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"You get America out of Iraq and
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By Kristin Roberts
Reuters
December 30, 2005
WASHINGTON - Sales of existing U.S. homes fell 1.7 percent in November as inventories climbed, indicating a rally in the U.S. housing market has begun to wane, a trade group said on Thursday. However, Midwest manufacturing is still strong according to business index also released on Thursday. The purchasing managers' index was higher than expected and pointed to solid growth. Key components such as employment and new orders were both stronger in the December data.
The existing home sales data "confirm that housing activity has peaked and is now slowing," said David Lereah, the chief economist at the National Association of Realtors.
November's existing-home sales at a 6.97 million unit annual rate compared with a 7.09 million unit pace in October and marked the first time the sales pace has dipped below 7 million units since March, the Realtors said.
Analysts had expected overall sales to decline to a 7.00 million unit pace in November. The existing homes figure includes both single-family homes and condominiums.
Low mortgage rates supported a five-year rally in the U.S. housing market, leading to record-shattering construction, sales and price increases. But as rates began to rise in September, the housing market has shown some signs of cooling.
According to Freddie Mac data cited by the Realtors, 30-year fixed mortgage rates averaged 6.33 percent in November, up from 6.07 percent in October and 5.73 percent a year ago.
Lereah said the gradual rather than sharp increase in mortgage rates was helping to keep the slowdown in housing moderate. That, combined with a growing economy and demographic trends that support demand, should provide a soft landing for housing, he said.
"This is not a scenario for a hard landing," Lereah said. [...] |
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Reuters
Thu Dec 29, 3:27 PM ET
DETROIT - General Motors Corp.'s shares touched their lowest price in more than 20 years on Thursday, in keeping with the rough road the world's largest automaker has traveled in 2005 and uncertainty about the future.
An expected weak end to GM's U.S. sales year, a possible change in pension accounting that could erase most shareholder equity and investors taking their losses in the stock to offset gains in other investments depressed GM stock on Thursday before it bounced back, analysts said. GM shares slipped as low as $18.33, but rebounded as "bottom fishing" investors took advantage of the decline to snap up the stock, according to Standard & Poor's analyst Efraim Levy. Shares were trading up 45 cents, or 2.4 percent, at $19.06 in late afternoon trading on the
New York Stock Exchange.
"We have today and tomorrow as the last trading sessions of the year. With the stock being down so far, you would be looking at a little bit of tax selling to harvest those capital losses to offset gains in other areas," Argus Research analyst Kevin Tynan said in the morning when the stock was down.
"I wouldn't say it's any one issue or any one news item. It's a combination of what's being going on ... with the timing of having two days left," he added, also referring to an expected weak U.S. sales report for December next week and the possible hit from a change in U.S. pension accounting rules.
Other analysts had similar reactions to the share decline.
"It's tax loss selling. I haven't heard of anything else," said Tim Ghriskey, chief investment officer of Solaris Asset Management, who does not own any auto stocks but follows them closely. His comments were made when the shares were trading down.
So far this year, GM shares have fallen almost 53 percent, making the stock one of the worst performers in the Standard & Poor's 500 index.
Reflecting the tough year for the U.S. auto sector, the list of 2005 underperformers also includes Ford Motor Co. and Dana Corp.. On Thursday, Ford was off 3 cents at $7.81, while Dana was up 14 cents, or 2 percent, at $7.13.
GM's rough year is also expected to be reflected in weak U.S. auto sales for December, said analysts, some of whom expect the automaker to post monthly declines of 8 percent or more from last year.
FASB CONCERNS
Another reason for concern is GM's possible exposure if next year the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), which sets U.S. accounting rules, requires companies to show a liability from pensions instead of a net asset. Such a move could wipe out GM's shareholder equity, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.
FASB voted earlier this year to undertake a project to make companies' pension information "more useful and transparent." The first phase of the project would put full pension liabilities on corporate balance sheets, possibly by the end of next year.
The proposed changes would likely affect auto and steel companies' shareholder equity the most, said Dan Noll, director of Accounting Standards for the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, but the changes, which would also require recognition of retiree health care benefits, could have a big effect on all companies' balance sheets.
"The information is already there in the financial statements and notes, but now moving it on the balance sheet, one has to wonder if investors will get more jittery," Noll said. |
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By Alexandria Sage
Reuters
Thu Dec 29, 6:59 PM ET
LOS ANGELES - After a tepid holiday shopping season, U.S. retailers are hoping that an earlier launch of full-price spring apparel will attract shoppers with gift cards in hand and break the industry's recent reliance on discounting. Apparel retailers from AnnTaylor Stores Corp. to Abercrombie & Fitch, Guess Inc. and retail leaders like Federated Department Stores Inc., are showcasing new clothes at full prices earlier than ever, hoping to entice shoppers on the lookout for the new and fashionable.
"Retailers are banking on the fact that the consumer has been shopping ... and they're bored with fall (merchandise). And they're coming in with their gift card and (are) willing to pay full price," for new items, said Marshal Cohen, chief analyst at market research firm NPD Group.
The trend of starting the full-price season earlier is shaking up an industry that has historically focused on reducing inventories in December and January before launching spring apparel in February.
"The retailer now counts January as a month to get business, it's no longer a throw-away month," Cohen said. The mid-January season -- known as "resort" and featuring dressy clothing originally intended for winter cruises -- has faded in importance among retailers and has been supplanted by the growing interest in hastening the arrival of spring, he said.
Cohen estimated that fewer than 10 percent of apparel retailers are embracing the new trend. But if successful, the number could jump to more than a quarter of U.S. retailers.
Driving the trend is the popularity of gift cards, sales of which the National Retail Federation estimated would total $18.48 billion this holiday, a 6.6 percent increase over 2004.
"Everyone wants to capture that full-price selling that you get from gift cards after Christmas," said Brean Murray analyst Eric Beder. "This is a perfect way to do it. Since it's 'found' money, (consumers) will pay full price for something that's kind of cool."
The phenomenon is also being embraced by discounters. Both Target Corp. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. -- which set the tone of aggressive discounting among all retailers this season -- have already restocked with full-price goods.
In a research note this week, Merrill Lynch analyst Mark Friedman wrote that teen-oriented and higher-end stores, in particular luxury handbag retailer Coach Inc., would be most successful with "spring transition" merchandise, since their customers would have gift cards in hand as they look for the latest trends.
Bringing in new merchandise earlier also makes sense for national chains that have stores throughout the Sunbelt regions, where shoppers ignore cold-weather items like coats and sweaters in January.
And analysts say there is room for creativity. While some retailers will simply move up the launch of spring merchandise in stores, the more "clever" will incorporate spring colors with slightly heavier fabrics, creating a new, pre-spring line, NPD Group's Cohen said.
But introducing new products early has its pitfalls. Still, as Beder noted: "If you have a material gift card business, it's a risk you have to take."
"The problem with being aggressive in January and February is if you don't sell it, you'll start to clog up the spring season," leading to sales and profit misses in the first and second quarters of the fiscal year, Beder said.
But if the fashions are spot-on and shoppers are receptive, he said, Wall Street will take notice of retailers who have successfully created a new season of high-margin apparel that boosts the fiscal fourth and first quarters.
"This will be a concept that will change the way we look at retail next year," said Cohen. "There is no question about it." |
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By Jennifer Coogan
Reuters
Thu Dec 29, 2:26 PM ET
NEW YORK - As the year draws to a close, the U.S. stock market's major indexes have fallen short of Wall Street forecasts, but analysts aren't blaming corporate America for this year's lackluster gains.
Analysts point to Federal Reserve monetary policy and a sharp increase in energy prices as the culprits. Company earnings exceeded expectations in 2005, yet the Standard & Poor's 500 Index (^SPX - news) was up just 3.95 percent for the year as of this afternoon, at 1,259, while the Dow Jones industrial average (^DJI - news) was barely holding its head above water, up 0.3 percent to 10,816.
According to the median forecasts in a Reuters poll conducted in September, strategists had expected the Dow to be at 11,000 by year-end, and the S&P 500 to finish at 1,265.
"The two primary factors that held up the market were the Fed raising rates ... and that energy prices were far more excitable than people had anticipated," said Tobias Levkovich, equity strategist for U.S. institutional investors at Citigroup.
Beginning in June 2004, a steady campaign of quarter-point interest-rate increases by the Federal Open Market Committee brought the benchmark federal funds rate to 4.25 percent. Rising rates are seen as a negative for stocks because they increase borrowing costs for companies and consumers.
"Certainly, in the last four to five months, there's been uncertainty over what the Fed will do," said Scott Wren, senior equity strategist at A.G. Edwards & Sons Inc. "In our mind, they've already raised interest rates too far."
Keeping inflation at bay was the primary reason the Fed kept lifting rates, and nowhere were price increases more acutely felt in the U.S. economy than in oil and gas sector.
"The fact that inflation picked up and caused the Fed to keep raising rates was (partly caused by) a hurricane-related surge in energy prices," said Jeff Kleintop, chief investment strategist at PNC Advisors. "There was a lot of worry created around mother nature. It threw everybody for a curve."
Crude oil hit a record $70.85 a barrel on August 30 when Hurricane Katrina pummeled the U.S. Gulf Coast, damaging refineries and oil platforms.
"It was too much for the market to overcome," said Rick Meckler, president of investment firm LibertyView Capital Management in Jersey City, New Jersey. "Otherwise, it could have been an even better year profit-wise if so much of (companies') earnings weren't deflected into energy costs."
Looking ahead to 2006, strategists are optimistic that this year's main roadblocks for stocks will relent. Policymakers are widely expected to end the rate hike cycle in the first quarter, and the shock of $60 a barrel oil has worn off.
But 2006 may present its own forecast-foiling factors for stocks. Strategists have set their targets with contingencies in mind. Among the most popular caveats are another deadly storm season, a collapse in the U.S. housing market, and an outbreak of an avian flu pandemic. |
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By JEANNINE AVERSA
29 Dec 2005
AP
WASHINGTON - Treasury Secretary John Snow on Thursday said the United States could face the prospect of not being able to pay its bills early next year unless Congress raises the government's borrowing authority, now capped at $8.18 trillion.
Snow, in a letter to lawmakers, estimated that the government is expected to bump into the statutory debt limit around the middle of February.
"At that time, unless the debt limit is raised or the Treasury Department takes authorized extraordinary actions, we will be unable to continue to finance government operations," Snow wrote. If the department were to carry out various accounting maneuvers - as it has done in the past to avoid breaching the limit - that would free up finances and allow the government to keep paying its bills "no longer than mid-March," Snow wrote.
Boosting the debt limit is more a matter of politics than economics.
Economists doubt Congress will refuse to raise the limit. A federal default is considered unimaginable because it would rattle bond markets, force interest rates higher and shake the economy.
The last time Congress agreed to boost the debt limit was in November 2004 - from $7.38 trillion to the current $8.18 trillion. The government's statutory borrowing authority also was pushed up in 2002 and in 2003.
Snow's letter did not say how much of a boost to the current debt limit the department would like to see this time.
Instead, Snow implored: "I am writing to request that Congress raise the statutory debt limit as soon as possible." |
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AFP
Fri Dec 30, 5:11 AM ET
ISLAMABAD - At least 24 people were killed in an avalanche while hunting precious stones in a remote mountain range in northwest Pakistan, police said.
The incident happened on Tuesday in the rugged Karakoram range in Kohistan district, local police chief Ashfaq Ahmed told AFP Friday. "There were around 120 people extracting gemstones when the avalanche struck, burying a number of them," Ahmed said.
"Twenty-four were killed and the rest are fine. Locals have dug all the bodies out of the snow," Ahmed said.
He said a military helicopter had been despatched to the hard-to-reach area and had so far brought back 12 bodies to Dassu, the main town in the region, where they were handed over to relatives.
Police only learned of the avalanche late Thursday, when residents of the far-flung village of Sputmali in the highlands arrived at their police post.
Kohistan is located in the region of Pakistan that was devastated by a massive earthquake in October, which killed more than 73,000 people. Since then, the mountainous area has been jolted by more than 1,500 aftershocks.
Ahmed said it was possible a tremor had triggered the avalanche.
The gemstones are one of the only ways of making a living in the rugged area, which is four days trek from Dassu.
The stones are sold through intermediaries to buyers in foreign countries.
"This is a good source of income for many people in the region where there is no industry and very little agriculture," local administrative official Niaz Mohammad told AFP.
It was the first reported incident of its kind to hit gemstone prospectors in the area, he added. |
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30 Dec 2005
AFP
Europe braced for more freezing temperatures after blizzards swept through northern and central European countries, disrupting air, road and rail traffic and causing widespread power cuts.
Much of the continent was battened down against the harsh weather, the coldest December in a decade in Britain, where temperatures plunged to minus 11 Celsius (12 Fahrenheit) in Scotland and northeastern England.
France reported a second death Thursday from freezing temperatures after snowstorms left thousands of people trapped in their cars in sub-freezing temperatures this week. Road conditions remained icy and dangerous in many areas, but the only serious disruptions were in western Brittany and around the Channel port of Calais in the north.
A sea search was on overnight off Calvados on France's Normandy coast after a yacht captain fell overboard in "difficult conditions", the local maritime authority said.
His two crewmates sounded the alarm late Thursday and an air and sea search began.
Most of the country has gone on winter alert, opening extra shelters to protect homeless people from the cold, which claimed a second victim overnight.
A 52-year-old woman was found dead of cold outside the wooden shack where she lived in the northwestern town of Le Mans. Police said she had suffered from poor health and had a drinking problem.
A homeless man in his 40s was found dead in a car on Tuesday in the central-eastern city of Lyon, thought to have died of cold.
Snow was likely to blanket many parts of Britain throughout Friday, weather forecasters said.
Newspapers reported that a man sleeping rough had been found frozen to death in West Bromwich, central England, where temperatures fell to -7C (23F).
High-speed train services from Paris to Lille, as well as Thalys and Eurostar links to London and Brussels, were coping with delays of up to 40 minutes, as drivers were told to reduce their speed.
Travellers at airports in Prague, Florence and Charleroi in southern Belgium experienced serious flight disruptions due to heavy snows and swirling winds.
Across Scandinavia, snowstorms cut power lines and disrupted rail and road traffic, with the situation expected to worsen in some places.
Sixteen people were injured in traffic accidents on icy roads in Finland, where more snow was expected in the south.
A snowstorm also swept Denmark, causing train delays, truck accidents and blocking several smaller roads, the Ritzau news agency reported. Police have warned Danes not to take to the roads in the east of the country.
Between 150 and 200 piglets died when a truck carrying around 800 of the animals rolled over in snowbound northern Denmark, local media reported.
In Switzerland, around 20 people were hurt in road accidents, including a 59-year-old man who was seriously injured when his car skidded on ice.
Road traffic was badly disrupted across Poland, especially in the northern Gdansk region, as well as in Hungary.
Snow caused few disruptions in Austria, however, beyond a traffic snarl on the Vienna ring road, since snow ploughs are systematically deployed on the roads during the harsh winters.
Traffic was also reported to be near normal in Germany, which has been coated in white from north to south, with 90 centimetres (three feet) of snow measured on Mount Brocken in the central Harz mountain range.
In Turkey, where snow and ice claimed four lives and cut road access to several thousand villages this week, temperatures dropped to minus 33 Celsius (minus 28 Fahrenheit) in some eastern mountain regions. |
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By ANGELA K. BROWN
Associated Press Writer
Dec 29, 2005
CROSS PLAINS, Texas - Gov. Rick Perry toured this wildfire- ravaged town Thursday and urged counties to prohibit fireworks around the New Year's holiday, warning "the state of Texas is a tinderbox." Wildfires raced through grass dried out by the region's worst drought in 50 years earlier this week, charring nearly 200 homes and killing four people in Texas and Oklahoma Severe drought, wind gusts of 40 mph and temperatures reaching the low 80s set the stage for the fires. Authorities believe they were mostly set by people ignoring fire bans and burning trash, shooting fireworks or throwing out cigarettes.
"Truly be careful with your activities, because people's lives are on the line," Perry said.
In central Oklahoma, grass fires flared in windy weather Thursday, consuming hundreds of acres of land and threatening scattered homes. By late afternoon, the flames appeared to ease as firefighters gained the upper hand on the blazes, said fire Maj. Brian Stanaland.
Many fires in Texas had been contained, but unseasonably dry and hot conditions persisted.
The National Weather Service predicted a return of hazardous conditions on Saturday, prompting fears that New Year's fireworks could spark another round of fires.
"It's not going to be a good day to throw up fireworks," meteorologist Alan Moller said. "This could lead to some really nasty fires."
Patrick Burke, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Norman, Okla., said little if any rain was forecast for that state over the next seven days. Strong wind and higher-than-normal temperatures were expected.
President Bush, who is staying this week at his Texas ranch, was briefed about the fires Thursday, according to White House spokesman Trent Duffy. The Agriculture Department is lending equipment and firefighters to help battle blazes in Texas and Oklahoma, Duffy said.
Cross Plains, a working-class town about 115 miles west of Fort Worth, was the hardest-hit community, losing about 90 homes and several other buildings, including a church, on Tuesday. Two of the state's three deaths were reported there, including Andrew Shepard's 89-year-old bedridden mother.
Shepard, 45, who couldn't get back inside his house to help his mother, was relieved by Perry's arrival, saying "we'll get more help by him seeing the devastation."
In all, the grass fires destroyed about 120 homes across Texas and about 75 in Oklahoma, authorities said.
This year has been the fifth-driest year on record for north and central Texas, where most of the fires happened. The annual rainfall in the Dallas-Fort Worth area is about 16 inches less than the average of about 35 inches. Oklahoma has received about 24 inches of rain this year, about 12 inches less than normal. |
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Dec 29, 2005
By ANGELA K. BROWN
CROSS PLAINS, Texas (AP) - As Gov. Rick Perry toured this wildfire-ravaged town Thursday and urged counties to prohibit fireworks around the New Year's holiday, more grass fires flared in windy weather in eastern Oklahoma.
Wildfires raced through grass dried out by the region's worst drought in 50 years earlier this week, charring nearly 200 homes and killing four people in Texas and Oklahoma. Severe drought, wind gusts of 40 mph and temperatures reaching the low 80s set the stage for the fires. Authorities believe they were mostly set by people ignoring fire bans and burning trash, shooting fireworks or throwing out cigarettes.
"Truly be careful with your activities, because people's lives are on the line," Perry said, warning that 'the state of Texas is a tinderbox."
By late afternoon, the flames in central Oklahoma appeared to ease as firefighters gained the upper hand on the blazes, said fire Maj. Brian Stanaland.
Many fires in Texas had been contained, but unseasonably dry and hot conditions persisted.
The National Weather Service predicted a return of hazardous conditions on Saturday, prompting fears that New Year's fireworks could spark another round of fires.
"It's not going to be a good day to throw up fireworks," meteorologist Alan Moller said. "This could lead to some really nasty fires."
Patrick Burke, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Norman, Okla., said little if any rain was forecast for that state over the next seven days. Strong wind and higher-than-normal temperatures were expected.
President Bush, who is staying this week at his Texas ranch, was briefed about the fires Thursday, according to White House spokesman Trent Duffy. The Agriculture Department is lending equipment and firefighters to help battle blazes in Texas and Oklahoma, Duffy said.
Cross Plains, a working-class town about 115 miles west of Fort Worth, was the hardest-hit community, losing about 90 homes and several other buildings, including a church, on Tuesday. Two of the state's three deaths were reported there, including Andrew Shepard's 89-year-old bedridden mother.
Shepard, 45, who couldn't get back inside his house to help his mother, was relieved by Perry's arrival, saying "we'll get more help by him seeing the devastation."
In all, the grass fires destroyed about 120 homes across Texas and about 75 in Oklahoma, authorities said.
This year has been the fifth-driest year on record for north and central Texas, where most of the fires happened. The annual rainfall in the Dallas-Fort Worth area is about 16 inches less than the average of about 35 inches. Oklahoma has received about 24 inches of rain this year, about 12 inches less than normal. |
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29 December 2005
Northern California residents got a break from downpours that have caused flooding, power outages and minor landslides, but they braced for more powerful storms on the way. Emergency services workers in communities north of San Francisco were dispensing sand bags, clearing street drains, and monitoring rivers in anticipation of torrential rains expected to begin Friday.
Meteorologists have predicted that by the end of the New Year's weekend, rainfall will total from three to six inches (7.5 to 15 centimeters) along the coast from San Francisco to the border of the state of Oregon.
The Russian River that flows through California's chic wine country is expected to breach its banks. The river is the most flood prone in the United States, according to water officials.
The ground has been saturated by rains in recent weeks, meaning soggy hillsides could give way and water will run off instead of being absorbed into soil.
Landslides have prompted homes to be evacuated as precautions in some communities and caused a boulder to plunge from a side of San Francisco's famed Telegraph Hill.
A high tide expected Saturday morning will likely exacerbate flooding in areas adjacent to the coast, according to Chris Godley, manager of emergency services in Marin County.
Godley is bringing in extra fire and public works crews for the weekend, and was planning to have "swift water" teams on standby to rescue "anyone not quite swift enough to avoid driving into deep water," he said.
"It is rare to have someone swept out of their home by flood water at 3 am," Godley said. "It is common to have someone drive into deep water and get stuck."
"A car is a heavy thing, until you put a lot of water under it. Then, it floats." |
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Dec. 30 2005
Associated Press
SEATTLE — For more than a year now, Mount St. Helens has been oozing lava into its crater at the rate of roughly a large dump truck load -- 10 cubic yards -- every three seconds. With the sticky molten rock comes a steady drumfire of small earthquakes.
The movement of lava up through the southwest Washington volcano is "like a sticky piston trying to rise in a rusty cylinder," U.S. Geological Survey geologist Dave Sherrod said Thursday in a telephone interview from the agency's Cascades Volcano Observatory in Vancouver, Wash. "These quakes are very small -- we think they're associated with that sticking and slipping as the ground is deformed and relaxes."
The mountain is about 50 miles north of Vancouver and 100 miles south of Seattle.
St. Helens' violent May 18, 1980, eruption blasted 3.7 billion cubic yards of ash and debris off the top of the mountain. A torrent of scalding mud poured down the north fork of the Toutle River. Fifty-seven people died in the blast, which left a gaping crater in place of the perfect, snowclad cone that had marked the original 9,677-foot peak known as "America's Mount Fuji."
St. Helens -- now 8,325 feet -- rumbled for another six years, extruding 97 million cubic yards of lava onto the crater floor in a series of 22 eruptions that built a 876-foot dome. The volcano fell silent in 1986.
Then in September 2004, the drumfire of low-level quakes began -- occasionally spiking above magnitude 3, but generally ranging between magnitude 1 and 2. In the past 15 months, the mountain has squeezed out about 102 million cubic yards of lava.
Winter weather has prevented aerial monitoring of the crater since Oct. 24, "but we know what the rate has been. It's been relentless," Sherrod said, noting geologists can also rely on a network of remote monitoring equipment to tell them what's happening.
"One view of this eruption is that we're at the end of the eruption that began in 1980," he added. "If it hadn't been so cataclysmic ... it might instead have gone through 30 or 40 years of domebuilding and small explosions."
All the recent activity has remained within the crater, though scientists -- keenly aware of the potential damage that silica-laced ash can pose to jet engines -- monitor St. Helens closely for plumes of smoke and ash that can go as high as 30,000 feet.
"We haven't had that kind of plume since March 8, which is either a blessing or it leads us into complacency," Sherrod said, adding quickly, "We avoid complacency."
"This dome collapses and grows and collapses and grows. It changes its location ... it can't seem to maintain its height at much more than it is now" -- about 1,300 feet. "Then it kind of shoves the sandpile aside and starts over."
It's not entirely clear where the lava is coming from. If it were being generated by the mountain, scientists would expect to see changes in the mountain's shape, its sides compressing as lava is spewed out.
At the current rate of extrusion, "three or four months would have been enough time to exhaust what was standing in the conduit. ... The volume is greater than anything that could be standing in a narrow 3-mile pipe," Sherrod said.
That suggests resupply from greater depths, which normally would generate certain gases and deep earthquakes. Neither is being detected.
"That's one of the headscratchers, I guess," Sherrod said.
St. Helens' unremitting, monthslong pace is not common, he said. "It's not a characteristic feature of volcanism."
The mountain is the youngest and most restless of the Cascade volcanos. "Most of what we see today is 4,000 years old," Sherrod said. By comparison, Oregon's Mount Hood is 30,000 to 50,000 years old. Parts of Mount Rainier in Washington date back 200,000 years. |
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By CATHERINE TSAI
AP
Dec 29, 9:44 PM (ET)
DENVER - A winter storm packing snow and wind gusts to 75 mph blew across the Colorado Rockies on Thursday, knocking down trees, causing accidents and shutting down roads including heavily traveled Interstate 70 west of Denver. Drivers slowed to a crawl on icy, snowpacked roads in the mountains an hour outside Denver. Vehicles slid off the highway near Georgetown and farther west, on Vail Pass, said Eric Escudero of the Colorado Department of Transportation. The pass and Loveland Pass were closed at various times due to weather and accidents.
Linda Rohlinger of Santa Monica, Calif., left Boulder for Vail around 11 a.m. but had traveled only 60 miles in three hours. She and her husband stopped in Georgetown for lunch after inching through stop-and-go traffic at 5 mph for miles.
"I felt like we were on the 405 in Los Angeles," said Rohlinger, 40. "I've been coming up to Colorado for 14 years, and I've never seen it like this."
At the Eisenhower Tunnel, where I-70 knifes under the Continental Divide, traffic was stopped each hour to let vehicles carrying hazardous materials pass through while Loveland Pass was closed. Heavy snow was falling on the west side of the tunnel, and the road was icy.
"It's packed and barely moving," said Amanda Henson at the visitors center in Georgetown.
At the nearby Happy Cooker, server Stephanie Mellon said the restaurant was packed.
"Everybody's all grumpy because they didn't get to go skiing," she said. "Everybody had the same story. They were going skiing, the roads were terrible, people were sliding all around."
Snow and blowing snow advisories were issued through Monday evening for much of the northern and central mountains. Aspen reported a half-mile visibility as snow fell, the National Weather Service said. Copper Mountain Ski Resort reported 6 inches of new snow in the past 24 hours Thursday afternoon, and the Loveland ski area at the Continental Divide reported 9.
South of Denver, a wind gust of 75 mph was reported near Chatfield Reservoir as the storm reached the metropolitan area, spitting out rain and snow and sending dust blowing through the streets of downtown. The highest gust at Denver International Airport was 64 mph.
"It died once it got past the airport onto the plains, away from the mountains," said Carl Burroughs of the National Weather Service.
The wind downed several trees in Denver, with one falling on a pickup truck and some falling onto houses, Denver TV stations reported. Two small chimneys blew off another house.
Back in Georgetown, Rohlinger was getting ready to head back out onto I-70.
"We expected there to be some delay because it's a holiday weekend and there's snow, but not as much as we experienced," she said. "The drive has been beautiful, with the snow on the ground and on the trees, despite the time it's taking." |
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SETH BORENSTEIN
Knight Ridder Newspapers
30 December 2005
It's not just your imagination. America's weather went wild this year.
It began with a record downpour in the Nevada desert and record warmth in Alaska, and it's ending with floods in California and wildfires in Texas and Oklahoma.
Along the way, at least 214 climate records were smashed or tied, thanks to a slew of hurricanes, 21 straight days of 100-degree-plus temperatures in Fresno, Calif., and wildfires that have burned 8.64 million acres, nearly a quarter-million more than the previous record, set in 2000. Extremes were everywhere. Above-normal heat covered twice as much land as usual. Excessive rain and snow blanketed three times as much land as normal. Average daily low temperatures were warmer than normal across four times as much U.S. territory as in average years.
It was the third worst year for U.S. extreme-weather events in history, according to the National Climatic Data Center. For 2005's first 11 months, the nation had an extreme-climate index figure of 35, behind only 1998's 42 and 1934's 37. The average annual score is 20.
One form of extreme weather fell short, however: tornadoes. In 2005, there were only half as many killer U.S. tornadoes as recent norms.
The relentless Atlantic hurricane season especially marked 2005 as wild - and tragic. Hurricanes set or tied 19 records, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, including:
• Hurricane Katrina caused $50 billion in insured damages.
• Hurricane Wilma set a hemispheric record for low barometric pressure.
• Three Category 5 hurricanes formed: Katrina, Rita and Wilma.
• A record seven major storms packed winds above 110 mph; the old record was five.
• Fourteen hurricanes in the season beat the old record of 12.
• The 26 named storms shattered the old mark of 21, set in 1933, causing meteorologists to run out of conventional names for hurricanes and tropical storms. They had to go five deep into the Greek alphabet for new names.
Many of the remaining extremes came from Alaska, which had 53 percent of the wildfire acreage burned and set temperature, rain and snow records almost weekly. That's because Alaska is getting hotter from global warming and its permafrost is melting, said Jay Lawrimore, the chief of the National Climatic Data Center's climate-monitoring branch.
It's less clear whether what's happening nationally can be blamed on global warming or results from mere chance. Scientists are researching the question on supercomputers. One theory is that warmer air holds more moisture, creating bigger downpours, snowfalls and stronger hurricanes, and that warmer air also worsens droughts.
Lawrimore said that one year's extremes couldn't necessarily be blamed on climate change and were more likely to reflect random weather shifts. But Kevin Trenberth, the climate-analysis chief at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, said initial studies showed that global warming might be a factor.
In his latest research, Trenberth calculated that because the ocean is warmer, there's been an 8 percent increase in moisture flowing into tropical storms and hurricanes, and in rain coming out of them. For Katrina, that meant an extra inch of rain fell on the Gulf Coast.
"We're in the realm now where global warming is with us and we're going to see this year to year," Trenberth said. |
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COLIN PERKEL
Dec 29, 2005
TORONTO - It's the social lubricant that helps grease the everyday discourse of strangers waiting for a bus or friends coming in from a snowy night: chit-chat about the weather.
And, this being Canada, this year offered more than enough fodder for chat about shovelling snow or the seemingly endless summer that warmed hearts and tanned skins in much of the country. Or the rain. Oh, boy. The rain.
There was so much of it that floods in three provinces caused hundreds of millions of dollars in property damage and earned the first three spots on Environment Canada's list of Top 10 weather stories of 2005 that was released Thursday.
"Never has Canada been so wet as it's been here this year, and particularly the summer," said Environment Canada's David Phillips, who compiled the annual Top 10 list.
"It was also the most expensive summer from an insurance point of view." Leading the way was Alberta, where three massive storms about a week apart dumped record amounts of rain in June.
The result was a flood of almost biblical proportions - or at least the kind that mercifully comes once every 200 or so years.
Four people were killed and livestock drowned in what became one of the province's costliest natural disasters, with damage topping $400 million.
In Calgary, one in 10 homes was flooded. Thousands of residents were forced to flee as water reached basement ceilings. Some in High River needed to be rescued by helicopter.
"It was like looking through a murky aquarium," Kathi Solomon-Duda, of Evergreen Estates near Coaldale, said of her basement.
In all, about 40 municipalities in southern Alberta were damaged, and 14 declared states of emergency, as floodwaters washed out roads and parks, destroyed sewers and bridges and wrecked buildings.
Not content with swamping swaths of Alberta, close to 40 days and nights of rain that started June 1 triggered the worst summer flood in Manitoba history and the No. 2 spot on Environment Canada's list.
"It was just continual, actual lightning bolts as opposed to the sheet lightning you usually see," Winnipeg resident Mike Dubienski said of one storm.
"And the thunder - I've never heard crashes like that before."
The rare summer washout of 2005 caused about $400 million in damage and losses.
Water covered the largest geographic area of the province on record. Pastures looked like rice paddies and one-quarter of Manitoba farmland was out of commission.
The record number of roads closed at one time outdid even the worst of winter.
In all, nearly 200 local authorities needed disaster assistance, 22 municipalities declared a state of emergency, and 5,000 claims were filed for private flood damage - excluding agricultural losses.
Only the Great Flood of '97 prompted more claims.
And just as the two provinces were drying out, and amid a seemingly endless summer, a cluster of brutal thunderstorms packing 1,400 lightning strikes per minute turned Toronto the Good into Toronto the Very Wet.
More than 10 centimetres of rain fell in barely an hour on the afternoon of Aug. 19, double the hourly amount of Hurricane Hazel in 1954.
To the southwest, a couple of tornadoes with gusts of up to 250 kilometres an hour uprooted trees, downed power lines, tossed cars and trucks aside, and ripped into homes, cottages and barns.
At one farm, the twisters drove a ballpoint pen deep into a tree, splitting the trunk, Environment Canada said.
Damage tallied at more than $500 million resulted in Canada's second largest insured losses on record.
But the weather of '05 wasn't all bad.
Ontario and Quebec had one heck of a summer, nasty smog and humidity aside. It was one of the hottest on record, and a far cry from 2004, when summer essentially wasn't.
Toronto alone saw 41 days of 30-degree-plus weather, more than double the normal 14 in a season, while Montreal saw 23, triple the usual eight.
At least six deaths were blamed on the relentless heat.
And though 2005 was all about deadly hurricanes in North America, Canada didn't see one - a story worth the No. 5 spot.
"One has to be, of course, in awe of what's happened globally," said Phillips.
"What happened in Canada pales by those standards."
Environment Canada compiles its Top 10 list based on factors such as the impact of the events, the size of the area affected and the economic effects.
Here are Canada's Top 10 weather stories of 2005, as compiled by Environment Canada:
1. Alberta swamped by massive early summer flooding.
2. Manitoba washed out by rare record summer flood.
3. August rains cause Ontario's costliest weather disaster.
4. The sweltering summer in Ontario and Quebec.
5. The Year of the Hurricane - but not in Canada.
6. April showers bring May floods to the Maritimes.
7. Winter snow goes missing in British Columbia.
A week of snow in January buries Atlantic Canada.
Weird brew of storms, cold and warmth flummoxes Great Lakes region in November.
