer:

1. Does the US media purposely avoid disturbing news stories of 911 contradictions (see example below) that conflict with the official government version of events?

2. Has your newspaper ever mentioned any significant news story (or stories) that disagreed with the official Kean Commission version of 911 events?

3. Is it treasonous or patriotic to claim that 911 attacks were partly or completely an ‘inside job,’ as internet bloggers claim (see below)?

4. If you personally became suspicious that 911 was possibly an inside job--by a rogue element in the government--would you suppress the story rather than inform, and thus distress, your readers?

Herman started sending the surveys to editors last week, adding he plans to publish the results of his findings in an upcoming article.

Saying the responses should provide an interesting insight into the psyche of the editors, he is also carefully weighing the answers against the principles established by the former owner of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Joseph Pulitzer, whose name was honored by the American press with its most coveted yearly awards called ‘The Pulitzer Prize.”

Herman recalled Pulitzer’s statements about truth in journalism made in 1907 upon his retirement, words many of today’s editors may find difficult to swallow.

Pulitzer said:

“I know that my retirement will make no difference in its cardinal principles, that it (St Louis Post-Dispatch) will always fight for progress and reform, never tolerate injustice or corruption, always fight demagogues of all parties, never belong to any party, always oppose privileged classes and public plunderers, never lack sympathy with the poor, always remain devoted to the public welfare, never be satisfied with merely printing news, always be drastically independent, never be afraid to attack wrong, whether by predatory plutocracy or predatory poverty.”

And it probably would be safe to say that Pulitzer may be turning over in his grave, wanting to pull his name form the prestigious awards given out yearly, considering the media’s pathetic coverage of 9/11, the Patriot Act and doctoring of WMD intelligence reports to sell the war in Iraq.

Besides Pulitzer’s obvious grumblings over the state of the American media, his beloved Post-Dispatch also became another independent daily newspaper to recently tumble, falling into corporate ownership of the media giant, Lee Enterprises, who bought the flagship paper from the Pulitzer family for roughly $1.46 billion earlier this year.

Along with the corporate sale, the question also has to be asked whether this is just another overt sign that “the free press is dying,” since quickly after the Post-Dispatch changed hands, more than 130 staff members, including 41 journalists and the editor-in chief, quit the paper over salary cuts and obvious editorial policy changes inhibiting what was termed as “free speech issues.”

And as enterprising editors and truth-seeking journalists are being tossed into the wood shed in ‘real world,” Herman brings this exact same situation to light in his novel as, Pilgrim, his fictional journalist, is having trouble finding an outlet for his truth-telling stories.

Saying that his fictional character is reminiscent of a reporter in real life working for the Arctic Beacon, Herman added:

“Greg, my fictional news reporter, Daniel Pilgrim, works for a paper and gets fired for doing exactly what you tried to do. Yup, life imitates art--- too damn much.”

Herman’s novel, ‘The Guns of Dallas,” can be purchased at www.amazon.com.

Nasa has estimated that an impact from Apophis, which has an outside chance of hitting the Earth in 2036, would release more than 100,000 times the energy released in the nuclear blast over Hiroshima. Thousands of square kilometres would be directly affected by the blast but the whole of the Earth would see the effects of the dust released into the atmosphere.

And, scientists insist, there is actually very little time left to decide. At a recent meeting of experts in near-Earth objects (NEOs) in London, scientists said it could take decades to design, test and build the required technology to deflect the asteroid. Monica Grady, an expert in meteorites at the Open University, said: "It's a question of when, not if, a near Earth object collides with Earth. Many of the smaller objects break up when they reach the Earth's atmosphere and have no impact. However, a NEO larger than 1km [wide] will collide with Earth every few hundred thousand years and a NEO larger than 6km, which could cause mass extinction, will collide with Earth every hundred million years. We are overdue for a big one."

Apophis had been intermittently tracked since its discovery in June last year but, in December, it started causing serious concern. Projecting the orbit of the asteroid into the future, astronomers had calculated that the odds of it hitting the Earth in 2029 were alarming. As more observations came in, the odds got higher.

