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The Quantum Future Group 2006 Agenda is now available. Our critics say we have an agenda. Now you can have our agenda, too! This leatherbound pocket agenda includes a handy notepad as well as a double-page weekly view of all of the important events you need to remember. Moreover, it's in French, a subtle way to show your disapproval of the Bush Reich. Planning a trip to Europe next summer to scout out a safe haven for the future? An easy-to-use chart includes distances between major European cities. The Quantum Future Group 2006 Agenda will be available for a limited time for any donation of 20.06 euros (US$24.00 approximately). Get in on the agenda! Click here now to support the Quantum Future Group! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! The Quantum Future Group Comment: Supplies are very limited - once they are gone, they are gone!

Peak Oil and the End of Empire by Charles Sullivan Peak oil is most likely a term most readers have not heard before. That is about to change. The concept is slowly making its way onto the mainstream stage. It is intruding into the fringes of the public conscience and soon it may occupy the greater part. When that time comes, as it inevitably will, and probably sooner than you think, the world as we know it will end. Oil is the lifeblood not only of the U.S. economy—especially its terrible military capability—it is in a very literal sense what drives the global economy. Even small declines in oil extraction (oil is not produced—it is extracted), have created major ripples in the global economy. Remember the gas shortages and rationing that occurred during the Carter Administration during the late 1970s? All of the oil that exists is the product of complex ecological processes: the decomposition of prehistoric plants and animals over eons of time. There will never be any more oil than there is now. There will only be less; and eventually there will be none. Peak oil refers to the time when the rate of extraction from a specific location (or the whole world) is at a maximum. Beyond the peak of extraction follows a steady and continuous decline. In the U.S. peak oil was reached in the early seventies of the last century. Since that time extraction of all U.S. oil reserves has been steadily declining, while demand has gradually increased. As more of the world becomes industrialized and taps into the world’s oil pipeline, the more rapidly it is depleted. Once it’s gone, it’s gone. There will never be any more. The world’s largest known oil reserves are in the Middle East--specifically, beneath the desert sands of Saudi Arabia. Other significant reserves exist in Africa, Venezuela, Asia, and Siberia and in lesser amounts scattered across the planet. According to the world’s most highly regarded geologists, physicists and investment bankers, those reserves are much smaller than originally thought. Much of what remains is of poor quality, difficult to extract and very expensive to refine. Globally, world peak oil may have occurred as early as the year 2000. By the year 2020 global population will have nearly doubled; and ever more underdeveloped countries will come online. It should be obvious to any sane person that worldwide demand for oil is severely outpacing supply. For every ten barrels of oil used, only four barrels are being extracted and refined to replace them. Peak oil is a concept that is well understood by most governments. The end of cheap oil means the collapse not only of the U.S. economy but also the global economy. Alarm over peak oil is almost certainly the hidden reason that the U.S. invaded Iraq. It is the reason we are building fourteen permanent military bases in that country. The U.S. has no intentions of ever leaving Iraq as long as one drop of our precious oil lies beneath their sand. How our oil got beneath their sand must have some cryptogamous connection to the ideology of manifest destiny that has driven this nation to unthinkable crimes against nature and humanity. It is the basis for World War Three, which we may already have initiated with the U.S. occupation of Iraq. Widespread resource wars will be the very predictable result of the rush to extract the world’s last remaining and dwindling oil reserves. Peak oil is almost certainly the underlying cause for the events of 9/11. The American people are not being told the truth. There is a high probability that Oil men in high places of the U.S. government orchestrated those events in order to get the American People behind the invasion of first Afghanistan, then Iraq; and probably Iran, Syria or North Korea will be next. Dick Cheney appears to be a likely suspect, perhaps with the aid of Poppy Bush and his CIA connections. They intend to get average American’s used to the idea of war that will not end in our lifetimes. The age of cheap oil is nearing an end and the financiers of war and empire are scared stiff. They will do anything to have access to the last dregs of oil that can be sucked out of the earth, no matter which nations sit atop them. The second largest reserves of oil happen to lie beneath Iraq. The U.S. connections to the House of Saud are too well documented to warrant discussion here. Those who run America’s shadow government, a coalition of the world’s wealthiest and most powerful people; including the Carlyle Group and the Bilderbergers, know that we are addicted to oil, especially cheap oil. The entire financial infrastructure of the U.S. Empire and its global holdings, including its satellite terrorist state, Israel, is on the verge of collapse. Those in power are secretly panic stricken. America’s unequalled military firepower is utterly dependent on the life blood of cheap oil to keep the machinery of run amok capitalism running. Given the atrocities that the U.S. is inflicting with impunity around the world, there will be hell to pay when that advantage is lost. Like an addict hooked on Cocaine, those in power will do anything to get one more fix, cost what it will. We are in for a rude awakening. We must wake up to what kind of people we are dealing with. This government is not only more criminal and corrupt than we imagine—it is more criminal and illicit than we can imagine. Bush and company make the mafia look like boy scouts. Let me try to convey some idea of what I mean. The collection of thugs and criminals now running the country are the greatest and most dangerous organized crime syndicate in the world. And they possess the greatest arsenal of weapons, many of them nuclear, that the world has ever seen. They have an unparalleled propensity for violence. They are not who you think they are; and they are not doing what you think they are doing. As world citizens we must come to our senses and cast off the intoxicating lies we have been told about America’s domestic and foreign policies. We have built a self delusional culture of mindless consumption of goods and services based upon the exploitation of working class people and raw materials by the ruling elite. It is in their interest, not ours’, that the myths of America as a democracy, as world emancipator of the oppressed were created. They are mere folklore and powerful delusions that are based upon lies and deceit in order to serve the purposes of empire; to keep the poor in servitude to the rich and powerful. They were created so that we can bear to live with ourselves. We are the slaves of modern capitalism in all its horrible incarnations. Like Frankenstein, we helped to create this monster and unleashed it upon the world. We therefore bear the responsibility for bringing it under control and making it accountable to the world. It has been said that the truth will set us free. If so, and I believe it will, it would behoove us to come to an honest reckoning with the history we have chosen as a nation to create. Any truth is better than make believe. Charles Sullivan is a furniture maker, photographer, and free lance writer residing in the eastern panhandle of West Virgina. He welcomes your comments at earthdog@highstream.net Comment: What makes the "Peak Oil reason for invasion" even more evil is the fact that it is probably cooked up as a fall-back excuse to begin with. See: Ruppert and Hopsicker Co-Opting the 9-11 Truth Movement Or Exposing the Big Con – Lies and Disinformation At The End Of Civilisation As We Know It by Joe Quinn

Reader Response to We Grow Up, Now, or We Die January 4, 2005 Dave A Reader of Signs of the Times One of our readers has raised a certain objection to the views expressed in the article We Grow Up, Now, or We Die. Because it is such an important point, we are responding in some detail. These was a very eye-opening article posted here on Tuesday about the reason that resistance to oppression and greed is still so scattered, and what needs to be done to unite the compassionate humans against the oppressive and selfish ones. However, deeply integrated into this article is a concept that I am forever trying to explain to people as an assumption that shows that we are yet little better than the supposed psychopaths that we are trying to figure out. Comment: We will see below that Dave is operating with certain assumptions. From the article: TYPE 1 HUMANS ARE the absolute predators: THE truly and incurably INSANE, pathologically selfish and greedy . They always crave more; no matter what they have or how much, it is never enough. These people are absolutists: they cannot reason; they cannot negotiate; they cannot compromise; they cannot peacefully agree to disagree; they cannot, ever, not in the slightest regard, live-and-let-live as the co-equals of others. This paragraph, along with a lot of similar statements in the article, embodies the very reason that I cannot subscribe to the emotionally heated ideas I read here that are written in response to the sorry state of the world and the supposed perpetrators. Comment: The quote from article that Dave has singled out is a rather accurate and dispassionate description of the behaviour of certain people. If Dave is reading it as "emotionally heated", we wonder if the heat is ours or his own when confronted with the possibility that a very small percentage of the population are so very different? The idea obviously disturbs him greatly. When you declare emphatically and categorically what IS and what ISN'T, and make claims as to what IS and ISN'T possible, you are doing exactly what you are claiming is wrong, by trying to force the world along a path that you beleive is correct while ignoring any alternate possibilities which might mean that you aren't entirely correct or have incomplete understanding. Comment: Our approach is to study the data, form hypotheses, test the hypotheses against the data and any new data that comes in. When new data comes in that invalidates a hypothesis, or parts of it, we use that data to reformulate our ideas. Any claims made as to what is or isn't are made within our current working hypotheses. They are not hard and fast beliefs. The alternate possibility that we are "ignoring", if we read Dave