10. B.C.'s tropical punch in January prompts rain, mudslides and sizzling temperatures.
Source: Environment Canada. |
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29 December 2005
NewScientist.com news service
John Pickrell
Natural disaster was a running theme in 2005 - a year marked by more North Atlantic tropical storms and hurricanes since records began, and a string of massive earthquakes. Scientists also warned that the planet is edging closer to irreversible global warming, as ice melts across the planet. The environmental year began with devastation in the aftermath of the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, which struck on 26 December 2004. The tsunami claimed 300,000 lives, crippled economies, and wiped out coastal communities from Sri Lanka to Somalia. But it also caused considerable environmental damage, carrying salt water far inland and smashing coral reefs across south-east Asia.
Seismologists warned that the earthquake would be the first of many, and confirmation came first in March when a huge related quake struck Sumatra. Then in October, another gargantuan quake measuring 7.6 on the Richter scale levelled swathes of Pakistan and Kashmir. The death toll is 80,000 so far, but winter may take the lives of many more people lacking adequate shelter.
Stormy summer
In 2005 climate change was blamed for an increase in tropical weather system severity. Hurricanes such as Dennis, Emily, Rita, Wilma and Stan wrought devastation and repeatedly hit the headlines.
The most damaging was Katrina which tore across the US Gulf Coast, dragging a 6-metre-high storm surge, and created a disaster zone covering 90,000 square miles. 80% of New Orleans disappeared underwater, and the US faced a humanitarian disaster on a scale not seen since the great depression.
The year saw not only an increase in frequency of tropical storms, but also changes in their behaviour, fuelling claims that global warming is to blame. Catarina, which struck Brazil in March, was the first hurricane ever recorded to form over the South Atlantic. Tropical storms from the Americas also found their way to Spain and Africa - another first.
Global thaw
Also in 2005, ice continued to thaw across the planet. In April, researchers announced that 87% of Antarctic glaciers have retreated in the last 50 years. The edges of these ice sheets are now slipping into the ocean at an unprecedented rate. The massive west Antarctic ice sheet is also starting to collapse.
Similarly, in the northern hemisphere, Siberian permafrost covering a million square kilometres is melting into peat bogs, while the extent of Arctic sea ice was lower than it has been in a century.
Disturbingly, in November, a new survey warned that Europe could be flipped into a miniature ice age, if warm ocean currents are knocked off course by rising temperatures. Some experts now predict that within 10 years global warming will become irreversible.
Climate action
Despite warning signs, many governments have been slow to take decisive action. In July, six non-signatories to Kyoto, including the US and Australia, announced plans to develop "clean energy" technologies rather than emissions caps. In May, G8 leaders agreed that warming is an urgent problem, but did little more.
An international climate conference held in Montreal, Canada, in December was hailed as a qualified success by some. At the meeting, signatories to Kyoto agreed to set tougher targets, and the world's biggest polluter, the US, agreed to continue talks about its own contribution.
While national governments drag their feet, many city and state governments around the world are now setting their own targets for cutting emissions.
Ecological footprint
During 2005 humans continued to degrade the Earth's environment. The Amazon rainforest continued to be cleared at a rate of 24,000 km2 per year - equivalent to losing an area the size of New York City's Central Park each hour. In October, satellite date presented an even bleaker picture.
Big sporting events were found to leave massive "ecological footprints". Nearly all wild rivers - those unfettered by dams or irrigation systems - are gone. Ever increasing CO2 in the atmosphere is slowly acidifying the oceans, with potentially catastrophic effects on marine life. The seasonal hole in the Arctic ozone layer may have been bigger than ever this year. Also, despite efforts to prevent it, illegal fishing was found to be thriving this year, as was poaching of our closest living relative, the bonobo.
In November, 100 tonnes of chemicals, including benzene, flowed into China's Songhua River after an explosion at a chemical plant. The toxic slick affected the water supply of a number of large Chinese cities, before heading to Russia in December. Another explosion in December at a UK fuel depot, ignited Europe's largest ever peacetime blaze, which burnt for several days and sent a 3-km-high plume of toxic gas in the atmosphere.
It was not all bad news though. In June, the International Whaling Commission voted to uphold the 19-year whaling moratorium, though Japan announced plans to double its "scientific catch" quota of minke whales. In November the UN revealed that reforestation projects around the world had resulted in a small reduction in global deforestation rates. And in February research revealed that Iraq's Mesopotamian marshlands, devastated by damming and draining, are showing renewed signs of life. |
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24 December 2005
NewScientist.com news service
Fred Pearce
THE ominous phrase "tipping point" entered the vocabulary of climate science this year, sounding a warning that global warming may soon spiral out of control. The permafrost beneath the west Siberian peatlands is thawing, creating giant lakes and swelling rivers. More worryingly, the melting of the bogs - which cover an area the size of France and Germany combined - could unleash billions of tonnes of methane. This greenhouse gas is 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide, so the event has the potential to accelerate global warming.
Meanwhile, higher air and sea temperatures dramatically reduced the extent of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean this year. Satellite measurements analysed by the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) in Boulder, Colorado, showed 20 per cent less ice than when NASA took the first pictures in 1978. "Feedbacks are starting to take hold," says NSIDC's Ted Scambos. Newly thawed expanses of ocean absorb more solar radiation, which in turn melts more ice.
And this month one of the linchpins of the climate system, the global ocean circulation system known as the conveyor belt, was found to be faltering, as evidenced by a 30 per cent reduction in the northward flow of warm water from the Gulf Stream over the past decade. The worry is that this could herald one of the most widely discussed tipping points of all - a shutdown of the conveyor that would plunge western Europe into freezing winters and threaten climate systems worldwide, including the Asian monsoon. |
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By Rupert Cornwell
30 December 2005
The White House, unlike Windsor Castle, was not ravaged by fire last year, nor did it witness any family disaster to match the divorce of Charles and Diana. But just as surely as 1992 was the annus horribilis for Queen Elizabeth II, 2005 gained the same dismal distinction for George W Bush.
For the 43rd American president, it was proof that Murphy's Law operates in politics as in every other walk of life. There were the unforeseeable "events" of which Harold Macmillan used to warn - in this case Hurricane Katrina, and the faults in the Federal Government, as well as the Bush weakness for cronyism, that it exposed. The President's fatuous encomium to the hopelessly incompetent manager of the Federal Emergency Management Agency - "Brownie, you're doing a heckuva job" - will surely go down as the quote of the year.
Then there was the fiasco of the President's attempt to sell the country on his plan to part-privatise social security. Originally intended to be the centrepiece of his second term, it was dead and buried within four months.
There were the scandals too, the indictment and resignation of Lewis Libby, chief aide to Vice President Dick Cheney, in the CIA leak affair (which could yet claim Bush's own closest adviser, Karl Rove), and the misdeeds of the Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff that lap at the White House gates.
Above all there was Iraq, in the past, present and future tenses. 2005 was when the past, in the shape of Saddam Hussein's non-existent WMDs, could no longer be ignored, amid ever mounting evidence that the administration wilfully distorted intelligence as it took the country into a war that has already cost some 2,150 American lives.
Iraq's precarious and violent present meanwhile offered daily reminders that a war launched in the name of pre-empting terror has merely served to spread terrorism. As for the future, it becomes ever more obvious that by invading Iraq, the US may well have made a present of regional supremacy to its old foe Iran. One way and another, in short, almost everything in 2005 that could go wrong, did go wrong.
How different everything was just 11 months ago. Bush was still flush with his narrow but clear-cut election victory over John Kerry that laid to rest the ghosts of Florida 2000. The President boasted of the new political capital he had gained and, he added: "I intend to spend it." On 20 January 2005, as he began his second term, Bush delivered one of the most grandiloquent inaugural addresses of modern times, committing the US to carrying democracy to all four corners of the earth.
By summer however, the political capital had vanished - not so much spent as blown away on the winds of reality. Iraq might have met each of the electoral and constitutional deadlines assigned to it, but the insurgency there only grew. Gradually, but ultimately decisively, America began to turn against a war for which the White House had no credible plan.
As the disasters accumulated, Bush's approval ratings sank, from 60 per cent at the start of 2005 to 40 per cent or less at year's end. The Iraq war was even less popular; two thirds of Americans now believe the 2003 invasion was a mistake. Largely as a result, the President's once unshakeable grip on Congress melted. Increasingly, many Republicans kept their distance, fearful that excessive proximity might drag them to defeat in the 2006 mid-term elections.
Re-elected presidents almost always have a rough time (witness LBJ and Vietnam, Reagan and the Iran-Contra scandal, not to mention Bill Clinton and a certain Monica Lewinsky). Rarely, though, has "second term-itis" struck so quickly and so fiercely. More than three years before he leaves the White House, President Bush is already something of a lame duck. Can the trend be reversed? The omens are not promising. Bush once preached his doctrine of "compassionate conservatism". But he has become a desperately polarising figure, of whom half the country will hear no good under any circumstances. One of his strongest selling points was managerial competence, but Katrina banished that illusion. Even more than previous presidents, he surrounds himself with courtiers and is almost never exposed to dissenting views. Presidents live in bubbles, but few are as sealed off from reality as much as George W Bush. "We make our own reality," once boasted an aide.
Then of course the roof fell in.
Nor has he ever showed much inclination to admit mistakes, even to himself.
Exacerbating his problems is the lack of an heir apparent. For the first time in half a century, a sitting vice president is not vying for the succession. Instead Dick Cheney is even less popular than his boss. The result is an already discernable free-for-all among potential contenders for the crown - making it harder than ever for the White House to impose its will on Republicans in Congress.
Some factors, it is true, are working in Mr Bush's favour. After a mid-year wobble, the economy is performing well - apart from trade and budget deficits whose adverse effect will probably only be felt well after Mr Bush leaves office. Fortunately, the Democrats are also in disarray on Iraq, split between advocates of a swift withdrawal, and those who reluctantly agree with the President that swift withdrawal would only make matters even worse. By year's end, Bush's approval ratings were edging higher, as the White House finally packaged its assertions of progress in Iraq into something that could be passed off as a policy.
And it is Iraq that will determine this President's fate and his place in history. Bush vows to accept "nothing less than victory" before US forces leave Iraq. That goal may be more plausible now that December's parliamentary elections are deemed a success, and the Pentagon can make real reductions in the US military presence.
But the opposite is equally possible: greater sectarian and ethnic tensions and continuing violence, along with greater encroachment by Iran. This would set the stage for an even more bitter showdown with Tehran - a far more dangerous adversary than Iraq - over its nuclear programme. It is possible that 2006 could turn out as horrible, or even more so, than 2005. |
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By NORMAN SOLOMON
29 Dec 2005
Journalists should be in the business of providing timely information to the public. But some -- notably at the top rungs of the profession -- have become players in the power games of the nation's capital. And more than a few seem glad to imitate the officeholders who want to decide what the public shouldn't know. When the New York Times front page broke the story of the National Security Agency's domestic spying, the newspaper's editors had good reason to feel proud. Or so it seemed. But there was a troubling backstory: The Times had kept the scoop under wraps for a long time.
The White House did what it could -- including, as a last-ditch move, an early December presidential meeting that brought Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger and executive editor Bill Keller to the Oval Office -- in its efforts to persuade the Times not to report the story. The good news is that those efforts ultimately failed. The bad news is that they were successful for more than a year.
"The decision to hold the story last year was mine," Keller said, according to a Washington Post article that appeared 10 days after the Times' blockbuster Dec. 16 story. He added: "The decision to run the story last week was mine. I'm comfortable with both decisions. Beyond that, there's just no way to have a full discussion of the internal procedural twists that media writers find so fascinating without talking about what we knew, when, and how -- and that I can't do."
From all indications, the Times had the basic story in hand before the election in November 2004, when Bush defeated challenger John Kerry. In other words, if those running the New York Times had behaved like journalists instead of political players -- if they had exposed this momentous secret instead of keeping it -- there are good reasons to believe the outcome of the presidential election might have been different.
Chiseled into the stone facades of some courthouses is the credo "Justice delayed is justice denied." The same might be said of journalism, which derives much of its power from timeliness. When egregiously delayed, journalism is denied -- or at least severely diminished.
Yet quite a few prominent journalists have expressed a strange kind of media solidarity with the Times delay of the NSA story for so long.
Consider how the Washington Post intelligence reporter Dana Priest, for instance, responded to a request for "your opinion on the NY Times holding the domestic spying story for a year," during a Dec. 22 online chat. "Well, first: I don't have a clue why they did so," Priest replied. "But I would give them the benefit of the doubt that it was for a good reason and, as their story said, they do more reporting within that year to satisfy themselves about certain things. Having read the story and the follow-ups, it's unclear why this would damage a valuable capability. Again, if the government doesn't think the bad guys believe their phones are tapped, they underestimate the enemy!"
Also opting to "give them the benefit of the doubt," some usually insightful media critics have gone out of their way to voice support for the Times news management.
Deferring to the judgment of the executive editor of the New York Times may be akin to deferring to the judgment of the chief executive of the United States government. And as it happens, in this case, the avowed foreign policy goals of each do not appear to be in fundamental conflict -- on the meaning of the Iraq war or the wisdom of enshrining a warfare state. Pretenses aside, the operative judgments from the New York Times executive editor go way beyond the purely journalistic.
"So far, the passion to investigate the integrity of American intelligence-gathering belongs mostly to the doves, whose motives are subject to suspicion and who, in any case, do not set the agenda," Bill Keller wrote in an essay that appeared in the Times on June 14, 2003, shortly before he became executive editor. And Keller concluded: "The truth is that the information-gathering machine designed to guide our leaders in matters of war and peace shows signs of being corrupted. To my mind, this is a worrisome problem, but not because it invalidates the war we won. It is a problem because it weakens us for the wars we still face."
(By the way, Keller's phrase "the war we won" referred to the Iraq war.)
The story of the NSA's illicit domestic spying is not over. More holes are appearing in the Bush administration's damage-control claims. Media critics who affirm how important the story is -- but make excuses for the long delay in breaking it -- are part of a rationalizing process that has no end.
"The domestic spying controversy is a story of immense importance," Sydney Schanberg writes in the current Village Voice. The long delay before the Times published this "story of immense importance" does not seem to bother him much. "The paper had held the story for a year at the administration's pleading but decided, after second thoughts and more reporting, that its importance required publication." Such wording should look at least a bit weird to journalistic eyes, but Schanberg doesn't muster any criticism, merely commenting: "From where I stand (I'm a Times alumnus), the paper should get credit for digging it out and publishing it."
Professional loyalties can't explain the extent of such uncritical media criticism from journalists. Many, like Schanberg, want to concentrate on the villainy of the Bush administration -- as if it hasn't been aided and abetted by the New York Times' delay. Leading off his Dec. 24 column with a blast at George W. Bush for "asserting the divine right of presidents," the Los Angeles Times media critic Tim Rutten proceeded with an essay that came close to asserting the divine right of executive editors to hold back vital stories for a very long time. Dismissing substantive criticism as the work of "paranoids," Rutten gave only laurels to the sovereign: "The New York Times deserves thanks and admiration for the service it has done the nation."
A cogent rebuttal to such testimonials came on Dec. 26 from Miami Herald columnist Edward Wasserman, who wrote: "One of the more durable fallacies of ethical thought in journalism is the notion that doing right means holding back, that wrong is averted by leaving things out, reporting less or reporting nothing. When in doubt, kill the quote, hold the story -- that's the ethical choice. But silence isn't innocent. It has consequences. In this case, it protected those within the government who believe that the law is a nuisance, that they don't have to play by the rules, by any rules, even their own."
While many journalists seem eager to downplay the importance of the Times' refusal to publish what it knew without long delay, Wasserman offers clarity: "Didn't the delay do harm? We know that thousands of people were subject to governmental intrusion that officials thought couldn't be justified even under a highly permissive set of laws. We also know that because knowledge of this illegality was kept confined to a small circle of initiates, the political system's response was postponed more than a year, and its ability to correct a serious abuse of power was thwarted. I don't know what the Times' brass was thinking. Maybe they just lost their nerve. Maybe they didn't want to tangle with a fiercely combative White House right before an election. But I do believe that withholding accurate information of great public importance is the most serious action any news organization can take. The reproach -- You knew and you didn't tell us?' -- reflects a fundamental professional betrayal."
Perhaps in 2007 we will learn that the New York Times had an explosive story about other ongoing government violations of civil liberties or some other crucial issue, but held it until after the November 2006 congressional elections. In that case, quite a few media critics and other journalists could recycle their pieces about giving the Times the benefit of the doubt and appreciating the quality of the crucial story that finally appeared.
Norman Solomon is the author of War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death. |
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By DAN K. THOMASSON
Dec 30, 2005
The FBI, it seems, has been keeping an eye on any number of domestic organizations that appear to have little to do with its stepped up counterintelligence assignment -- shades of Cointelpro, "Commie" hunting, black-bag jobs, and a variety of other notorious activities from the '50s, '60s, and '70s that made the bureau the scourge of any protester who might disagree with prevailing government policy in a demonstrative fashion. The difference, of course, is that the word "terrorism" has been substituted for "communism" (at least in most cases) as the stated reason for checking up on such groups as the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), an admittedly pain-in-the-rear group who would discourage us from such violent activity as milking cows. This comes at a time when the bureau's reputation for ferreting out truly dangerous folks who might be plotting another assault on America is under attack from a half-dozen quarters, including Congress, where former allies have been disillusioned by one failure after another.
The bureau reportedly has some 4,000 of its 11,000-plus agents now assigned to seeking out domestic links to al Qaeda and other terrorist networks. So why, it is proper to ask, is it concerned with the antics of environmental extremists such as Greenpeace and anti-war demonstrators? The bureau says that it has a duty to check into any group that might be plotting some criminal activity. Fair enough, but as violent as some of these groups and individuals get is to climb a tree and refuse to come down or unfurl a banner where they shouldn't.
Don't misunderstand, the '70s weren't all that benign and the FBI did have legitimate concerns when it came to the violent student groups such as the anarchic Weather Underground many of whose members were extremely bright, if intellectually twisted, and who alluded capture for years. Groups such as the Symbanese Liberation Army of Patty Hearst infamy were actually just made up of sociopaths who infiltrated the legitimate antiwar movement as an excuse for other activities, including extortion and robbery.
For that reason, the FBI's current posture in surveillance of seemingly nonthreatening organizations is not all bad. The danger comes in wasting time and money and effort on groups that are well-established with goals that have nothing to do with violent terrorism. This policy merely engenders bad publicity, is constitutionally questionable, and deters the bureau from the mission of preventing another 9-11. In a town where nothing is a secret for long, there is no hope of keeping such activity under wraps, nor should there be. The bureau has struggled to overcome the "storm trooper" image of the '70s and to install reforms that would preclude the abuses from recurring.
Granted the terrorists are a threat unlike any the nation has ever confronted, given their faceless nature. But there also are demands to maintaining an open society. Balancing the need to protect that openness from external threats while not adopting internal measures that injure the freedoms that have made it so great is always delicate. Sometimes the cost of liberty is high, but it is necessary to pay it. Few of the nation's institutions should understand that better than the FBI with its record of internal turmoil over the last century.
Americans are increasingly sensitive about the "Big Brother" intrusions into their everyday living. Few complain about the need for stricter security nearly everywhere they go. But to be subjected to warrantless wiretaps and official fishing expeditions and other government spying on every aspect of their existence, including what they read at the library, is becoming almost an intolerable burden. That is especially true when it comes against a backdrop of decreased privacy in every normal endeavor of modern life.
Cointelpro, the compiling of information about anyone who seemed to disagree with what J. Edgar Hoover and his minions saw as the American way, was a disgrace the bureau survived only by cleaning up its act. The break ins and other activities, some clearly illegal and others highly questionable, conducted by the FBI were career ending for any number of dedicated FBI supervisors and agents, including Mark Felt, who recently admitted to being the "Deep Throat" of Watergate fact and fiction. Felt was convicted and subsequently pardoned for his part in illegal activities in the name of national security.
The last thing the FBI wants is a repeat of those activities. It can only undermine what is needed to keep the true terrorists at bay. No organization needs to be more diligent in monitoring itself to prevent the excesses.
(Dan K. Thomasson is former editor of the Scripps Howard News Service.) |
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by Allen L Roland, Ph.D
29 December 2005
Dear sir ( I know you prefer to be called Mr President ~ but do remember ~ you work for me and the American people )
It appears you are under the mistaken assumption that the vast majority of Iraqis want our protection ~ but the reality is that approximately 80% want us out pronto.
WE CANNOT CONQUER IRAQ and I offer you this
analogy to the quagmire we are currently engaged in.
It is the letter from William Pitt to the House of
Lords on November 18th, 1777. It's entitled An English Plea For Peace With The American
Colonies ;
" My Lords, this ruinous and ignominious situation, where we cannot act with success, nor suffer with honour, calls upon us to remonstrate in the strongest and loudest language of truth, to rescue the ear of Majesty from the delusions which surround it. You cannot, I venture to say, you CANNOT conquer America.
"What is your present situation there? We do not know the worst; but we know that in three campaigns we have done nothing and suffered much. You may swell every expense, and strain every effort, still more extravagantly; accumulate every assistance you can beg or borrow; traffic and barter
with every pitiful German Prince, that sells and sends his subjects to the shambles of a foreign country: your efforts are forever vain and impotent- doubly so from this mercenary aid on which you rely; for it irritates to an incurable resentment the minds of your enemies, to overrun them with the sordid sons of rapine and of plunder, devoting them and their possessions to the rapacity of hireling cruelty!
If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country, I never would lay down my arms! ~ Never! Never! Never! "
And the Iraqi freedom fighters ( I know that terminology makes you cringe ) will not lay down their arms for that very same reason.
Iraq will be your waterloo and we will not allow you to drag all of us down into your black hole of deceit, hubris, humiliation and heartache.
Most sincerely,
Allen L Roland
www.allenroland.com
Allen L Roland is a practicing psychotherapist, author and lecturer who also shares a daily political and social commentary on his weblog http://blogs.salon.com/0002255/ and website www.allenroland.com He also guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on Conscious talk radio www.conscioustalk.net |
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by Manuel Valenzuela
29 December 2005
Burden on Those Yet to Come
Throughout human history certain patterns continue repeating themselves over and over again, becoming, if careful attention is paid to study them, a direct harbinger to what tomorrow’s cultures and societies will be like.
The inevitability of what a future generation’s destiny will become is oftentimes discernable from the accumulated sins of the fathers that came before as well as those of the grandfathers that no longer exist, over years accruing and building upon each other until the future becomes the unstoppable rollercoaster birthed from the damage that was done in the past.
Tomorrow’s fate follows the path of the slow to evolve human condition and of our raw animalistic emotions and psychologies that have for millennia remained unchanged, following the same direction and trends, the same inability to change, though multiplied by advanced technologies, societal complexity, environmental stresses and increases in populations. It can be read buried inside the forgotten writings of historians and in the investigations of anthropologists, for the patterns endemic to our existence are bountiful, traversing oceans and continents, sparing no corner of human habitation, prevalent to all peoples and all times.
What we will become can be analyzed by studying the research of evolutionary psychologists and that of modern day zoologists. The patterns of our descendants can be deciphered examining the perpetual hierarchy of castes and the habitual social engineering of entire groups demonizing humankind for tens of thousands of years. It can be foretold by the never ending rule of peasants by the Establishment, the exploitation of the masses by the elite and by the willing, seemingly masochistic subservience of the many to the will of the few, as if authoritarian systems of governance are inbred into the human condition, making us mammals thriving on the suffering and heartache ingrained with being governed by tyrants and despots.
Human history, both biological and of civilization, – with its massive amounts of evidence left behind, accumulated and now known – does not lie, telling us the human condition has been a constant throughout time, following the psychologies, behaviors, emotions, culture, needs, wants and instincts that have walked with us since the genesis of humankind. Through the study of the past and of ourselves, therefore, our future can be deciphered and better understood. For what is the future but days yet to come built atop the accumulated ruins of the past, its lessons and errors and triumphs forgotten? What is the future but the heavy burden left behind by past generations whose complicity or failure to act passes on to those young or not yet born? What is the future but the accumulated knowledge of past civilizations imprisoned and silenced by our inability to know who and what we truly are, our denial and ego becoming the demons condemning us to perpetual years of unnecessary turmoil?
The future has yet to arrive, of course, its destiny having not yet been sealed in stone, but what is certain is that there exists a perpetual belief among humankind, in this modern age of greed, selfishness and comfort, that the problems or errors or sins of the present can be ignored and inherited to those yet to take the reigns of society. Every generation, it seems, places upon the next the heavy weight of a society’s ills, those hidden secrets we all know about but would rather not confront, in the misplaced assumption that the future will invariably be better equipped to confront the maladies of the past visiting the innocence of the future.
In this way, the present can relinquish the guilt of what they have endowed to the future, enabling selfish minds to return to their comfortable existence, continuing on the errors of their ways, thereby condemning tomorrow for the short-term satisfaction of today. Built upon the foundations of those now ash and dust, themselves leaving behind heaps of unresolved troubles, and continuing with those now made producers, consumers, serfs and sheeple, the sins, errors, gluttonous stupor and indifference of yesterday and today gather momentum, building a colossal wall, brick of indifference built atop brick of indifference, making blind the present, hindering views of the horizon, even as their behavior degenerates further and even as their actions further indebt America’s tomorrow.
Ultimately, the weight of burdens and ills left behind by the past and present becomes an unbearable responsibility for those yet innocent and unborn who are placed in the indelible position of having to somehow make right what has for years been made wrong. The accumulation of past errors, indifference and acquiescence becomes so heavy, containing so much volume and momentum, that inevitably the dam containing and hiding the indifferences of times past breaks, flooding tomorrow with an unfixed and untreatable destiny. As such, one day in the not too distant future the remnants of times past will arrive to overtake our achievements and triumphs and virtues, swallowing our children with the inherited affliction not of their own making. The vicious cycle will continue, inevitably leading humankind to the precipice of its own destruction.
Facilitator of America’s Tomorrow
If America’s today is any indication of how America’s tomorrow will develop, the past and present must be scrutinized, and understood, for in exploring the sins and errors and tribulations and events of days preceding our own time we can peer directly into, as far as we can go, into America’s tomorrow, trying to understand the course our nation is headed towards. The patterns of history are omnipotent, never invisible or clandestine, waiting eagerly on the periphery for us to wake up and hear the trumpets signaling and warning us to the troubles waiting America’s tomorrow.
America’s tomorrow will arrive like a thunderbolt created during an ominous storm of fear and psychological fragility, striking without warning, its concussion reverberating throughout the land. An attack by the enemy will be declared, its images aired repetitiously by the corporatist media, unleashing wave after wave of human emotion and tragedy for all of us to absorb. The attack will be horrific, a new Pearl Harbor reincarnated, devastating lives and infrastructure, its severity magnified a million-fold by the instruments of propaganda, the tools of power releasing a hypnotizing cocktail of fear, hatred and xenophobia amongst the citizenry.
Tens of millions of people will instantly become, once again, the marching army of drones and automatons for those in power, engendering legions of “good Americans,” their minds under the spell of human wickedness, ready to sacrifice their blood, children, treasure and freedom in the name of security, acting on animal instinct, looking at government for protection, willingly enslaving themselves to the dictates of criminals and murderers. Calls for vengeance abroad and greater security in the fatherland will emanate from our monitors, becoming the calls to prayer listened to by the faithful.
Under the pretext of securing the homeland from the terrorists wanting to destroy us for our cherished freedoms and democracy, the police state will be ushered in during the quiet hours of citizen fear and shock, blindly approved by the people themselves, preferring the modes of totalitarianism to being woken from their gluttony-filled, comfort-laden, fiction-living bubble. In the darkness of America’s chaotic nights the spot lights of draconian measures will be introduced, and the America of yesteryear’s dreams will abruptly vanish into the reality of America’s tomorrow.
It will all be a smoking mirror, of course, stirring the masses through the chimera of terrorism, placing in our own hands the guillotine used to self-decapitate our rights and freedoms, sacrificing liberty for so-called security, the futures of our children for so-called protection. Used to justify total corporatist domination over our lives, and our society, an attack upon an American city will be but the latest stage in our acrimonious and gradual descent into fascism. For the road we have decided to take, so tempting in its comfort and lavishness, yet so corrosive in its birth of ignorance and docility, has inevitably led to the rise of the corporate world, a Leviathan managed by the Establishment, over the years having grown all-powerful, its fangs deeply entrenched in the mechanisms used to create, alter and dominate society and culture.
Our eyes and ears will be unable to understand or see the ramifications of a society allowed to enter the black hole of today’s mutated capitalism. Years in the making, capitalism’s lifespan has reached the point of regression and perversion, where its apex, that greatest bell curve of exploitation, inequality and addiction to power, coincides with the compromising nature upon the human condition, creating that period of decline where its advantages are severely outweighed by its demons. After decades becoming indifferent and unattached to the gradual mutation of capitalism from beacon of hope to unregulated manipulator of human nature, allowing it to reach its most corrosive stage in its cycle, today we find that we are reaping what we have sowed.
The methodical rise of the corporate Leviathan, controlled by the vices of greed and addiction to power, its wealth and power unmatched and unchallenged, concerned only for revenue and sales, stock price and dividend yield, putting profit over people, seeing 300 million Americans only as producers and consumers, not human beings, and thinking of democracy more as a hindrance rather than a blessing, has invariably resulted in the total dominance of governance by an Establishment intent on expanding its control and power over American society.
The last few decades have seen the accumulated wealth of the few at the top grow exponentially, reaching astronomical proportions. At the root of this manifestation has been the exploitation of the middle and working classes along with the pillage of their wages, creating an unbalanced redistribution of resources in favor of the rich. These castes have, over the years, been made to subsist on the crumbs, bones and scraps thrown them by the ruling elite, forced to survive by purchasing the same products they make or sell at work, using up their slave wages for food and survival, forced to pay tribute to their rulers through high taxes.
Behind today’s degenerative and unfettered capitalism – an economic system simply embarking on the next step in its lifecycle – stands the inability of man, no matter what position he stands in, to sever highly animalistic emotions, passions, wants and needs away from the mechanisms of modern economic forms of governance. The rewards spawned by capitalism to the few at the top, as satisfying as any euphoria, yet as addicting as the most compulsive drug, compromise and indeed multiply the primitive, mammalian urges existing inside us, granting sustenance to the demons of human nature and making of man a most dangerous entity.
Inside the minds of the luckiest and wealthiest among us, those we would call the elite, the Establishment, the capitalists and the rich, these demons grow unabatedly with the continued accumulation of capital, creating a circle of degeneration, making addicts to power, wealth and control the same people already possessing them, those with the ability and means to keep pursuing and expanding their wealth at the expense of the easily exploitable masses. For absolute power corrupts absolutely and the human condition has yet to evolve the mechanisms to control itself both in the presence of gluttony or once trapped inside the addictions created by the spoils of capitalism.
In a vicious cycle of capitalistic greed, those having much devote their lives to amassing more, never satisfied with the treasure they already possess, like a wolf gorging on the spoils of the kill, becoming blind to the addiction their lust to the Almighty dollar has created. In their quest for wealth and power, therefore, they will stop at nothing in order to achieve their goals, exploiting and subjugating the masses, manipulating and enslaving us, commandeering the instruments by which to control society, decimating the environment, steering us directly towards the gates of corporatism.
The few at the top, mostly products of inheritance, nepotism and born wealth, over the years inbred and diluted, lost of ability and talent, living off the laurels of ancestors, forever spoon-fed and pampered, far removed from their talented patriarchs and the realm of reality, long since weaned from the ways or lives of the rest of us and insulated by the bubble that wealth inflates, have never experienced the struggle of the masses, nor the reality of life to billions. Instead, isolated and protected do they live, their vast empires designed to enrich them through the slave labor that social engineering manufactures. Paying slave wages, exploiting the lives, energy, blood, sweat and tears of billions, their revenues and profits skyrocket, their lives becoming ever more luxurious, gluttony permeating every moment of their existence. The addiction to what they have cannot be controlled, or extinguished, and so, the exploitation of their workers continues, enabling the ever-widening gap between the rich and the rest of us.
Yet even their wealth and power cannot halt the possession over the human mind that the addiction to greed, love of the Almighty Dollar and the ingrained demons of human nature that are unleashed by capitalism create. Because weather rich or poor, from suburban haven or urban reservation, the fact remains that our brains remain the same, our behaviors perhaps more refined in the former, less educated in the latter, yet still human, all too human, both primate and mammalian, subject to the same forces of evolution, the same animal behaviors, human psychologies and vulnerabilities of consciousness and thus susceptible to the same evils that capitalism helps spawn.
The ruling elite have long since lost any attachment to the masses, or any empathy to the plight of the less fortunate. They live cocooned in their aristocracy, unable to comprehend the life of normalcy, possessing only the drive to further the interests of their own kind. They have become slave drivers, degenerate capitalists, thriving at the expense of others, depending on lower caste systems for their workers, pushing forward the buttons of social engineering to create the next generation of their slaves, slashing education, making more automatons, exacerbating poverty, cutting social services, implementing insurmountable barriers to entry and multiple incentives for failure. They have achieved their successes through the corporation, over the years having become their lifeblood, allowing them greater control over America.
The corporation has become the demon of the modern age, becoming, to 21st century humanity, what totalitarian regimes were to the 20th, a threat allowed to grow and prosper, slowly gaining power and influence, becoming wealthier than entire nations, allowed to control and manipulate the population, swallowing whole the branches of government, becoming overlord of Earth, master of the masses. It is the corporation, allowed to develop through debauched capitalism and the power of the Establishment, through our indifference and failure to act, which has accelerated the dastardly stage of degenerate capitalism we are immersed in today. It is the corporation, and the people that control it, that has become the greatest threat to the continued survival of humankind.