Having more than 20 years warning of potential impact might seem plenty of time. But, at last week's meeting, Andrea Carusi, president of the Spaceguard Foundation, said that the time for governments to make decisions on what to do was now, to give scientists time to prepare mitigation missions. At the peak of concern, Apophis asteroid was placed at four out of 10 on the Torino scale - a measure of the threat posed by an NEO where 10 is a certain collision which could cause a global catastrophe. This was the highest of any asteroid in recorded history and it had a 1 in 37 chance of hitting the Earth. The threat of a collision in 2029 was eventually ruled out at the end of last year. [...]

The Stanford-U.S. Geological Survey project is the first time geologists have dug deep below the Earth's surface to within tens of meters (yards) of an active fault zone to study earthquakes, Stanford University geologist Mark Zoback said at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union.

"We've never been inside the fault zone before," said William Ellsworth, a principal investigator on the project for the U.S. Geological Survey. "The goal has been to understand the basic mechanics of faults," he said.

Geologists who have been analyzing earthquakes along the San Andreas fault near Parkfield in central California told a scientific conference they plan to install a number of monitoring devices within meters (yards) of one of the world's most notorious fault zones.

Preliminary monitoring is set to begin in January.

"The instruments will be detecting what is occurring exactly in the fault zone before, during and after" an earthquake, Zoback said.

The San Andreas fault, which triggered the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and the deadly fires that followed, runs from the Southern California desert to northern California and marks the boundary of the Pacific and North American tectonic plates.

The monitoring instruments, part of a five-year, $20-million project by the university and the USGS, will be installed two to three km (1.2 to 1.9 miles) underground in a portion of the San Andreas fault zone that triggered several moderate quakes of about magnitude 6 from 1857 to 1966. Drilling for the project began in 2004.

"This is not an earthquake prediction instrument," Zoback said. "We are testing whether these types of earthquakes on this particular fault are predictable."

Scientists have long used seismographs linked to monitors on the Earth's surface to measure ground waves during an earthquake but this is the first time the monitors will be embedded deep within an active fault, Zoback said.

Epsilon had top sustained winds of about 75 mph, according to the National Hurricane Center. The minimum for a hurricane is 74 mph.

Epsilon, the 14th hurricane of the season, was downgraded Sunday to a tropical storm but unexpectedly regained hurricane strength.

At 4 a.m. EST, Epsilon was centered about 775 miles southwest of the Azores and was moving southwest near 9 mph.

The Atlantic hurricane season began June 1 and officially ended Nov. 30.

Epsilon was only the fifth hurricane to form in the month of December in more than 150 years of record-keeping, the hurricane center said. The latest that a hurricane has formed in the Caribbean was Dec. 30, in 1954.

The United States is still counting the cost of hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma, which ravaged the Gulf Coast and may cost insurers up to $70 billion, but could face further devastation next year, London-based forecaster Tropical Storm Risk (TSR) said in a statement issued on Tuesday evening.

But it soothed anxieties that 2006 may see a repeat of this year.

"Despite the forecast for another active hurricane season in 2006, the chance of seeing as many as five intense hurricanes in the Gulf (as happened in 2005) is extremely remote," said Professor Mark Saunders, TSR's lead scientist.

In its long-range forecast for next year TSR predicts an above-normal Atlantic hurricane season with a strong probability that more hurricanes will slam into the United States than usual, based on average figures for the period between 1950 and 2005.

It predicts five tropical storms striking the U.S., of which two will be hurricanes, while it forecasts two tropical storms will hit the Caribbean, of which one will be a hurricane.

TSR said its forecast is based on two factors that combine to produce an above-average number of hurricanes.

These are weaker than normal trade winds, which blow westwards across the tropical Atlantic ocean and Caribbean sea, and warmer than normal sea temperatures between West Africa and the Caribbean, where many hurricanes develop.

TSR, whose long-range outlooks for the past three years have proven accurate, is sponsored by the reinsurance broker Benfield Group, the insurer Royal & SunAlliance and claims assessor Crawford & Co.

The cold even extended south to the Texas Panhandle, where Lubbock shivered at a record low 6 above zero, the weather service said.

The body of a homeless man was found huddled next to a fence in Denver, where the temperature hit 11 below Wednesday, and authorities were trying to determine if he froze to death. He apparently had shed his jacket in a phenomenon called "paradoxical undressing," where victims of hypothermia become disoriented and hallucinate, deputy coroner Amy Martin said.