correctly, is the idea that we all have a conscience, even if it is just a small cinder obscured by layers of societal programming. Thing is, this was our starting hypothesis, the one we abandoned when confronted by the evidence that suggests it is not the case. This is the hidden beast inside us all, this instinct to draw lines and put people on one side or the other, while we always remain on the "right" side. It is exactly the reason that good people continue the predatory cycle even as a large portion of our personalities try to accomplish good things. Comment: The idea that we each have a "hidden beast" within is a very popular belief, propagated primarily in the past 50 years or so by the psychiatric profession, mostly. Psychologist, George K. Simon writes: …[W]e’ve been pre-programmed to believe that people only exhibit problem behaviors when they’re “troubled” inside or anxious about something. We’ve also been taught that people aggress only when they’re attacked in some way. So, even when our gut tells us that somebody is attacking us and for no good reason, we don’t readily accept the notion. We usually start to wonder what’s bothering the person so badly “underneath it all” that’s making them act in such a disturbing way. We may even wonder what we may have said or done that “threatened” them. We almost never think that they might be fighting simply to get something, have their way, or gain the upper hand. So, instead of seeing them as merely fighting, we view them as primarily hurting in some way. Not only do we often have trouble recognizing the ways people aggress us, but we also have difficulty discerning the distinctly aggressive character of some personalities. The legacy of Sigmund Freud’s work has a lot to do with this. Freud’s theories (and the theories of others who built upon his work) heavily influenced the psychology of personality for a long time. Elements of the classical theories of personality found their way into many disciplines other than psychology as well as into many of our social institutions and enterprises. The basic tenets of these theories and their hallmark construct, neurosis, have become fairly well etched in the public consciousness. Psychodynamic theories of personality tend to view everyone, at least to some degree, as neurotic. Neurotic individuals are overly inhibited people who suffer unreasonable fear (anxiety), guilt and shame when it comes to securing their basic wants and needs. The malignant impact of overgeneralizing Freud’s observations about a small group of overly inhibited individuals into a broad set of assumptions about the causes of psychological ill-health in everyone cannot be overstated.[…] Therapists whose training overly indoctrinated them in the theory of neurosis, may “frame” problems presented them incorrectly. They may, for example, assume that a person, who all their life has aggressively pursued independence and demonstrated little affinity for others, must necessarily be “compensating” for a “fear” of intimacy. In other words, they will view a hardened fighter as a terrified runner, thus misperceiving the core reality of the situation.[…] We need a completely different theoretical framework if we are to truly understand, deal with, and treat the kinds of people who fight too much as opposed to those who cower or “run” too much. We would like to emphasize "Elements of the classical theories of personality found their way into many disciplines other than psychology as well as into many of our social institutions and enterprises". It is this influence that has promulgated the idea that everyone is basically the "same" inside and it is only nurture that twists and deforms the individual. This idea is so deep in the structure of our reality that few people (except those who have dealt with psychopaths) ever question it. We, as a society, believe in this illusion so passionately that when a good person looks at the behaviour of a psychopath and discovers a disconnect, he simply projects his or her own inner life onto the psychopath. It is easier to do that than to question a belief that we take in with our mother's milk. But where is the data that supports this belief? Good or normal people know that they have nasty thoughts. In a moment of heat, they might well wish someone dead. They may well wish harm to come to a colleague at work. We all do have these dark urges from time to time, and because we do, we project our own notion of conscience on those who not only have such thoughts, but act them out. Because there are good people who, when pushed to the extreme, may commit murder, we assume that anyone who murders or rapes also has a conscience. Note, however, that when such normal people are pushed to such an extreme, there is an emotion attached. The act is not the result of cold calculation free of emotion. It is accompanied by, one might say, too much emotion. This is an important distinction to keep in mind. Yet, there are those with no conscience, who feel no remorse, who kill not when in a rage or pushed to an extreme, but who do it without a second thought. We conflate the two experiences because we cannot imagine a being without a conscience. Martha Stout, in her book The Sociopath Next Door, raises this point of the theorized "shadow side", the idea in certain schools of psychology that we all have a "shadow self" within. She writes that this theory: "...maintains in its most extreme form that anything doable or feelable by one human being is potentially doable and feelable by all... Ironically, good and kindhearted people are often the most willing to subscribe to this theory in the radical form that proposes they could, in some bizarre situation, be mass murderers. It feels more democratic and less condemnatory (and somehow less alarming) to believe that everyone is a little shady than to accept a few human beings live in a permanent nighttime. To admit that some people literally have no conscience is not technically saying that some human beings are evil, but it is disturbingly close. And good people want very much not to believe in the personification of evil." p. 126 We think that Dave is among those who are not yet willing to believe in the personification of evil. You can't create a system that embodies compassion as long as you categorize certain people as incurable absolutists and presuppose their disability to learn and grow. We all have the spark of cooperation inside of us. Comment: Would that this were so! The question that must be asked is: How does Dave know this to be true? What are his data? It regulates our internal systems in order to function together to allow us to live, breathe and learn. Comment: Assumption. How does Dave know this to be true? What are his data? This is a force that is necessary to all life, including those deemed psychopaths. Comment: Assumption. How does Dave know this to be true? What are his data? I simply have never seen any actual evidence in all of my years reading about these subjects that demonstrates that anybody is a so-called "essential" Type-1 human psychopath, and not an environmentally-induced or naturally selected psychopath. Comment: Dave hasn't read very much, it seems. Stout cites several studies carried out on identical and fraternal twins. She wries, "twin studies indicate that most measurable aspects of our personalities 35 to 50 percent innate". "In 1995, a mjor longitudinal study was published that investigated sociopathic traits and their absence in 3,226 pairs of male twins located through a register of people who had served in the United States armed focres during the Vietnam War. By the same mathematical model, eight sociopathic symptoms and their absence were found to be dignificantly heritable." p. 123. Summing up the studies, which can be found in her book, she writes: "Over and again, heritability studies come up with a statisical finding that has emotionally charged social and political implications -- that indeed a person's tendency to possess certain sociopathic characteristics is partially born in the blood, perhaps as much as 50 percent or so. To bring home the provocative nature of this research -- it would indicate, for example, that before they were even born, at the very moment of conception (the people given as examples given in this book) were already somewhat predisposed to become deceitful, reckless, faithless, and remorseless. When we make heridity statements about athletic ability or introversion, or even bipolar disorders or schizophrenia, somehow the information does not seem so shocking. But to say so about antisocial tendencies feels especially grim, though the same statistical approaches are used." p. 124. In her work on sexual predators, Predators: Pedophiles, rapists, and other sex offenders, Anna C. Salter, Ph.D. writes: "There is a lot of research on psychopaths, and much of it is very worrisome: studies, for example, that show that the quality of parenting is unrelated to the number of conduct problems that callous/unemotional children have. From the start they seem to be on a set trajectory that even good parenting won't change." p. 9. The evidence is available, it is the implication that Dave is having so much trouble with. "Good people want very much not to believe in the personification of evil." That is the issue that is so "emtionally charged" as Stout puts it. Dave reveals his emotional charge when he declares that the statement that essential psychopaths DO exist is "emotionally heated". We do not want to believe that there exist "hopeless" cases, people who do not have the hardware, as it were, to be loving people. It seems unfair. We turn on ourselves schizophrenically at the very thought and turn neurotic, feeling that we are doing what they are doing by labelling and condemning someone to a hopeless future. And psychopaths like it that way. The fact is, the data suggests that psychopaths are, in fact, "other" in a very important way, perhaps, even, in that very thing that makes us human: conscience. If the data is correct, should we insist on ignoring it because it is unpleasant? If you are raised into a psychopathic system from birth and selfish methods end up getting you what you think you "need" early in life, if your empathetic capabilities are not nurtured in the slightest, how could anybody possibly tell whether you were "incurable" because of conditioning or because of some natural defect? Even having a genetic predisposion towards this kind of behaviour doesn't necessarily mean that you "cannot, ever, not in the slightest regard, live-and-let-live as the co-equals of others." Comment: We will address this below. Most things are possible with sufficient technology or understanding. Comment: Assumption. How does Dave know this to be true? What are his data? Why must it be so hard to accept that even the seemingly inhuman may somehow be taught the value of cooperation and unity? I admit that there is a tipping point at which most self-centered people will simply shut out the challenging ideas that other people's viewpoints present to them, but this isn't a failure of