Yet the Leviathan is allowed to continue expanding its wealth, power and control. Out of the top 100 economies in the world, 51 are corporations, their GDP surpassing that of many underdeveloped nations. It is destroying entire societies and cultures, usurping governments into its den of servitude, collapsing the environment and using as its exploitable producers and consumers 6.3 billion human beings. The Leviathan now controls every mechanism of globalization, giving rise to the era of the corporation and the death of the nation state, resurrecting the systems of feudalism and serfdom, carving up the lands of the planet and furthering the utter decay of billions of human lives through the reality of perpetual indentured servitude. The influence they possess is, therefore, immense, able to dictate the direction of the world, and the lives of over six billion humans, through control of the government’s of the world.
The power of the corporation is such that American government, that bastion of ‘We the People,’ has been hijacked, the army of corporatism now infested deep within all levels of governance, conditioned to further the interests of the corporate world. Through the allure of wealth, money and the always addicting Almighty Dollar, which the human brain cannot yet defeat, the Establishment can purchase the services and favors of government employees as well as injecting its own vermin into the halls of power. The revolving door of cronyism, where government officials are hired by corporations and corporate executives get appointed to the highest levels of government, as well as through the legal form of bribery called lobbying of government officials, have resulted in the complete control of America by the corporate world. The military-energy-industrial complex has infiltrated the Oval Office, West Wing and the Congress, spreading its tentacles to all Departments and offices of substance. American government has, for all intents and purposes, become a government of the corporations, by the corporations and for the corporations, a prostitute inseminated by her pimp to give birth to and nurture the mechanisms of complete corporatist control of American civilization.
Every day we see further signs that a government designed to represent the interests of the People has long since stopped doing just that. Yet the citizenry continues to yield more and more power to the corporate world, its indifference and passivity helping seal America’s tomorrow. As the years progress, this reality continues, with government having become a charade, democracy but an instrument of fantasy, our elected representatives having become the whores of corporations, the twice unelected President a corporate puppet, a buffoon whose last name was needed to secure entrance of corporatists to the most powerful position in the world. The debauchery has resulted in laws and regulations and appropriations and rules and tax breaks and incessant welfare furthering the power of the corporation, not those of the people, our interests steamrolled by money, power and greed.
Capitalism has created a system whereby the Almighty Dollar has become the new religion of man, with the demons of greed and exploitation working hand in hand to emasculate the human mind, the pursuit of wealth and the addiction to power condemning billions around the world who have no choice but to live the life of slave to the capitalists. Never before in the history of man has our brain, and our psychology, been confronted with the gluttony or the lavishness or the temptations or the incredible wealth now available to a small minority of humans. It has yet to build defense mechanisms to the evils that capitalism spawns inside the mind; society, and capitalism, has proceeded much faster than our ability to evolve our psychologies. The pursuit of wealth, the addiction to power and the ease with which the elite can build personal empires has become a new phenomenon in our species, relatively speaking. For millennia we were nothing but primitive hunters and gatherers, living off of game and plants, surviving day to day, week to week, considered lucky if we ate once a day, our numbers sparse, the planet virgin.
Never had we seen the gluttony or unsustainable exploitations of today, the overabundance of material goods, the excessiveness of foods, the great accumulation of wealth and the evisceration of the planet to achieve it. The human species has never seen the obesity we see today or the large cardboard cookie cutter homes of today’s suburbs or the stresses of modern living or such technologies as television. Humans had never lived the life of luxury, pursuing material possessions much more than humanity, becoming the greed mongers we are today. The elite had never had the corporation as an option, its tentacles building human wickedness around the globe.
We have evolved technology, but technology has not evolved us. Our society has grown beyond the reach of our slow evolving brains, witnessed by our inability to manage and control the over excessiveness prevalent in the America of today. Our ingrained behaviors and instincts cannot keep up with the rapid pace of society and the alluring temptations of the Almighty Dollar, for evolution works in long epochs, not in decades or years or days.
Our psychology remains susceptible to the demons of capitalism, transforming us not into animals, but into animals now divided by wealth, power and social engineering, with some possessing immense power, control and treasure while others own not one possession. We remain the mammalian primate we have always been, yet capitalism has allowed entrance to the evils inherent in human nature, exploiting and manipulating the easily created pathology of greed, the addiction to power, the urge to exploit, the loss of empathy and the drive toward selfishness, creating behaviors and actions we have yet to fully comprehend. Our fragile, as yet unevolved psychology relative to the mechanisms of the modern world, with its many liabilities, constraints, errors and needs for improvement, has proved that we sped like a runaway freight train directly into forms of economic governance our minds were perhaps not ready to dominate.
We have become, perhaps, a society where the blind lead the blind, into a place nobody knows, for no one has ever entered the parameters of where we presently find ourselves. The temptations, addictions, euphoria, comforts and materialism spawned by capitalism have blinded us to what we have become, to the frailty of our psychologies, to the demons we are releasing. Instead of humankind dominating and controlling capitalism we have allowed capitalism to dominate and control us, much to the detriment of billions.
Today we see the effects of capitalism run amok, beyond the control of humankind, becoming, through its sojourn through its various stages, a runaway freight train whose only stop will be the crash that sends concussions reverberating throughout America’s tomorrow. With few possessing much, many owning little, the great gap between the haves and the have nots nonetheless continues to increase, creating friction and animosity. Left to its own devices, free to evolve as it has since its inception, capitalism, in its modern incarnation, is inevitably leading to increased levels of corporatism, for in authoritarianism, and in control of governance, the elite see the next step in their pursuit of power, wealth and control. In corporatism they see control of a population that will in the next few years increasingly become more and more bitter with the continued decimation of their way of life.
Corporatist addictions to the evils of capitalism, to which their minds are impotent to try and dominate, dictate that the fusion of their corporations with government is the next logical step in the complete control over producers and consumers, 300 million strong. With the increased gap between rich and the rest, with poverty on the rise, with slave labor and slave wages growing, with tens of millions struggling paycheck to paycheck, needing two jobs to sustain themselves, with healthcare lacking for over 40 million people, with laws and regulations no longer enacted to help citizens, with inequality and injustice on the rise, with wealth vastly disproportional, the nation’s resources owned almost exclusively by the elite, and with millions waking to the realization of what is being done to America and its citizens by corporatist interests, the only way to prevent a repeat of the French Revolution will be complete and utter control of the population.
The exploitation by the corporatists of both the people and the nation will continue, for the most deranged step in capitalism’s cycle is upon us. At some point in time, whether in a month or five years, the masses will wake to what is being done to them. Corporatists, already in control of government, dominating society, our culture, thoughts and lives, will try to preempt this inevitability with the introduction of a perpetual police state using as pretext the war on terror and further attacks upon one of our cities.
For corporatism, more commonly termed fascism, has arrived, just in time to hail the arrival of America’s tomorrow.
The Arrival of Tomorrow
Already in control of government, possessing the technologies of private enterprise and the resources of governance, holding all the mechanisms by which to brainwash and manipulate the populace, their wallets thick with the Almighty Dollar, the tentacles of power and control omnipotent and omnipresent, corporatists have all the ingredients deeply entrenched to enact the next step in America’s history.
It is they, the power hungry and corrupted, those addicted to greed and wealth that cannot stand democracy and must, therefore, try to destroy it. For real democracy, and not the illusion meant to convey in the masses a sense of participation, is a threat to those seeking to rule by authority and through absolute control of the nation. To them the will of the citizenry is an obstacle; a government of, by and for the people is a hindrance, because in real democracy the population chooses, decides and controls the path a country will take. In a real democracy the rights of minorities are protected, the freedom of everyone is guaranteed.
Democracy is, therefore, incompatible with authoritarianism, with a system ruled by the few, not the many. Democracy becomes an obstacle to those at the top, because they are few, the masses many, and, in deciding the fate of a nation the elite can never outvote the masses. Given that the interests of the elite are incompatible with those of the people, and that the people will, without manipulation, vote for those espousing their own interests, the elite must use all tools at their disposal to manipulate the vote or the mind of the voters. In order to steer the nation in the direction of their interests, then, the wealthy few must control government and society, using all weapons at their disposal to control the thoughts and opinions of the population. Hence, the importance of the elite to control all aspects of the corporate media is understood, for in the television the thoughts and decisions of the American people are born.
To the corporatists and the elite, the will of the people becomes meaningless, their interests emaciated by the instruments of corporatism. Instead, the illusion is maintained in the minds of the people that their interests are being protected and defended, yet to the careful eye, the interests being pursued are only those of the elite. Slowly but surely, the ambitions of power become a parasite feeding off the interests of the weak, hemorrhaging centuries old rights birthed through revolution. A nation of liberties, freedoms and rights interferes with the wants and visions of those seeking to become overlords of the most powerful and wealthiest nation the world has ever seen. It is, therefore, imperative that the Bill of Rights be torn to shreds, that the Constitution be ripped apart. It is only a “god damn piece of paper,” after all, a document meant for the masses, a barrier to complete control by the elite. To the corporatists now in power, cherished American documents, wonderments in the evolution of human society and thought, are nothing but the toilet paper used to clean themselves of the refuse they call the masses.
A nation of liberty, freedoms and rights is a nation of people able to become threats to governance, their lives protected by law and by the will of the people. Freedom and rights gives birth to a society free to question the actions of government, to seek accountability, a citizenry that owns a government created to serve the interests of the people. A nation of liberties possesses millions of people unwilling to become the sheeple of the powerful, always searching for the truth, seeking it through protest, dissent, debate and intelligence.
A nation free is a nation educated and intelligent, wise to the chicanery of the elite and criminality of its leaders, a people emancipated through the powers of knowledge. An educated people are a liberated people, given the tools to question authority, myth, fables and the auras of false leadership. Indeed, a citizenry that thinks for itself is the greatest threat to corporatists and the elite because free minds question, analyze and are able to see beyond the haze of aerolized bull manure, seeing through the lies and crimes and propaganda, the thoughts of controlled television not given entrance to a mind free to think and reason.
A people free is a threat to the Establishment, for it places barriers to government and corporate chicanery, acting as a firewall to the actions of thieves and murderers, helping, in some way, to try to make right what has been made wrong. Knowing the vital protections endowed to them by the Constitution, the population has the confidence to rise up and be heard, speaking truth to power, marching for justice and liberty.
In this document, a living, breathing, always evolving masterpiece of human understanding, meant to adapt to the present, not cement itself to archaic notions of the past, exists the impediment to corporatism desired by the elite. It is the Constitution that has halted their rise to total prominence, for in their ideology, humanity has always and must always be governed by authority, by a Machiavelli type despot thinking for those that cannot, for only then can civilization thrive and only then can the total domination of the corporatists become reality. In their warped mind, then, America must come under the grip of corporatism, for today, in this stage of civilization’s evolution, the corporate Leviathan is overlord of the planet and those that control it are, therefore, our masters.
Using as pretext an attack on one of our cities by terrorists, America’s new stated enemy, corporatists now entrenched in power will declare martial law, pronouncing that the security of the nation and the protection of our way of life are at stake. Through the exploitation of patriotism, xenophobia and the ignorance of large segments of the American public, the corporatists will introduce new laws designed to further control our lives and eviscerate our rights. The tools of propaganda will bombard us with psychological warfare, molding us to threats existing only in our fears and in our altered state of mind, making of us the soldiers embedded deep inside the trenches of American society, doing the dirty work for the corporatist government.
Exploiting the blindness and silent acquiescence of the masses that fear, anger and hatred engenders, corporatists in government will give rise to the police state, first by deploying the military throughout key cities and regions, creating the environment necessary to begin the conditioning process of the population. Under the rubric of securing the homeland, the military will be placed at the helm of a new security apparatus that will maintain an ever vigilant eye on the population. The citizenry will be told to be vigilant and to report suspicious activity. It will be told to become the eyes and ears of the corporatists, transforming itself into agents of tyranny. In time the populace will become paranoid sheeple robbed of freedom, shadows of their former selves, created by the ceaseless suspicions bred by years of Americans spying on Americans.
The Bill of Rights will be truncated and the Constitution, which is already seen as a piece of toilet paper to the corporatists, will be altered or amended to suit those holding the reigns of absolute power. The government will be further degraded into serving the interests of the corporations, its vast resources, with its tentacles of governance, used to expand the reach and wealth of corporatists. Gone will be our rights to free speech and of assembly and of the press, replaced instead with draconian laws designed to quash dissident voices pronouncing the sounds of wisdom.
A police presence throughout large cities will permeate, designed to intimidate and control. Everywhere one goes will be seen the tools of subservience and obedience, from army fatigues to machine guns to surveillance cameras located in every street corner to police patrols to curfews to heavily armed men stationed at all points of public interest. Warrants will cease to exist, as homes will be invaded without the authority of the law. Courts will become tribunals judging those guilty of breaking the laws of draconian intent.
Dissent will be made quiet, and all forms of protest and debate will not be tolerated for in the America of tomorrow only the voices and visions of the rulers will be allowed to stand. The idea of due process, along with habeas corpus, will become an abstract concept reserved for future historians, for those designated enemies of the state will simply be made to disappear without reason into the national system of gulags, its numbers swelling into the tens of millions, the fates of its prisoners decided by the level of truth they once tried to tell.
Subservience to the state will become a principle to be embedded into the minds of all, particularly the young, whose education will further be implemented to dumb them down, brainwashing them, making them, over years of conditioning, soldiers and automatons loyal to corporatists and the powers of the state. Free thought will become a thing of the past, as books of knowledge will be banned or burned, the opinions of reason made extinct. Television and music will be controlled much more so than today, becoming the loudspeakers of propaganda and the education of enslavement. The pages of past history will be erased or altered; those of the present will be manipulated as reality becomes what the corporatists decide it to be. News, opinion and current events at odds with the goals of power will disappear from society, for the citizenry will only be allowed to hear the propaganda and see only what is beneficial to the state.
Arrests without cause or suspicion will be legalized, wiretaps and eavesdropping will be said to benefit the quest for the homeland’s security. The wonders of the Internet, already a grave and gathering threat to the Establishment, will be destroyed; censorship of websites and their content will become policy and throughout the country, the free opinions of the population will become less than a whisper of a dying society, for in the last breaths of freedom the last palpitations of America’s heart will be heard. Fear and intimidation will permeate throughout the nation, thereby controlling the population, for in the threatening posture of a police state the people are forced into shells of their former selves.
A culture of surveillance will be endemic as the instruments of the security state are used to spy on its own citizens, especially those deemed threats and dissidents. Those fighting for the freedoms and rights now lost will be picked up in the middle of the night, lost like a morning fog, joining a growing group of the disappeared, likely tortured, imprisoned or dropped from a plane at 10,000 feet. Mass graves will be hidden from reality, unmarked and untended, forgotten like the cadavers contained in their bowels. Dissent and protest and debate will be outlawed, and all around, a society made to conform and acquiesce to totalitarianism will be born, its children never experiencing the freedom and the rights once afforded their parents.
In America’s tomorrow, neighbors will be made to spy on neighbors, strangers will inform on strangers, children will be told to report the suspicious activities of parents and all around the nation paranoia will hover over towns and cities and the homes of the population, trust having become one more victim of corporatism, the loyalty amongst friends and relatives compromised with the arrival of self-preservation. False accusations will be made against thousands whose only crime will be thinking for themselves, not being liked by an informer, or being at the wrong place at the wrong time, and guilty they will stand in a court not of law, but of guilt, where justice is not blind, though it will be unknown and unwanted.
Secrecy and unaccountability will be hallmarks of America’s government; constant surveillance of its citizens will become routine. With the advent of newer technologies the complete whereabouts of citizens will be known at all times. The national ID card will contain all the biometric information about a person, its carrier able to be tracked through GPS surveillance. The introduction of permanent police stops throughout various city streets, state highways and borders will assure authorities of one’s intentions, our vehicles, already equipped with GPS, ransacked without need for reasonable suspicion or probable cause.
The intrusion by the corporatist state will define our existence in our daily lives. Propaganda posters will line the streets and public spaces; surveillance cameras will watch our every move. Project Echelon and its offspring will monitor our phone calls, emails, faxes and conversations; through our fingerprints, DNA and iris scanning the state will be aware of our movements at all times. National psychology examinations for children will be made mandatory, with those deemed ‘troubled’ forced to take certain prescription drugs, made to attend special schools, creating a caste system of undesirables through genetic and social engineering. Through the use of television we will be told what to think and what reality is. Our children will be forced into conscription, trained to become soldiers of fortune in wars against East Asia, Middle Asia and South America. The end of privacy as we know it will arrive with the insertion of cameras into our homes, used to monitor our daily lives and record our most intimate moments.
Birthed from a slippery slope of America’s past and present, fusing the sins of the fathers and ignorance of the sons, our tomorrow will be a mutation of the natural regression that American capitalism has taken over the last two hundred years. We are entering an epoch of cataclysmic momentum, for the evils of 21st century capitalism, having gathered unstoppable momentum during the last 100 years, have generated forces uncompromising and degenerate, gathering power through our inability to visualize the damage inflicted by our economic system’s cycles. The America of yesterday cannot survive in the America of tomorrow; to the corporatists they are mutually exclusive.
We have reached a moment in history where the opening of different doors can be made by our decisions in the next few years. Yet time is precious, for it passes fast and without contemplation, passing us without so much of a realization on our part. Today, corporatism grows and festers in our midst, using the fictional and over-exaggerated war on terror to entrench itself into our culture, methodically conditioning us, preparing us to its eventual and permanent rise. The instruments of its governance are systematically being put into place, clandestinely inserted into our consciousness, one piece of the puzzle at a time, the easier to assimilate us to America’s tomorrow.
Soon we will wake not to find a new dawn but a dreaded twilight, marking not the end of yet another day gone by but the end of America as we knew her, a once brave people succumbing to fear, and once intelligent citizenry cowering to manipulation and a once free society shackled to the dungeons of America’s tomorrow. With each day that passes that we remain passive, silent and indifferent, becoming submissive to further corporatist control over our lives, we are helping to cement the unforgiving future of our progeny and of a once great nation.
Through our inability to act to reality and understand where we are headed we have burdened yet one more generation with the sins and errors of those that came before, in the process imploding the foundations of a nation that once acted as the beacon of freedom, rights and liberty to people throughout the globe. In the end, we have begun assisting in burying the grave of American liberty and freedom, helping to give birth to American corporatism and invariably acting to give rise to the dawn of America’s tomorrow.
www.valenzuelasveritas.blogspot.com
Manuel Valenzuela is a social critic and commentator, international affairs analyst and Internet columnist. His articles as well as his archive can be found at his blog, http://www.valenzuelasveritas.blogspot.com as well as at other alternative news websites from around the globe. Mr. Valenzuela welcomes comments and can be reached at manuel@valenzuelas.net. Mr. Valenzuela is also author of Echoes in the Wind, a novel made available at most online book sellers. |
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by Carol Wolman
29 December 2005
I have been fascinated by the psychology of George W. Bush since he first declared his candidacy for presidency, and burst on the scene. I keep wondering how he reconciles his so-called Christianity with his satanic background and actions. There are a number of possible explanations. He may be too stupid to recognize the contradiction- but I doubt it. He may be totally cynical, not caring whether he contradicts himself or not. Perhaps he is a true satanist, and a better actor than Ronald Reagan, duping the public with pretended piety. He may have multiple personalities, so that the pious Christian within him is not aware of the bloodthirsty torturer, and vice-versa. He is so secretive and so scripted that it is hard to know what the real person is like.
Modern psychology aside, it is clear that Bush is power-hungry and and somewhat megalomaniacal. His current challenge to we the people and our representatives in Congress, that he is above the law, can spy without a warrant, and we can't do anything about it, is a strong sign that he sees himself as emperor, king, god, rather than as an elected official of the citizenry.
Bush sees himself as ruler rather than as public servant. Perhaps the simplest explanation for the invasion of Iraq is that Bush needed a war so that he could be a war president, and claim war powers for himself as the commander-in-chief of a nation at war.
Bush's regime is founded on stirring up hatred, of Christians towards Muslims, of native borns towards immigrants, of poor toward rich. His methods are hateful- smears, cheating on voting, blackmail and intimidation, spying and sneaking, torture called something else, secret detention centers, etc.
1 John 2: 11Whoever hates his brother is in darkness;
he walks in darkness and does not know where he is going
because the darkness has blinded his eyes.
Bush is blinded. He does not see the accumulated disasters heading his way- the investigations into corruption, the revolt of the generals against his Iraq policy, the outrage against his imperial claims to unlimited power. His days are numbered, but he blithely continues to stay the course, to hell.
He will not succeed in taking us all there with him.
In the name of the Prince of Peace, Carol Wolman |
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Jane Smiley
Dec 29
I was thinking that the spy scandal was being expertly taken care of without my input, what with Martin Garbus, Katrina Vanden Heuvel, and Barron's magazine hot on the "president's" tail. My plan was to continue reading Les Rougons-Macquart in peace, but then I read RJ Eskow's blog about the Democrats, and while I thought it was insightful and well-argued, there was one thing I disagree with, and that is that the point of the whole spy scandal, now that Bush has been caught and has admitted breaking the law, is not whether the Democrats can find a way to be electable, it is whether the Republican Party is a criminal enterprise, and whether average Republicans, both in and out of the government, are going to countenance and support unnecessary and shamelessly unlawful behavior. Let's not shift the focus to Losers and Victims, but rather, keep it firmly on Winners and Perpetrators. Let's talk about the "winner" aspect first.
I clearly remember back in 2000, when Bush cheated to
"win" the Presidential election with the help of Justices Scalia and Thomas, who dishonored themselves in perpetuity by voting to stop the Florida recount, the Republicans gloated and gloried in the "win". They acted like a nasty Little League team, who wins on a technicality and then goes on to rub the faces of the other team in the dirt, as if winning at the cost of the integrity of the game were actually a thing worth celebrating. Clearly, the Republicans had learned their sportsmanship on the football fields of America's colleges and universities, by observing the hiring practices of successful coaches, the educational careers of cheating athletes, and the fund-raising efforts of testosterone-poisoned alumni. It was not how you play the game, but whether you win or lose! What a terrific model of traditional values that is!
The Bush team thereafter went on to exemplify "winning through intimidation"-- "You're with us or against us." "If you disagree with the President, you are supporting the terrorists". Blah blah blah--we know the whole litany, and it is nauseating. We also know where it came from --the corporate boardroom as well as the athletic stadium and the middle school and the frat house, where bullies are king and "the common good" is a joke.
By 2004, the Republicans had refined their election stealing techniques, and anyway, they were benefiting from continued disbelief on the part of the Democrats, who didn't seem to be able to imagine that the Republicans could be so brazen as to do it again, even though when Texas redistricting came up, Tom Delay gave them a taste of the corruption in store. What does it matter, the Republicans seemed to be saying in 2004, fair elections? The whole idea was a joke to them and they hardly bothered to conceal their thousands of little cheats and obstacles to an honest vote.
You had to wonder at the so-called moderates who were going along for the ride, all those diversity figures who were trotted out at the Republican convention, just for show, then packed away again for next time. Schwarzenegger and McCain were the most disgusting, but there were plenty of others, dupes or knaves, in whose name an illegal war had been perpetrated, in whose name an election was going to be stolen, in whose name war crimes were going to be committed in Fallujah right after the election, in whose name detainees and captives were going to be rendered and tortured. What kind of person, you had to wonder, would associate him or herself with winning at any cost, but there were plenty of them, and lots of them worked in the MSM and actually allowed their very own names to appear as by-lines! So they won. I'm sure they felt good about it. Supposedly, winning is the only thing and winners are always happy. Fair enough.
Back then, I was willing to admit that maybe some people didn't see these issues in quite the black and white way that I did. The conservative caste of mind is different from the liberal caste of mind, and much of what we believe is dictated by temperament.
For example, I've noticed that for most liberals, the greatest sin is murder. Liberals recoil at harming others.
The fact that the Iraq war has physically harmed tens of thousands of Iraqis, not to mention many thousands of American soldiers, is the red letter immorality that defines that misadventure for liberals. If they reluctantly supported the war, those deaths and injuries are the hardest sticking point; if they never supported the war, those deaths are the most unforgivable horror.
Conservatives, though, don't really mind doing harm to others, even murder, especially if they add the phrase, "for your own good." After all, people get harmed all the time-- the world, to a natural conservative, is a harmful place and a vale of tears. To a conservative, the greatest crime is betrayal of the tribe, and if worst comes to worst, better that those outside the tribe (often not even defined as human) come to grief (get injured, get raped, lose everything, get killed, let's be honest) in preference to oneself or one's allies.
To a true conservative, it doesn't matter that Jesus's number one rule was to do unto others as you would have them do unto you- -they somehow read this as do unto others before they do unto you.
Conservatives, I think, have a stronger flight/fight response than liberals. They are both more fearful and more aggressive. It shows in their religion (God is someone to fear), it shows in their child-rearing techniques (beatings,whippings, spankings are to be administered, not avoided), it shows in their attitude toward marriage and sexuality (conforming to one's own strict moral standards isn't enough--others must conform, also, or the whole society is in danger).
To the conservative mind, harm may be justifiably done to others who do not conform. Doing harm to others is a relative evil, not an absolute one. It is, you might say, an aspect of winning.
We can argue about these tempermentally-based political differences and never resolve them, I admit that. In the US, especially, conservatives have never, until now, at any rate, brought upon themselves the sort of destruction and humiliation that conservatives in other countries have brought upon themselves. They are still naive, and think that they can do harm with impunity. We shall see if they can.
At any rate, for a long time, American culture provided one area, negotiable though it has been, where conservatives and liberals could more or less agree that right and wrong is located, and that is the area of the law.
While flouting the law is almost a national pastime in the US, the flouting is always done away from the public eye. Everyone pays lip service to the concept of the law-abiding citizen--even Tony Soprano presents himself as an average guy when he's at his daughter's soccer game. There's a good reason for this--we all know that, gripe as we will about certain laws, the law stands between us and actual chaos. Most people adhere even to laws that they don't agree with.
If the Republican party, though, allows Bush and his cronies to get away with warrantless internal spying, self-admitted and even trumpeted, then they have explicitly allowed "winning" to become an openly committed crime, a coup d'etat and a form of usurpation. The "president" will have actually usurped the powers of the Congress and even the Judiciary, and the Republican Party will have colluded in this crime for the sake of tribal loyalty and, I suppose, mere "winning".
It actually doesn't matter what bad legal advice Bush has received from his house lawyers, poodles all, namely Gonzalez, Ashcroft, Miers, and Yoo. Just because they are in a closed power loop, where they tell the boss what he wants to hear, that doesn't mean they are actually correct in their interpretation.
If fellow Republicans allow their republic-destroying opinions to go forward as the standard, though, then they are colluding in an egregious crime committed against the nation. IMO, as they say.
Whether the Democrats are losers or victims; whether the Democrats can regain control of the House of Representatives is interesting but irrelevant. What is relevant are the morals and ethics of the Republicans -- individual Republicans --you, Senator Brownback. You, Rep. Hastert. You, Chief Justice Roberts. You, Uncle David. You, Mom.
Do any of you conservatives care about the Republic? This is your accountability moment. Is your loyalty to the US or is your loyalty to Bush, Cheney, and Rove?
Crimes lead to larger crimes when criminals get away with them. Bush clearly shows no signs of even beginning understand why he might not have the right to be all powerful. There's that Constitution thing again ("God-damned piece of paper"--George W. Bush, December 2005).
A crime is being committed.
If, because of "winning" or "loyalty", many more or less innocent bystanders do nothing prevent its continuation and do nothing to punish the perpetrator, then they are implicated. It's as black and white as that. |
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By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 30, 2005
he effort President Bush authorized shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, to fight al Qaeda has grown into the largest CIA covert action program since the height of the Cold War, expanding in size and ambition despite a growing outcry at home and abroad over its clandestine tactics, according to former and current intelligence officials and congressional and administration sources.
The broad-based effort, known within the agency by the initials GST, is compartmentalized into dozens of highly classified individual programs, details of which are known mainly to those directly involved. GST includes programs allowing the CIA to capture al Qaeda suspects with help from foreign intelligence services, to maintain secret prisons abroad, to use interrogation techniques that some lawyers say violate international treaties, and to maintain a fleet of aircraft to move detainees around the globe. Other compartments within GST give the CIA enhanced ability to mine international financial records and eavesdrop on suspects anywhere in the world.
Over the past two years, as aspects of this umbrella effort have burst into public view, the revelations have prompted protests and official investigations in countries that work with the United States, as well as condemnation by international human rights activists and criticism by members of Congress.
Still, virtually all the programs continue to operate largely as they were set up, according to current and former officials. These sources say Bush's personal commitment to maintaining the GST program and his belief in its legality have been key to resisting any pressure to change course.
"In the past, presidents set up buffers to distance themselves from covert action," said A. John Radsan, assistant general counsel at the CIA from 2002 to 2004. "But this president, who is breaking down the boundaries between covert action and conventional war, seems to relish the secret findings and the dirty details of operations."
The administration's decisions to rely on a small circle of lawyers for legal interpretations that justify the CIA's covert programs and not to consult widely with Congress on them have also helped insulate the efforts from the growing furor, said several sources who have been involved.
Bush has never publicly confirmed the existence of a covert program, but he was recently forced to defend the approach in general terms, citing his wartime responsibilities to protect the nation. In November, responding to questions about the CIA's clandestine prisons, he said the nation must defend against an enemy that "lurks and plots and plans and wants to hurt America again."
This month he went into more detail, defending the National Security Agency's warrantless eavesdropping within the United States. That program is separate from the GST program, but three lawyers involved said the legal rationale for the NSA program is essentially the same one used to support GST, which is an abbreviation of a classified code name for the umbrella covert action program.
The administration contends it is still acting in self-defense after the Sept. 11 attacks, that the battlefield is worldwide, and that everything it has approved is consistent with the demands made by Congress on Sept. 14, 2001, when it passed a resolution authorizing "all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons [the president] determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks."
"Everything is done in the name of self-defense, so they can do anything because nothing is forbidden in the war powers act," said one official who was briefed on the CIA's original cover program and who is skeptical of its legal underpinnings. "It's an amazing legal justification that allows them to do anything," said the official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issues.
The interpretation undergirds the administration's determination not to waver under public protests or the threat of legislative action. For example, after The Washington Post disclosed the existence of secret prisons in several Eastern European democracies, the CIA closed them down because of an uproar in Europe. But the detainees were moved elsewhere to similar CIA prisons, referred to as "black sites" in classified documents.
The CIA has stuck with its overall approaches, defending and in some cases refining them. The agency is working to establish procedures in the event a prisoner dies in custody. One proposal circulating among mid-level officers calls for rushing in a CIA pathologist to perform an autopsy and then quickly burning the body, according to two sources.
In June, the CIA temporarily suspended its interrogation program after a controversy over the disclosure of an Aug. 1, 2002, memorandum from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel that defined torture in an unconventional way. The White House withdrew and replaced the memo. But the hold on the CIA's interrogation activities was eventually removed, several intelligence officials said.
The authorized techniques include "waterboarding" and "water dousing," both meant to make prisoners think they are drowning; hard slapping; isolation; sleep deprivation; liquid diets; and stress positions -- often used, intelligence officials say, in combination to enhance the effect.
Behind the scenes, CIA Director Porter J. Goss -- until last year the Republican chairman of the House intelligence committee -- has gathered ammunition to defend the program.
After a CIA inspector general's report in the spring of 2004 stated that some authorized interrogation techniques violated international law, Goss asked two national security experts to study the program's effectiveness.
Gardner Peckham, an adviser to then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), concluded that the interrogation techniques had been effective, said an intelligence official familiar with the result. John J. Hamre, deputy defense secretary under President Bill Clinton, offered a more ambiguous conclusion. Both declined to comment.
The only apparent roadblock that could yet prompt significant change in the CIA's approach is a law passed this month prohibiting torture and cruel and inhumane treatment of prisoners in U.S. custody, including in CIA hands.
It is still unclear how the law, sponsored by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), will be implemented. But two intelligence experts said the CIA will be required to draw up clear guidelines and to get all special interrogation techniques approved by a wider range of government lawyers who hold a more conventional interpretation of international treaty obligations.
"The executive branch will not pull back unless it has to," said a former Justice Department lawyer involved in the initial discussions on executive power. "Because if it pulls back unilaterally and another attack occurs, it will get blamed."
The Origins
The top-secret presidential finding Bush signed six days after the Sept. 11 attacks empowered the intelligence agencies in a way not seen since World War II, and it ordered them to create what would become the GST program.
Written findings are required by the National Security Act of 1947 before the CIA can undertake a covert action. A covert action may not violate the Constitution or any U.S. law. But such actions can, and often do, violate laws of the foreign countries in which they take place, said intelligence experts.
The CIA faced the day after the 2001 attacks with few al Qaeda informants, a tiny paramilitary division and no interrogators, much less a system for transporting terrorism suspects and keeping them hidden for interrogation.
Besides fighting the war in Afghanistan, the agency set about to put in place an intelligence-gathering network that relies heavily on foreign security services and their deeper knowledge of local terrorist groups. With billions of dollars appropriated each year by Congress, the CIA has established joint counterterrorism intelligence centers in more than two dozen countries, and it has enlisted at least eight countries, including several in Eastern Europe, to allow secret prisons on their soil.
Working behind the scenes, the CIA has gained approval from foreign governments to whisk terrorism suspects off the streets or out of police custody into a clandestine prison system that includes the CIA's black sites and facilities run by intelligence agencies in other countries.
The presidential finding also permitted the CIA to create paramilitary teams to hunt and kill designated individuals anywhere in the world, according to a dozen current and former intelligence officials and congressional and executive branch sources.
In four years, the GST has become larger than the CIA's covert action programs in Afghanistan and Central America in the 1980s, according to current and former intelligence officials. Indeed, the CIA, working with foreign counterparts, has been responsible for virtually all of the success the United States has had in capturing or killing al Qaeda leaders since Sept. 11, 2001.
Bush delegated much of the day-to-day decision-making and the creation of individual components to then-CIA Director George J. Tenet, according to congressional and intelligence officials who were briefed on the finding at the time.