The Denver Rescue Mission opened all available space for the homeless.

The coldest spot in Colorado early Wednesday was Hohnholz Ranch, 50 miles northwest of Fort Collins, which bottomed out at 37 below zero, the weather service said.

In Gunnison, Alec Solimeo tended bar at the Timbers Sports Bar & Grill wearing a couple layers of clothing Tuesday as a faulty heater let the inside temperature drop to 42 degrees. The outside temperature fell to 12 below early Wednesday, the weather service said.

"I'm keeping these travelers happy," Solimeo said, adding that his regular customers apparently stayed home. "They're playing pool, drinking some Irish coffee and doing some singing."

Temperatures read like baseball scores in northeastern New Mexico — zero at Las Vegas and 1 at Raton. "I'm sitting here in my office and it's freezing and we've got the heat on full blast," said Bill Cox, owner of the Hillcrest Restaurant in Las Vegas.

The cold follows a blizzard that blasted much of the Plains on Nov. 27-28, shutting down hundreds of miles of major highways across a half-dozen states and piling up snowdrifts 8 feet high in South Dakota.

Just two of the 157 South Dakota towns that had power problems after that storm snapped power lines were still without electricity Wednesday, but more than 3,600 rural customers were still blacked out, said Tom Dravland, state public safety secretary. Lows across the eastern part of the state dipped to as much as 20 below.

A winter storm warning was issued Wednesday in and around the Dallas-Fort Worth area, where the temperature fell from the low 40s before sunrise to the upper 20s by the end of the morning rush hour. Freezing rain and sleet fell Wednesday and up to 2 inches of snow was predicted by Thursday morning.

Elsewhere Wednesday, the weather service said record lows for the date included 28 below zero at Drummond, Mont., where the date's previous record was 21 below in 1971; 26 below at Seeley Lake, Mont.; 25 below at Laramie, Wyo., tying a 1978 reading; 17 below at Alliance, Neb.; 19 below at Cedar Rapids, Iowa; and 3 below at Lincoln, Ill.

The agreements were signed after one-on-one summit talks between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Russian President Vladimir Putin following delegation-level parleys covering areas of India's requirement of civilian nuclear energy, cooperation in space sector and ways of enhancing bilateral economic and trade ties.

International terrorism and ways to combat it also figured prominently during the parleys.

The agreements were signed in the presence of the Prime Minister and the Russian President after the talks.

Besides, Russia's Federal Space Agency and ISRO signing an agreement on cooperation in the field of solar physics, India and Russia signed a Technology Safeguard Agreement to operationalise the 2004 pact on joint use of space-based Global Navigational Satellite System to provide for joint development of new generation navigational satellites.

IPR protection covered by agreement

One of the key agreements signed between the two sides was protection of intellectual property rights that will regulate joint defence work.

"India and Russia share the perspective to move towards collaborative defence projects, designs, develop and market next generation military products," Singh said at the joint conference with Putin.

"Russia has decided to futher partnership in civilian nuclear projects. There is vast potential to increasing cooperation between the two countries given India's growing energy requirements," the Prime Minister said.

The Kudankulam power project in Tamil Nadu which is being constructed with Russian help will be commissioned in 2007-8, he said.

"We have identified medium range transport aircraft and fifth generation fighter aircraft," Singh said.

Talking about the parleys, the Russian President said "serious discussions took place on international and regional politics. Our approaches to resolve the issues are consonant. Russia and India firmly believe that we will work towards multipolar system of international relations."

On the issue of terrorism, he said "we resolutely condemn any act of terror and also double standards in combating the evil.We are convinced that criminals who murder and maim have no justification for their acts.

Both countries will make efforts to isolate terrorists politically and ideologically and bring them to justice, he added.

Ford Chairman and Chief Executive Bill Ford Jr. has said the plan would include "significant plant closings" but has declined to elaborate. The extent of the restructuring has been the subject of widespread speculation.

Ford's board is expected to review parts of the restructuring plan during a two-day meeting beginning on Wednesday.