theirs, it is simply their tried and tested self-preservational instincts at work. It IS a failure of our educational capabilities, that we don't know how to convey these ideas to a large section of the population. Those who feel the need to fight against or ignore cooperative ideals end up with destructive personalities against those of us who do want to create a society of mutual trust and benefit. Comment: If Dave had ever dealt with a real psychopath, we think he might have a different point of view. Psychopaths are excited and fulfilled by one thing and one thing only: preying on normal people. They get their kicks this way. If a psychopath is in your life, he is in the process of destroying that life and hurting you and your loved ones. Learning how to extricate oneself from a psychopath is the first step. Tricking people into thinking that if they just give more, do more, have more compassion, is what they do best. It is the way they keep their hooks in you, drawing you back for more. As long as you continue to believe that they can be changed, you will be their victim. It is very good to try to identify the source of the supporting forces of the world's problems. But to stop and say that certain people are responsible for it and that they cannot be "saved" or changed is to take that very aspect of human behaviour and attempt to slip it in underneath a veneer of compassion and understanding. Comment: Dave has not understood our position. We think that we are all responsible for the state of the world today. As long as we allow pathological people to come to power, as long as we accept their values as our values, then we are responsible. The first step in becoming responsible for changing the state of things is to see it for what it is. Identifying the underlying pathology is an important step. Dave admits that our society is a pscyhopathic one. How did it get this way? Was it always so? Or did it become pathological over time? Either answer would suggest a certain genetic predisposition to psychopathy: the first, because if it were always this way, such values would appear to be part of all of us; second, because if the values were once different, where did the pathological ones come from? Declaring that we are right because certain people are more obviously wrong does not excuse further discrimination, no matter what uncompassionate people "deserve" or how uneducable they seem to be. Comment: Here we think Dave is confusing a description with a judgement. We are describing the acts of psychopaths. We can say that their values are not ours. We can also say that if they make up only 4 (or more) percent of the population, then there is good reason to suggest that their values should not be the values of society as a whole. That is a discrimination based upon an objective aseessment of things as they are. We are not speaking in terms of right or wrong. Those are moralisms that will prevent us from confronting and correcting the situation. We have said before, many times, that you cannot judge a cat to be "evil" because it plays with the mouse before eating it. The cat is a cat. It is part of its nature. The same thing applies to the psychopath. It is what it is. Let us recognise the difference dispassionately so that we can deal with it. The emotional charge or heat that Dave sees, we repeat, seems to be within him. Martha Stout has identified this as a common reaction. Until we can accept the psychopathic aspect of people as a natural disablity, or a lack of proper education and social conditioning, those people who appear as predominantly psychopathic will remain the "enemy" and humanity will remain "at war" with itself. Forever. Comment: We are in agreement here. Lobaczewski devotes the beginning of his book Political Ponerology to the question of language. He makes the point that as long as psychopâthy is seen in moral terms, rather than in scientific terms, then we will continue the cycle. Psychopaths do evil acts, yes, but their condition is a "natural" one. To admit that they are "other" is not to make a judgement; it is simply to recognise them for what they are, a necessary first step in dealing with them appropriately. You can't change that reality sometimes teaches people that being selfish is rewarding. Comment: The present reality consists largely of a society that has internalised the values of the psychopath. Psychopaths planned it that way. It is very tempting to want to beleive that the "other" side, the one you are fighting against in any battle, is incurably different than you are, but I think that the real answer to all of these problems is to learn to see that we are in fact all connected and all subject to the same forces. Comment: Assumption. How does Dave know this to be true? What are his data? Some people may end up being more visibly selfishly driven than others, but like all things, these forces have their place in our psyches, and they have gotten us this far in our development. Perhaps it is past time to reign in that beast within us all, and learn to treat it as the primal animal force that it is, but to condemn those that are more obviously enslaved to it is just as inhuman as the acts committed by those unf Comment: And just maybe there is more to it than that, just maybe there is a real, fundamental difference between the psychopath and the rest of us. We have been raised in a culture that teaches that we all have "the beast within", and that the acts committed by psychopaths are acts that each of us would be able to commit given the "right" circumstances. Imagine for a moment what the consequences would be if this idea were false. If it were false, then good people, people who would be unable to kill or do violence to another person, except in the most extreme cases (drug abuse, being raised in a violent environment), would accept that anyone who commits such an act without those extenuating circumstances is NOT like them. Over and over again, researchers who have delved into the question of psychopathy come to understand that there is a fundamental difference between a psychopath and a normal person. Stout writes: "The presence or absence of conscience is a deep human division, arguably more significant than intelligence, race, or even gender. What differeniates a sociopath who lives off the labor of others from one who occasionally robs convenience stores, or from one who is a contemporary robber baron -- or what makes the difference between an ordinary bully and a sociopathic murderer -- is nothing more than social status, drive, inellect, blood lust, or simple opportunity. What distinguishes all of these people from the rest of us is an utterly empty hole in the psyche, where there should be the most evolved of all humanizing functions." p. 10 The difference between the psychopath and a normal person is greater than we can imagine. They have no conscience. Consider for a moment what that really means. Imagine having no moral regulator that tells you that something you might do is bad or hurtful or dangerous, and that once you have committed the act, there was no remorse or guilt or shame to haunt you. Imagine that you are able to kill another human being with no more thought than you'd give to putting on your clothes in the morning or making breakfast. There are people among us who are this way. It's a cold, hard fact, and one we ought to face so that we can get on with the business of finding solutions. I only hope that those truth seekers who might read this don't already have too much of their theories invested in these divisive ideas to actually take what I say seriously. I know that a lot of the ideas here on SoTT presuppose this framework, and that frightens me, this phenomenon among so many progressive minds. Please post this to your main page if you are so inclined. Thank you, Dave Imagine - if you can - not having a conscience, none at all, no feelings of guilt or remorse no matter what you do, no limiting sense of concern for the well-being of strangers, friends, or even family members. Imagine no struggles with shame, not a single one in your whole life, no matter what kind of selfish, lazy, harmful, or immoral action you had taken. And pretend that the concept of responsibility is unknown to you, except as a burden others seem to accept without question, like gullible fools. Now add to this strange fantasy the ability to conceal from other people that your psychological makeup is radically different from theirs. Since everyone simply assumes that conscience is universal among human beings, hiding the fact that you are conscience-free is nearly effortless. You are not held back from any of your desires by guilt or shame, and you are never confronted by others for your cold-bloodedness. The ice water in your veins is so bizarre, so completely outside of their personal experience, that they seldom even guess at your condition. In other words, you are completely free of internal restraints, and your unhampered liberty to do just as you please, with no pangs of conscience, is conveniently invisible to the world. You can do anything at all, and still your strange advantage over the majority of people, who are kept in line by their consciences will most likely remain undiscovered. How will you live your life? What will you do with your huge and secret advantage, and with the corresponding handicap of other people (conscience)? The answer will depend largely on just what your desires happen to be, because people are not all the same. Even the profoundly unscrupulous are not all the same. Some people - whether they have a conscience or not - favor the ease of inertia, while others are filled with dreams and wild ambitions. Some human beings are brilliant and talented, some are dull-witted, and most, conscience or not, are somewhere in between. There are violent people and nonviolent ones, individuals who are motivated by blood lust and those who have no such appetites. [...] Provided you are not forcibly stopped, you can do anything at all. If you are born at the right time, with some access to family fortune, and you have a special talent for whipping up other people's hatred and sense of deprivation, you can arrange to kill large numbers of unsuspecting people. With enough money, you can accomplish this from far away, and you can sit back safely and watch in satisfaction. [...] Crazy and frightening - and real, in about 4 percent of the population.... The prevalence rate for anorexic eating disorders is estimated a 3.43 percent, deemed to be nearly epidemic, and yet this figure is a fraction lower than the rate for antisocial personality. The high-profile disorders classed as schizophrenia occur in only about 1 percent of [the population] - a mere quarter of the rate of antisocial personality - and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say that the rate of colon cancer in the United States, considered "alarmingly high," is about 40 per 100,000 - one hundred times lower than the rate of antisocial personality. The high incidence of sociopathy in human society has a profound effect on the rest of us