"George could decide, even on killings," one of these officials said, referring to Tenet. "That was pushed down to him. George had the authority on who was going to get it."
The Lawyers
Tenet, according to half a dozen former intelligence officials, delegated most of the decision making on lethal action to the CIA's Counterterrorist Center. Killing an al Qaeda leader with a Hellfire missile fired from a remote-controlled drone might have been considered assassination in a prior era and therefore banned by law.
But after Sept. 11, four former government lawyers said, it was classified as an act of self-defense and therefore was not an assassination. "If it was an al Qaeda person, it wouldn't be an assassination," said one lawyer involved.
This month, Pakistani intelligence sources said, Hamza Rabia, a top operational planner for al Qaeda, was killed along with four others by a missile fired by U.S. operatives using an unmanned Predator drone, although there were conflicting reports on whether a missile was used. In May, another al Qaeda member, Haitham Yemeni, was reported killed by a Predator drone missile in northwest Pakistan.
Refining what constitutes an assassination was just one of many legal interpretations made by Bush administration lawyers. Time and again, the administration asked government lawyers to draw up new rules and reinterpret old ones to approve activities once banned or discouraged under the congressional reforms beginning in the 1970s, according to these officials and seven lawyers who once worked on these matters.
Gen. Michael V. Hayden, deputy director of national intelligence, has described the administration's philosophy in public and private meetings, including a session with human rights groups.
"We're going to live on the edge," Hayden told the groups, according to notes taken by Human Rights Watch and confirmed by Hayden's office. "My spikes will have chalk on them. . . . We're pretty aggressive within the law. As a professional, I'm troubled if I'm not using the full authority allowed by law."
Not stopping another attack not only will be a professional failure, he argued, but also "will move the line" again on acceptable legal limits to counterterrorism.
When the CIA wanted new rules for interrogating important terrorism suspects the White House gave the task to a small group of lawyers within the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel who believed in an aggressive interpretation of presidential power.
The White House tightened the circle of participants involved in these most sensitive new areas. It initially cut out the State Department's general counsel, most of the judge advocates general of the military services and the Justice Department's criminal division, which traditionally dealt with international terrorism.
"The Bush administration did not seek a broad debate on whether commander-in-chief powers can trump international conventions and domestic statutes in our struggle against terrorism," said Radsan, the former CIA lawyer, who is a professor at William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul, Minn. "They could have separated the big question from classified details to operations and had an open debate. Instead, an inner circle of lawyers and advisers worked around the dissenters in the administration and one-upped each other with extreme arguments."
At the CIA, the White House allowed the general counsel's job, traditionally filled from outside the CIA by someone who functioned in a sort of oversight role, to be held by John Rizzo, a career CIA lawyer with a fondness for flashy suits and ties who worked for years in the Directorate of Operations, or D.O.
"John Rizzo is a classic D.O. lawyer. He understands the culture, the intelligence business," Radsan said. "He admires the case officers. And they trust him to work out tough issues in the gray with them. He is like a corporate lawyer who knows how to make the deal happen."
These lawyers have written legal justifications for holding suspects picked up outside Afghanistan without a court order, without granting traditional legal rights and without giving them access to the International Committee of the Red Cross.
CIA and Office of Legal Counsel lawyers also determined that it was legal for suspects to be secretly detained in one country and transferred to another for the purposes of interrogation and detention -- a process known as "rendition."
Lawyers involved in the decision making acknowledge the uncharted nature of their work. "I did what I thought the best reading of the law was," one lawyer said. "These lines are not obvious. It was a judgment."
Credit and Blame
One way the White House limited debate over its program was to virtually shut out Congress during the early years. Congress, for its part, raised only weak and sporadic protests. The administration sometimes refused to give the committees charged with overseeing intelligence agencies the details they requested. It also cut the number of members of Congress routinely briefed on these matters, usually to four members -- the chairmen and ranking Democratic members of the House and Senate intelligence panels.
John D. Rockefeller IV (W.Va.), ranking Democrat on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, complained in a 2003 letter to Vice President Cheney that his briefing on the NSA eavesdropping was unsatisfactory. "Given the security restrictions associated with this information, and my inability to consult staff or counsel on my own, I feel unable to fully evaluate, much less endorse, these activities," he wrote.
Rockefeller made similar complaints about the CIA's refusal to allow the full committee to see the backup material supporting a skeptical report by the CIA inspector general in 2004 on detentions and interrogations that questioned the legal basis for renditions.
Some former CIA officers now worry that the agency alone will be held responsible for actions authorized by Bush and approved by the White House's lawyers.
Attacking the CIA is common when covert programs are exposed and controversial, said Gerald Haines, a former CIA historian who is a scholar in residence at the University of Virginia. "It seems to me the agency is taking the brunt of all the recent criticism."
Duane R. "Dewey" Clarridge, who directed the CIA's covert efforts to support the Nicaraguan contras in the 1980s, said the nature of CIA work overseas is, and should be, risky and sometimes ugly. "You have a spy agency because the spy agency is going to break laws overseas. If you don't want it to do those dastardly things, don't have it. You can have the State Department."
But a former CIA officer said the agency "lost its way" after Sept. 11, rarely refusing or questioning an administration request. The unorthodox measures "have got to be flushed out of the system," the former officer said. "That's how it works in this country."
Researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report. |
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A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS
29 December 2005
The pall of "normalcy" has once again fallen over the rogue, radical, lawbreaking, bumbling, national security threatening, lying, character assassinating administration.
By that we return to one of our favorite BuzzFlash themes, how Karl Rove has turned incompetence, lying and lawbreaking into what Hannah Arendt, a philospher, called the banality of evil.
So now we are treated to an Associated Press story that announces Bush's grand plans for 2006. We see photos of "Baby Doc" and Laura carrying their photo-op dogs for that warm fuzzy feeling. There are articles in every paper about what books Bush is allegedly -- and we emphasize allegedly -- reading while the world burns. (Of course, these are actually books that Bush carries in his hand on photo-ops to give the impression that he is reading them because they create a certain image about him; in this case a book about rough rider Teddy Roosevelt, and one about the heroism of U.S. soldiers. Just more props. We dare a White House "reporter" to ask Bush a substantive question about either book. They will just get a blank stare. The last book he read in full was "My Pet Goat" on 9/11.) And the Washington Post runs a long story about the Bush Administration plan for political "recovery." Shouldn't that just be about a rehabilitation program for people after they get out of jail?
It's as though we weren't being ruled by a bunch of Constitution shredding, incompetent, fanatical thugs. These guys should be in the hoosegow, not guffawing about how Scott McClellan is so good at never answering a question, as Christmas goose gravy drips from their chins.
This sort of "pall of normalcy" settles over the media after every Bush debacle and horrid revelation that any other president would be impeached for. In part, it's because the Democratic leadership (although acting a bit tougher on occasion than in the past) doesn't push back hard enough -- and doesn't sustain the outrage and demand for accountabilty appropriate for the situation.
And then there's the press, which just rides the crest of each news cycle without providing any historical context to the latest propaganda from the White House. And today, historical context for an evening story would mean just remembering what the White House said in the morning, which is often just the opposite of what it is declaring by the evening. But the media obliviously trudges on like good stenographers, making crime breaking seem like a routine function of government.
There's little doubt now that you could have a pumpkin as president and the mainstream corporate press would still print the same "business as usual" stories as they do about Bush.
After all, having a cabbage head as president isn't that different from having a pumpkin.
Except that this cabbage head is something that you would serve up for a prison meal, not treat with deference and complacency. |
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30 Dec 2005
PulpNonFiction
Dear So & So...
This is your first and last WARNING...WE know exactly who you are and what you have been saying against the government in general and the jews in particular from the day you logged on.Now under the GAS Global.Anti.Semitic LAW we can come down to your house and neoconfiscate your computer and your kids computers and all your cd roms and dvds and arrest you for violating the GAS LAW...but guess what...because we don't want to waste our time with someone as irrelevant as you, we are giving you this FIRST AND LAST WARNING. You are to CEASE from this nanosecond on...POSTING ANYTHING that is against the jews or against the bildenbergs or against the new world order and the thousand points of light...
GOT THAT PUNK? MAKE MY DAY!
Did you get that punk? We could take you to Guantanamo and keep you there indefinitely!
This is what MARTIALLAW is all about.You may go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martial_law
If you so much as FORWARD an email that HINTS of your despicable unpatriotism and your hatred of a president who is in the middle of a war who is waging a crUSAde to save your pitiful soul and spread democracy so the world will be a safer place and the Carlyle Group can get on with its business making billions for their loved ones and for their WAR CHESTS.
How many times have we told you "YOU CAN NOT CHANGE HORSES IN MISTREAM ESPECIALLY IF THE COWBOY RIDING THE HORSE IS WAGING A WARRENTERRA!"
This is the first and last time...you're either gonna see the thousnd points of light...you're either with us or youre with the terrarists.
This is not a hoax.Check out http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/blxnew.htm for the lastest urban legends and hoaxes.
Have a Happy Christmas ok?
Merry CHRISTmas not Happy Holidays.
Remember...your Uncle Sam Loves Ya and kNWOs whats good fer ya.
Hugs n Kisses,
Happy Neo Year!
Uncle Sam |
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by Anthony Gregory
30 Dec 2005
LewRockwell.com
Okay, America. Calm down. I know that some think that Bush and company might have finally bit off more than they can chew. New reports that the administration has been illegally spying on the American people, and has been less than candid about it, come only a couple months after the indictment of I. Lewis Libby and the scandals of Plamegate and the Niger uranium forgeries finally got attention in the MSM.
And who knows? Top officials in the administration might soon have to join Scooter in taking a long vacation from the highest positions in public service. At first, they might do so as martyrs, but it is not beyond reasonable speculation to expect these scandals to finally bring down the man in charge of it all – and maybe even George Bush as well. A loud outcry of people who hate America and love the terrorists is being heard. According to an informal poll of over 150,000 visitors at MSNBC, a small, anti-American extremist fringe – well under 90%, in fact – currently think Bush should be impeached. (A scientific poll from a couple weeks back puts the real percentage of anti-Americans at a mere 32%.)
Come on, America. Let us get a sense of perspective, here. Sure, the Bush administration has refused to treat the Bill of Rights like a suicide pact – or as a limit on his powers in any sense. Sure, he lied America into an orgy of mass slaughter and destruction, sacrificing into the fire of geopolitical power worship the lives of tens of thousands of people. But it’s not like he lied about sex.
If you recall, Bill Clinton – ooooh, the name just makes me cringe with disgust – deceived the American public about a certain other affair – one that didn’t happen in the hardly concrete world of American telecommunications, nor in an irrelevant land thousands of miles away, but rather right there in the Oval Office, the heart of the White House, the soul of the national’s capital, the very core of America and the Free World itself.
When Clinton smiled for the cameras, biting his lip in that oh-so-patronizing way, and swore to the American people that he did not have sexual relations with the intern – now that was treacherous, lecherous and vile. Do you even remember, America? Or are you so preoccupied by a couple of fibs Dubya told to protect us all from the terrorists and liberate Iraq, that you do not remember that other liar in the White House, who dared to lie about something truly icky and inappropriate?
And to do so under oath! And not just under a meaningless oath, like the one presidents take to uphold and defend the Constitution. No, no, no. Slick Willy lied to special prosecutors and federal investigators! What a bad example he set to the world and the world’s children.
There is precedence for presidents to lie about war, and Bush is the last in a proud line of them. James Polk did it to wage war with Mexico. Abraham Lincoln did it to invade the South. William McKinley did it to rationalize war with Spain. Woodrow Wilson did it to sneak America into the First World War. Franklin Roosevelt did it to open up a backdoor into the Second World War. Lyndon Johnson did it to get America into the game of keeping dominoes from falling. George Bush the Elder did it to launch Operation Desert Storm. And George W. Bush did it for war with Iraq. Since when has a little white lie for a splendid little war been a sin – much less an impeachable crime?
And to fault him for concealing secret surveillance? Give me a break, already! We are talking about the Commander in Chief here – hello!? He is supposed to have all kinds of powers he keeps hidden from the people, and he’s expected to keep an eye on everyone. FDR did it. LBJ and Nixon did it. The idea that the president should have to tell the American people that he’s conducting warrantless wiretaps of the citizenry smacks of Communism and anti-Americanism. Orwell is spinning 360 degrees in his grave, unable to keep up with the surreal Big Brother crusade against the president.
To reiterate, it’s not as though any of those wonderful wartime presidents lied about sex. When JFK or Andrew Jackson covered up sexual affairs – now there might have been a case for impeachment. But no American president has ever been brought down by war deception or sneakily spying on the people, and, for the sake of the future of this Home of the Brave, let us hope none ever is!
Now, some will defend Clinton, saying that he lied about war and civil liberties violations too. Sure, but the Republicans didn’t impeach him for that. They didn’t hassle him over his good lies to protect national security. They wouldn’t have dreamed of it. No, when he was bombing Serbia, the conservatives tried not to get too much in his way. Remember: Mass violence is sometimes necessary, which is why it usually gets an R rating. The Republicans only seriously challenged Clinton on the truly horrible deceptions regarding his X-rated behavior.
There is also a line of thought that Clinton didn’t really lie about sex because the activity he actually engaged in does not qualify. Yeah, right. And Bush didn’t lie about Saddam trying to get nuclear weapons materials from Africa! Hah-ha-hah-ha-hah-ha-hah! Oh, good one.
Seriously, though, we know that both Bush and Clinton lied. One of them is famous for having lied about sex in the Oval Office. The other’s famous lies concerned war and secret surveillance.
So the question for America is: Which is worse? |
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Sidney Blumenthal
Friday December 30, 2005
The Guardian
In his second inaugural address, George Bush four times summoned the image of fire - "a day of fire", "we have lit a fire", "fire in the minds of men", and "untamed fire". Over the course of the first year of his second term, all four of the ancient Greek elements have wreaked havoc: the fire of war, the air and water of Hurricane Katrina, the earth ravaged by whirlwinds raging from Iraq to Florida, from Louisiana to Washington. Through obsession or obliviousness, rigidity or laziness, Bush got himself singed, tossed about, engulfed, and nearly buried. He began the year proclaiming "a turning point" in Iraq. In every crisis he faced, he assumed that everything would turn his way, as it always had in the past. He ended the year declaring "victory" within reach.
The first shift in Bush's political fortunes came with his unprecedented intervention in the case of Terry Schiavo, a woman in a persistent vegetative state for 15 years, whose husband's attempt to have her feeding tube removed was upheld after 14 appeals in Florida courts, five federal law suits, and four refusals to hear the case by the supreme court.
Bush rushed to sign a bill transferring the case from state to federal courts. For weeks Republicans strutted and the Democrats cowered. Then, on March 21, the spell carried over from the election campaign was broken: an ABC News poll found that 63% backed the removal of Schiavo's feeding tube and 67% believed that politicians urging she be kept alive were demagogic and unprincipled.
By now Bush's plan to privatise social security was moribund. He languished over his long summer vacation besieged by Cindy Sheehan, whose son had died in Iraq. She camped by the road leading to the president's ranch, asking him to explain the "noble cause" for which her son had given his life. Bush refused.
After Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans on August 29, Bush's aides held a fraught debate about which one of them would have to tell the president he should cut short his vacation. Four days after the hurricane landed, Bush left his ranch, and on Air Force One watched a custom DVD of television news coverage assembled by his staff. He had not bothered to see any of it on his own.
He praised his feckless chief of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Michael Brown - "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job" - and nominated his former personal attorney and White House legal counsel Harriet Miers for the supreme court. Though friends offered testimony of her evangelical religiosity, conservatives did not trust her because she had once made gestures toward women's and civil rights, and Bush got her to withdraw.
Bush hoped to erase the year's infamies with the election in Iraq on December 15, his ultimate turning point. He delivered five major speeches crafted by his new adviser on the National Security Council, Peter Feaver, a Duke University political scientist and co-author of Choosing Your Battles, based on his public opinion research showing that "the public is defeat phobic, not casualty phobic". In one speech, Bush mentioned "victory" 15 times, against a background embossed with the slogan "Plan for Victory," and the White House issued a document entitled National Strategy for Victory in Iraq.
Since the election of the Shia slate that will hold power for four years, dedicated to an Islamic state allied with Iran, the president and his advisers have fallen eerily silent. As his annus horribilis draws to a close, Bush appears to have expended the turning points. Welcome to victory.
· Sidney Blumenthal, a former senior adviser to President Clinton, is the author of The Clinton Wars |
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Reuters
Thu Dec 29, 4:12 PM ET
MEXICO CITY - Mexico's foreign minister will meet with counterparts in Central America to seek their backing against a U.S. plan to build a high-tech border fence aimed at holding back illegal immigrants.
Mexicans are incensed by the proposal in the U.S. Congress to erect the fence with lights and security cameras along parts of the border and make illegal immigration a felony. The meeting with Central American leaders, whose nations also send many undocumented workers to the United States, is Mexico's latest move to block the U.S. proposal, which the government of President Vicente Fox has called "disgraceful" and a violation of human rights.
The office of Foreign Minister Luis Ernesto Derbez, who met in Washington this week with U.S. Deputy Secretary of State
Robert Zoellick to express opposition to the fence, said on Wednesday that the meeting with Central American leaders was being arranged although no date had been set.
The Mexican Congress, meanwhile, sent a letter to parliaments in Latin America, Spain and Portugal asking for condemnation of the U.S. border security proposal.
Fox's top foreign policy goal when he took office in 2000 was to win sweeping U.S. immigration reform in favor of millions of Mexicans working illegally in the United States.
U.S. President George W. Bush pledged to work with him but reforms were set back by the September 11 attacks. This month, the U.S. House of Representatives seemed to step further away from easing immigration law by passing the fence plan, which is now under consideration in the Senate. |
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MediaMatters
23 December 2005
Since our launch in May 2004, Media Matters for America has monitored, analyzed, and corrected conservative misinformation in the media, wherever and whenever we find it. As you may remember, last year our staff conducted an extensive review of all the misinformation we identified and corrected in the early days in order to name the first annual "Misinformer of the Year." We singled out one particularly egregious purveyor of falsehoods and awarded Bill O'Reilly the dubious title. O'Reilly graciously accepted the award on Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor.
This year, of all the news anchors, columnists, pundits, and reporters whose work we've critiqued and corrected, one man stands alone as a clear successor to the O'Reilly throne. We are pleased to announce broadcast journalist, former newspaper bureau chief, former presidential speechwriter, and best-selling author Chris Matthews has earned the title of 2005's "Misinformer of the Year." At times, it has even been difficult to tell the difference between 2005's Misinformer of the Year and his predecessor. For your reading pleasure, we've compiled some highlights of Matthews's most egregious false and misleading claims, as well as his glowing and gushing praise for President Bush.
Without further ado:
* Chris ♥ George, Part 1: Bush sometimes "glimmers" with "sunny nobility." On MSNBC's Hardball, during a discussion with Washington Times editorial page editor Tony Blankley of the effects on President Bush and his administration of the investigation into the leak of the name of CIA operative Valerie Plame, Matthews said "[S]ometimes it glimmers with this man, our president, that kind of sunny nobility." [Hardball, 10/24/05]
* Chris ♥ George, Part 2: "Everybody sort of likes the president, except for the real whack-jobs ..." Insulting the majority of Americans who hold an unfavorable opinion of President Bush, Matthews exclaimed on Hardball: "Everybody sort of likes the president, except for the real whack-jobs, maybe on the left," adding, "I mean, like him personally." [Hardball, 11/28/05]
* Chris ♥ George, Part 3: Matthews praised Bush speech as "brilliant" even before it was delivered. Before Bush had even delivered his November 30 speech at the U.S. Naval Academy, Matthews used variations of the word "brilliant" twice to describe it, while deriding Democratic critics of the Iraq war as "carpers and complainers." [MSNBC live coverage, 11/30/05]
* Chris ♥ George, Part 4: Bush "belongs on Mount Rushmore." Recounting his experience at a White House party, Matthews said that he "felt sensitive" during his interactions with the president, adding: "You get your picture taken with him. It's like Santa Claus, and he's always very generous and friendly." He continued: "I felt like I was too towel-snappy with him," explaining that Bush had noted his "red scarf" and remarked that he looked "preppy." During the same show, Matthews stated: "If [Bush's] gamble that he can create a democracy in the middle of the Arab world" is successful, "he belongs on Mount Rushmore." [Hardball, 12/16/05]
* Matthews on the filibuster debate: Democrats are "just sort of pouting and bitching." Matthews weighed in on the filibuster debate in May, declaring: "I think the Democrats started this fight. I think they did. ... You know, I think Democrats should win more elections. That will solve their problem." Days later, in discussing the Senate compromise agreement to avert the "nuclear option" to ban judicial filibusters, Matthews repeatedly espoused Republican talking points, claiming, among other things, that because of the recent bipartisan agreement aimed at averting the "nuclear option," Democrats can stop "pouting and bitching ... [and] actually participate in legislation now"; that Republicans might "get double-crossed or screwed by the Democrats"; and that the Republican position that every judicial nominee deserves an up-or-down vote "sounds great to me." [Hardball, 5/18/05]
* Matthews repeatedly smeared Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. On April 24, Matthews attacked Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) by referring to her as a "sort of a Madame Defarge of the left." On May 30, Matthews questioned Clinton's ability to lead, expressing surprise that retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey, an NBC military analyst, wasn't "chuckling a little bit" at the idea of Clinton giving orders to the troops as commander in chief. On July 11, Matthews said Sen. Clinton "looked more witchy" because she criticized the Bush administration's homeland security spending priorities on July 8, a day after the London bombings. On July 27, Matthews asked Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) if he thought Sen. Clinton is a "big-government socialist." [Hardball, 5/30/05; The Chris Matthews Show, 4/24/05; Hardball, 7/11/05; Hardball, 7/27/05]
* Matthews falsely claimed Democrats accused Alito of being "lenient on the mob." During MSNBC's coverage of the nomination of Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. to the Supreme Court, Matthews repeatedly misrepresented a document about Alito that was circulated by Democrats. Waving the document around on camera -- but not quoting directly from it -- Matthews falsely claimed that the document accused Alito of being "lenient on the mob" and made the baseless assertion that, by mentioning a case involving organized crime, Democrats were "go[ing] after [Alito's Italian] ethnicity." In fact, the document, available here, made no mention of Alito's ethnicity and simply noted that he lost a high-profile mob case -- not that he was "lenient" on anybody. [Hardball, 10/31/05]
* Matthews made false claim about Jan. 30 Iraqi election. In praising the Iraqi election in January, Matthews falsely claimed that no insurgent attacks had occurred at polling places on election day. In fact, attacks on Iraqi polling places were widely reported during the January 30 elections. [Hardball, 1/31/05]
* Matthews distorted poll data to claim Catholics are increasingly Republican. Matthews cherry-picked poll data to support his misleading claim that Catholics have voted increasingly Republican since 1960. In fact, exit poll data indicate that Catholics are actually a swing constituency: In every presidential election since 1980, a majority or plurality of Catholics have voted for the candidate who won the popular vote, including Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996 and Al Gore in 2000. [The Chris Matthews Show, 4/10/05]
* Matthews's panels consistently skew to the right. Matthews has hosted numerous MSNBC panels that contained far more conservative commentators than progressives. In 2005, the trend was especially prevalent during MSNBC's presidential inauguration coverage; and both before and after Bush's State of the Union address. While moderating discussion panels on Hardball, Matthews has repeatedly emphasized the liberal allegiances of progressive guests while failing to note that other guests on the same panels were Republican.
* Matthews distorted Murtha's Iraq proposal. Matthews repeatedly suggested that Rep. John P. Murtha's (D-PA) call for a redeployment of U.S. forces from Iraq was inconsistent with his record of being "known as the soldiers' friend" and "pro-Pentagon, pro-soldier." The suggestion echoed news reports that described Murtha as being "usually pro-military" -- implying that his position on redeployment is not -- and a "pro-military" Democrat, suggesting that the typical Democrat is not. [Hardball, 11/18/05]
* Matthews resurrected false claim that Saddam let Sunni fundamentalists "come in for ... training." Matthews falsely claimed that, prior to his overthrow by U.S.-led forces, Saddam Hussein allowed Islamic terrorists to train for chemical warfare in northern Iraq. In fact, as the Los Angeles Times noted on June 15, 2003, the training camp, operated by Kurdish Islamic fundamentalist group Ansar al-Islam, "was in an autonomous Kurdish region not ruled by Hussein." [Hardball, 11/9/05]
* Matthews falsely insisted that the ongoing insurgency in Iraq was unexpected. Ignoring evidence that the Bush administration received repeated prewar warnings of the potential for a sustained insurgency in Iraq, Matthews insisted that the continuing bloodshed had not been anticipated. Matthews suggested that the "enduring" nature of the Iraqi insurgency was a surprise and told viewers that he didn't "know many people who expected it to still be going on this long." However, as reported by USA Today, "Military and civilian intelligence agencies repeatedly warned prior to the invasion that Iraqi insurgent forces were preparing to fight and that their ranks would grow as other Iraqis came to resent the U.S. occupation and organize guerrilla attacks." [The Chris Matthews Show, 9/25/05]
* Matthews falsely attacked Wilson over Niger trip's genesis. Matthews falsely accused former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV of claiming during his July 6 Meet the Press appearance and in his July 6 New York Times op-ed that Vice President Dick Cheney had sent him on his February 2002 trip to investigate whether Iraq had tried to acquire uranium from Niger. In fact, Wilson never made such a claim in either his Times op-ed or his appearance on Meet the Press. Wilson wrote in his Times op-ed that CIA officials, not the vice president, asked him to go to Niger; discussing his op-ed on Meet the Press, Wilson said that the "the question [of Iraq seeking uranium from Niger] was asked of the CIA by the office of the vice president." [The Chris Matthews Show, 7/24/05]
* Matthews mischaracterized Democratic efforts to complete intel probe as "disingenuous," "using crocodile tears." Matthews baselessly assigned motives to both the Democrats' support for authorizing the president to take the country to war in October 2002 and their recent push to complete "phase two" of the Senate Intelligence Committee's probe into the prewar intelligence on Iraq. Matthews characterized Democrats' efforts to fully examine the Bush administration's handling of the intelligence as "disingenuous," "using crocodile tears," and "trying to climb down off the war." Matthews ignored Democrats' argument that the judgments provided to Congress on the Iraqi threat prior to the vote were later found to have been false or exaggerated. [Hardball, 11/1/05]
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by Missy Comley Beattie
30 December 2005
When will Americans awaken from their sleepwalk through the criminal presidency of George W. Bush? The events of 9/11 were terrifying and made us all feel vulnerable, but this tragedy doesn't justify the president's assumption of absolute power.
Soon after September 11, I had a conversation with someone who said, "I don't care if there are terrorist attacks as long as they aren't on American soil." I was appalled.
It's unfortunate that some Americans place a higher value on American life than on any other. Certainly, people in many countries have felt the insecurity for years that struck us that day.
I heard a woman on television say, "Why would anyone want to hurt us? We do so much good all over the world."
There's the problem. We have a citizenry with little knowledge of the atrocities we've committed and continue to inflict. Many believe that our fingerprints all over the globe are gentle touches to help the needy when, in reality, most of our involvement is brutal and usually motivated by greed.
On 9/11, I e-mailed a friend, lamenting the ramifications of our duplicitous actions.
She was furious. Her reply was that she couldn't get out of her mind that beautiful little girl on the plane headed for Disneyland and how afraid the child and her mother must have been when the hijackers took control.
I agreed with her. The image of all the adults and children who died when the planes crashed is almost too much to bear. And so is thinking of those who jumped from the towers--making a choice between two horrendous paths to death.
But I had to remind my friend that our sanctions in Iraq killed many children whose lives were just as worthwhile as our own. In fact, those sanctions were weapons of mass destruction. She became angry and so did I, and our relationship was broken for awhile.
I haven't spoken with her since it was revealed that George W. has crowned himself public enemy number one to our civil liberties. I wonder if she'd support the dictator's invasion of our privacy. The Bush Clinic is open seven days a week for colonoscopies that probe our lives. And don't forget that Dr. Condi Rice's Club Med Rendition Cruise which offers complete physicals is an efficient use of outsourcing. Seems many people applaud these tactics because Bush insists that they are the means by which he keeps us safe.
It must be emphasized that if safety of the American people is the president's greatest priority, why has he failed to take seriously the findings of the 9/11 Commission? And why isn't the mainstream media asking this question?
Why isn't this being demanded by everyone? When polls indicate that many Americans believe the war in Iraq has made us less safe, why do we see this on the crawl, submerged beneath the faces of those who take themselves seriously as transmitters of breaking news? Why is so little of this reported by anchors? Because they are obsessing on Scott Peterson's hiring new attorneys. Frankly, I don't give a rat's rump about Scott. I'm more concerned about the lies of this administration and the rats who are spying on us, eating away at our rights with their sharp little teeth. And I'm wondering why reputable newspapers who knew about the government's activities waited so long to tell the public.
Is it because they're afraid too? That's exactly what Bush demands. As long as he repeatedly tells us that terrorists want to kill us, he destroys our confidence in holding him accountable. We are a battered electorate suffering from the Stockholm Syndrome. George has turned us into loyal defenders of his policies, prisoners of war who've bonded with the victimizer.
Those of us strong enough to resist the hazing must demand that it stop.
And, then, we'll have to conduct a huge intervention. Bring in the deprogrammers, please. Our Constitution is in peril.
Missy Beattie lives in New York City. She's written for National Public Radio and Nashville Life Magazine. An outspoken critic of the Bush Administration and the war in Iraq, she has participated in many peace marches, including the Cindy Sheehan rally in DC. She completed a novel last year, but since the death of her nephew, Marine Lance Cpl. Chase J. Comley, in Iraq on August 6,'05, she has been writing political articles. |
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Translated By Carly Gatzert
December 24, 2005
Reacting with derision to news that Washington has new plans for 'political transition' in Cuba, Fidel Castro Called Condoleezza Rice a 'madwoman' and President Bush 'foolish,' 'absolutely crazy,' and 'disgraceful.' According to this article from Mexico's La Chronica De Hoy, the Cuban dictator dubbed the plan, 'laughable' and 'a joke.' In a mocking tone demonstrating irritation, Cuban President Fidel Castro dubbed U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice a "madwoman" and referred to Bush Administration plans for a peaceful political transition on the Caribbean island [Cuba] as a "joke."
"Can there be anything more laughable than assigning this madwoman [Rice] to talk of transition now? … They are absolutely crazy. They are disgraceful," said Castro during a session of the National Assembly. On December 20, 2005, following a meeting of top Washington officials of the U.S. Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba, Rice deemed it necessary to accelerate the transition in Cuba and announced that a plan to meet this objective would be presented to President Bush in May.
"They want to speed up the transition. One has to laugh when confronted with this Commission, this gang of shit-eaters who are undeserving of the world's respect," said Castro, scoffing in reference to the U.S. government's agenda.
INVINCIBLE
Castro guaranteed that his country has not "even slightly deferred [to the U.S.]" and that the revolution that has reigned in Cuba since 1959 is "stronger" and more "invincible" than ever, as he stressed the "impeccable conduct of the revolution."
"These idiots who are now discussing transition believe in crime and the elimination of individuals [Castro], while we believe in the endurance of convictions," he added. The Cuban President stated that, "attacking Cuba is like attacking the safe haven for universal ethics," and he assured that Cubans are "defeating the dishonesty." Castro rejected U.S. government plans to establish a political transition in Cuba and said that instead, it would be in the United States where this would occur.
"As we are confronted with this [proposal,] we should consider the possibility of forming the Cuban Commission for Transition in the U.S., because the only transition that will occur in Cuba is one toward communism," emphasized the Cuban leader, who considers U.S. President Bush to be "absolutely crazy" and "disgraceful."
RESPONSE
For her part, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice declared yesterday in Washington at the final 2005 meeting of the U.S. Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba, that "after 46 years of cruel dictatorship, now is the time for change in Cuba." Furthermore, she urged the commission to seek more ways "to help Cubans hasten the day when they will be free from the oppression" that they have been living with for four decades.
BASEBALL
The Cuban leader also made reference to the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), and the agency's opposition to Cuban participation in the World Baseball Classic to take place in Puerto Rico next March.
"Now, with a baseball, almost the entire world has announced that they will withdraw if [the U.S. attempts to] exclude Cuba from this league. The U.S. has created another major problem for themselves in this case of political-athletics," Castro said.
Without changing his tone, Fidel Castro said firmly that George W. Bush "is very foolish," and he accused the U.S. President of not knowing "who Cuban baseball players are" and of being unaware that the Cuban team is the Olympic and World Champion in baseball.
Castro, with ever-increasing vigor against the U.S. government, said that [Bush] doesn't know how to govern his country, that he doesn't read, that he goes to bed late and "walks like a zombie," and that his inability to handle the situation when America confronted Hurricane Katrina shows the fallacy of his presence in the office of President.
HAVANA: 'MILITARILY INDESTRUCTABLE'
Yesterday, the Latin American News Agency echoed Castro's declaration before the National Assembly of People's Power, that the White House is making a mistake if it intends to invade or destroy Cuba, because the country [Cuba] is militarily indestructible.
In reference to recent announcements by top Washington officials regarding their new measures against Cuba, Castro responded that, "They are quite mistaken … if they believe that they can invade Cuba. The aggressors will end up with a mass burial," he advised.
Castro questioned what the Bush Administration could possibly do, given the reality that 182 countries of the United Nations voted to end the U.S. blockade against Cuba, with only four countries yielding to U.S. influence.
GUANTANAMO
Broaching the subject of the Guantanamo prison, where U.S. soldiers have been accused of mistreating and torturing prisoners, and emphasizing the increase in nations interested in accepting Cuban medical assistance, Castro stated "Everyone can see that we don't mistreat anyone. Rather, we take care of the needy."