Mark Fields, the executive vice president in charge of Ford's Americas operations -- who is drafting the company's turnaround strategy along with Anne Stevens, chief operating officer of Americas -- told employees on Friday in an e-mail that the restructuring plan had not yet been finalized.

But in addition to the plant closing and blue-collar layoffs, the Detroit News said the No. 2 U.S. automaker will announce the departure of up to seven top executives in the coming weeks.

Gerald Bantom, the United Auto Workers vice president in charge of the union's relations with Ford told reporters late on Tuesday the automaker's restructuring plan was expected to be unveiled on January 23.

Like its larger U.S. rival General Motors Corp., Ford has seen its margins squeezed by soaring health-care and raw material costs, and a decline in U.S. market share. So far this year, Ford's North American unit has lost more than $1.4 billion before taxes.

Ford's U.S. sales have fallen for all but two of the last 18 months. The company's sales fell 18 percent in November.

GM said in November that it would cut 30,000 North American manufacturing jobs through 2008 and close 12 facilities to reduce excess capacity.

Last month, Ford said it planned to eliminate 4,000 salaried jobs, or 10 percent of its North American white-collar work force, as part of its turnaround plan dubbed the "Way Forward."

The carving from the Guatemalan site of Naachtun likely dates to the end of the fourth century, when Mayan dynasties

were being established.



A close-up of the carving. (Courtesy: University of Calgary)

"This woman was obviously a very important figure," said Kathryn Reese-Taylor, director of the University of Calgary team that made the discovery in the tropical forest of the Yucatan peninsula earlier this year.

For scholars, the discovery raises new questions, such as were women founders of dynasties and were all patron deities male?

Three lines of evidence show the importance of the two-metre-high find:

The early portrayal of a female on a stela or stone carving in itself is significant. Until now, archeologists have found women from this time period named in texts but not depicted.

• Maya attacked and targeted historic stela by chipping off the inscriptions, as is the case for this monument.


• The monument was reverentially reburied by the Maya in an ancient building after the city and inscriptions were attacked. Reburial is usually reserved for founders or kings.

Researchers don't know if the woman was a historic or mythological figure. The glyphs on her headdress, which is typical of royalty, name her as Lady Partition Lord or Lady Partition Flower.

The limestone stela has unique style. The woman's body is missing and the image focuses instead on only her head and headdress, said Julia Guernsey, a professor of Precolumbian art history at the University of Texas at Austin and a member of the team.

The elaborate headdress features a reptilian creature as its main element, with waterfowl coming off the top, feathers and a sacrificial dish.



Drawing of Stela 26. (Courtesy: University of Calgary)

"It's much bigger than anything Carmen Miranda ever wore," Reese-Taylor said.

The stela doesn't follow the usual style of monuments from the time or later, which suggests there may have been room for independent art styles before conventions were established on portraying women, she added.

The find has been given to the government of Guatemala and was presented at a symposium in July.

The research is sponsored by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the University of Calgary, universities in the United States and Australia, and private funders.

Pagan called a Flagler County sheriff's deputy to her family's home, but no report has been filed on the incident, sheriff's office spokeswoman Debra Johnson said Monday.

Pagan later translated the message as, " 'You've been warned. Stop what you're doing,' " she said Monday. And it was a way to scare her, her husband and daughter.

Pagan thinks the suspect is someone known to the local pagan community ---- perhaps another pagan familiar with Theban script.

Pagans in Volusia and Flagler counties are a loose-knit group with various beliefs. Some believe in multiple deities, while some follow the Wicca, Celtic, Norse, Egyptian, Druid, African and Native American traditions.

"Someone knew damn well that I was a witch and that I would recognize Theban for what it was," Pagan said, angry at what she calls a hate crime on her Belvedere Lane home.

Pagan wants to know why someone sent such a violent message.

"If you wanted to ask me a question, knock on my door -- don't throw a brick through it," she said. "All my neighbors know and most of them are very cool with it."

Bob Engborg, a retired Daytona Beach police officer who specializes in strange and unusual crimes that involve occult, or hidden beliefs, said Monday he agrees that the note was written in Theban and the suspect most likely is a fellow pagan -- probably someone who dislikes Jill Pagan.

"This sounds like an internal thing between other people of her faith," Engborg said, later adding, "They don't like her and the work she is doing or the way she is doing the work."