who must live on this planet, too, even those of us who have not been clinically traumatized. The individuals who constitute this 4 percent drain our relationships, our bank accounts, our accomplishments, our self-esteem, our very peace on earth. Yet surprisingly, many people know nothing about this disorder, or if they do, they think only in terms of violent psychopathy - murderers, serial killers, mass murderers - people who have conspicuously broken the law many times over, and who, if caught, will be imprisoned, maybe even put to death by our legal system. We are not commonly aware of, nor do we usually identify, the larger number of nonviolent sociopaths among us, people who often are not blatant lawbreakers, and against whom our formal legal system provides little defense. Most of us would not imagine any correspondence between conceiving an ethnic genocide and, say, guiltlessly lying to one's boss about a coworker. But the psychological correspondence is not only there; it is chilling. Simple and profound, the link is the absence of the inner mechanism that beats up on us, emotionally speaking, when we make a choice we view as immoral, unethical, neglectful, or selfish. [Martha Stout, Ph.D., The Sociopath Next Door] (highly recommended) Comment: We suggest you read The Mask of Sanity by Hervey Cleckley, available from the qfgpublishing.com website as a free pdf. Also, the very important book The Sociopath Next Door by Martha Stout that we have quoted as well as Predators: Pedophiles, rapists, and other sex offenders by Anna C. Salter Ph.D. Psychopaths are predators. We are their victims. Our writing about psychopathy is done to warn people and to give them the tools to protect themselves, both individually and as a society. Researchers are agreeed that we do not known enough about psychopathy. We have mental images of monsters that conform to the extreme cases we see on television and in films, and this makes us vulnerable. Most psychopaths seem to be the nicest people you would ever want to meet. In the foreword to Predators, Gavin de Becker writes: "Taking children from parents is rarely done with force; kids are not stolen at gunpoint. They are taken through a form of seduction, one that aims not at passion, but at trust -- yours or your child's. Misplaced trust is the predator's most powerful resource, and we can decide whether or not to give it to him." p, xi. One of the characteristics of the psychopath is his charm. They can seduce almost anyone. They can be fun to be around, the life of the party. And they are able to manipulate others with great skill. They can spend as long as they need to win our trust. Over and again, researchers into psychopathy repeat that we think of these people as monsters, easily recognisable monsters, and they are not. Martha Stout writes: "Except for the pathological monsters we sometimes see on television, whose actions are too horific to explain away, conscienceless people are nearly always invisible to us. We are keenly interested in how smart we are, and in the intelligence level of other people. The smallest child can tell the difference between a girl and a boy. We fight wars over race. But to what is possibly the single most meaningful characeristic that divides the human species -- the presence or absence of conscience -- we remain effectively oblivious.3 p. 11. Salter writes in a similar vein about sexual predators: "More often they come through the front door in the day, as friends and neighbors, as Boy Scout leaders, priests, principals, teachers, doctors, and coaches. They are invited into our homes time after time, and we give them permission to take our children on the overnight camping trip, the basketball game, or down to the Salvation Army post for youth activities. "We give permission because we don't recognise these people as predators, because we think sex offenders are monters and surely we would recognize a monster, wouldn't we? That nice young minister wo runs all the youtrh programs, the one with the crooked smile and the thatch of brown hair over his brow, the one who visits the ederly and he poor oney from his own funds -- surely not him. He could not be a child molester with ninety victims while he's still in his twenties... "I sit in rooms with such men, and they tell me their side of the story. They tell me what you don't see, about the thoughts and feelings and hungers that drive them. They tell me how they operate and how they got away with assaults for so long. They tell me how they make assessments of people like you and me. I get to see, sometimes, the face we don't see in public. "...The truth is that many sex offenders like to talk about their exploits -- if it can be done in some way that doesn't hurt them in court. They are proud of what clever fellows they are. Narcissism is their Achilles' heel." p. 5. Is this only the "beast within us all"? Or is it something darker? Salter continues. She has a front row seat on this violence: "I have discovered there is a price to be paid for seeing it. Once in a three-day taping that included several sadists, the material was so overwhelming that both the film crew and I got sick -- I with a sinus infection, and the entire film crew with a flu so severe they had to delay their departure from the motel. Our immune systems had weakened, I believe, from the beating our souls had taken. "Malevolence takes a bite out of your spirit. Just sitting with it, just talking with people who consciously and deliberately exploit others, feels like being beaten." ibid. Is this only the "beast within us all"? Or is it something darker? Dave, if we have understood him correctly, is upset because we have, to some extent, written off certain psychopaths as unredeemable. We think the data supports this assessment. However, let's look at what he is saying on a practical level, in our day-to-day lives. Anyone who has confronted the effects of a psychopath in their lives will know how empty are Dave's words "Why is it so hard to accept that even the seemingly inhuman may somehow be taught the value of cooperation and unity?" Confronted with the psychopath and the realisation of how wrong things are, the victim just wants out. There is no room for concern and attempting to help the psychopath; in fact, such a strategy is the worst thing one can do because it keeps you in his presence. Compassion and sympathy for the psychopath are exactly what he wants because those are the tools he uses to destroy you. Dave appears to be arguing from a theoretical level so high that it is untouched by actual experience, from a desire to prove that "we are all one" because he can't accept the possibility that, no, there are real divisions that are fundamental and that would overthrow his conceptual framework. Emotionally charged. On another level, yes, we are all interconnected. Good and evil are a polarity. The upward path of evolution, that of creation, needs the downword path of entropy. One of the ways entropy manifests in our world is through the psychopath. We are all "interconnected" with them because the other path wouldn't exist without him. But let's not pretend the wolf in sheep's clothing is really a sheep underneath all those layers of wolf. There may be a very small percentage of these people, the genetically predisposed psychopaths, on our planet; perhaps under two percent or as high as 6 percent. But to deny their existence, we think, is to render ourselves blind to reality and incapable of elaborating a strategy to survive, both as individuals and as a society. However, a moral judgement upon their heads would be incorrect. They are what they are. We close with the following story from the book Darkness Over Tibet, a story we think illustrates the fundamental point we are trying to make: "Are you never attacked by animals?" "Seldom, " I answered. "The animals which are on the rising branch of life are very kind to me. I do not think even a lion would attack me, although I never met one. I have had very pleasant experiences, though, with bears and some other so-called wild animals." "I heard a story about a bear," said Dolma. "I will tell it to you. Perhaps you will be able to tell me whether such a thing can happen... A man who often broke the law which prohibits hunting had obtained a white man's death stick in the Lhasa district, and when he returned to his province he went out bear-hunting. He had shot several bears, but one day, just while he followed the track of an animal, a strong bear suddenly appeared just behind his back... [...] The hunter was so afraid when he saw the big bear just behind his back that he dropped his gun and stared aghast at the animal, who could have crushed him in a couple of seconds. [...] he bear looked at the frail creature who stood tremblingly before him, his gun lying at his feet, and calmly walked away." "I can believe that, " I said, "for bears have a soul, although they are only at times individualized. By the way, it is easy to say whether the hunter in the story had a soul or not." "How?" "If the hunter had a soul, it was impossible for him to take up the gun to shoot after the bear. If he was soulless, he would have done so at once." "Are there soulless animals too?" "Oh yes. The animals on the descending branch of life are soulless. [...] Ravens, rats, mice - vermin, for instance." "They behave like a soulless man?" "Yes." "Did these entities inhabit men before?" "Perhaps, many thousand years ago. When they lost their soul they began to move downward." "It is very strange. When I visited India I heard so much about progressive evolution - that life always passed upward, that the souls in minerals became souls in plants, then in animals, and after this in man, and that man finally must become an angel and that all this is only a question of time." "Life would have no meaning if there was no alternative between light and darkness," I said. "There are two currents of life. One is moving upward and the other downward. The moment one loses one's soul one is precipitated into the downward current." "How can one lose one's soul?" "By sinning against one's soul." "By a sensual life?" "Oh no, in most cases that is a sin against one's body. You may suffer for it in this life or in some future incarnation." "By treating other's badly, then?" "No, as a rule, even this is no sin against your soul. You will get your punishment for treating others badly in this or some future incarnation, although wanton cruelty to defenceless creatures, ratlike ingratitude, or an innate tendency to spy on others already reveal a certain degree of soullessness which may be due to sins committed against one's soul in former incarnations." "Well, then, what is a sin against one's soul?" "Using spiritual things for selfish purposes. Dragging God down to earth. Trying to put oneself on a level with the Creator." [Trying to make all as One at a level where it is not appropriate.] "Then many of us here sin like that!" "Yes, but also people in other countries." For more on the ascending and descending paths, please see the article on Darkness Over Tibet.