Castro also rehashed his criticism of Washington for its ties to organizations and individuals that practice terrorism against Cuba. The criticism from Havana about these connections had the desired effect and forced Washington to act against these criminals, as in the arrest in Miami of prominent terrorist Santiago Alvarez Fernandez-Magrina. Castro also pointed out that the Bush Administration has so far failed to account for how Alvarez' accomplice and fellow terrorist Luis Posada Carriles, who the Venezuelan government demands be turned over, entered U.S. territory. |
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30 Dec 2005
Eighty-four suspects in the US-led 'war on terror' being held at prison in the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba are currently on a hunger strike, US military officials said.
The figure includes 46 detainees "that have refused nine consecutive meals since December 25," read a statement from the US military's Joint Task Force Guantanamo.
"The number of detainees engaged in the current fast, which began on August 8, 2005, routinely fluctuates," said the military. The number peaked in September, when 131 inmates were on a strike, according to news reports.
"Since then, increases in the number of fasters have coincided with the anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and the scheduled arrival of defense attorneys representing certain detainees."
Hunger striking "is consistent with Al-Qaeda training and reflects detainee attempts to elicit media attention," and to bring pressure on the US government "to release them," the statement emphasized.
Guantanamo holds about 500 detainees, most of whom were captured in Afghanistan in the fall of 2001.
Since opening in January 2002, the prison has been the focus of controversy over the indefinite detention of suspects without charges or legal representation, as well as accusations of torture and detainee mistreatment.
Hunger strikers "are closely monitored by medical professionals, receive excellent medical care, and when required, the appropriate amount of daily nutrition and hydration through enteral feeding," the statement read. |
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by Chris Martin
9 April, 2005
Mahatma Gandhi is probably the most famous proponent of political fasting.
Today, thousands of people around the world will voluntarily refrain from eating to show solidarity with the many millions who won't eat today because they have no choice. This is a highly appropriate way of demonstrating against the gross inequality that means while some sections of global society throw millions of tons food away every year, millions of others will die of starvation. As part of Christian Aid's Global week of Action, we take a look at a non violent protest format with a long tradition. Fasting is the act of total abstinence from food for a limited period of time. Traditionally the fast was undertaken for moral or religious reasons. But over time, fasting has been become better known for its secular application as a political act in the form of hunger strikes.
The religious fast
The practice of fasting as a spiritual devotion has its origins in the earliest recorded religions. It was a fundamental tenant of Jainism. The last Jina, Vardhamana, achieved enlightenment after a stomach rumbling 13 years of depravation, teaching that believers should fast to achieve passionless detachment from life, culminating ultimately in their death by voluntary starvation. This may explain why Jainism has only 4 million followers left in the world.
While few modern religions share Jainism's extreme dedication, nearly all of them promote or sanction fasting in some form. Jesus Christ spent forty looooong days and nights fasting in the desert in the preparation for his formal ministry. During his temptation, Satan offered to turn stones into bread. A more inspiring menu might have changed the history of Christianity.
The political fast
Mahatma Gandhi is probably the most famous proponent of political fasting. He starved himself to pressure his Hindu and Moslem followers to observe his principles of non-violence during India's struggle for freedom. But political hunger strikes were a far from new phenomenon.
The imprisoned Suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst found her attempts to fast for women's rights repeatedly frustrated when Parliament passed the Cat and Mouse Act. The Suffragettes were let out of jail, only to be rearrested when their fasts had been broken. Pankhurst, a slight, grey haired woman, used these periods of freedom from starvation effectively, burning down Ayr racecourse and breaking the windows of the Prime Minister's house.
Irish fasters
Her dedication was eclipsed by Terence MacSwiney. The former mayor of Cork was imprisoned for carrying secret IRA codes. He joined nine others in the longest hunger strike in recorded history, dying in Brixton on the 74th day of the fast on October 25th, 1920. Just one year later Irish independence was achieved.
Over 60 years later, The Irish Conflict claimed another life by starvation when IRA activist Bobby Sands died on May 5th 1981. The incident twice caused outrage. First with the death of Sands and then when Fox News in the USA attempted a crude joke on television.
'Bobby Sands died after sixty-six days on a hunger strike in prison in Belfast,' said anchorman Steve Shepherd. 'The moral of the story: eat more often.'
A massive online petition by outraged Irish-Americans forced Fox to apologise.
The obvious physical toll of fasting was demonstrated by comedian Dick Gregory, while engaged in a fast against the Vietnam War. He called for a joint boycott of all barbers, only to find himself unable to participate when his hair stopped growing as a result of not eating.
Modern fasting
In primal religions fasting prepared followers for a ceremonial observance. Eastern religions used it to gain mystical insight. Christianity associated fasting with repentance for sin. Nowadays , the self sacrifice of fasting is used to pressure governments non violently. In the present day, hunger strike has become a powerful tool for refugees seeking political asylum. This crossover between the religious and political fast can be seen in such actions such as the 40 Hour Famine, an event run annually by the Christian relief organisation, World Vision Australia, to raise awareness of world hunger. |
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Harvey Wasserman
December 28, 2005
The medieval town in which Arnold Schwarzenegger grew up has rightly rejected his medieval murder of Stanley "Tookie" Williams.
The Terminator's nickname has taken on a twisted new dimension. His Austrian home town is horrified, along with sane human beings throughout the rest of the world. Above all, this was a fascist killing. For the full horror of what Schwarzenegger has done in American terms, we must hearken back to the witch trials of the 1600s.
In Salem and elsewhere in New England, Puritan fanatics took the loud hysteria of scheming adolescents as "evidence" of deviltry. In 1692-3 a score of citizens---nearly all of them women---were "convicted" of witchcraft.
The charges were sick and absurd. Many of the accused were esteemed grandmothers. Most were independent gardeners, farmers, craftspeople or in business for themselves. In many cases, family feuds or the coveting of land and property were at the core of the accusations.
Though written as an attack on 1950s McCarthyism, Arthur Miller's "Crucible" and the brilliant movie most recently made of it (starring his son-in-law, Daniel Day-Lewis) stand as intensely powerful warnings against the kind of lethal hysteria that has gripped the America of George W. Bush and the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Williams was a founder of the notorious Crips gang who reformed and worked ceaselessly to end violence. He renounced his past, wrote a children's book and became a model citizen. Living a prison life in productive dignity, he came to embody precisely the kind of quiet integrity so distinctly lacking in those who put him to death.
In their Puritan eyes, Williams' ultimate crime was not the murders he may or may not have committed---it was his refusal to confess to them.
Throughout his years in prison, Williams steadfastly insisted on his innocence. It was this insistence that Schwarzenegger cited as the ultimate reason for having him killed. His lack of "repentance" said the governor, was what justified his execution.
It was a purely medieval decision. The Puritans are Schwarzenegger's spiritual predecessors in this. They gleefully slaughtered Quakers, Indians, Baptists and all others who refused to toe the God Squad line. Pioneers in frontier totalitarianism, the Puritans always demanded one thing: a confession. If you admitted to being a witch, they might not kill you. If you held fast to your convictions, they certainly would. Break you or kill you, take your pick.
In some cases their "trials" made Kafka seem sane. Accused witches were bound and thrown into lakes or rivers or tubs of water. If they sank, it meant they were embraced by the Lord, and thus innocent (but dead). If they floated, they were rejected by the Divine, and thus guilty---and executed.
That's about the level of Schwarzenegger's reasoning in his ritual murder of Tookie Williams. The Puritans ruled New England for nearly a century with an iron hand that punished non-conformity and political dissent with torture and death. Like the Bush-Rove GOP, they based it all on God and the Bible. Like McCarthy and Schwarzenegger, they demanded confession and a broken spirit as the price of physical survival.
A century after the Salem killings, the newly independent United States adopted a Bill of Rights whose very first demand was to separate church and state. "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion," reads the opening line of the First Amendment, an iron rule of new American life now being obliterated by the Bush-Rove GOP.
The irony becomes even deeper with the bitter rejection of Schwarzenegger's hypocrisy by his Austrian hometown of Graz. Arnold has danced around a personal past heavily tainted with overt or covert Nazism. But Graz was undeniably in the fascist grip during World War 2.
Now Graz has set its sights in direct opposition, with official revulsion against a death penalty it (and most of the rest of the world) considers barbaric.
Five years ago the Graz City Council unanimously voted to deem itself Europe's premier "city of human rights." For many, Williams had become precisely the kind of citizen with whom Graz wanted to associate.
In protest against Schwarzenegger's refusal to commute Williams'sentence to life in prison, a majority of the city council accepted a petition to rename the local 15,000-seat stadium which was named after Schwarzenegger in 1997. Before the petition could be formally approved, Schwarzenegger had his name removed.
"It was a clever step," said one council member.
There have since been proposals to rename the stadium after the Crips, or after Hakoah, a Jewish sports club banned by Hitler after he annexed Austria in 1938.
But Schwarzenegger proclaims no remorse for Williams's death. The ritual slaughter in California, Texas and Iraq continue as the rest of the world recoils in horror.
Public revulsion against the bloody excesses of the Salem witch trials ultimately sped the downfall of a Puritan reign of terror. Graz has added hope that Schwarzenegger's ghastly, medieval murder of Tookie Williams will now find a similar meaning.
HARVEY WASSERMAN'S HISTORY OF THE US is available at www.harveywasserman.com, as is HOW THE GOP STOLE AMERICA'S 2004 ELECTION & IS RIGGING 2008, written with Bob Fitrakis. |
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By MARCI HAMILTON
29 Dec 2005
FindLaw.com
Over this past year, the intersection of law and religion (and politics) took center stage in the United States. In this column, I've provided what I think are the top ten "highlights," in no particular order.
Interestingly, one thing the list shows is that despite the proven ability of conservative Christians to set the public agenda for debate, they have not been terribly successful in ultimately altering the law to fit their world view. Highlight Number One: The movement to introduce "intelligent design" into the public school science curriculum failed when a federal judge in Dover, Pennsylvania, ruled that it was not science, but merely a re-introduction of creationism -- and that it was, therefore, a straightforward violation of the Establishment Clause.
The opinion, by a conservative Bush appointee, is well-reasoned and sound: Among other points, it chastised the school board for its transparent move to get Christian teachings into the public school curriculum. (Meanwhile, on the political side, the pro-intelligent-design members of the relevant school board also lost their jobs in the November elections, apparently on this very topic.)
Highlight Number Two: The United States Supreme Court ruled, in McCreary County v. ACLU, that when the Ten Commandments are posted in a courthouse with an accompanying pro-Christian resolution, the posting constitutes an official endorsement of religion and is therefore unconstitutional.
Yet at the same time, in Van Orden v. Perry, the Court held that the display of a Ten Commandments monument at a state capitol - when the monument had been donated by a philanthropic group, and when there was no overt government endorsement of religion - was constitutional. Surprisingly, the swing vote was Justice Breyer, not Justice O'Connor.
Highlight Number Three: In Cutter v. Wilkinson, the Supreme Court upheld the institutionalized persons provisions of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA), which subject prison regulations to strict scrutiny if there is a substantial burden on a prisoner's religious exercise. This case would have been a blockbuster in the Establishment Clause arena, because the accommodation is blind in the sense that it covers scores of regulations never even contemplated by Congress. But the decision, in the end, meant very little, because it mandated, on the basis of legislative history, that Congress intended the courts to defer to prison authorities' expertise and asserted interests. The Court's interpretation meant that RLUIPA mandated a standard of review with considerably less bite than strict scrutiny in the constitutional context, as I discussed in a prior column, and, the accommodation was de minimis.
Highlight Number Four: Judge Williams, the federal bankruptcy judge in Spokane, Washington, who is presiding over the Spokane Diocese's bankruptcy, issued a landmark opinion in which she held that the First Amendment did not permit the Diocese to determine property ownership solely according to canon law. Instead, she ruled, religious entities filing for federal bankruptcy, like all others, must have the issue of property ownership determined by neutral, generally applicable property laws. The question arose because the Diocese was attempting to reduce the size of the estate available to clergy abuse victims.
Highlight Number Five: The Supreme Court heard oral argument in the O Centro case, involving the question whether a South American-based religious group, the UDV for short, could use the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) to avoid the federal Controlled Substances Act. The UDV wanted to follow its practice of using an illegal drug, DMT, in their religious ceremonies, without fear of prosecution. As I discussed in another column, the religious group's arguments do not seem as strong as those on the other side.
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By LOLITA C. BALDOR
Associated Press
Thu Dec 29, 3:52 AM ET
WASHINGTON - Heading a military service isn't quite the position of power it used to be. In a Bush administration revision of plans for Pentagon succession in a doomsday scenario, three of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's most loyal advisers moved ahead of the secretaries of the Army, Navy and Air Force.
A little-noticed holiday week executive order from President Bush moved the Pentagon's intelligence chief to the No. 3 spot in the succession hierarchy behind Rumsfeld. The second spot would be the deputy secretary of defense, but that position currently is vacant. The Army secretary, which long held the No. 3 spot, was dropped to sixth. The changes, announced last week, are the second in six months and reflect the administration's new emphasis on intelligence gathering versus combat in 21st century war fighting.
Technically, the line of succession is assigned to specific positions, rather than the current individuals holding those jobs.
But in its current incarnation, the doomsday plan moves to near the top three undersecretaries who are Rumsfeld loyalists and who previously worked for Vice President
Dick Cheney when he was defense secretary.
The changes were recommended, said Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman, because the three undersecretaries have "a broad knowledge and perspective of overall Defense Department operations." The service leaders are more focused on training, equipping and leading a particular military service, said Whitman.
Thomas Donnelly, a defense expert with the American Enterprise Institute, said the changes make it easier for the administration to assert political control and could lead to more narrow-minded decisions.
"It continues to devalue the services as institutions," said Donnelly, saying it will centralize power and shift it away from the services, where there is generally more military expertise.
Under the new plan, Rumsfeld ally Stephen Cambone, the undersecretary for intelligence, moved up to the third spot. Former Ambassador Eric Edelman, the policy undersecretary, and Kenneth Krieg, the undersecretary for acquisition, technology and logistics, hold the fourth and fifth positions.
The first to succeed Rumsfeld remains the deputy secretary, a position currently vacant because the Senate has not confirmed Bush's nominee — current Navy Secretary Gordon England.
Senators have already approved Donald Winter to be England's replacement as Navy chief, and it is expected that Bush will eventually move England into the No. 2 Pentagon job without congressional approval through a recess appointment.
The new succession order bumps the Navy secretary to near the bottom of the line of succession — eighth behind the deputy, the three Pentagon undersecretaries and the Army and Air Force secretaries.
The Army secretary historically has been third in line, right behind the deputy secretary.
Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, intelligence gathering has taken center stage. Earlier this year, Bush named former ambassador John Negroponte as the country's first director of national intelligence, charged with overseeing the government's 15 highly competitive spy agencies.
In spring 2003, Rumsfeld installed Cambone — one of his closest aides — in the new job of intelligence undersecretary.
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December 30, 2005
UK Guardian
WASHINGTON (AP) - Donald Winter can be sworn in as the new Secretary of the Navy next week now that his predecessor has given up the post.
Navy Secretary Gordon England - who has also been serving as the acting deputy defense secretary - relinquished his Navy post Thursday, clearing the way for Winter.
Congressional roadblocks have prevented Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld from filling key leadership positions in his department for months. But legal maneuvering by the White House, which formally designated acting deputy England as Rumsfeld's second in command last week, allowed England to relinquish the Navy job.
Two senators have blocked England's confirmation as deputy defense secretary, the Pentagon's second-highest position, creating a logjam in the department's hierarchy.
But senators indicated last month that Bush will bypass the Senate and install England as deputy secretary within the next few months using what is known as a recess appointment. Last week Bush issued an order outlining a new Defense Department line of succession, if something happens to the secretary. He also ordered the acting defense deputy to be Rumsfeld's immediate successor.
Meanwhile, Winter, the former corporate vice president of Northrop Grumman Mission Systems, has been in an unusual limbo. He was confirmed as Navy secretary by the Senate last month, but not sworn in.
Now that England has stepped down, that ceremony will take place next Tuesday.
Sen. John Warner, R-Va., who has urged Bush to make recess appointments to fill wartime vacancies at the Pentagon, assured the Senate that this was a unique situation, and would not set a precedent for other similar shuffles. |
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30 Dec 2005
AFP
Kiev will study the US decision to extradite convicted ex-Nazi death camp guard John Demjanjuk to Ukraine before deciding whether to let him return, a process which could take years, Ukrainian officials told AFP Thursday.
"According to general practice" and "Ukrainian law, the US court decision must be examined by competent Ukrainian officials, such as the prosecutor general," the foreign ministry's spokesman Vasyl Filipchuk told AFP.
Demjanjuk, 85, a convicted former Nazi concentration camp guard whose legal battles with the American and Israeli governments have dragged on for 28 years, was ordered on Wednesday to be deported to his native Ukraine.
However, a source in the Ukrainian ministry told AFP that as Demjanjuk had no Ukrainian citizenship, "this is a 100-percent reason to refuse accepting him." According to this source, principal conclusions would be drawn by Ukrainian security services, who would then transmit them to the prosecutor general.
"If in those two cases the conclusion is positive, a political decision would have to be made" as to whether to accept or refuse his extradition, the source said, adding that the procedure could take "years".
Officially, Ukraine had so far received no official request from the United States on this issue, Filipchuk said, adding that "we have only media reports."
If Ukraine refuses the extradition, Demjanjuk would be deported to Germany or Poland.
Demjanjuk's legal odyssey began in 1977 when the US Justice Department first accused him of being a Ukrainian prison camp guard nicknamed Ivan the Terrible, who tortured Jewish inmates and operated gas chambers at three camps that killed 900,000 people.
A federal judge stripped Demjanjuk of his US citizenship in 1981 for lying about his Nazi past when he first entered the United States in 1952. The Justice Department then began proceedings to deport him to Ukraine.
Israel requested Demjanjuk's extradition in 1983 to face war crime charges. He was found guilty and sentenced to death. The conviction was overturned in 1993 when the Israeli Supreme Court heard testimony from former death camp guards and laborers that another man was actually Ivan the Terrible.
Demjanjuk, a retired autoworker, returned to his home in a Cleveland suburb and restored his citizenship in 1998.
Judge Michael Creppy stripped Demjanjuk of his citizenship for a second time last June and the Justice Department applied to have him deported.
Demanjanjuk applied for asylum and argued he would likely be tortured if he was deported to his native Ukraine. |
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By Reuters
December 28, 2005, 1:46 PM PST
A Chinese state-owned energy firm plans to invest at least $2.48 billion over the next five years in biomass, garbage treatment and other alternative energy projects, state media said on Wednesday.
China Energy Conservation Investment Corp. made the plans to take advantage of a new law promoting renewable energy, which sets tariffs in favor of non-fossil energy such as wind, water and solar power and is due to take effect in January. "We see tremendous business opportunities from the new law," the China Daily quoted Wang Yi, a senior company official, as saying.
Coal provides some 70 percent of electricity in China, the world's second-largest energy consumer and producer of greenhouse gases.
The state-owned company has started building two wind farms and a new facility that would harness steam generated from garbage and sewage treatment to produce power, the newspaper said.
The firm had budgeted about $1.1 billion to build the garbage-powered plant underway in eastern China and 10 others like it in other parts of the country over the next five years, Wang said.
Another $1.1 billion would go toward constructing up to 30 biomass energy projects in major agricultural provinces, which use organic or woody material such as straw to make fuel or generate power.
China has set a goal of getting 15 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2020, though it has acknowledged that coal will remain its primary source of electricity for decades to come. |
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AFP
Thursday December 29, 4:34 PM
The Norwegian-led truce monitoring mission has demanded an immediate end to the latest wave of bloodshed in Sri Lanka and warned that war "may not be far away". The Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) said they themselves were under threat and were unable to operate in an insecure environment.
"This spiral of violence is not conducive to a badly needed high-level meeting between the parties," SLMM chief Hagrup Haukland said in a statement. "If the trend of violence is allowed to continue, war may not be far away."
At least 83 people have been killed this month alone in violence linked to the island's long running Tamil separatist conflict despite a Norwegian-arranged truce that has been in place since February 23, 2002.
Haukland said the "volatile situation" had made the mission's own monitoring work difficult and they were also threatened by unidentified elements. "The SLMM cannot operate in an insecure environment," he said.
He said only a dialogue between the Colombo government and the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) could bring peace to Sri Lanka where more than 60,000 people have been killed in three decades of violence.
His remarks came a day after Sri Lanka's peace broker Norway urged Colombo and Tamil Tiger rebels to immediately resume talks to save their faltering truce.
Norway's International Development Minister Erik Solheim said in a statement that Oslo was "deeply concerned" about the latest turn of events.
"The high level of violence and the tragic loss of life are putting the ceasefire agreement at risk and will make it very difficult to secure further progress in the peace process," Solheim said.
Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse has been in neighbouring India since Tuesday to hold talks with Indian leaders in a bid to secure New Delhi's increased involvement in the island's troubled peace process. |
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By Nigel Bunyan
30 Dec 2005
A drunken holidaymaker has been dumped on a desert island after launching a foul-mouthed tirade at the crew of a passenger jet.
The unwilling Robinson Crusoe will only be able to leave Porto Santo, a tiny patch of land off the North African coast, if he books a two-and-a-half hour ferry trip to Madeira. He will then have to book a flight to his intended destination, Tenerife, or return to Britain. Monarch Airlines has yet to decide whether to sue him for the cost of the unscheduled diversion, estimated at "many thousands of pounds".
The unnamed passenger's difficulties began on Tuesday evening at 35,000 ft when he began abusing the cabin crew of flight ZB558 from Manchester. He refused to calm down and then turned his attention to the other 210 passengers.
Eventually the pilot decided that he posed a risk to safety and had to be removed.
Rather than continue for a further 45 minutes to Tenerife he diverted his Airbus A321 to Porto Santo. Within moments of the plane touching down the passenger was escorted to the terminal. Last night he remained a castaway on the Portuguese-controlled island. His New Year home is a mere 10 miles long by three miles wide with a population of 4,000. There is little entertainment apart from walking on the sand dunes.
Porto Santo's only cultural claim to fame is to have been the place where Christopher Columbus met his wife, the then governor's daughter.
Jo Robertson, of Monarch, refused to name the drunken passenger. She said that he was asked to sign a form admitting his disruptive behaviour, but had refused.
Despite enduring a four-hour delay, other passengers were "fully supportive" of the decision to dump the man.
Last night it was unclear either how or when he would return to Britain.
"He certainly won't be flying back with us," said Miss Robertson. |
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By JASON STRAZIUSO
Associated Press Writer
Dec 29 6:29 PM US/Eastern
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Maybe it was the time the taxi dumped him at the Iraq-Kuwait border, leaving him alone in the middle of the desert. Or when he drew a crowd at a Baghdad food stand after using an Arabic phrase book to order. Or the moment a Kuwaiti cab driver almost punched him in the face when he balked at the $100 fare. But at some point, Farris Hassan, a 16-year-old from Florida, realized that traveling to Iraq by himself was not the safest thing he could have done with his Christmas vacation.
And he didn't even tell his parents. Hassan's dangerous adventure winds down with the 101st Airborne delivering the Fort Lauderdale teen to the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, which had been on the lookout for him and promises to see him back to the United States this weekend.
It begins with a high school class on "immersion journalism" and one overly eager - or naively idealistic - student who's lucky to be alive after going way beyond what any teacher would ask.
As a junior this year at a Pine Crest School, a prep academy of about 700 students in Fort Lauderdale, Hassan studied writers like John McPhee in the book "The New Journalism," an introduction to immersion journalism - a writer who lives the life of his subject in order to better understand it.
Diving headfirst into an assignment, Hassan, whose parents were born in Iraq but have lived in the United States for about 35 years, hung out at a local mosque. The teen, who says he has no religious affiliation, added that he even spent an entire night until 6 a.m. talking politics with a group of Muslim men, a level of "immersion" his teacher characterized as dangerous and irresponsible.
The next trimester his class was assigned to choose an international topic and write editorials about it, Hassan said. He chose the Iraq war and decided to practice immersion journalism there, too, though he knows his school in no way endorses his travels.
"I thought I'd go the extra mile for that, or rather, a few thousand miles," he told The Associated Press.
Using money his parents had given him at one point, he bought a $900 plane ticket and took off from school a week before Christmas vacation started, skipping classes and leaving the country on Dec. 11.
His goal: Baghdad. Those privy to his plans: two high school buddies.
Given his heritage, Hassan could almost pass as Iraqi. His father's background helped him secure an entry visa, and native Arabs would see in his face Iraqi features and a familiar skin tone. His wispy beard was meant to help him blend in.
But underneath that Mideast veneer was full-blooded American teen, a born-and-bred Floridian sporting white Nike tennis shoes and trendy jeans. And as soon as the lanky, 6-foot teenager opened his mouth - he speaks no Arabic - his true nationality would have betrayed him.
Traveling on his own in a land where insurgents and jihadists have kidnapped more than 400 foreigners, killing at least 39 of them, Hassan walked straight into a death zone. On Monday, his first full day in Iraq, six vehicle bombs exploded in Baghdad, killing five people and wounding more than 40.
The State Department strongly advises U.S. citizens against traveling to Iraq, saying it "remains very dangerous." Forty American citizens have been kidnapped since the war started in March 2003, of which 10 have been killed, a U.S. official said. About 15 remain missing.
"Travel warnings are issued for countries that are considered especially dangerous for Americans, and one of the strongest warnings covers travel to Iraq," said Elizabeth Colton, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.
Colton said the embassy's consular section can provide only limited help to Americans in Iraq, though once officials learn of a potentially dangerous situation every effort is made to assist.
Inside the safety of Baghdad's Green Zone, an Embassy official from the Hostage Working Group talked to Hassan about how risky travel is in Iraq.
"This place is incredibly dangerous to individual private American citizens, especially minors, and all of us, especially the military, went to extraordinary lengths to ensure this youth's safety, even if he doesn't acknowledge it or even understand it," a U.S. official who wasn't authorized to speak to the media said on condition of anonymity.
Hassan's extra-mile attitude took him east through eight time zones, from Fort Lauderdale to Kuwait City. His plan was to take a taxi across the border and ultimately to Baghdad - an unconventional, expensive and utterly dangerous route.
It was in Kuwait City that he first called his parents to tell them of his plans - and that he was now in the Middle East.
His mother, Shatha Atiya, a psychologist, said she was "shocked and terrified." She had told him she would take him to Iraq, but only after the country stabilizes.
"He thinks he can be an ambassador for democracy around the world. It's admirable but also agony for a parent," Atiya said.
Attempting to get into Iraq, Hassan took a taxi from Kuwait City to the border 55 miles away. He spoke English at the border and was soon surrounded by about 15 men, a scene he wanted no part of. On the drive back to Kuwait City, a taxi driver almost punched him when he balked at the fee.
"In one day I probably spent like $250 on taxis," he said. "And they're so evil too, because they ripped me off, and when I wouldn't pay the ripped-off price they started threatening me. It was bad."
It could have been worse - the border could have been open.
As luck would have it, the teenager found himself at the Iraq-Kuwait line sometime on Dec. 13, and the border security was extra tight because of Iraq's Dec. 15 parliamentary elections. The timing saved him from a dangerous trip.
"If they'd let me in from Kuwait, I probably would have died," he acknowledged. "That would have been a bad idea."
He again called his father, who told him to come home. But the teen insisted on going to Baghdad. His father advised him to stay with family friends in Beirut, Lebanon, so he flew there, spending 10 days before flying to Baghdad on Christmas.
His ride at Baghdad International Airport, arranged by the family friends in Lebanon, dropped him off at an international hotel where Americans were staying.
He says he only strayed far from that hotel once, in search of food. He walked into a nearby shop and asked for a menu. When no menu appeared, he pulled out his Arabic phrase book, and after fumbling around found the word "menu." The stand didn't have one. Then a worker tried to read some of the English phrases.
"And I'm like, 'Well, I should probably be going.' It was not a safe place. The way they were looking at me kind of freaked me out," he said.
It was mid-afternoon Tuesday, after his second night in Baghdad, that he sought out editors at The Associated Press and announced he was in Iraq to do research and humanitarian work. AP staffers had never seen an unaccompanied teenage American walk into their war zone office. ("I would have been less surprised if little green men had walked in," said editor Patrick Quinn.)
Wearing a blue long-sleeve shirt in addition to his jeans and sneakers, Hassan appeared eager and outgoing but slightly sheepish about his situation.
The AP quickly called the U.S. embassy.
Embassy officials had been on the lookout for Hassan, at the request of his parents, who still weren't sure exactly where he was. One U.S. military officer said he was shocked the teen was still alive. The 101st Airborne lieutenant who picked him up from the hotel said it was the wildest story he'd ever heard.
Hassan accepted being turned over to authorities as the safest thing to do, but seemed to accept the idea more readily over time.
Most of Hassan's wild tale could not be corroborated, but his larger story arc was in line with details provided by friends and family members back home.
Dangerous and dramatic, Hassan's trip has also been educational. He had tea with Kuwaitis under a tent in the middle of a desert. He says he interviewed Christians in south Lebanon. And he said he spoke with U.S. soldiers guarding his Baghdad hotel who told him they are treated better by Sunni Arabs - the minority population that enjoyed a high standing under Saddam Hussein and are now thought to fuel the insurgency - than by the majority Shiites.
His father, Redha Hassan, a doctor, said his son is an idealist, principled and moral. Aside from the research he wanted to accomplish, he also wrote in an essay saying he wanted to volunteer in Iraq.
He said he wrote half the essay while in the United States, half in Kuwait, and e-mailed it to his teachers Dec. 15 while in the Kuwait City airport.
"There is a struggle in Iraq between good and evil, between those striving for freedom and liberty and those striving for death and destruction," he wrote.
"Those terrorists are not human but pure evil. For their goals to be thwarted, decent individuals must answer justice's call for help. Unfortunately altruism is always in short supply. Not enough are willing to set aside the material ambitions of this transient world, put morality first, and risk their lives for the cause of humanity. So I will."
"I want to experience during my Christmas the same hardships ordinary Iraqis experience everyday, so that I may better empathize with their distress," he wrote.
Farris Hassan says he thinks a trip to the Middle East is a healthy vacation compared with a trip to Colorado for holiday skiing.
"You go to, like, the worst place in the world and things are terrible," he said. "When you go back home you have such a new appreciation for all the blessing you have there, and I'm just going to be, like, ecstatic for life."
His mother, however, sees things differently.
"I don't think I will ever leave him in the house alone again," she said. "He showed a lack of judgment."
Hassan may not mind, at least for a while. He now understands how dangerous his trip was, that he was only a whisker away from death.
His plans on his return to Florida: "Kiss the ground and hug everyone." |
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AFP
Friday December 30, 3:22 PM
At least 2,838 soldiers and rebels were killed in insurgent violence in the Philippines in 2005, according to military statistics.
Soldiers accounted for 723 of the fatalities while the communist New People's Army (NPA), who have been fighting for over three decades to set up a Maoist state, suffered 1,810 dead, the military said. The Abu Sayyaf, a Muslim extremist group linked by intelligence services to the Al-Qaeda network, suffered 171 dead while the Muslim separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) incurred 118 fatalities.
The Abu Sayyaf have engaged in bombings and mass kidnappings while the MILF forged a ceasefire three years ago to negotiate peace with the government. But clashes with MILF commanders still take place sporadically.
The remaining fatalities were among followers of Nur Misuari, a former Muslim leader who was made governor of a Muslim autonomous region as part of a peace deal.
However Misuari lost his position and staged a brief rebellion in 2001 before being arrested and jailed.
The statistics did not say how many policemen or civilans had been slain in the same period, or give comparative figures for previous years.
The military captured 575 assorted firearms in the clashes but lost 168 in the process, according to the statistics.
The 8,000-strong NPA accounted for the most clashes with government forces with 1,255 incidents last year, followed by the Abu Sayyaf at 123. |
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Reuters
Fri Dec 30, 3:35 AM ET
SEOUL - South Korea's parliament approved a bill on Friday to cut by about one third the size of its troop deployment in
Iraq, the third-largest foreign contingent there.
The unicameral National Assembly voted by 110 to 31 to extend the country's troop deployment in the northern Iraqi region of Arbil by one year until the end of 2006 but cut the contingent to 2,300 from 3,200. Seventeen members abstained. The United States has the largest contingent of foreign troops in Iraq and Britain the second largest.
The country's commitment to its alliance with the United States was a key reason for extending the mission, the government-submitted bill said.
"We believe the deployment will contribute to peace and reconstruction of Iraq, stability in the Middle East and to reaffirming the South Korea-U.S. alliance," ruling Uri Party member Ahn Young-keun told the assembly in proposing the bill.
South Korea has about 690,000 troops, a large force meant to deter North Korea, whose military is more than one million strong. There are also some 30,000 U.S. troops in the South, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War that ended in a truce rather than a peace treaty.
Despite lingering opposition from liberal Uri Party members and anti-war groups, President Roh Moo-hyun has consistently backed the Iraq deployment.
The troops will remain in Iraq as long as they are needed under the mission set out by U.S.-led coalition forces, he has said.
Progress in rebuilding Iraq has prompted the reduction, the government has said.
The cut, which will begin in early 2006, could drop South Korea's unit to the fourth largest after Italy. Italy has said it will reduce its 2,900 troops in Iraq by 10 percent in January and plans to pull out its troops by the end of 2006. |
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AFP
December 30, 2005
GAZA CITY - Palestinian police have added to the sense of anarchy in the Gaza Strip by forcing a halt to crossings into Egypt as security forces continued their search for three kidnapped Britons. Around 100 members of the police force gathered outside the front of the Rafah terminal on Friday, prompting staff to retreat to their offices for a brief period, in protest against the killing of one of their colleagues on Thursday.
An official at the terminal told AFP that it was a "peaceful protest" and that the workers at the crossing had returned to their offices as a precautionary measure.
"The crossing is on the point of reopening," the official added.
Fearing that the protest could spiral out of control, Palestinian security chiefs told European Union observers at Rafah to move temporarily to their nearby headquarters several miles away from the terminal.