Bush: troop reductions in Iraq possible this year 04 Jan 2006 17:46:09 GMT Source: Reuters WASHINGTON, Jan 4 (Reuters) - President George W. Bush, anxious to show progress in Iraq to Americans disenchanted by a war that saw fresh attacks that killed 50 people on Wednesday, said reducing U.S. troops later this year may be possible. He reiterated that any reductions would be based on the situation on the ground in Iraq and decisions by military commanders, not on a political timetable imposed by Washington, in a rejection of those Democrats demanding a phased pullout. Bush, speaking at the Pentagon, said a reduction of U.S. troops already planned after the Iraqi election in mid-December was under way and would result in a net decrease of several thousand troops below the pre-election total of 138,000 U.S. troops in Iraq. He said the decrease comes in addition to the reduction of about 20,000 troops who were in Iraq to assist with security during the December elections. "Later this year, if Iraqis continue to make progress on the security and political side that we expect, we can discuss further possible adjustments with the leaders of a new government in Iraq," Bush said. Violence flared across the country on Wednesday, which was the bloodiest day in Iraq for weeks. A suicide bomber caused carnage at a Shi'ite funeral and gunmen ambushed a fuel convoy outside Baghdad amid a wave of attacks that killed more than 50 people. Car bombs went off in the capital and in the recently peaceful Shi'ite holy city of Kerbala, suggesting a level of coordination that may be a response by Sunni Arab insurgents to last month's largely peaceful parliamentary election. Bush spoke after talks with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Peter Pace, and U.S. commanders in Iraq who participated in a Pentagon briefing by video hookup. In a speech after the meeting, Bush cited progress in training Iraqi forces to fight the insurgency themselves, saying more than 125 Iraqi combat battalions are now fighting the enemy with 50 playing a lead role. "In 2006 the mission is to continue to hand over more and more territory and more and more responsibility to Iraqi forces," Bush said. More than 2,100 U.S. troops have died in the war, with about 16,000 more wounded. Comment: You know Bush is feeling the heat if he is speculating on troop reductions. It's an election year, and he knows there is a building opposition to the war.

From Cabinet Rooms Past, a Gathering to Assess Iraq By DAVID E. SANGER NY Times January 4, 2006 WASHINGTON, Jan. 3 - It will be an unusual sight on Thursday in the Roosevelt Room of White House, and deliberately so: President Bush will engage in a consultation of sorts with a bipartisan collection of former secretaries of state and defense. Among them will be several who have left little doubt that they think Mr. Bush has dangerously mishandled Iraq, ignored other looming crises, and put critical alliances at risk. The meeting was called by the White House, which sent out invitations just before Christmas to everyone who once held those jobs. The invitees were told that they were being asked to attend a briefing on Iraq and other issues. It was unclear, one recipient said, "how interested they are in what we are thinking." Among those planning to attend are Colin L. Powell, Mr. Bush's first secretary of state and the administration's best-known and most careful dissident voice, and Madeleine K. Albright, Mr. Powell's predecessor. William Perry, who was secretary of defense in the Clinton administration, is flying in from California; he helped formulate foreign policy positions for Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts in the race for president in 2004. "This should be interesting," said another former secretary who received an invitation, but asked not to be identified until he had heard Mr. Bush's arguments. "It's not exactly as if these guys have reached out to hear a lot of outside opinions." In fact, no one inside the White House could recall a meeting quite like this during Mr. Bush's first five years in office. At moments he has called upon past presidents - notably his father and Bill Clinton - for aid missions to countries hit by the 2004 tsunami, and then to cities and towns hit by Hurricane Katrina. Former Secretary of State James A. Baker III was recruited to lead efforts to get debt relief for Iraq, and Brent Scowcroft, the former national security adviser, headed up a White House panel that reviews foreign intelligence issues, only to be dis-invited after he became a critic of the decision to invade Iraq. But never before has Mr. Bush asked such a broad array of former senior officials to show up together, presumably armed with strong opinions about issues like whether the moment has come to begin an exit from Iraq and what the United States should be doing with North Korea, Iran, Sudan or public diplomacy. Several of the officials, mostly Democrats, said they were concerned about being used as props in an effort to portray Mr. Bush as seeking what the national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, recently called "common ground" on Iraq. But they said they suspected that the president was seeking to close the gap with officials of both parties who are influential in Congress, and often comment on Iraq and other issues on television and on op-ed pages. Perhaps the most interesting dynamic will be between Mr. Bush and Mr. Powell. Since leaving office a year ago, Mr. Powell has been careful to avoid direct criticism of his former boss, though some of his former aides have been blistering in their descriptions of Mr. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld (who presumably has an invitation because he served as secretary of defense under Gerald R. Ford). In May, Mr. Bush traveled to Mr. Powell's house in McLean, Va., for a quiet dinner, but Mr. Powell publicly parted company with the administration on the issue of interrogation techniques for suspected terrorists, backing an amendment sponsored last year by Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, when the White House still opposed it. Mr. Bush's guests will be briefed by Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the American commander in Iraq, and Zalmay M. Khalilzad, the American ambassador there. "We invited them so they could hear from General Casey and Ambassador Khalilzad, so that they could hear about the progress we are making on our plan for victory in Iraq, from the military and civilian leaders on the ground," Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, said Tuesday evening, calling the meeting part of Mr. Bush's broader effort for "outreach on the strategy." "There will be opportunity for them to ask questions and have a discussion," he said.