"The Palestinian police, who are responsible for our security, told us to go to Kerem Shalom and we are waiting to see developments on the ground," said a spokesman for the EU mission, Julio de la Guardia.
"When things calm down, we will go back to work," he said by phone.
One policeman and a civilian were killed on Thursday afternoon in Gaza City when an argument between a local family clan and security forces degenerated into a gunfight.
Security in the Gaza Strip has increasingly broken down in the weeks since Israeli troops withdrew from the territory and handed over total control to the
Palestinian Authority in September.
Despite pledges to reverse the tide of lawlessness, Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas has proved incapable of addressing a culture of violence where gunmen from factions fighting in the name of "resistance" to
Israel largely operate above the law.
The Black Panthers, an armed offshoot of his own
Fatah faction, are believed to be behind the abduction at gunpoint of the three members of a British family on Wednesday.
More than a dozen foreigners have been kidnapped in the territory since the summer but previous victims have usually been freed within a matter of hours.
As the security forces continued their hunt for the kidnappers for a third day, sources admitted that they had so far struck a blank.
Relatives of Kate Burton, a 24-year-old human rights worker based in Gaza, and her parents, Hugh and Helen, issued a statement which voiced their deep concern at the kidnapping.
"We are a close family, and are naturally deeply concerned about our parents and sister," the relatives said in a statement released by Britain's Foreign Office.
"Kate is a warm and loving person, and has been working as a volunteer in Gaza for the past year, trying to do what she can to help the situation there."
Abbas's failure to halt rocket firing from militants earlier this week led Israel to impose a "no-go zone" in parts of northern Gaza which had been used as launch sites for the missiles.
The imposition of the zone means that Israel has effectively reasserted control over a site where three of its Jewish settlements stood until they were evacuated over the summer.
The rockets have been launched by followers of a series of factions, including Islamic Jihad which has continued to carry out suicide attacks against Israeli targets despite signing up to a truce in March.
Jihad claimed responsibility for the latest such attack, when an Israeli officer and two Palestinian civilians were killed by one of its members near Tulkarem on Thursday.
The army has said 19-year-old Suheib Ibrahim Ajami was on his way to Tel Aviv, where he planned to blow himself up in a crowded space, but was forced to detonate his load prematurely when he was challenged at a checkpoint. |
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30 December 2005
AFP
Switzerland's supreme court gave a green light to extradite imprisoned former Russian nuclear minister Yevgeny Adamov to his homeland, rather than the United States where he faces corruption charges.
The Federal Tribunal ruled in favour of Adamov, who has been battling an October decision by Swiss justice authorities to hand him over to the United States.
The move was hailed in Moscow but the United States expressed disappointment. The Swiss justice ministry said it was in discussion with Russian authorities to organize the extradition "as soon as possible."
It did not give further details, but Adamov's Swiss lawyer Stefan Wehrenberg said the handover could take place within 15 days under extradition rules.
Adamov, 66, has been in jail in Switzerland since he was arrested in the capital Bern on May 2 at the request of US authorities, who then filed for his extradition.
Russia's nuclear minister from 1998 to 2001, Adamov is suspected of fraud and money laundering in connection with nine million dollars sent by the US government to help Russia improve its nuclear safety after the break-up of the Soviet Union.
Shortly after he was detained, Russia filed its own request for his extradition, on the grounds that he allegedly skimmed 17 million dollars from state coffers while he was a minister.
Russian officials were believed to be concerned that Adamov could reveal state secrets if he was sent to the United States.
Russia's foreign ministry was "satisfied" by the decision and expected the handover to take place shortly, a spokesman in Moscow said Thursday.
But a diplomat at the US embassy in Moscow, quoted by the Swiss ATS news agency, said that while Washington respected the court's decision, "it is nonetheless very disappointed".
"Yevgeny Adamov is accused of offences committed on American soil, specifically of embezzling US taxpayers' money which was designed to allow Moscow to improve the safety of its nuclear installations," the diplomat said.
Adamov, who denies the accusations against him, said in August that he would accept extradition to Russia. Wehrenberg said Thursday that his client was looking forward to defending himself against both the Russian and US accusations.
In a unanimous December 22 verdict made public Thursday, the Federal Tribunal's five judges decided that sending the former minister to Russia made more sense because of Adamov's nationality and the fact that his homeland was the "centre of gravity" of his alleged offences.
Taking international law into account, the Russian extradition request should take priority over the US demand, it ruled.
Facing competing extradition requests, Swiss justice authorities approved the handover to Russia in August.
In October, however, the justice ministry decided that the US extradition request should take priority on the grounds that Russia does not hand over its citizens to foreign jurisdictions.
That would have prevented Adamov from being extradited to the United States even after a possible trial in Russia, Swiss authorities said at the time.
The October decision was heavily criticized in Russia.
Russian justice authorities have given a formal guarantee that they will also investigate the US charges against Adamov, the Federal Tribunal noted in its ruling.
The US government said in May that Adamov and an associate, Mark Kaushansky, 53, had been indicted by a US federal grand jury in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on 20 counts.
Adamov is part-owner of a consulting firm based in the US state and a former director of Russian nuclear design and research institute NIKIET.
US investigators believe the two men created a scheme to siphon off funds, using shell companies with accounts in the United States, Monaco and France.
US law provides for a maximum potential sentence of 60 years in prison and a fine of 1.7 million dollars for Adamov, and up to 180 years in prison and a fine of five million dollars or both for Kaushansky, according to US officials. |
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SUSAN BELL
IN PARIS
30 Dec 2005
THE mysterious death of the wife of a senior French government official, killed in 1957 by an exploding cigar box, has come a step closer to being solved after two Czech spies were charged with her murder.
Following a nine-year investigation, two former agents of the Statni Bezpecnost - the secret police in communist Czechoslovakia - identified only as Stanislav T and Milan M, both aged 78, will stand trial in Prague early next year for the murder of Henriette Trémeaud, the wife of Andre-Marie Trémeaud, the prefect of the eastern French city of Strasbourg, on 17 May, 1957. On that day, Mr Trémeaud's secretary had placed a box of cigars in a drawer in the private apartment of the prefect and his wife. The cigars had been posted four days previously in Paris.
The same evening, Mrs Trémeaud opened the box, which blew up in her face, killing her instantly.
Her death immediately became the subject of a lengthy investigation by the French secret services, the DST.
They discovered a plot to destabilise the nascent European Community.
The Czech agents had expected that Mr Trémeaud would receive the parcel the following day, during a reception in honour of a meeting of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) that was being attended by several senior French politicians.
A campaign was being waged, under Soviet auspices, to sow distrust between France and Germany. The agents had been sending hate-mail to French politicians, designed to look as if it came from German neo-Nazis.
René Meyer, a former head of the DST, explained how the hate-mail led to the Czechs. "They were written in German and contained errors in syntax which are only made by Sudetes [Germans who had settled a long time previously in Czechoslovakia]," he said.
The French secret services identified the members of the Czech spy ring responsible for the attack but failed to arrest the four agents before they escaped behind the Iron Curtain.
Now, following the launch of an investigation by the Czech interior minister in Prague almost 50 years later, two of the men accused of being responsible will finally stand trial. The two other suspects in the bomb attack died before they could be arrested.
Jan Srb, a spokesman for the Czech bureau of investigations into communist crimes, said: "Europe was divided by the Iron Curtain and the former adversaries of the West were beginning to become allies. This was hard for the Communist regimes of the East to digest."
"For this sort of crime there is no statutory limitation," said Pavel Zavadil, of the Czech information agency.
If the two men are found guilty, Mr Zavadil believes they would escape lightly for Mrs Trémeaud's murder.
"In view of their advanced age I think that the judges will be merciful," he said.
Mrs Trémeaud's husband died 12 years ago in Paris at the age of 90. |
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30 December 2005
Seattle Times
An ethnic Serb seen killing Muslims in a nationally televised video was convicted of war crimes Thursday and sentenced to 15 years in prison, with the judge saying he had shown "no mercy or compassion" for his victims.
Serbian paramilitary member Slobodan Davidovic, a Croatian citizen, "actively participated in inhuman treatment, humiliation and liquidation" of six young Muslim men from Srebrenica in 1995, Zagreb district court judge Miroslav Sovanj said in his ruling.
Five others seen in the video were arrested and are on trial in Serbia. |
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29 Dec 2005
news.com.au
FORMER German army corporal Paul Schaefer has been charged with torturing eight children in a mysterious German enclave he founded in Chile, according to judicial sources.
Mr Schaefer, 84, who has already been charged with the rape of more than 20 children, was arrested in Argentina in March after eight years on the run. Chilean judge Jorge Zepeda, who has investigated alleged crimes committed in the Colonia Dignidad enclave founded in 1961, today also charged a female German doctor who admitted to torturing children.
Gisela Seewald, 75, who was director of the enclave's hospital from 1975 to 1978, admitted that she used electroshock treatment and sedatives on children who refused to obey Colonia Dignidad's hierarchy.
The treatments were also applied to children who resisted the sexual advances of former German army nurse and colony founder Paul Schaefer, the doctor told Zepeda in her confession, which took place Monday.
Schaefer established the large, self-sufficient German colony in an isolated region south of Santiago in 1961 after fleeing Germany to escape child abuse charges. About 300 Germans still live in the colony 350 kilometres south of Santiago. |
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By DERRICK O'KEEFE
29 December 2005
In Bolivia, Evo Morales has swept into the presidency after years of popular mobilization; the long-suffering indigenous and poor majority is demanding an alternative economic and social order.
In Venezuela, seven years after Hugo Chavez first won power, the Bolivarian Revolution is demonstrating an alternative path, powered by a people awakened to political action and in the process of transforming their society. Part of the reason for the resurgent radicalism in Latin America is the fact that the United States government -- for all their efforts at sabotage and asphyxiation -- has never been able to fully eliminate the Cuban Revolution. Immediately following news of his massive election victory, Morales passed on this unsubtle message via Cuban television:
I want to tell the Cuban people, its government and its leaders: thank you, for showing how to govern, to Latin America and the rest of the world, and for defending its dignity and sovereignty. (Morales Praises Castro in Cuban TV Interview,, Agence France-Press, December 20, 2005)
Back in 1999, the year Chavez was inaugurated as Venezuela,s President, capitalism was still at the height of its triumphalism (until late in the year, at least, when the twin specters of a raucous protest in Seattle and Y2K paranoia intervened).
In addition to the bombast of fashionable neo-liberal intellectuals, and the scolding insistence of right-wing politicians, we would do well do recall that the deans of social democracy had also, by the 1990s to be sure, fallen in line to prostrate themselves before the market and justify the rule of capital. The Left, in power, at least in the form that Canada and Europe had known it as mass social democratic parties, has seemed all too willing to impose, or all too impotent to oppose, neo-liberal measures and legislation.
A remarkably colourless (in terms of both the pigmentation and the style of the writers) and vapid collection of essays -- published the same year that Chavez came to power in Venezuela -- outlined the perspectives of social democracy,s statesmen as of the late 1990s. The Future of Social Democracy (Russell, 1999) includes contributions from noted leftists, like Shimon Peres, who recently formed a new political party in Israel with Ariel Sharon, and Bob Rae, the dismal former New Democratic Party (NDP) premier of Ontario who used a column a few years ago in the ultra right-wing National Post to formalize his defection (Parting Company with the NDP,, April 16, 2002). Rae,s essay is the book,s concluding one and includes, believe it or not, a sentence analogizing Tommy Douglas, Marin Luther King Jr. and Tony Blair!
Without dwelling on this dry little book too long, it is worth noting the rigid and sectarian line explicitly laid-out by editor Peter Russell in his introduction:
- "the social democracy advocated here must be and is reformist, not revolutionary social democratic, not democratic socialist.
- "Social democracy,s mission has become not replacing capitalism with an alternative economic system but humanizing capitalism both nationally and internationally.
- "capitalism is the only economic system capable of producing the wealth needed to sustain a full and rewarding life for all citizens. (Rusell, PP.8-9)
None of the essays -- including the one by Canada,s former NDP leader and outgoing Member of Parliament Ed Broadbent strays from Russell,s narrow confines. In an era of rampant privatization, respectable, social democracy has prostrated itself before the market as just another shade of liberalism.
Many prominent social democrats have in fact formally become liberals. Taking just a couple of recent Canadian examples, former British Columbia N.D.P. premier Ujjal Dosanjh is now the federal Liberal Minister of Health, while Rae is a darling of Liberal governments at both the provincial level as well as in Ottawa. Last year, for instance, the former Rhodes scholar angered student groups by recommending that the Ontario Liberal government further deregulate university tuition fees.
The Future of Social Democracy also makes almost no mention of any of the organizations in the Global South that have continued to emerge to challenge neo-liberalism. Despite the stated global outlook, the myopic vision of the leaders of the West,s major social democratic parties is startling. The lionization of capitalism,s efficiency and productivity seems all the more absurd, of course, from the perspective of the impoverished majority in the neo-colonial world, where for centuries labour and natural resources have produced the wealth of Western Europe and North America.
Today, global capitalism is being challenged most directly in Venezuela. Hugo Chavez,s own discourse has sharpened dramatically against international capital in recent months and years. The Bolivarian leader has made repeated calls for the building of socialism for the 21st century,.
The Bolivarian Revolution is carrying out a transformation of both the reality of Venezuela and of the global alignment of political forces. The gains of el proceso are preciously concrete, as seen in rising rates of literacy and education, mass expansion of health care services, land reform, new housing for the poor, and an explosion in cooperative worker co-managed enterprises. These reforms are part of a revolutionary process with a continental and global dynamic.
Forget TINA.
Regardless of what we are told by the guardians of economic and political power, there is an alternative. All progressive-minded people would be wise to look closely at Venezuela, Bolivia, and at the social movements of Latin America, where the people are leading the way towards a future beyond neo-liberalism.
Derrick O'Keefe is co-editor of Seven Oaks. |
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By Cahal Milmo
30 December 2005
They run to some three million words and have already made public juicy details of the private lives and beliefs of figures from the Queen Mother to Rupert Murdoch.
But the diaries of Woodrow Wyatt, the former Labour MP turned claret-quaffing doyen of high Tory socialites and assorted glitterati, seem to be a closed book when it comes to his own family. His widow, Verushka Wyatt, revealed yesterday that she has been prevented from reading the unedited text of the famously indiscreet chronicles of the ruling classes in the 1980s and 1990s.
The original handwritten diaries, which revealed the Queen Mother's liking for Margaret Thatcher and Norman Lamont's concern about looking overweight in his swimming costume, are held by Lord Wyatt of Weeford's publisher, Macmillan. Some three volumes of the diaries, running to more than 2,000 pages, have already been published since Lord Wyatt's death in 1997, prompting at least one critic to complain that their journalist author had filed too much material.
But Lady Wyatt claimed she had been barred from seeing some 300,000 words which remain in the vaults of Macmillan's London headquarters because they may form the basis for yet another volume.
Lady Wyatt said: "[Macmillan] say they might want to publish them. But what harm would it do to let me see them? I could go into their office and read them and not take a copy away. I could sign a confidentiality agreement. But they are just completely unreasonable and refuse even after all this time. It is very upsetting."
Macmillan, the German-owned publishing giant whose authors range from V S Naipaul to the BBC's John Simpson, declined to comment. But it is thought that the company may be sticking to the letter of its agreement with Lord Wyatt that his family - Lady Wyatt and his daughter, the journalist Petronella Wyatt - should not know the contents of his diaries until they were published.
For a dynasty which has made a profession of knowing the details of other people's lives, the stand-off is strange. Lady Wyatt, a Hungarian-born aristocrat, has previously said she had no interest in her husband's diaries, written throughout a career which ranged from his role as a junior minister in Clement Attlee's 1951 government to a 21-year stint as chairman of the Tote racing board. The contents of the unpublished 300,000 words are unknown, but Lord Wyatt made a point of hobnobbing with highest in the land, turning his £2m north London home into a salon attended by prime ministers and royalty.
Lady Wyatt has proved herself adept at handling the media. Last year, she played an instrumental role in the revelation of an affair between her daughter and the Conservative MP Boris Johnson, when he was editor of The Spectator. Lady Wyatt revealed the details of the relationship to a Sunday newspaper after Mr Johnson had dismissed claims of an affair as "an inverted pyramid of piffle". The outraged mother declared that her daughter had an abortion after Mr Johnson, who stepped down from his role as Conservative arts spokesman within days, had promised to marry her only to end the relationship.
Such revelations would not have looked out of place in the pages of the diaries of Lord Wyatt, who described his journals as the "only memorial I can ever leave". The peer, who supposedly ordered the publication of the works to provide a nest egg for his family after his death, created controversy when he broke with convention to detail conversations with the Queen Mother during lunches at which he mixed her gin martinis.
The diaries themselves have been criticised as self-regarding and repetitious, making Lady Wyatt's insistence on reading the contents of the missing 300,000 words all the more intriguing. |
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30 December 2005
Irish Examiner
The family of an 18-year-old who died after being released from Garda custody today demanded an independent inquiry.
John Maloney Junior, from Crumlin in Dublin, was arrested in May 2003 but was found unconscious shortly after being released and died 11 days later in hospital.
His 48-year-old father, Johnny Maloney, said the family wanted an independent inquiry because they could not believe that their son had died from a combination of drugs or alcohol.
“If he was like that, he couldn’t have walked out of the police station,” he said. He claimed the family have been subjected to a campaign of garda harassment for highlighting the mysterious aspects of their son’s death.
A parking ticket was placed on their car when they went to visit his grave on Christmas Day in 2003 and their home has been raided for illegal fireworks.
“It’s been very rough for the family over the last two years. You’re still fighting your case and there’s no time for grieving,” said Mr Maloney.
The questions the family want answered include:
:: How could their son be released from custody in a healthy condition and then collapse 10 minutes later?
:: Why was there no record of him signing out of the garda station and no CCTV footage of him leaving?
:: Why did gardaí at Rathfarnam deny he had been in custody there when the family rang to ask the following day?
:: Why was he walking in the opposite direction to where he lived and why had no-one seen him on the route?
:: Was the garda investigation into his death properly carried out?
John Maloney Junior was in a car with a friend in Rathfarnam at around 8am on Sunday May 4, 2003 when they were arrested for a drugs search.
His friend was released from his cell at 9.35am without charge and was told John was being held over due to an outstanding warrant for driving without insurance.
At an inquest in Tallaght District Court last year, the sergeant on duty said John was released shortly afterwards and he walked out of the station “with a spring in his step”.
But he was seen stumbling and falling at a nearby estate at around 9.50am by a passer-by and an ambulance was called. He died in Tallaght Hospital on May 16 when the life support machine was switched off.
The family tried to find out where their son was that weekend but claim they were told by gardaí at Rathfarnam that he had not been in custody there.
Mr Maloney’s wife, Sandra, finally learned what had happened when a radio bulletin mentioned a young man with a “Johnner” tattoo being taken unconscious to hospital.
Professor Marie Cassidy carried out the post-mortem examination on the body and gave evidence at the inquest that a minute amount of cocaine had been found in his body. There was also a large quantity of alcohol.
Although she said the cause of death was possibly due to a reaction from cocaine, the jury returned an open verdict.
Mr Maloney said his son had probably hung around with people who smoked cannabis but had never been into drugs.
“He probably would have tried it (cocaine) for the first time but no way would it have killed him,” he said.
“He was a very jolly young fellow and he always had a lot of fun.”
Independent Socialist councillor Joan Collins said the Maloneys were an ordinary working class family who had been torn apart by the death of their son.
“There’s just a lot of questions that haven’t been answered and the family are really in limbo for the last two years. First of all, the trauma of losing their son and secondly not knowing exactly what went on,” she said.
The family’s relationship with the force has been extremely poor since, with John Maloney breaking his arm in a confrontation at a garda station shortly after the death.
In another incident, he went to visit his son’s grave in Mount Jerome Cemetery in Harold’s Cross on Christmas Day 2003 and found that a Garda had placed a parking ticket on their car outside.
Both he and one of his sons became involved in a verbal altercation with the Gardaí.
He pleaded guilty to threatening behaviour and assault in court, and the charges were dropped against his son. He was bound over to keep the peace for a year.
Since then, their home on Cashel Road in Crumlin has been raided by gardai searching for illegal fireworks.
“They’re harassing us all the time,” said Mr Maloney.
He is now co-operating with the family of Terence Wheelock, who died in September, three months after he was found unconscious in a cell in Store St Garda station. Both families are collecting signatures for a petition calling for independent inquiries into the two deaths.
A Garda spokesman did not return calls seeking comment about the case. |
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By Aquiles Z. Zonio
Published on Page A15 of the December 30, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
GENERAL SANTOS CITY-At least four prisoners have died under mysterious circumstances here this month alone, prompting relatives to call for an investigation. The latest was Gino Yakan, 24, and a resident of Bula village here.
Yakan died on Wednesday evening, shortly after he was rushed to the hospital.
Although the result of the medical examination has yet to be issued, jail officials said Yakan died of "complications."
The day before Yakan died, inmate Mary Jane Manzera, 33, also died while being rushed to the General Santos City Hospital.
Manzera, a resident of Darimco Silway in Dadiangas West village here, was detained last year for illegal drug use.
Her live-in partner Fidel Navaza told reporters that Mary Jane appeared healthy during his visit last Sunday.
Jail officials claimed Manzera collapsed while attending the Christmas party for the inmates inside the city jail.
She was rushed to the hospital but was declared dead on arrival.
The
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Manzera family said they wanted Mary Jane's death investigated.
Minda Quizon, Mary Jane's mother, told reporters they noticed a wound in the left portion of her neck when they checked the body at the hospital's morgue.
Two weeks ago, prisoner Vicente Abella died in his sleep at the city jail.
Jail officials claimed he died of cardiac arrest.
Earlier this month, an inmate identified as Arthur Esquelona also died while being transported by an ambulance to the hospital.
In her autopsy report, Dr. Antonietta Odi, medico legal officer of the City Health Integrated Services, claimed Esquelona died of severe head injuries.
The doctor found that the left portion of the victim's head was swollen.
This, Odi said, could have been the cause of the victim's death contrary to claims by jail officials that the prisoner was suffering from stomach ulcer. |
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AFP
Friday December 30, 2:06 AM
China announced the country's seventh human case of bird flu and third fatality from the H5N1 virus, state media said. [...]
Initial samples taken from her tested negative but further tests showed positive results for the H5N1 virus, Xinhua said, quoting a ministry report. "Zhou has been confirmed to be infected with bird flu in accordance with the standards of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Chinese government," the ministry said, according to Xinhua.
People who had close contact with Zhou were under medical observation but none of them so far had shown any abnormal symptoms, it said.
The health ministry said no outbreak of bird flu had been detected among poultry in the area, Xinhua said, and there was no indication in the agency report of how she contracted the disease.
With the latest case, China has reported seven human infections of bird flu, including three fatalities, and 31 outbreaks among poultry this year.
China's previous most recent confirmed human case of bird flu was in the neighbouring province of Jiangxi on December 16, identified as a 35-year-old man surnamed Guo.
Guo, who fell ill on December 4 with fever and symptoms of pneumonia, was being treated at a local hospital, Xinhua reported at the time, citing the health ministry.
While Guo was the first human bird flu case in Jiangxi reported by China, he lived near the border with Hunan province, where at least one human case of bird flu has been detected in recent weeks.
Two other cases, both women who later died, have been confirmed in east China's Anhui province, which also borders Jiangxi.
One further human case has been confirmed in Liaoning province in the northeast and one in Guangxi region in the south.
Despite the toll, China is seen as having escaped relatively lightly from the bird flu virus, which has killed more than 70 people throughout Asia since 2003.
Even so, China is seen as a potential flashpoint for a feared global pandemic because it has the world's biggest poultry population combined with often primitive farming conditions where humans and animals live in close proximity.
The government announced last month it intended to vaccinate its entire poultry industry against bird flu and earlier this month began human trials of a bird flu vaccine.
The World Health Organization on Sunday called on China to change its farming practices as a long-term way to prevent outbreaks of deadly bird flu.
Shigeru Omi, director for the Western Pacific region, told Xinhua that the common practice in China of raising different kinds of animals together and living in close proximity to animals must change.
"We cannot kill all the chickens and ducks to prevent bird flu from spreading among them and to humans, therefore we have to make sure the chickens, ducks and humans do not mingle together," Omi was quoted as saying.
Segregation is one of the most important ways to prevent the spread of the virus, Omi, who was visiting China, told Xinhua in an interview.
China produces 14.2 billion poultry annually and most are raised in farmers' yards or even inside their houses.
Scientists fear the close proximity between poultry and other farm animals as well as humans can provide more opportunity for the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus to mutate into a more lethal strain.
The virus is currently spread among animals and from animals to humans. If it becomes easily spread between humans, it could create a pandemic that would likely kill millions of people, experts say. |
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29 December 2005
RFE/RL
There appear to be no new cases of the mysterious illness that recently afflicted dozens of Chechen villagers. But it remains unclear what caused some 80 people -- primarily teenage schoolgirls -- to suddenly suffer tremors, fainting spells, panic attacks, and shortness of breath. Prague -- Two weeks after the first illnesses were reported in Chechnya's northeastern Shelkovskaya Oblast, many of those affected have left hospital and are gradually recovering. But it is still unclear what was behind the mystery illness.
Sultan Alimkhadzhiev, Chechnya's deputy health minister, says just 12 children are still receiving treatment in the pediatric hospital in Grozny. But he says consultations about the illness have yet to reach a definitive conclusion about its source.
Unknown Origins
The debate is centered on two rival theories.
Was the illness a kind of contagious manifestation of psychological trauma? Or was it the result of environmental or chemical poisoning, possibly resulting from the ongoing military conflict in the region?
Some medical experts, including Russia's chief psychiatric official, have embraced the notion that the illness is the product of long-term exposure to stress from Russia's two wars in the separatist republic.
Tatyana Dmitrieva, the director of the Serbskii National Research Center for Social and Forensic Psychiatry, said that similar cases were recorded following the 1988 earthquake in Spitak, Armenia, and the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States.
No experts have offered explanations why an illness induced by war-related stress would suddenly strike a single region in a republic that has endured military conflicts for over a decade.
But Dmitrieva did say teenage girls were most affected by the illness because the "female juvenile character has a high level of suggestibility."
Ethylene Glycol
But local residents dismiss the theory. Sacita Bataeva is the mother of one of the girls affected by the illness: "I don't agree with this diagnosis. A lot of other people don't either. How can it be that they all came down with one and the same illness, and all at the same time? It seems to me that [medical experts] are speaking off the top of their heads without taking time to figure out the illness itself. After all, every mother here is taking care of her own child. We know what we see. In Chechnya we use different types of weapons. Couldn't they be to blame for this strange illness? The war here continues to this day, despite what they say about it having ended. Sometimes children are woken up at night by fear, when they hear shooting nearby. That's true. And the illness can also be related to that. But not entirely."
Forensic examiners in the neighboring republic of Daghestan reported last week that they had found traces of ethylene glycol in blood samples taken from several of the affected girls.
Ethylene glycol is a toxic liquid chemical used in automobile antifreeze. Doctors in Daghestan speculated that it may have been ingested after seeping into the groundwater.
Akhmed Zakaev, a representative of the republic's separatist leadership, has accused Russia of attempting to cover up the true source of the illness.
Earlier this week, Zakaev told The Associated Press from London he was "certain" federal forces were testing a new weapon, and that the mass illness was a result of those tests.
He said if Russia has nothing to hide, it should allow independent experts to establish the cause of the illness.
Zakaev called on the Hague-based Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons to conduct an "urgent international investigation" into the incident.
Regional authorities had earlier speculated the poisoning had been caused by exposure to nerve gas or another toxic agent.
The newly elected Chechen parliament discussed the issue during a session on 23 December.
The head of the parliamentary health committee, Said Yakhikhadzhiyev, said an independent probe was needed to ensure that Chechens did not view the investigation as a whitewash.
But at least one deputy blamed the Russian military for the illness, saying Chechnya has been a "testing ground for all kinds of weapons" for the last 15 years. |
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30 December 2005
interfax
ROSTOV-ON-DON. Dec 30 (Interfax) - A Chechen governmental commission investigating a recent outbreak of a mysterious disease among school pupils in Chechnya's Shelkovskoi district has confirmed a diagnosis that was previously described by doctors as a pseudo-asthmatic condition. The press service of the Emergency Situations Ministry's southern regional center told Interfax that the commission blamed the disease on intense psychological pressure caused by lengthy hostilities in the republic.
Thirty-four people, including 22 children, remain in hospitals, the press service said.
The commission also proposed a number of measures to avoid similar outbreaks in the future, which include opening a republican psycho- neurology center capable of accommodating 17 patients, a 150-bed drug rehabilitation center, and a center for children's psychological rehabilitation and social adaptation. |
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30 December 2005
Reuters
EIGHT indigenous Peruvians have died from a mysterious disease in the country's remote northern jungle and about 100 people are suffering from fever and respiratory problems, doctors said today.
The Aguaruna Indians in Peru's Amazon jungle began showing symptoms of the illness, which include vomiting blood, at the start of December and could have been transmitted by animals.
"It seems like yellow fever, but it isn't," said Luiz Suarez, director of epidemics at Peru's health ministry.
Some Aguarunas have been evacuated from the Alto Tuntus community by helicopter to the nearest major town of Bagua.
"We've got 109 people with these symptoms and everyone is receiving treatment ... but five people are in a very serious situation in hospital," said Martin Glendenes, head of the hospital in Bagua.
Glendenes said he had sent samples of the disease to the Peruvian capital Lima for analysis.
Peru's jungle communities have been susceptible to rare diseases in recent years and have few antibodies because of the remoteness of their villages.
Health ministry doctors also lack funds to build proper hospitals and vaccinate communities. |
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By Rob Stein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 30, 2005
First came stomach cramps, which left Christina Shultz doubled over and weeping in pain. Then came nausea and fatigue -- so overwhelming she couldn't get out of bed for days. Just when she thought things couldn't get worse, the nastiest diarrhea of her life hit -- repeatedly forcing her into the hospital.
Doctors finally discovered that the 35-year-old Hilliard, Ohio, woman had an intestinal bug that used to be found almost exclusively among older, sicker patients in hospitals and was usually easily cured with a dose of antibiotics. But after months of treatment, Shultz is still incapacitated. "It's been a nightmare," said Shultz, a mother of two young children. "I just want my life back."
Shultz is one of a growing number of young, otherwise healthy Americans who are being stricken by the bacterial infection known as Clostridium difficile -- or C. diff -- which appears to be spreading rapidly around the country and causing unusually severe, sometimes fatal illness.
That is raising alarm among health officials, who are concerned that many cases may be misdiagnosed and are puzzled as to what is causing the microbe to become so much more common and dangerous.
"It's a new phenomenon. It's just emerging," said L. Clifford McDonald of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. "We're very concerned. We know it's happening, but we're really not sure why it's happening or where this is going."
It may, however, be the latest example of a common, relatively benign bug that has mutated because of the overuse of antibiotics.
"This may well be another consequence of our use of antibiotics," said John G. Bartlett, an infectious-disease expert at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. "It's another example of an organism that all of a sudden has gotten a lot meaner and nastier."
In addition, new evidence released last week suggests that the enormous popularity of powerful new heartburn drugs may also be playing a role.
The antibiotics Flagyl (metronidazole) and vancomycin still cure many patients, but others develop stubborn infections like Shultz's that take over their lives. Some resort to having their colon removed to end the debilitating diarrhea. A small but disturbingly high number have died, including an otherwise healthy pregnant woman who succumbed earlier this year in Pennsylvania after miscarrying twins.
The infection usually hits people who are taking antibiotics for other reasons, but a handful of cases have been reported among people who were taking nothing, another unexpected and troubling turn in the germ's behavior.
The infection has long been common in hospital patients taking antibiotics. As the drugs kill off other bacteria in the digestive system, the C. diff microbe can proliferate. It spreads easily through contact with contaminated people, clothing or surfaces.
There are no national statistics, but the number of infections in hospitals appears to have doubled from 2000 to 2003 and there may be as many as 500,000 cases each year, McDonald said. Other estimates put the number in the millions.
The emerging problem first gained attention when unusually large and serious outbreaks began turning up in other countries. In Canada, for example, Quebec health officials reported last year that perhaps 200 patients died in an outbreak involving at least 10 hospitals. Similar outbreaks were reported in England and the Netherlands.
After the CDC began receiving reports of severe cases among hospital patients in the United States -- and in people who had never, or just briefly, been hospitalized -- it launched an investigation.
In the Dec. 8 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, the CDC reported that an analysis of 187 C. diff samples found that the unusually dangerous strain that caused the Quebec cases was also involved in outbreaks at eight health care facilities in Georgia, Illinois, Maine, New Jersey, Oregon and Pennsylvania.
"This strain has somehow been able to get into hospitals widely distributed across the United States," said Dale N. Gerding of Loyola University in Chicago, who helped conduct the analysis. "We're not sure how."
But scientists do have a few clues. The dangerous strain has mutated to become resistant to a class of frequently used antibiotics known as fluoroquinolones. That means anyone taking those antibiotics for other reasons would be particularly prone to contract C. diff .
"Because this strain is resistant, it can take advantage of that situation and establish itself in the gut," Gerding said.
Experts said the resistant germ's proliferation offers the latest reason why people should use antibiotics only when necessary, to reduce both their risk for C. diff and the chances that other microbes will mutate into more dangerous forms.
"That's one theory for what's happening here," said J. Thomas Lamont of Harvard Medical School. "If we reduce the number and amount of antibiotics given for trivial infections like colds and stuffy noses, we'd all be a lot better off."
Overuse of antibiotics can make germs more dangerous by killing off susceptible strains, leaving behind those that by chance have mutated to become less vulnerable to the drugs. The resistant strains then become dominant.
In addition to being resistant, the dangerous C. diff strain also produces far higher levels of two toxins than do other strains, as well as a third, previously unknown toxin. That would explain why it makes people so much sicker and is more likely to kill. In Quebec, C. diff killed 6.9 percent of patients -- which is much higher than the disease's usual mortality rate -- and was a factor in more than 400 deaths.
Adding to the alarm is evidence that the infection is occurring outside of hospitals. When the CDC began looking for such cases earlier this year, investigators quickly identified 33 cases in New Hampshire, New Jersey, Ohio and Pennsylvania, including 23 people who had never been in the hospital and 10 women who had been hospitalized only briefly to deliver a baby, the agency reported this month. Eight of the patients had never taken antibiotics.
"This is the first time we've started to see this not only in people who have never been in the hospital but also in those who are otherwise perfectly healthy and have not even taken antibiotics," McDonald said.
"It's probably going on everywhere," he said.
It remains unclear whether the cases occurring outside the hospital are being caused by the same dangerous strain.
"We don't really know what's going on here," McDonald said. "We know it's changing in some ways; we know it's changing the kinds of patients it's attacking, and we know it's causing more severe disease. But we don't know exactly why."
Canadian researchers, however, have found one possible culprit: popular new heartburn drugs. Patients taking proton pump inhibitors, such as Prilosec and Prevacid, are almost three times as likely to be diagnosed with C-diff , the McGill University researchers reported in the Dec. 21 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. And those taking another type called H2-receptor antagonists, such as Pepcid and Zantac, are twice as likely. By suppressing stomach acid, the drugs may inadvertently help the bug, the researchers said.
Whatever the cause, the infection often resists standard treatment. That is what happened to Shultz, who had been taking antibiotics to help clear up her acne when C. diff hit in June. Because the bacterium can hibernate in protective spores, patients can be prone to recurrences. It can take multiple rounds of antibiotics -- or sometimes infusions of antibodies or ingesting competing organisms such as yeast or the bacteria found in yogurt -- to finally cure them.
"I'm trying to stay positive," Shultz said. "People tell me it does go away and I will get rid of it someday. I'm looking forward to getting my life back, but I'm not convinced I'll ever be normal again." |
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30 December 2005
Orlando Sentinel
The coals were glowing bright orange and cracking like popcorn, only the sound wasn't at all appetizing. In fact, it turned my stomach.
What had been an inviting campfire of fragrant ash logs an hour earlier was now reduced to a forbidding bed of burning embers. And I was about to step directly onto it. But only if my inner voice gave me the green light, and my brain cooperated.
With the rhythmic drone of hand drums urging me on, I circled the smoldering bed with 16 strangers, chanting a litany against fear.
"Will I walk the fire? . . . I must make a choice. . . . I can always listen to my inner voice," we repeated over and over, trying to build confidence with each lap. The radiant heat from the coals was a sobering contrast to the cold, wet grass under my bare feet. I stared down at each step, trying to prepare myself for the challenge ahead. I could bail out if I didn't believe I could cross the fire unscathed.
But I was too far gone to turn back.
A gut check, by foot
I know what you're thinking: "Why would anyone in their right mind walk through fire?"
It's a totally reasonable question, and one I asked myself many times that windy, moonless night at Savannas Preserve State Park in Fort Pierce. Those coals were hot, burning between 1,000 and 1,800 degrees. And the danger was very real, as indicated by the lengthy liability form we all signed. But so was the reward.
Each of us gathered that evening for the Walk This Way Seminars fire walk had our own reasons for putting foot to fire, and we shared them aloud as we introduced ourselves. Some in our diverse bunch, which covered the character gamut from MIT grads to free-spirited earth mothers, had come for the challenge, some to help overcome a tough obstacle in their lives and others to connect with the element of fire in a spiritual way.
I was there for the experience, to test my boundaries a bit. A metaphysical gut check, if you will. And I found exactly what I was looking for.
A pastime through the ages
Humans have been playing with fire for centuries.
History tells tales of ritual fire walking on nearly every continent, from the Beqa islanders of Fiji, to Hindus in India, the Kung bushmen of Africa, Eastern Orthodox Christians in Greece and American Indians across the country.
Each had its own mysterious purpose -- transformation, initiation, healing or purification. And the practice continues today in its most basic form at group ceremonies and corporate team-building events around the country. Kathy Lezon, our hostess for the evening, has been guiding believers and skeptics alike over the coals professionally for more than three years.
A former critical-care nurse, who now makes her living training medical professionals in advanced cardiac life support, she discovered the ritual during a "gathering" in St. Petersburg in the autumn of 2002. Lezon credits the "transformational experience" and intense "energy rush" of fire walking as her inspiration for turning pro.
Lezon studied under Tolly Burkan, author and unofficial father of the American fire-walking movement, at a four-day retreat during which her group was told to dance on hot coals until they were extinguished, among other challenges. Since then, she has introduced more than 200 pairs of feet to the heat and says that watching the reactions after a successful fire walk is her biggest reward.
But you can't just show up and walk the coals. You have to prepare yourself, and it's far more involved than just stretching the calves and hamstrings.
Not sparing the rod
The fire-walking calisthenics began with a pep talk. In a calm, soothing voice, Lezon explained a series of challenges that would teach us to hear -- and trust -- our "inner voice." We would attempt to achieve a quality of "mind in matter," the ability to control the body's response to outside factors, such as fear, pain and -- most important -- fire.
The first challenge was to walk through a big pile of broken glass, an exercise that would force us to focus. Lezon's helpers spread a large blanket filled with green, blue and brown shards and we took turns running the gauntlet, making careful foot placements before adding body weight.
With no casualties, we moved on to board-breaking, a cathartic drill that taught us to look beyond barriers at the goal. Next we were to snap an arrow with the business end pointed at our necks (cushioned by a swatch of thin leather), an achievement to show us that we could push past adversity (i.e. pain) to success.
The arrow proved easy to break -- and nowhere near as intimidating as the next exercise, bending 4-foot rods of metal rebar to help us think beyond our limits. With a partner, we were to place an end at our necks and walk toward each other until the rod bent. It took me a while to psyche up to this challenge, but watching the others hug enthusiastically upon completion got me on the bandwagon.
I won't lie. It was difficult, and it hurt. But when that rod began to bend, I knew I'd survive. And that small victory, combined with a massive adrenaline rush, was enough to carry me on to the main event.
Hot coals, anyone?
Crunchy but not too hot
I considered taking the first step with my eyes closed. Maybe if I didn't actually see what was happening, it wouldn't hurt?
The wave of confidence I had caught during the feats of strength was dying quickly as I paced around the coal bed. And my inner voice was whispering in gibberish.
Then someone broke off from the circle and took that first step into the unknown. With wide eyes, I watched for disaster. But there was no screaming or aroma of burning flesh, only a big smile and applause.
I decided in an instant, as all good leaps of faith should go down, and took a right turn onto the coals. The embers felt crunchy underfoot, like walking on breakfast cereal, but without the cool comfort of milk. As for the heat, it was no worse than the hottest asphalt roasted by the summer sun.
One, two, three quick steps and I was back on cold grass, a welcome blast from a garden hose extinguishing my anxiety and a warm wave of endorphins reviving my spirit. It was so liberating that I went back for seconds, and thirds, and fourths.
I can't say exactly why I escaped unscathed. Research dug up theories about the poor thermal conductivity of the coals, the dampening effect of ash and other debunking ideas. Science, schmience -- I had put my podiatric destiny on the line and survived.
"Empowerment" and "self-discovery" are gross understatements. I could still feel hot spots on my feet during the ride home. They faded eventually, along with my natural high, but the memory of walking through fire will last a lifetime.
Eric Michael can be reached at 407-420-5259.
emichael@orlandosentinel.com |
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AFP
Thu Dec 29, 4:03 PM ET
BAGHDAD - Fourteen Shiite men and women were gunned down in an area south of Iraq's capital known as the "triangle of death", as a US soldier died in a bomb blast and a Lebanese was kidnapped in Baghdad. On the political front, the International Mission for Iraqi Elections announced it was sending assessors to Iraq to help investigate complaints of fraud in the December 15 general elections, while Shiite and Kurdish leaders -- whose lists topped the polls -- held talks on setting up a government.
Shiite-based religious parties have rebuffed calls by Sunni Arabs and secular factions for a re-run of the election and the electoral commission has suggested that, while some ballots might be cancelled because of fraud, this would not affect overall results.
UN and US spokesmen have also expressed confidence in the election results whose final tally is expected next week.
In the latest outbreak of violence, 14 people, believed to be from a single Shiite family, were found shot to death in their home in Mamudiyah, south of the capital.
"Armed men broke into their home and their bodies were then taken by minibus to a police checkpoint in Latifiyah," a security official said.
Another security source said the victims were "Shiites living in the midst of Sunnis".
In the capital, a US soldier was killed by a roadside bomb, bringing the overall US military death toll in Iraq to 2,172.
The foreign ministry in Beirut announced that one of its nationals, an engineer named as Camille Nassif Tannus, was kidnapped in Baghdad, and French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy appealed for the release of a French hostage threatened with execution.
A previously unknown group claimed the kidnapping of French engineer Bernard Planche and threatened on Wednesday to kill him if France did not "end its illegitimate presence in Iraq", in a video shown on Al-Arabiya television.
"I stress that France has no military presence in Iraq and that it has always argued for full sovereignty to be restored to the country," Douste-Blazy said in a statement appealing for the release of Planche. [...] |
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By Patrick Cockburn
30 December 2005
This was the year in which the US admitted it was not going to defeat the insurgency. It was the ebb tide of American and British power in Iraq. By the end of the year both countries were urgently looking to withdraw their troops in circumstances not too humiliating to themselves and without precipitating the complete collapse of the Iraqi state.
The failure of the US and Britain to win the war does not mean that the two-and-a-half year uprising among the Sunni Arabs has achieved all its aims. The beneficiaries from President George W Bush's invasion of Iraq in 2003 are not the Sunni but the Iraqi Shia and the Kurds. Outside Iraq, the country which has gained most from the fall of Saddam Hussein is Iran.
The year began and ended with elections. The first, on 30 January, was critical in demonstrating the electoral power of the Shia community. The United Iraqi Alliance, a coalition of Shia parties, triumphed. This was hardly surprising since the Shia make up 60 per cent of the Iraqi population. But it was a political earthquake in Iraq after so many centuries of Sunni dominance. The verdict of the January poll was confirmed by the election on 15 December for the National Assembly, which will sit for four years.
The political landscape of post-Saddam Iraq is becoming clearer but the country still looks as if it will be a very violent place. A striking feature of present-day Iraq is that there are multiple centres of power, which as they conflict create numerous friction points. Authority is fragmented. The US has power, but so do the three main communities: the Sunni and Shia Arabs and the Kurds. This much is very evident on the ground in Baghdad. In a Sunni district of west Baghdad, the local police pack up and go home at 8pm. "I am leaving now and the resistance will take over," explained one policeman as he got into his car. "If I stayed around here I would be killed." In Ramadi, the capital of rebellious Anbar province, west of Baghdad, insurgents took over the city centre for four hours in December, despite the presence of powerful US and Iraqi military units.
Precisely where real power lies in Iraq is not always obvious. In Basra the British forces are supposedly helping to build up the local police, but a confrontation in October sparked when two British soldiers, working undercover and in disguise, were arrested by the Iraqi police and then rescued by the Army, demonstrated the real state of affairs. Film of a British soldier, his clothes burning as he jumped from a blazing armoured vehicle, was shown around the world. It is the Shia political parties and their militias in and out of the police who are the real masters of Basra and southern Iraq. The growing power of the militias is evident everywhere; so too is the influence of Iran. At some point, a new balance of power between the main communities, the militias, political parties, the foreign powers, the insurgent groups and the secret intelligence services will emerge in Iraq. It has not happened yet. The new rules of the game are not yet agreed. To give one example: the government has declared that the weekend will now fall on Friday and Saturday. But in western Iraq insurgents say it falls on Friday alone, and anything else is un-Islamic. They have threatened to kill headmasters who do not open their schools on Saturdays.
There are also more serious disagreements. In northern Iraq, territory is disputed between Arabs and Kurds. The Kurds captured the oil city of Kirkuk, the so-called jewel of Kurdistan, in the war of 2003. They will not give it up. The future of the city and of the Turkoman and Arab communities living there is still disputed.
But not all divisions in Iraq are getting wider. Sunni and Shia leaders now appreciate, in a way that they did not two years ago, that the Kurds, 20 per cent of the Iraqi population, already have quasi-independence. Most Kurds in the street would prefer outright autonomy. The main reasons their leaders want to stay inside Iraq for now is fear of neighbours like the Turks, the need to keep in with the US - and access to oil revenues.
The US is learning to play communal politics. The US ambassador Zilmay Khalilzad, appointed this summer, is far more adept at this than the preceding envoys. The US has learned in the last two-and-a-half years that it may have been easy to overthrow Saddam Hussein, but it is dangerous to buck the Kurds, the Shia or the Sunni. During the rancorous negotiations on the new Iraqi constitution, President Bush even called Abul Aziz al-Hakim, the head of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the Shia religious party, asking for concessions. In 2003 the US viewed SCIRI, not entirely wrongly, as a dangerous stalking horse for Iran, and US soldiers raided its Baghdad offices.
But the US has begun to learn too late. Iraqis know that whatever Bush and Blair say, the political will to stay in Iraq is weakening in the US and Britain. The British role in Iraq is in any case small, however great it may loom in domestic politics. The 8,500-strong force was never going to be enough to confront the Shia militias in southern Iraq.
The US was able to stick to its timetable for elections on 30 January and 15 December, as well as the constitutional referendum on 15 October. But this was primarily because it met the wishes of the Shia and Kurdish leaders. Even these "successes" had their price. The constitution was passed in the teeth of Sunni resistance, though the US tried to mitigate this with some last-minute cosmetic concessions. Under these the constitution can be amended by the newly elected National Assembly, although the Sunni parties are unlikely to have the votes to do so.
The constitution institutionalises the fragmentation of Iraq. The Kurds will have autonomy close to independence. They can drill for oil and will own what new reserves are discovered. But the surprise of the year is that the Shia leaders asked for and got the same concessions. There will be a Shia super region established, covering nine provinces in southern Iraq. This represents half of the 18 provinces in the whole country. One Iraqi minister lamented that the central government of Iraq might end up as a few buildings in the Green Zone.
After the war in 2003, Arab Iraqis, both Sunni and Shia, would deride comparisons between Iraq and countries divided by sectarianism such as Northern Ireland and Lebanon. They pointed out that Sunni and Shia in Iraq were often married to each other. They did not have a history of massacring each other. These claims for Iraqi Arab solidarity were always a little exaggerated. Sunni friends claim to love the Shia, aside, of course, "from those that are really Iranians or their agents". The Shia, for their part, said they saw all Iraqi Sunni as their brothers "aside from those that are really Baathists". Claims of communal amity are made less often today. The divisions between them are deepening because Iraq was a Sunni state and is becoming a Shia one. The Sunni are fighting the US occupiers and the Shia are, for the moment at least, loosely allied to the US. Iraq's al-Qa'ida suicide bombers have repeatedly targeted Shia civilians such as day labourers waiting for jobs in the Khadamiyah district of Baghdad. Would-be army and police, almost always Shia, have been slaughtered again and again.
So far the Shia response has been restrained. Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the supreme religious leader who is vastly influential over the Shia, has forbidden retaliation. But the powerful Ministry of the Interior, once controlled by the Sunni, is now in the hands of the Shia. The minister, Bayan Jabr, was previously a leader of SCIRI's militia, the Badr Brigade.
They dominate the fearsome paramilitary police commandos whom the Sunni see as nothing more than licensed death squads. At the end of the year, US troops raided an Interior Ministry bunker in the Jadriyah district of west Baghdad, where they found 158 tortured and starved prisoners, all allegedly Sunni. Bodies of men shot in the head and their hands in handcuffs are routinely found on dumps and beside the road in Baghdad.
Many ministries have become the domain of a single sect or party. The health ministry under the interim government became famous for being run by the Dawa Shia Muslim group, while the transport ministry portfolio is held by a follower of the nationalist cleric, Muqtada al- Sadr. This has a disastrous impact because the government begins to resemble that of Lebanon. Ministers are representatives of their communities. They cannot be fired, however crooked or incompetent.
The impact of the insurgency is exaggerated because the state in Iraq remains so weak. This remained strikingly true during 2005, when the government did extraordinarily little for its people. The electricity supply remains poor in Baghdad; kidnapping is rife; security is limited and Iraqis spend much of their time surviving from day to day. The police are not seen as protectors. Earlier this month, a student called Muammur Mohsin al-Obeidi said: "The Iraqi people know nobody is going to save them from criminals. They believe nobody will punish them. If gangsters are arrested they have enough money to bribe their way out of prison. There is no real government." It is a lament heard again and again from people in the streets of Baghdad. They believe government scarcely exists - and certainly not for their benefit.
There have been three administrations of Iraq since the US invasion, and all have failed. There was the Coalition Provisional Authority, fairly undiluted US imperial rule, under Paul Bremer, which helped provoke the Sunni rebellion. On 28 June 2004, the US formally turned power over to the interim government of Iyad Allawi, whose administration was notoriously corrupt. On 7 April 2005, Ibrahim al-Jaafari became Prime Minister but his government has proved fractious. These divisions largely mirrored those between the contending groups in Iraq. In all three administrations, corruption was on a scale attributed to states like Nigeria in the past. In 2005 the entire defence procurement budget of $1.3bn disappeared in return for a few unusable helicopters and armoured vehicles. This degree of corruption is now more difficult because ministers cannot spend money without authorisation.
There is a further reason why the Iraqi state is weak, which is not at first obvious. The US and Britain foresaw an Iraqi state whose armed forces were equipped only to cope with internal dissent. They have been determined not to hand over heavy weapons or modern equipment.
The US has not been as generous in transferring power to Iraqis as might appear from formal announcements. The main intelligence service has no budget, but is paid for and run by the CIA. The US has tried to keep control of the Defence Ministry and the new Iraqi army, which is supposedly being built up to take the place of US forces when they are withdrawn. The US military speaks of the triumphs and failures of training and equipping Iraqi troops (they have given less attention to the police). But there is another problem that the US has not really tackled.
The question is not just about the ability of the new army to fight, but about loyalty. Who, at the end of the day, will the soldiers fight for? Polls by Britain's Ministry of Defence show that the occupation is overwhelmingly unpopular among Shia as well as Sunni Iraqis. In the long run, the US cannot create an officer corps loyal to America. Then there is also the question of how far the army is a national institution. Its 115 battalions are reportedly 60 Shia, 45 Sunni, 9 Kurdish and one mixed. Over the next year we will see if Iraq is going to remain a single state or turn into a confederation. There are forces for unity as well as disintegration. Most Iraqi Arabs want to live in one country. But political observers fear that a Bosnian solution is on the cards, in which Baghdad will play the role of Sarajevo. |
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29 Dec 2005
Reuters
AMMAN (Reuters) - The United States should free Saddam Hussein if it wants to end its problems in Iraq and earn the friendship of Arabs, the former Iraqi president's lawyer wrote in a letter to U.S. President George W. Bush.
The chief lawyer for Saddam at his trial for crimes against humanity in Baghdad told Bush that Iraqis who supported their former leader were waiting for a bold decision from the world's most powerful statesman to free him.
"I call on you (President Bush) to release Mr. President (Saddam) immediately to allow the Iraqis to decide his fate. Only then will you get out of your predicament in Iraq and truly become an advocate of justice," Khalil Dulaimi wrote in a letter obtained by Reuters.
Such a decision would prove to be the panacea that would end Washington's woes over Iraq, Dulaimi asserted. "Your relations with Iraq will then be historic and you will win the favor of the Arabs and Muslims and the entire world," Dulaimi said, adding that it was the only way to spare Iraq from undergoing a bloody civil war.
"Iraq is heading now toward a destructive civil war... release him so that wounds can heal and his people unite."
Dulaimi also said it will become clear to Bush that Saddam's two-month-old trial is a farce of false witnesses and lies that should be ended. Saddam faces hanging if convicted.
"You will become convinced of President Saddam's complete innocence. His popularity gains by the day and (he) is beloved by millions of Iraqis," Dulaimi said.
For many Iraqis, the televised trial since October has generated mixed feelings of anger and revenge and moved others to criticize it as a show trial.
Iraq's new leaders say Saddam's trial will erase painful memories of a brutal regime and help usher in a new era of democracy and justice. |
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Anne Penketh, Diplomatic Editor
30 December 2005
Britain's former ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, has defied the Foreign Office by publishing on the internet documents providing evidence that the British Government knowingly received information extracted by torture in the "war on terror".
Mr Murray, who publicly raised the issue of the usefulness of information obtained under torture before he was forced to leave his job last year, submitted his forthcoming book, Murder in Samarkand, to the Foreign Office for clearance. But the Foreign Office demanded that he remove references to two sensitive government documents, which undermine official denials, to show that Britain had been aware it was receiving information obtained by the Uzbek authorities through torture. Rather than submit to the gagging order Mr Murray decided to publish the material on the internet. The first document published by Mr Murray contains the text of several telegrams that he sent to London from 2002 to 2004, warning that the information being passed on by the Uzbek security services was torture-tainted, and challenging MI6 claims that the information was nonetheless "useful". The second document is the text of a Foreign Office legal opinion which argues that the use by intelligence services of information extracted through torture is not a violation of the UN Convention Against Torture. |
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By ringverse
29/12/2005
Background:
The UK government has been quick to deny that we practice, or tolerate the practice of Torture. So it is perhaps not suprising that they are determined that you should not see the following documents:
http://users.pandora.be/quarsan/craig/telegrams.pdf
http://users.pandora.be/quarsan/craig/npaper.jpg
Craig Murray was the UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, untill his complaints and protest at the use of intelligence gained by torture got too much for Jack Straw and the Foreign Office, who set about attempting to unsuccessfully smear him, and to successfully remove him from office.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3750370.stm
http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2005/04/timeline_of_cra.html
The Foreign Office has had the draft of Craig's book for clearance for over 3 months now, and they are doing everything they can to try and prevent him from publishing his side of the story. Their latest attempt to cover their own backs was to inform him, the night before Christmas Eve, that these two documents cannot be published, and that he was to return or destroy all copies immediately.
What are these documents?
The first document is a series of Telegrams that Craig sent to the Foreign Office, outlining his growing concern and disgust at our use of intelligence passed to the UK by the Uzbek security services.
The second document is a copy of legal advice the Foreign Office sought, to see if they were operating within the Law in accepting torture intelligence, and according to Michael Wood the FCO legal adviser; it is fine, as long as it is not used as evidence.
Faced with this heavy handed censorship by the FCO, in an attempt to cover up our use of and complicity in torture, Craig has decided to fight back, and has asked us all to publish this information, so it cannot be suppressed.
I am in discussion with the FCO over what I am and am not allowed to publish in my book. The FCO is seeking to gut the book of all evidence of complicity with the Uzbek regime.
With Bliar cornered on extraordinary rendition, they are particularly anxious to suppress all evidence of our complicity in obtaining intelligence from Uzbek torture.
In particular, they have demanded I do not publish the attached documents, and that I hand over all copies of them.
The obvious answer to this is to post these documents as widely on the web as possible. This is also potentially very valuable in establishing that I am not attempting to make money from these documents - you don't have to buy my book to see them, they are freely available. If you buy the book, you are only paying for the added value of my thoughts.
This will only work if we can get the [documents] very widely posted, including on sites in the US and elsewhere outside the UK … there is a chance that those who … post this stuff will get threatened under the Official Secrets Act.
In March 2003 I was summoned back to London from Tashkent specifically for a meeting at which I was told to stop protesting. I was told specifically that it was perfectly legal for us to obtain and to use intelligence from the Uzbek torture chambers.
After this meeting Sir Michael Wood, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office's legal adviser, wrote to confirm this position. This minute from Michael Wood is perhaps the most important document that has become public about extraordinary rendition. It is irrefutable evidence of the government's use of torture material, and that I was attempting to stop it. It is no wonder that the government is trying to suppress this.
Craig
Compare and Contrast the government's public position on Torture, with the information they were recieving at the time from their own Ambassador, and the legal advice they were seeking.
We have archived a selection of government spin and lies on the use of torture in these 4 pages:
http://www.blairwatch.co.uk/node/708
http://www.blairwatch.co.uk/node/709
http://www.blairwatch.co.uk/node/710
http://www.blairwatch.co.uk/node/711
and you can listen to Jack Straw and Tony Blair deny what you read in these hitherto 'secret' documents here.
http://www.blairwatch.co.uk/down/strawhust.mp3
http://www.blairwatch.co.uk/down/blairrend.mp3
What you can do:
We have published the documents in full here, and ask that anyone who can will do the same.
http://www.blairwatch.co.uk/node/715
http://www.blairwatch.co.uk/node/714
If you could publish, host and link to these documents on your own webspace, then it will be harder for anybody to be prosecuted here in the UK, and ensure that they get maximum coverage.
Craig Murray stood up for what many of us believe, and it cost him his Job, his health, and his professional reputation. The least we can do his stand by him as he defies the UK government's attempts at censorship, and possible prosecution.
Craig's own post on the subject can be found here:
http://www.craigmurray.co.uk/archives/2005/12/damning_documen.html
Thanks for your help. |
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Robert Fisk
30 December 2005
This was the year the "war on terror" - an obnoxious expression which we all parroted after 11 September 2001 - appeared to be almost as endless as George Bush once claimed it would be. And unsuccessful. For, after all the bombing of Afghanistan, the overthrow of the Taliban, the invasion of Iraq and its appallingly tragic aftermath, can anyone claim today that they feel safer than they did a year ago? We have gone on smashing away at the human rights we trumpeted at the Russians - and the Arabs - during the Cold War. We have perhaps fatally weakened all those provisions that were written into our treaties and conventions in the aftermath of the Second World War to make the world a safer place. And we claim we are winning.
Where, for example, is the terror? In the streets of Baghdad, to be sure. And perhaps again in our glorious West if we go on with this folly. But terror is also in the prisons and torture chambers of the Middle East. It is in the very jails to which we have been merrily sending out trussed-up prisoners these past three years. For Jack Straw to claim that men are not being sent on their way to torture is surely one of the most extraordinary - perhaps absurd is closer to the mark - statements to have been made in the "war on terror". If they are not going to be tortured - like the luckless Canadian shipped off to Damascus from New York - then what is the purpose of sending them anywhere?
And how are we supposed to "win" this war by ignoring all the injustices we are inflicting on that part of the world from which the hijackers of September 11 originally came? How many times have Messrs Bush and Blair talked about "democracy"? How few times have they talked about "justice", the righting of historic wrongs, the ending of torture? Our principal victims of the "war on terror", of course, have been in Iraq (where we have done quite a bit of torturing ourselves).
But, strange to say, we are silent about the horrors the people of Iraq are now enduring. We do not even know - are not allowed to know - how many of them have died. We know that 1,100 Iraqis died by violence in Baghdad in July alone. That's terror.
But how many died in the other cities of Iraq, in Mosul and Kirkuk and Irbil, and in Amara and Fallujah and Ramadi and Najaf and Kerbala and Basra? Three thousand in July? Or four thousand? And if those projections are accurate, we are talking about 36,000 or 48,000 over the year - which makes that projected post-April 2003 figure of 100,000 dead, which Blair ridiculed, rather conservative, doesn't it?
It's not so long ago, I recall, that Bush explained to us that all the Arabs would one day wish to have the freedoms of Iraq. I cannot think of an Arab today who would wish to contemplate such ill fortune, not least because of the increasingly sectarian nature of the authorities, elected though they are.
The year did allow Ariel Sharon to achieve his aim of turning his colonial war into part of the "war on terror". It also allowed al-Qa'ida's violence to embrace more Arab countries. Jordan was added to Egypt. Woe betide those of us who are now locked into the huge military machine that embraces the Middle East. Why, Iraqis sometimes ask me, are American forces - aerial or land - in Uzbekistan? And Kazakhstan and Afghanistan, in Turkey and Jordan (and Iraq) and in Kuwait and Qatar and Bahrain and Oman and Yemen and Egypt and Algeria (there is a US special forces unit based near Tamanrasset, co-operating with the same Algerian army that was involved in the massacre of civilians the 1990s)?
In fact, just look at the map and you can see the Americans in Greenland and Iceland and Britain and Germany and ex-Yugoslavia and Greece - where we join up with Turkey. How did this iron curtain from the ice cap to the borders of Sudan emerge? What is its purpose? These are the key questions that should engage anyone trying to understand the "war on terror".
And what of the bombers? Where are they coming from, these armies of suiciders? Still we are obsessed with Osama bin Laden. Is he alive? Yes. But does he matter? Quite possibly not. For he has created al-Qa'ida. The monster has been born. To squander our millions searching for people like Bin Laden is about as useless as arresting nuclear scientists after the invention of the atom bomb. It is with us.
Alas, as long as we are not attending to the real problems of the Middle East, of its record of suffering and injustice, it - al-Qa'ida - will still be with us. My year began with a massive explosion in Beirut, just 400 metres from me, as a bomb killed the ex-prime minister Rafiq Hariri. It continued on 7 July when a bomb blew up two trains back from me on the Piccadilly line. Oh, the dangerous world we live in now. I suppose we all have to make our personal choices these days. Mine is that I am not going to allow 11 September 2001 to change my world. Bush may believe that 19 Arab murderers changed his world. But I'm not going to let them change mine. I hope I'm right. |
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By RICHARD THIEME
28 Dec 2005
Torture is all the rage these days, getting plenty of ink in the liberal press, as if it's something new. It's not. We have been torturing one another for centuries. Our intelligence professionals have perfected the means and the methods and have created opportunities for learning how to do it right. Torture, from beating, lacerating, electrocuting, raping and breaking individuals in hell holes to quietly standing aside while genocide takes place, is ho hum. By treating it as something special, the discussion of appropriate policies governing torture has been distorted.
Hence this essay to right that wrong. First of all, torture is widely practiced. We Americans developed a very good manual for torturing "leftist rebels," i.e. anyone who opposes "free trade" and organizes themselves enough to be a threat, and we trained people in how to do it. I spoke to someone recently who had wandered into torture training classes complete with chalk diagrams on the blackboard and arrows pointing out pressure points. I talked to an interrogator from Guantanamo who smiled and shook his head when presented with government statements about the humane treatment of "enemy combatants." So let's stop talking about Abu Ghraib and related "atrocities," as they are called by the leftwing media, as if they are anomalous. Atrocities are not anomalous. They're as common as fumbles when the Packers are playing.
Secondly, despite a significant number of voices in the chorus proclaiming that torture is not a good interrogation technique (let's face it, when the electricity is coursing through your genitals and the man in the black hood asks if you want some more, you'll say anything to staunch the juice; and the best interrogators say they prefer what is called the Scharff method after the sophisticated NAZI interrogator Hans Joachim Scharff who showed how empathy, understanding, and patience often turned the most recalcitrant captive into a good source of information) despite all that, torture must be good for more than recreation because even those who say it's ineffective continue to authorize, execute, and cover up its use.
Now, part of that may be the fun factor. Totally dominating another human being can be fun. One source explained that torture has long been practiced in other countries with Americans as coaches (to use the current buzzword), if not participants. He named a lot of countries where we did this, including El Salvador, Cambodia, Chile, Iran, South Vietnam, Guatemala, Argentina, Israel, and Egypt. We could double that list, at least, with countries in our own hemisphere (the Monroe Doctrine gives us permission to do that, and now the Monroe Doctrine is applied to the world and beyond, we apply it to space all the way out to the asteroid belt). For some, torture is just work. But for others, torture is fun.
Take the Uzbeks, for example. One source with a long history in military intelligence said it was a novelty when the Uzbeks learned that one purpose of torture might be to elicit information.
But I digress. The point I want to make is that we have been engaged in torturing people directly or through proxies, here, there and everywhere, for so long, that torture ought to commend itself to all thinking individuals as an appropriate methodology for (1) getting the truth out of people quickly and efficiently, and (2) disciplining unruly children and adults alike, as is when is.
I propose that we apply the lessons of torture in ways consistent with our actual practice, not with the cover stories we invent so the squeamish can sleep at night.
Torture should be used first in the basements of police stations, in prisons, and in schools, places where we have nearly total control over prisoners, inmates and students now. Torture has been in fact routinely practiced in many of those places and when, for example, white police attach wires to a black man and let the good times flow, subsequent protestations are widely ignored. So this extension of current practice would be a seamless splice.
Once the efficacy of torture in those environments has become clear to a desensitized population, it can be extended into homes and businesses where discipline is a must but achieving it efficiently has been denied to executives and parents. (Desensitization training is a must. When the CIA trained assassins for assignment to embassies where they would be ready at hand, they were compelled to watch hours of atrocities, their heads immobilized and eyelids propped open, until they no longer had an emotional response to killings, mutilation and so on.)
Imagine that you ask your child what they've been looking at on the Internet and you get an unsatisfactory answer. Now all you can do is shut them up in a room with a computer, a television, a cell phone with conference calling, all the comforts of home. But if you could take them down to the basement and wire up the auto battery or break the little darling's arm and hang them from it for a few days as we do in Iraq, can you imagine how quickly you would know what Junior was browsing?
Or imagine an executive faced with employees who threaten litigation on some politically correct mini-point of contention every time they're told to work. Instead of having to listen to that smarty-pants voice, you just tie their hands to opposing cubicles and shred that designer blouse with twenty or thirty bloody lashes like they do in Afghanistan. Do that a couple of times, making sure the rest of the crew has to watch, and you'll have a hard-working corps of workers with the right attitude in no time.
The truth is, people are overly squeamish about torture. We need to ramp up public exposure to what we really do and get people used to the sounds and smells. Those pictures from Abu Ghraib were well-scrubbed. They only showed men being abused in mostly passive humiliating ways. Pictures of women being raped and the sounds of children being sodomized were locked away. Trials of low-level personnel were quick and quiet while responsible policy makers were ignored. For heaven's sake, it required a trained physician going through autopsy reports to discover that "natural death" upon "natural death" was a cover for torturing people to death. That's inexcusable. I think we Americans have stronger stomachs than that and the collusion between media and military to sanitize the truth is inappropriate. If they can take it, hell, so can we!