A President at war with America by Doug Thompson 4 Jan 2006 Yes, Bush is a wartime President because he’s the one at war – at war with the American people, at war against the American way of life and at war with the Constitution of the United States, that law of the land that he calls “just a goddamned piece of paper.” “The enemy has not gone away. They're still there. And I expect Congress to understand that we're still at war, and they got to give us the tools necessary to win this war,” the president said Tuesday. Ah, the war rhetoric. Whenever Bush wants to get his way with no questions act, he trots out the war talk. We’re at war, he says, and – as a wartime president – he must be free to wiretap and spy on Americans at will and trample on the rights that used to be guaranteed by the Constitution. “When it came time to renew the act, for partisan reasons, in my mind, people have not stepped up,” Bush says. That’s Bush-speak for “you want war? You got war.” Yes, Bush is a wartime President because he’s the one at war – at war with the American people, at war against the American way of life and at war with the Constitution of the United States, that law of the land that he calls “just a goddamned piece of paper.” My friends in the White House say Bush has also declared war on any Republican Senator who does not vote to make the Patriot Act a permanent threat to American liberties when it comes back up for a vote later this month. They tell me Bush repeatedly refers to Idaho Senator Larry Craig as “a goddamned traitor” for joining with Democrats to block permanent renewal of the act and add that the President has similar insults for Senators Chuck Hagel and Olympia Snowe. In Bush’s world, anyone who doesn’t march in absolute lockstep with his extremist view is a traitor. Such rhetoric, however, doesn’t faze Craig who says “the Patriot Act doesn't do enough to protect the civil liberties of innocent Americans.” Craig, more than most Republicans in Congress, realizes that George W. Bush doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the civil liberties of any American. I’ve known Craig for more than 20 years and he doesn’t suffer fools lightly. But Craig, Snowe and Hagel are just three Republicans in a Senate dominated by right-wing fanatics who value power above liberty. Risking the wrath of the White House is dangerous – especially when the President is a member of the same party. “Bush has shown time and again that he is ready and willing to punish those who disagree with him,” says political scientist George Harleigh. “He may be a wounded lame duck but he is a cornered lame duck and any hunter knows a cornered animal is dangerous.” The excesses of the Patriot Act concern those on both sides of the political fence. That's why conservative firebrand and former member of Congress Bob Barr joined with the liberal American Civil Liberties Union to fight renewal of the act. That's why career professionals at the uber-secret National Security Agency are quitting rather than spy on fellow Americans. But the USA Patriot Act did not become the law of the land because only Republicans supported it. Too many Democrats also voted to create a law where the rights of American citizens can be held hostage to paranoia. “Contrary to the president's misleading comments, nobody wants to see the Patriot Act expire,” Democratic Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold said Tuesday, adding that “we want commonsense changes to the act that would give the government the power to combat terrorism while protecting the rights and freedoms of law-abiding citizens.” There’s the rub. In George W. Bush’s world the only “law-abiding citizens” are the rapidly-dwindling numbers of political extremists who still agree with his dictatorial views. The rest of us remain enemies of the state.

W, fear — together again in yet another campaign By CRAGG HINES Jan 3,2006 Houston Chronicle THE only issue that worked reliably for President Bush in his 2004 re-election campaign was fear. In the first national campaign after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, he exploited it shamelessly, if not always directly. Keep that in mind as Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney this week continue to attempt to dig out of the hole created by the revelations of Bush's personally authorized program of warrantless domestic wiretapping, and to win unfettered renewal of the Patriot Act. In 2004, one of the ways Bush hit the nation's fear nerve was by plumping for renewal of the act, even though it was not to expire until the end of 2005. It was a handy rhetorical device to recall to voters' mind the images of passenger jets slamming into the towers of the World Trade Center without getting too morbid or appearing to exploit the tragedy for political purposes — which is, of course, what he was doing. That spring, shortly after the Democratic presidential nomination had more or less been won by Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, Bush took to the supposedly nonpolitical stump to stir the fear pot. He began with a Saturday radio address on April 17. The following Tuesday, he was in Buffalo, N.Y., (where a local Republican congressional candidate was in a spot of bother) for a stagey "conversation" on the Patriot Act. Because of the "nonpolitical" nature of the event, he could dress up the stage with the local U.S. attorney and FBI agent in charge. This appearance has drawn far more notice in the days since the revelation of the warrantless wiretaps than it did when Bush delivered it. For in Bush's remarks, before the "conversation" part of the program, the president flatly assured his audience that wiretaps require a warrant. Bush's more recent contention that he was not speaking broadly but only about so-called "roving" wiretaps is not consistent with his remarks. Bush began the segment in question by speaking specifically of roving wiretaps. But possibly because he was appearing at Kleinhans Music Hall, formerly home to such musical artists as Ozzy Osbourne, Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, Bush appears to have decided on a riff of his own. After mentioning "roving wiretaps," Bush rhetorically steps back: "Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires — a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed by the way. When you're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so. It's important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think Patriot Act, constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution." That's about as generic as it gets, and to return to the particulars and provide contrast, Bush then said, "But a roving wiretap means ... ." In light of what we now know about warrantless wiretaps, Bush's statement in Buffalo is shockingly laughable. It seems to be filled at every turn with purposeful deceit. And his "we value the Constitution" fillip verges on the contemptuous. The saddest piece of this puzzle is that the fear factor may again be working, if only marginally. Word from some Republicans is that, while sampling public opinion during the holidays is often chancy, initial indications are Bush's defense of warrantless wiretaps may be having a positive effect on his still poor but already slightly improving public standing. • • • The seismic tremor you may have felt Tuesday was the political earth moving as fallen super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff pleaded guilty to a host of federal charges and stipulated that he had conspired in the "corruption of public officials" and ponied up campaign funds "in exchange for certain official acts." What's to play out may be the biggest congressional scandal in more than a decade. Not only are members expected to be implicated but also revelations are anticipated that will highlight how vast is the power of congressional staff members. Also on the griddle will be the revolving door that whisks anonymous staffers into high-paying lobbying jobs. • • • It's early in the year, but already there's a strong contender for the Desperate for Exposure Award. New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, an eager perpetual resident of lists of those interested in the White House, rode aboard his state's 55-foot-long float in Monday's Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena, Calif. Richardson may have envisioned some sunny national television exposure (well, at least HGTV's cable coverage), but the annual event Monday was a soaking five-mile ride in a dreadful downpour. Ah, the demands of an ever-hungering political life. Hines is a Houston Chronicle columnist based in Washington, D.C.