You would be surprised how many people would enjoy it. Listen to the words of a medic who described his feelings while beating prisoners during service in Iraq: "You get a burning in your stomach, a rush, a feeling of hot lead running through your veins, and you get a sense of power. ... Imagine wearing point-blank body armor, an M-16 and all the power in the world, and the authority of God. That power is very attractive." (quoted from the forthcoming book by Dr. Stephen Miles, Oath Betrayed: Military Medicine and the War on Terror). The lessons of torture are matter-of-fact. Torture is widespread, obviously effective or we wouldn't use it so much, and to many practitioners either a rationalized, neutral event or something they really like. Adapting torture to more general use in society would quickly pay dividends. Students would stop mouthing off, employees would stop suing bosses, suspects would confess, and children would obey their parents.
I think it is high time we use torture whenever and wherever. Initial opposition will quickly drown in a sea of screams and resisters will learn that the fact of resistance marks them for the next session. We have the tools, we have the techniques, we have lacked only the will to do what works to straighten out our bent society once and for all.
I highly commend torture to everybody.
Richard Thieme is an author, speaker, and retreat leader focused on the implications of technology, religion, and science for the 21st century. He can be reached at: rthieme@thiemeworks.com |
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By DOUG THOMPSON
Dec 30, 2005
Tim Abbott is a Vietnam veteran who lives in the Southwestern Virginia town of Hillsville, a conservative, blue-collar community that tends to vote Republican and bleed red, white and blue.
But, like an increasing number of veterans, Abbott is fed up with President George W. Bush.
“Bush talks a lot about freedom, courage, transparent government and the rule of law. He talks,” Abbott says. “His speeches are carefully choreographed before audiences of his faithful -- often Christian fundamentalists or, to paraphrase Bush, Christian-fascists -- and they must sign loyalty oaths to Bush. He speaks before audience after audience of soldiers and sailors who cannot speak except as directed by the White House.”
Normally, such comments would be risky in a mountain town where Patriotism rules supreme but Abbott expressed his views this week in an op ed article for The Roanoke Times and found many people agreeing with him.
“When I think of Bush, I do not think of liberty and courage, compassion and justice. No, I think of arrogance, greed and lies,” Abbott wrote. “He is a thug, a buffoon and a coward. Not only is he incompetent, he is corrupt.”
In normal times, these would be fighting words and Abbott would do well to avoid lunch at the Hillsville Diner, the Main Street eatery where the locals gather to discuss politics. But George W. Bush’s times are not normal times and Abbott is greeted warmly on the streets of Hillsville.
“In his Mission Accomplished foray, (Bush) wore a military uniform, something no president has done since Washington, and Washington only wore the uniform to quell a rebellion,” Abbott says. “Around the world he has replaced the Soviet Gulag with the Bush Gulag, where men may be tortured.”
Abbott’s comments come when this web site revealed that the Pentagon has ordered soldiers home from Iraq for holiday leave to give pro-war interviews to their hometown newspapers and television station. This does not surprise a veteran who learned about military duplicity in Vietnam.
“Others before whom he speaks may ask no questions. He runs from journalists, as we have seen in China, even on those rare occasions that he speaks before them,” Abbott says of Bush. “Even worse, he has paid journalists to say good things about him and his policies. He also produces propaganda from government offices that he offers as news reports. And any protests against his policies are diverted well away from his sight and hearing.”
In recent weeks, I’ve spoken with dozens of vets of Vietnam, Desert Storm and the present invasion of Iraq and most speak with anger towards Bush and his policies.
Soldiers serve under a code of honor, something they say Bush lacks.
“Bush is of a kind with the dictators; a strutting, sanctimonious buffoon who talks democracy but acts like Saddam Hussein,” Abbott says. “Bush might differ in degree from Hussein, not having been in power as long, but in behavior, with torture and the corruption of government, they are of a kind.
“While al-Qaida is an enemy of the values and principles of the United States and Western civilization and must be confronted, it can do no more than kill people and destroy property.
“Bush can subvert our principles and institutions. He is the greater enemy.” |
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By DOUG THOMPSON
Publisher, Capitol Hill Blue
Dec 29, 2005
Good soldiers follow orders and hundreds of American military men and women returned to the United States on holiday leave this month with orders to sell the Iraq war to a skeptical public.
The program, coordinated through a Pentagon operation dubbed “Operation Homefront,” ordered military personnel to give interviews to their hometown newspapers, television stations and other media outlets and praise the American war effort in Iraq. Initial reports back to the Pentagon deem the operation a success with dozens of front page stories in daily and weekly newspapers around the country along with upbeat reports on local television stations.
“We've learned as a military how to do this better,” Captain David Diaz, a military reservist, told his hometown paper, The Roanoke (VA) Times. “My worry is that we have the right military strategy and political strategies now but the patience of the American public is wearing thin.”
When pressed by the paper on whether or not his commanding officers told him to talk to the press, Diaz admitted he was “encouraged” to do so. So reporter Duncan Adams asked:
“Did Diaz return to the U.S. on emergency leave with an agenda -- to offer a positive spin that could help counter growing concerns among Americans about the U.S. exit strategy? How do we know that's not his strategy, especially after he discloses that superior officers encouraged him to talk about his experiences in Iraq?”
Replied Diaz:
“You don't. I can tell you that the direction we've gotten from on high is that there is a concern about public opinion out there and they want to set the record straight.”
Diaz, an intelligence officer, knows how to avoid a direct answer. Other military personnel, however, tell Capitol Hill Blue privately that the pressure to “sell the war” back home is enormous.
“I’ve been promised an early release if I do a good job promoting the war,” says one reservist who asked not to be identified.
In interviews with a number of reservists home for the holidays, a pattern emerges on the Pentagon’s propaganda effort. Soldiers are encouraged to contact their local news media outlets to offer interviews about the war. A detailed set of talking points encourages them to:
--Admit initial doubts about the war but claim conversion to a belief in the American mission;
--Praise military leadership in Iraq and throw in a few words of support for the Bush administration;
--Claim the mission to turn security of the country over to the Iraqis is working;
--Reiterate that America must not abandon its mission and must stay until the “job is finished.”
--Talk about how “things are better” now in Iraq.
“My worry is that we have the right military strategy and political strategies now but the patience of the American public is wearing thin,” Diaz told The Roanoke Times.
“It’s way better now (in Iraq). People are friendlier. They seem more relaxed, and they say, ’Thank you, mister,’” Sgt. Christopher Desierto told his hometown paper, The Maui News.
But soldiers who are home and don’t have to return to Iraq tell a different story.
“I've just been focused on trying to get the rest of these guys home,” says Sgt. Major Floyd Dubose of Jackson, MS, who returned home after 11 months in Iraq with the Mississippi Army National Guard's 155th Combat Brigade.
And the Army is cracking down on soldiers who go on the record opposing the war.
Specialist Leonard Clark, a National Guardsman, was demoted to private and fined $1,640 for posting anti-war statements on an Internet blog. Clark wrote entries describing the company's commander as a "glory seeker" and the battalion sergeant major an "inhuman monster". His last entry before the blog was shut down told how his fellow soldiers were becoming increasingly opposed to the US operation in Iraq.
“The message is clear,” says one reservist who is home for the holidays but has to return and asked not to be identified. “If you want to get out of this man’s Army with an honorable (discharge) and full benefits you better not tell the truth about what is happening in-country.”
But Sgt. Johnathan Wilson, a reservist, got his honorable discharge after he returned home earlier this month and he’s not afraid to talk on the record.
“Iraq is a classic FUBAR,” he says. “The country is out of control and we can’t stop it. Anybody who tries to sell a good news story about the war is blowing it out his ass. We don’t win and eventually we will leave the country in a worse shape than it was when we invaded.” |
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By BILL and KATHLEEN CHRISTISON
Former CIA analysts
29 Dec 2005
"Nothing else more dangerous to the world, to the Middle East, to the oppressed Palestinians, or to the true interests of the United States is happening today -- anywhere.
Americans who do not want an eruption of a new world war, started by our own government, ought to be strongly lobbying the Bush administration and all members of Congress against supporting any military action by the U.S. and Israel against Iran.
Globally, people who oppose such a war should be lobbying their own governments in similar fashion." The peace movements of the entire world should be in crisis mode right now, working non-stop to prevent the U.S. and Israel from starting a war against Iran. (See the James Petras article in CounterPunch on December 24, 2005 titled Iran in the Crosshairs for the best summary of the present situation.) The reckless and unnecessary dangers arising from such a war are so obvious that one wonders why normal political forces in the two aggressor countries -- both of whom love to glorify themselves as democracies -- would not prevent such a war from happening.
But the "normal political forces" in both the U.S. and Israel have become badly distorted. Democracy has been seriously undermined in both. The cowboy-like personalities and aggressive tendencies of both countries' leaders tend to feed on each other.Domestic political difficulties and coming elections in both countries probably add to the macho inclination of the ruling elites to use force to remove any problems facing them. The glue binding these tendencies together is the ever-strengthening institutional link between defense establishments and military-industrial complexes in both countries, as well as, in the U.S, the growing power and influence of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) over both major political parties. The entire mix increases the probability, against all common sense, that this absurd war will actually happen.
Nothing else more dangerous to the world, to the Middle East, to the oppressed Palestinians, or to the true interests of the United States is happening today -- anywhere. Americans who do not want an eruption of a new world war, started by our own government, ought to be strongly lobbying the Bush administration and all members of Congress against supporting any military action by the U.S. and Israel against Iran. Globally, people who oppose such a war should be lobbying their own governments in similar fashion.
Background
It is worthwhile to discuss briefly the broader context of why a war with Iran today seems a real possibility. During his all-out public relations effort in late 2005 to regain support for his policies in the Middle East, Bush has made it clear that he plans to continue his drive for complete victory in the "War on Terrorism," without making significant changes in his own, very aggressive, foreign policies. Those policies will make this planet a less safe, more unjust place to live for most people around the world, as well as for most of us living in the U.S. The special relationship between the U.S. and Israel has long played an important role in these aggressive policies.
Outside the United States, it is widely understood that one of the true motives -- not the exclusive motive but a real and significant one -- behind the Bush administration's 2003 invasion of Iraq was the desire of the neocons in Washington to conquer Iraq in order to benefit Israel. Although a few of the big-name neocons (Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Lewis "Scooter" Libby) have left high-visibility positions for various reasons, many remain, and it is clear that Bush himself, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Rice have taken as their own the main tenets of neocon beliefs.
Inside the U.S., on the other hand, the pressure of the neocons for war on Israel's behalf, or any hint that Bush himself participates in that pressure, is hardly ever mentioned. This taboo on discussing the Israeli link to the war in Iraq, enforced by the threat of being labeled anti-Semitic, introduces major distortions into practically every effort to examine and change policies that are causing massive hatred of the U.S. around the world.
But right now, three of the long-existing "problems" in the Middle East (i.e., situations that have been made problems largely by our own actions) have reached critical stages that may, if Washington's policies do not change quite quickly, result in our losing even the remnants of stability and peace that remain in that region today. The world could face instead nuclear warfare or, at a minimum, a practically unending "clash of civilizations" and conventional warfare at a much higher level than exists now. The first, and the most important right now, of the three problems is the main subject of this article: the problem that arises from the determined U.S. and Israeli policy of preventing Iran from ever acquiring nuclear weapons. The second and third problems, also situations brought on by the U.S. itself, have to do with Syria and the Palestinians. In the long run, they are also very important, but they are less urgent for now. These other problems will be considered briefly at the end of this article.
As was the case with the U.S. invasion of Iraq, one of the underlying causes of all these "problems" in the Middle East has been the success of the neocons in persuading the Bush administration to support aggressively the goals of the Israeli government throughout the area. And here again, the fear of being charged with anti-Semitism causes many Americans quietly to accept the taboo on discussing the Israeli link to the Bush administration's foreign policies. This is an absurd situation. Criticizing Israeli (or U.S.) policies and urging specific changes in those policies is not anti-Semitic (or anti-American). The arrogance of anyone who suggests the contrary is appalling. The following paragraphs contain suggestions on how we should work to remedy those aspects of this absurdity that bear on Iran and nuclear weapons.
What should be done to change U.S. policy on Iran's nuclear program?
First of all, don't fall into the trap of accepting Iran's public claims that it is not attempting to acquire nuclear weapons. Many of the nations that now have such weapons made similar claims while they were developing the weapons. Israel did so throughout the first half of the 1960s, engaging in elaborate subterfuges even when dealing with U.S. inspectors who occasionally came looking for weapons work. The Israeli claims were so much garbage (see Israeli author Avner Cohen's book, Israel and the Bomb). Then, after it acquired its first nuclear explosive device almost 40 years ago now, Israel simply adopted a well publicized policy of ambiguity and stopped talking publicly about whether it had any weapons. India and Pakistan also both claimed not to be working on weapons when in fact they were. Their claims were garbage too, which they quickly threw away once they joined the nuclear club and possessed their own deterrent. Iran almost certainly intends to do the same, and its public claims to the contrary are also almost certainly worthless.
The principal point to start with is that, unless the U.S. and Israel (and other nations as well) all agree to work seriously toward eliminating their own nuclear weapons, any Iranian government will consider that it has as much right as the rest of us to such weapons. Essentially, even if Iran, under pressure, were to sign new agreements, now or in the future, to forgo nuclear weapons, the new agreements would be meaningless unless the U.S., Israel, and other nuclear nations ended their own monumental hypocrisy of insisting that they can keep and expand their nuclear arsenals, while non-nuclear nations may not acquire such arsenals. In the eyes of most Muslims around the world and many other people too, Iran, with a population of close to 70 million, has at least as much right as Israel, with a population less than one-tenth as large, to have nuclear weapons
Most supporters of the global peace movements by definition oppose the solving of international problems through warfare, and they also oppose the further proliferation of nuclear weapons. Most are also aware that the critical bargain reached in the 1970 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) -- the bargain that made the treaty possible -- was a trade-off: the acceptance of continued non-nuclear-weapons status by states without those weapons, in return for the simultaneous agreement by states possessing nuclear weapons to pursue good-faith negotiations on nuclear, and complete and general, disarmament. This latter provision had no teeth, and certainly many "realists" in the U.S. foreign policy establishment expected that it would not and could not be enforced. Nevertheless, the existence of this provision was necessary to the NPT's ratification by numerous countries, and it gives any state dissatisfied with progress toward nuclear disarmament an excuse to abrogate or ignore the treaty.
Most people will not bother to make the niceties of international law an issue in this matter, but the question of which is more important, stopping the further proliferation of nuclear weapons to Iran or stopping our own side from instigating a war against Iran, is vital. The answer should be clear: The single most urgent objective we should have right now is to prevent a war, possibly nuclear, from being started by the U.S. and/or Israel against Iran. To repeat, such a war would be disastrous, and we should be doing whatever we can, with the highest possible priority, to prevent it from ever happening.
Every peace activist on the globe ought to be in the streets and elsewhere lobbying in support of something very simple: do not attack Iran, even if this means allowing Iran to develop its own nuclear weapons. We should put out the message that it is simply not worth a war, with consequences impossible to foresee, to prevent Iran from obtaining such weapons. From 1945 until we invaded Iraq in 2003, we never once took military action to prevent other nations from developing nuclear weapons. We relied instead on deterrence and containment (to prevent other nations from using such weapons after they had been developed). These may not be perfect policies, but they have a successful track record and can probably be applied more successfully than other policies to subnational groups as well as nation-states. The point is that these are still better policies than the recklessness of preemption, and we should use these policies in lobbying against U.S involvement of any kind in military actions or coup attempts against Iran. We should also very definitely support an effort to tie future U.S. aid to Israel to Israel's not engaging in military action against Iran.
We are talking here about supporting (by our silence), or opposing (by vociferous lobbying), what could become major, serious warfare -- warfare that could easily become global, and also could easily cause greater difficulties for the peoples of the Middle East than any they have yet faced from U.S. policies. With an election campaign intensifying the political volatilities of Israeli politics, with possibly fast-moving new uncertainties and vulnerabilities arising among both Republicans and Democrats jousting for advantage in a U.S. election year, and with a new, inexperienced president in Iran who, so far at least, believes aggressive speech strengthens his political position, the dangers in the situation are evident. As each week passes and no movement occurs anywhere -- particularly in Washington -- to reduce tensions by changing policies, the risk grows of a mistake that will lead to new hostilities, and possibly nuclear warfare. How many Iranians might we and the Israelis kill? How many Israelis might die? How many Americans?
How should the U.S. change its policies with respect to Syria?
The issues of Syria and Palestine are related to U.S. policy toward Iran. Policy on Syria today is to put constant pressure on that country's ruler, Bashar al-Assad, with the ultimate objective of ousting and replacing him with someone (not yet named by the Americans) who would be even more subservient to U.S. and Israeli desires. Assad himself has moved a considerable way toward subservience, giving the U.S. considerable help on intelligence matters and accepting certain U.S. prisoners "rendered" to his regime for purposes of torture, but the U.S., unsatisfied, keeps intensifying the pressure. The U.S. and Israel have succeeded in making it more difficult for Syria to provide support for the Palestinian resistance against Israel's occupation, but Damascus still provides some refuge for Hezbollah personnel.
The recent assassinations of anti-Syrian leaders in Lebanon have provided new opportunities for the Bush administration to ratchet up its criticism of Syria still further, although the evidence of Syrian involvement in the assassinations is weak. It is at least possible that other groups, such as the Israel's Mossad or the CIA, are responsible.
Whatever the truth behind events in Lebanon, the events themselves could offer a U.S. president who is in some trouble at home the possibility of a low-cost, low-risk foreign policy victory if he could pull off, perhaps with the help of Mossad, a quick covert action that ousted Assad. Act II of a grand show might then proceed -- another U.S. occupation installed, another nation in the Middle East "democratized," elections held a year or two later and a puppet government set up, step-by-step takeovers of the economy implemented by U.S. and Israeli interests, further isolation of the Palestinians from other Arabs -- all in all, another great victory for the U.S-Israeli partnership.
Or so Bush, at least, might believe. In reality, the situation might turn into another morass like Iraq. But months might pass and the U.S. congressional election of November 2006 might be history before we knew that for sure. Might not a man like Bush who revels in chance-taking consider this a pretty good gamble? Meanwhile, how many Syrians would we kill? How many badly wounded Americans would come home to a questionable quality of life because bulletproof vests saved their lives? If Israeli military units moved into Syria (to help us, of course), how many Israelis would die?
We should all be lobbying members of Congress not to cast any votes in favor of aggressive U.S. policies toward Syria. Such votes cannot help, and will only take resources from, a majority of the world's peoples and a majority of Americans. Syria (and Lebanon) are not places where the United States benefits in any way from being a global policeman. While the neocons and probably some present top Israeli officials do see benefits to be gained from U.S. intervention in Syria, other senior and many ordinary Israelis do not. We also should urge members of Congress to tie further aid to Israel to Israel's not becoming involved in any military actions against Syria.
How should the U.S. change its policies with respect to the Palestinians?
We should make it as clear as we possibly can to members of Congress that the Palestine-Israel problem is the most central long-term issue to the peoples of the Middle East. Most Arab leaders have been so co-opted by the U.S. that they no longer object to our support for Israel's oppression of the Palestinians, but the peoples of the area are a different story. They do care about and object strenuously to that oppression.
Regardless of what happens anywhere in the Middle East, we will never end the "War on Terrorism" without, first, a solution to the Palestine-Israel issue that provides as much justice to the Palestinians as to the Israelis. Although many supporters of Israel try to compare the several-centuries-long U.S. conquest of American Indians to the Israeli attempt to conquer the Palestinians, there is no valid comparison. Quite apart from the immorality of any attempt to emulate the U.S. atrocity against its indigenous population, there are practical reasons why the comparison cannot be made. The population balances, for instance, are entirely different; there are proportionately far more Palestinians than there were American Indians.
Nevertheless, Israeli and U.S. policy in the West Bank, semi-hidden by a bogus withdrawal from Gaza, continues to seek permanent conquest of more and more territory. The daily injustices and cruelties imposed by Israel and the U.S. on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank are today worse than they have been in the previous 38 years of occupation. This is not only a major human rights issue facing the United States. It is also a very large cause of the hatred against the U.S. throughout the Arab and Muslim worlds.
What is new in the last few months is Israeli intensification of settlement activity in the West Bank, particularly in East Jerusalem; intensification of land-confiscation (with no recompense to Palestinians); a speed-up in construction of the separation wall and of new "Israeli-citizens-only" roads, both of which also require more land-confiscation; more demolitions of Palestinian houses; and new, harsh Israeli measures of other types aimed specifically at forcing Palestinians out of areas, in which they have lived for generations, in and near Jerusalem.
All of this takes place with little Western media attention; the media devoted considerably more attention to the carefully televised "suffering" of the relatively few Israeli settlers forced to move from their luxurious homes in Gaza. The Israelis, with heavy U.S. financing, are busily establishing more "facts on the ground" that will make any peaceful solution providing equal justice to both sides less possible. That does not mean that Israel will "win." Given the determination and inexhaustibility (and large numbers) of Palestinians, it just means more terrorism, killing, and cruelty on both sides. It is a shocking waste of lives, and the U.S. is prolonging it by its one-sided support of Israel. Let's put it baldly. U.S. policy on Israel and Palestine is simply immoral in its one-sidedness. It should take no one who investigates what is actually happening to Palestinians in the West Bank more than 30 seconds to decide that the oppression and cruelties that can be seen there daily should be stopped. Here too, further U.S. aid to Israel should be directly tied to Israel's stopping the oppression and cruelties to Palestinians.
The position we should take in lobbying members of Congress is simple and obvious: Stop the one-sidedness. It is a blot that will stain all our other activities and policies in the Middle East, and probably elsewhere, for years to come. The longer we avoid changing this situation, the larger the blot will become.
Conclusion
All of these issues -- Iran, Syria, and Palestine-Israel -- are interrelated, and each issue enhances the perception around the world that the U.S. is hypocritical, oppressive, and interested only in advancing Israel's interests. All grow out of the one-sided U.S. support for Israel, and none will be resolved without a change in the U.S.-Israeli relationship. To put it baldly again, the widespread perception of the U.S. as immoral and unjust interferes in a quite serious way with the conduct of U.S. foreign policy. Neither we nor Israel "wins" if U.S. policy continues on the same path.
Bill Christison was a senior official of the CIA. He served as a National Intelligence Officer and as Director of the CIA's Office of Regional and Political Analysis.
Kathleen Christison is a former CIA political analyst and has worked on Middle East issues for 30 years. She is the author of Perceptions of Palestine and The Wound of Dispossession.
They both can be reached at christison@counterpunch.org. |
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Julian Borger in Washington
Thursday December 29, 2005
The Guardian
America's wolves have climbed back from the edge of extinction in the past 10 years to the point where the federal government is about to relinquish responsibility for their protection. But environmentalists say the wolf is not quite out of the woods and warn that the human backlash against the predator has only just begun.
About 5,000 wolves - mainly Canadian greys - now roam the woods of Minnesota and the American west, compared with a population of barely 200 in the mid-90s, before the animals were reintroduced to Yellowstone national park. The success of that programme has led to the relaxation of some of the animal's protections. The interior department is working on a plan to take it off the threatened species list, and from early January the wolf packs of Idaho and Montana will no longer be wards of Washington but will instead have to rely on the state authorities to keep their enemies at bay.
Those enemies are almost all human. The success of the reintroduction has led to an outcry among western ranchers that the wolf packs represent a threat to their sheep and cattle. Despite official statistics showing the wolves are responsible for a tiny proportion of livestock deaths, and the fact that ranchers are compensated for any such attacks, hunters in the western states are increasingly taking the law into their own hands, shooting wolves on sight or even venturing into the woods to drop poison meatballs.
Environmentalists question whether western states, which represent their overwhelmingly anti-wolf electorates, will have the political willpower to enforce the wolf's legal protections.
Ranchers can get licences to hunt wolves if they can prove they are killing livestock. From January they will be able to get them from state authorities, rather than having to apply to Washington.
"This is a bad idea," said Rodger Schlickeisen, of the Defenders of Wildlife organisation. "Not least because several key state governments seem caught up in the reflexive hatred of some of the most strident of anti-wolf voices.
"State government antipathy and illegal killings mean that it's especially important to finish the job of wolf restoration, instead of stopping halfway, as the department of the interior intends."
Wyoming, where anti-wolf sentiment runs highest, wants to institute a shoot on sight policy outside its north-western woodlands.
An Idaho man, Tim Sundles, is due in court in the next few weeks for poisoning wolves on federal land in a trial likely to bring emotions to a head. He portrays his trial as a struggle between the individual and an "out-of-control federal agency" - the fish and wildlife service.
Predator profile
US wolf population: (except Alaska)
1994: 200; 2005: about 5,000
Alaska: 7,700-11,200 (estimate)
Attacks: Wolves are believed to have killed a man in Saskatchewan, Canada, last month. If confirmed, it would be the first lethal wolf attack in more than a century.
Sheep deaths caused by wolves: 0.1%
Wolf deaths caused by humans: 90%
Source: International Wolf Centre |
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29 Dec 2005
NewsChannel5
Johnny Marlin says two employees were cutting tobacco in this barn beside his home when suddenly, they heard an explosion.
A five pound chunk of ice fell through the roof of the barn. Marlin believes it fell from a passing plane overhead.
"I called Lelan Statom, and said can you explain this one? He guessed airplane too," said Marlin.
Marlin says luckily no one was hurt, but he's keeping the ice-chunk as a keepsake. |
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29 Dec 2005
AP
DULUTH, Minn. - With $400,000 in funding approved, researchers say they can make a good start in finding out what's causing the rust that's been attacking the steel plates that line the Duluth-Superior harbor.
The plates, which keep dirt out of the harbor and shipping channels, were expected to last 50 years. Instead, they are showing rust damage after only 10. The unexplained rot, discovered two years ago, may cause them to fail decades early. Duluth Seaway Facilities Director Jim Sharrow said the problem isn't found in other Great Lakes ports. The new research project will first determine the extent of the problem in the harbor.
"One of the things that we will be trying to do is to map, carefully, the extent of that coverage," Sharrow said. "Is it really as severe in all areas of the harbor? At the Oliver bridge, which is several miles above the navigation channel, we're not seeing this corrosion. We don't know if it has anything to do with shipping or just the other activities of the population around the harbor, or some other thing."
They do know the problem is only in the inner harbor.
"The corrosion is evident on the inside of the Duluth piers, right out to the lake, but not on the outside of the pier structure, where lake water is in contact with the steel," Sharrow said.
The plates are being replaced at the dock of a grain elevator, and along the port entry in Superior, Wis., where ships follow the river channel into and out of the harbor.
"Part of the Superior entry is being replaced by the Corps of Engineers, because of the excessive corrosion," Sharrow said. "Both of those projects are giving us some corroded steel that can be reviewed and analyzed during the study."
The Minnesota Legislature approved $100,000 for the study last summer. In November, Congress approved another $300,000.
Sharrow said the investigators will take a close look at whether something in the harbor water is causing the rust.
"To study the water chemistry, and the condition of the steel pilings of the various docks, as well as the on going corrosion process," Sharrow said. "We also will be studying the rate of corrosion and various possible methods of protecting the steel."
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will lead the study.
Dave Bowman, a Corps project manager in Detroit, said there are many theories about what could be causing the rust, including electrical currents or micro-organisms.
He said he is coming to the problem with an open mind, but he's leaning toward an issue with water quality.
"Main things seem to be the water chemistry; water temperature; or dissolved oxygen content - all those kind of water quality parameters," Bowman said. "So those are something that we can fairly easily look at. You know people have monitored that in the harbor for many years. And, those will be the first things that we look at."
The results could have a significant effect on the Corps' budget.
"The one figure that I saw was over half of the steel sheet pile in the harbor was corps' structures," Bowman said. "So, yeah, we are potentially on the line for tens of millions of dollars."
Officials think they may have some answers within two years. |
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23 December 2005
NewScientist.com news service
Hazel Muir
IN DA Bginnin God cre8d da heavens & da earth. If the text message bible makes you cringe, perhaps you'd better stop reading now. Because some physicists believe there is another way to pick up a divine message that will leave traditionalists rolling their eyes to the heavens. Forget scripture, they say, try looking out to space instead. Impossible? Not necessarily, according to physicists Stephen Hsu and Anthony Zee. No one knows why our universe came into existence. But Hsu and Zee argue that if some superior being or beings did intentionally create it, they might have left an elaborate signature in the cosmic microwave background, the relic radiation of the big bang. And in 20 or 30 years' time, we might finally be able to spot the message, the "word of God" if you like.
"I sometimes wonder what's the most mind-boggling thing that could happen during my lifetime," says Hsu, a particle physicist at the University of Oregon in Eugene. "One of them would be to come into contact with an alien civilisation. But it would be more exciting to find some message from a creator - the implications would be even more profound."
While we don't know what triggered the creation of our universe, there is good evidence that it came into being as a searing hot, expanding fireball some 13.7 billion years ago. During the first split second, the theory goes, it underwent a particularly dramatic expansion, with space ballooning outwards faster than light.
One of the developers of this inflation theory, Andrei Linde of Stanford University in California, has speculated that some techno-wizard in another universe could have provided the initial trigger. Linde's work hints that it might be possible for someone to spawn a universe like ours by compressing a speck of matter to an unimaginably high density, something like 1065 megatonnes per cubic centimetre. That could create a strange state called a false vacuum and trigger catastrophic inflation, with new space and matter exploding into existence from the negative energy of the gravitational field.
No one knows whether that is really possible. But imagine that some being, or beings, did create our universe - and they wanted us to know that. How would they send us a message?
From a religious standpoint at least, there has been no shortage of suggestions. People have proposed, for example, that God might have encoded a message in the genetic sequence of our DNA, or within the striking rock formations of Colorado's Grand Canyon. But would a hypothetical creator leave a message only for humans, and specifically Americans? "That's just chauvinism - as if God would only write His message in the United States," says Zee, a theoretical physicist at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Messages of this kind would also require some inconvenient, last-minute intervention from the creator, who would be hastily scribbling a message into DNA or rock formations billions of years after the big bang. That doesn't make sense, Hsu and Zee argue. The logical thing would be for the creator to send a single, universal message, one that would be visible to every technologically advanced civilisation. That points to one obvious option: the message would lie in the cosmic microwave background.
The microwave background formed when the universe was just 380,000 years old. By this time, the expanding big bang fireball had thinned out enough to become transparent to the photons of light bouncing around inside. So for the first time, light could flood freely through the universe. Today, we can still measure this radiation as microwaves heading in every direction in the sky. The radiation has slight variations in temperature that reflect small density variations of the early universe.
What's special about the microwave background is that it is universal. The expanding universe has swept some distant pockets of space beyond the reach of any man-made telescope, so we cannot see galaxies evolving there. But the microwave background radiation is like ubiquitous cosmic wallpaper with the same mottled pattern, and it is potentially visible to advanced civilisations everywhere. "I think of it like a giant billboard in the sky," says Zee. "Anybody can see it, regardless of whether you have five heads and three eyes, even if your biology is not based on carbon."
Our most accurate measurements of the ripples in the microwave background come from NASA's WMAP satellite, launched in 2001. Its measurements are often plotted to show the temperature difference between pairs of points on the sky versus their angular separation, which creates a curve with series of peaks (see Graph). The signals so far show no sign of any cryptic message. But the error margins are still fairly large, so it does not necessarily mean there isn't one.
Hsu and Zee say that when future, more detailed observations are made - with the error bars reduced by a factor of about 100 - it is possible that a message could come into focus as little lumps and bumps on the curve.
Earlier this year, they calculated how much information such a message could contain (www.arxiv.org/abs/physics/0510102). The amount of information is limited by a slight statistical variation in the microwave background ripples depending on where you live in the universe. Having allowed for that noise, Hsu and Zee calculate that the ripples could encode approximately 100,000 bits of information - enough to relate the entire first scene of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. "That's enough to say something substantive, to say something that no one could deny was a real message," says Hsu.
Except the message is hardly going to be from Shakespeare. So what might it say? Hsu draws a parallel with the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. SETI researchers assume that aliens would reveal their existence by sending a signal that is obviously not random and encodes some natural sequence, like the digits of the number pi. The message would essentially be: "We're here, and we've figured out what you've figured out."
Similarly, the creator of the universe might hallmark His handiwork with a message about universal laws. Hsu speculates that the first part of the message could be a kind of key - a simple statement that is easy to decode. That might be the simplest matrices of the algebra that describes nature's fundamental forces. "They could give out very specific information that all the physicists of all the advanced civilisations would immediately recognise," says Hsu. There would still be room for plenty more information - maybe even telling us something we didn't know, like the route to a "theory of everything".
But how could a creator physically stamp the code on the microwave background? That bit is tricky. Maybe He encoded a message by somehow programming the details of inflation before kick-starting the new cosmos. "The creator would not have to interfere with the universe after the initial moment - it would merely evolve according to physical laws," says Hsu.
Anyway, he argues, someone with technology sophisticated enough to make a new universe would probably also be smart enough to work out how to write a message.
Hsu and Zee know that it's a pretty wacky idea. But then again, it's not impossible. "The ultimate thing, as always with physics, is to do the observations and look," says Hsu. "We should consider everything that is possible and testable, and I think this will be testable within the next 20 to 30 years."
In that time, precise observations of the microwave background could become available from satellites. When they do, Hsu thinks someone might set up a project like SETI@home to look for a possible message. Since 1999, more than 5 million people have downloaded SETI@home programs onto their home computers to analyse signals from the Arecibo radio telescope and look for patterns that might be broadcasts from alien civilisations.
Likewise, your humble home computer might one day trawl the microwave background in search of a divine message. "People could donate their computer time to just beat on the data and see if there are any strange patterns," Hsu says. It's a long shot, maybe, but finding God on your laptop? That beats little green men any day. |
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