Bush's domestic spying excuses don't cut it By DALE McFEATTERS Jan 4, 2006, Now that the secret is out about warrantless wiretapping by the National Security Agency, President Bush has been defending its use, but his defense has been so disingenuous as to inspire little confidence. "If somebody from al Qaeda is calling you, we'd like to know why," said Bush. Fair enough, but the president decided to bypass the legal mechanism to do that _ the 11-judge Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Obtaining a warrant from the court is hardly a cumbersome hurdle. Whole years go by without the court denying a warrant. Most warrants are granted within 24 hours. And if agents have to act immediately, they can do so as long as they retroactively apply for the warrant within the next three days. Bush's decision to short-circuit that court has caused one justice to resign. Bush insists that NSA eavesdropping is confined to only "a few numbers," but published accounts put the number at more than 500 a day. The president says that the NSA program is regularly reviewed and approved by top levels of government. Maybe so, but it turns out this wasn't always so. According to The New York Times, then-acting Attorney General James Comey refused to sign off on the program in 2004, necessitating a hurried visit by top Bush aides to the hospital bed of ailing Attorney General John Ashcroft, who did sign off _ reluctantly, it is reported. In 2004, two years after he signed off on warrantless wiretaps, a president who prides himself on plain speaking and straight shooting said, "Anytime you hear the government talk about wiretap, it requires _ a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so." Reminded of that over the weekend, Bush amended his remarks to say he had been talking about "(ital) roving (endital) wiretaps." Oh. Under the expanded Patriot Act, which the president spent Tuesday urging Congress to renew, FBI agents have the power, without recourse to the courts, to grant themselves secret subpoenas called National Security letters for a wide variety of financial records. It turns out that the bureau was issuing 30,000 of these letters a year. The Senate Judiciary Committee is promising, as a first order of business, hearings into the president's view that the government has basically an unfettered right to eavesdrop. They are overdue. Congress can no longer be passively acquiescent in these erosions of basic privacy. (Contact Dale McFeatters at McFeattersD(at)SHNS.com. Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.shns.com)

Bush Assails Democrats Over Patriot Act By Jim VandeHei Washington Post January 4, 2006 President Bush accused Democrats yesterday of blocking a full reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act for political reasons, as the White House stepped up an aggressive campaign to defend the president's terrorism-fighting authority. "For partisan reasons, in my mind, people have not stepped up," Bush told reporters, with 19 federal prosecutors by his side. "The enemy has not gone away; they're still there, and I expect Congress to understand that we're still at war and they've got to give us the tools necessary to win this war." White House spokesman Scott McClellan, speaking to reporters earlier in the day, said Senate Democrats are simply doing the bidding of liberal special interest groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union, which opposes the broad surveillance power authorized by the act. Democrats are trying to "appease" the ACLU "because they want to weaken and undermine the Patriot Act," McClellan said. The Patriot Act, which Congress voted to extend until the end of this month amid a bitter political dispute over its reach, provides the federal government with broad power to monitor and prosecute terrorism suspects and those helping them. Many Democrats and a few key Republicans oppose the act as written because they say it does not provide adequate protections for the civil liberties of innocent Americans. The Patriot Act is expected to dominate the debate when Congress returns at the end of the month and to serve as a backdrop for a broader, and possibly even more contentious, argument over Bush's anti-terrorism policies. The White House is bracing for a heated dispute over both the Patriot Act and the recent revelations that Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to monitor communications within the United States involving terrorism suspects overseas. Congress is planning hearings on the NSA program this month and another vote on the Patriot Act early next month, when the current extension expires. Adopting campaign-style tactics, Bush and his aides plan to accuse Democrats of jeopardizing national security to further their political agenda, a tack that worked well for the White House in the 2002 and 2004 elections. But the political environment is different now, with Bush less popular and Democrats better organized in opposition. Moreover, key Republicans are also raising objections to Bush's broad interpretation of presidential power. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) was among the first to demand hearings on the NSA intercepts, and four GOP senators who typically back Bush in policy disputes played crucial roles in blocking the full reauthorization of the Patriot Act before Congress adjourned shortly before Christmas. On another front, the Justice Department notified U.S. District Court judges in Washington that it will seek the dismissal of lawsuits from more than 300 Guantanamo Bay detainees who are questioning the legality of their confinement, using a provision of the defense appropriations law that the Bush administration says limits existing challenges. The new provision prevailed after a sponsor, Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), said it would not apply to pending cases. But the Justice Department said the law eliminates the jurisdiction of district courts over challenges to the legality of detentions at the U.S. naval base in Cuba. The new law still permits detainees to appeal being classified as enemy combatants or any military-commission convictions to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Comment: We are speechless. The guy has enough gall to sink a battleship. He just doesn't get it. Over 80 % of the American people want him impeached, and he's just chugging along like he didn't do anything wrong!

Abramoff Pleads Guilty, Will Cooperate By MARK SHERMAN and CURT ANDERSON AP Jan 3, 2006 WASHINGTON - Jack Abramoff, the lobbyist who spawned a congressional corruption scandal, pleaded guilty Tuesday to three felonies and pledged to cooperate in a criminal probe edging closer to former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. "I plead guilty, your honor," Abramoff said in flat, unemotional tones, accepting a plea bargain that said he had provided lavish trips, golf outings, meals and more to public officials "in exchange for a series of official acts." In one case, he reported payments totaling $50,000 to the wife of a congressional aide to help block legislation for a client. The aide worked for DeLay, according to officials who spoke on condition of anonymity. Public corruption aside, Abramoff admitted defrauding four Indian tribes and other clients, taking millions in kickbacks from a one-time business partner, misusing a charity he had established and failing to pay income taxes on millions of ill-gotten gains. He is expected to plead guilty to additional charges on Wednesday in Florida in connection with charges stemming from the 2000 purchase of a fleet of gambling boats. At the Justice Department, officials said they intend to make use of the trove of e-mails and other material in Abramoff's possession as part of a probe that is believed to be focusing on as many as 20 members of Congress and aides. "This investigation continues ... however long it takes, wherever it leads," said Alice Fisher, assistant attorney general. Whatever the legal ramifications, there was swift political fallout at the dawn of an election year in which minority Democrats intend to make ethics a campaign issue. In a turnabout, House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., joined the roster of politicians announcing plans to donate Abramoff's campaign contributions to charity. House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi said Abramoff's confession in court was "not a surprise because this Republican Congress is the most corrupt in history and the American people are paying the price." Abramoff faces as much as 11 years in federal prison as well as fines in connection with his guilty pleas on charges of conspiracy, mail fraud and tax evasion. The precise penalty is to be determined in part by the extent of his cooperation with prosecutors. Together with his former business partner, Michael Scanlon, he is expected to face restitution costs of $25 million. Abramoff also will be required to pay $1.7 million for unpaid taxes, officials said. Scanlon pleaded guilty last November to corruption charges as part of the investigation that began 21 months ago. The Bush administration's former chief procurement official, David H. Safavian, was charged last fall with making false statements and obstructing investigations into a 2002 golf outing. He has pleaded innocent. The court papers released in connection with Tuesday's plea offered these glimpses into Abramoff's activities: - On behalf of clients eager to stop internet gambling and postal rate legislation, Abramoff paid $50,000 in 10 equal monthly payments beginning in June 2000 to the wife of a congressional aide identified as Staffer A. Based on other information made public, Staffer A was Tony Rudy, at the time a top aide to DeLay. His identity was confirmed by officials who spoke only on condition of anonymity, noting that the court papers did not name the aide. DeLay's office had no immediate comment. The congressman has previously said any actions he took on legislation were consistent with his political philosophy. Separately, DeLay is fighting state campaign finance charges in Texas, hoping to clear himself in time to reclaim his leadership post in Congress. - Abramoff contradicted statements by Rep. Bob Ney, saying the Ohio Republican accepted a golfing trip to Scotland in 2002 with the knowledge that the lobbyist's Indian clients were paying for it. Ney is not mentioned by name, but his identity is clear from a description of his committee chairmanship. Ney issued a statement saying, "At the time I dealt with Jack Abramoff, I obviously did not know, and had no way of knowing, the self-serving and fraudulent nature" of his activities. - Abramoff also said he had made a $10,000 donation to the National Republican Campaign Committee at Ney's request, part of what the plea agreement refers to as the "corruption of public officials." - Court documents said Abramoff solicited $50,000 from a wireless telephone company and got Ney's agreement to push the company's application to install a wireless telephone infrastructure in the House of Representatives, a job Ney's committee would have overseen. At the Justice Department, Fisher said that in one instance, "Abramoff was so bold as to take fees to assist one client when he was actually working for another client to defeat the first client's interests." Those clients were Indian tribes were from Texas and Louisiana, and the issue involved casino gambling. Apart from his lobbying in Congress, Abramoff raised at least $100,000 for President Bush's 2004 re-election effort, earning the honorary title "pioneer" from the campaign. White House spokesman Scott McClellan said he could not say whether Abramoff ever met Bush. McClellan said of Abramoff: "What he is reportedly acknowledging doing is unacceptable and outrageous." "If laws were broken, he must be held to account for what he did," McClellan said. Once a well-connected lobbyist able to command almost unimaginable fees - a Louisiana tribe once paid Scanlon and him more than $30 million over 26 months - Abramoff apologized after pleading guilty. "Words will not ever be able to express my sorrow and my profound regret for all my actions and mistakes," he said. "I hope I can merit forgiveness from the Almighty and those I've wronged or caused to suffer." Pressure had been intensifying on Abramoff to strike a deal with prosecutors since another former partner, Adam Kidan, pleaded guilty last month to fraud and conspiracy in connection with the 2000 SunCruz boat deal in Florida.

Corruption probe shakes Washington Wed Jan 4, 2006 6:06 PM GMT165 By Andy Sullivan WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Lobbyist Jack Abramoff's guilty plea in a U.S. corruption probe sent shock waves across Washington on Wednesday as top Republicans sought to avoid being tainted by the scandal and Democrats pressed the issue. President George W. Bush and House of Representatives Speaker Dennis Hastert of Illinois were among Republicans who donated to charity campaign contributions they had received from Abramoff, while Democrats said the issue would loom large in November's congressional elections. Others said the investigation would bring needed discipline to a lobbying industry that has enjoyed a freewheeling culture and record earnings. "I think it's going to make both sides, lobbyists and legislators, ask more questions of each other," said Doug Pinkham, president of the Public Affairs Council, a lobbying-industry trade group. "A lot of the relationships around lobbying have been awfully loose and enforcement of existing laws has been fairly lax," he said. Officials with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, an influential business organisation, said they thought the scandal could encourage lobbying-reform legislation and spur lawmakers to work harder to pass substantive legislation this year. Abramoff agreed on Tuesday to help Justice Department investigators probing whether members of Congress gave Abramoff and his clients favourable treatment in return for campaign contributions, sports tickets and other gifts. Both Republicans and Democrats received campaign funds from Abramoff, but much of the attention has been focussed on former House Republican Leader Tom DeLay of Texas and Rep. Bob Ney of Ohio. Democratic Sens. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota and Max Baucus of Montana have returned donations from Abramoff and his clients. Abramoff also was expected to plead guilty on Wednesday to wire-fraud charges for allegedly falsifying a loan in the purchase of a Florida casino cruise line. Abramoff's cooperation makes the Justice Department's case much easier, a former prosecutor said. "The real issue is intent -- what was the intent with which an official committed an act?" said Roma Theus, a Florida lawyer who prosecuted corruption cases with the Justice Department. "Testimony of an insider is critical, because it shows what the actual mind-set was, the thought process was." Democrats said the Abramoff case, along with other ethics issues, will give them valuable ammunition as they seek to take back control of Congress in November. "We've been talking for months about the culture of corruption in Washington," said Sarah Feinberg, a spokeswoman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. "When the Republican leadership is completely consumed with defending itself from ethics scandals, then the work of the people does not get done." Feinberg's Republican counterpart said that voters do not blame their local representatives if a member of the same party is found guilty of corruption. "The bottom line from a political standpoint is I don't know of anyone who lost a race because of something another member did or didn't do," said National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman Carl Forti. Ethics watchdog groups said Congress needs to tighten lobbying laws. One liberal group, the Campaign For America's Future, plans to run ads criticising Ney for his close relationship to Abramoff. Ney said on Tuesday that he has never done anything illegal or improper and did not know the nature of Abramoff's activities when he dealt with him. DeLay has said he did nothing illegal.

Abramoff Deal Opens Trove of Information By PETE YOST Associated Press 4 January 2006 In a deal that clears the way for the next phase of a widespread Capitol Hill corruption probe, lobbyist Jack Abramoff has agreed to tell prosecutors and the FBI about alleged bribes to lawmakers and their aides on issues ranging from Internet gambling to wireless phone service in the House. The full extent of the investigation is not yet known, but Justice Department officials said Tuesday they intended to make use of the trove of e-mails and other material in Abramoff's possession as part of a probe that is believed to be focusing on as many as 20 members of Congress and aides. "The corruption scheme with Mr. Abramoff is very extensive and we will continue to follow it wherever it leads," said Assistant Attorney General Alice Fisher, head of the Justice Department's criminal division. Court papers in Abramoff's case refer to an aide to then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay who helped stop anti-gambling legislation regarding the Internet. Abramoff, the papers state, paid the staffer's wife $50,000 from clients that benefited from the actions of the staffer, identified by a person close to the investigation as Tony Rudy, DeLay's former deputy chief of staff. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the probe is ongoing. Rudy did not return a phone call Tuesday at his lobbying firm. DeLay, R-Texas, voted against his party on the Internet anti-gambling legislation which was designed to make it easier for authorities to stop online gambling sites. DeLay attorney Richard Cullen said he believes that when the investigation is completed and the truth is known that the Justice Department will conclude that his client, who had risen to House majority leader before stepping down from the post last year, did nothing wrong. Abramoff pleaded guilty Tuesday to conspiracy, mail fraud and tax evasion, with his conduct outlined in court papers that refers to "a stream of things of value to public officials in exchange for a series of official acts and influence." On Wednesday, Abramoff was to plead guilty in Miami to criminal charges stemming from Abramoff's 2000 purchase of SunCruz Casinos, a case that touches on Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio. The political ramifications of the Abramoff probe were apparent, with minority Democrats intending to make ethics a campaign issue in this election year. House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said Abramoff's confession in court was "not a surprise because this Republican Congress is the most corrupt in history and the American people are paying the price." Some political consultants and analysts are comparing potential damage from the Abramoff investigation to the 1992 House banking scandal that led to the retirement or ouster of 77 lawmakers. Abramoff's cooperation has made lawmakers nervous. House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., became the most recent addition to the roster of politicians announcing plans to donate Abramoff's campaign contributions to charity. The court papers in the Washington case refer to Ney, saying that regarding SunCruz, the congressman placed a statement drafted by Abramoff partner Michael Scanlon in the Congressional Record. The statement, the court papers say, was calculated to pressure the owner of SunCruz to sell on terms favorable to Abramoff. Ney denies wrongdoing, saying that "at the time I dealt with Jack Abramoff, I obviously did not know, and had no way of knowing, the self-serving and fraudulent nature of Abramoff's activities." Abramoff and his former partner, Adam Kidan, are charged with concocting a false $23 million wire transfer making it appear they contributed a sizable stake of their own cash into the $147.5 million purchase of cruise ships. The court papers released Tuesday in Washington raised questions about Ney's former chief of staff, Neil Volz. The documents say the ex- staffer contacted the congressman on behalf of an Abramoff client that won a lucrative deal from Ney to improve cell phone reception in House buildings. Volz contacted his ex-boss within one year of leaving the congressman's staff, the court papers say, a possible violation of federal conflict of interest laws which impose a one-year lobbying ban. Volz referred questions to his attorney, who was not immediately available for comment. Abramoff was once a well-connected lobbyist able to command almost unimaginable fees: A Louisiana tribe once paid Scanlon and him more than $30 million over 26 months. Now facing up to 11 years in prison, Abramoff apologized after pleading guilty. "Words will not ever be able to express my sorrow and my profound regret for all my actions and mistakes," Abramoff said. "I hope I can merit forgiveness from the Almighty and those I've wronged or caused to suffer."

Dozens send back lobbyist's donations - Lawmakers fear link to Abramoff By Susan Milligan Boston Globe January 2, 2006 WASHINGTON -- Members of Congress who once counted on super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff to help finance their campaigns have begun returning the cash they got from him and his clients, signaling a growing worry that ethics -- and the scandal surrounding Abramoff -- will become issues that could affect close House and Senate races in next year's midterm elections. Abramoff, a powerful Washington figure who owned a tony restaurant frequented by members of Congress, is under federal investigation for allegedly swindling American Indian tribes out of millions of dollars in lobbying fees and contributions to Abramoff's associates. With a court date looming Jan. 9 -- and the possibility that Abramoff will cut a deal with prosecutors before that date -- at least two dozen lawmakers have refunded money they fear could look tainted by Election Day in November. ''They're obviously worried," said Michael Malbin, director of the nonpartisan Campaign Finance Institute. ''If people get disgusted by the relationship between the people in power and the lobbyists, [Abramoff] is going to become their poster boy." If a lawmaker is not personally tied to any possible illegal activity involving Abramoff, then giving the money back could burnish his or her image with voters, Malbin said. But if, as many political analysts suspect, some senators or House members are linked to Abramoff and potentially illegal activity, Malbin said, then ''returning the check won't begin to take care of the problem." Montana Senators Max Baucus, a Democrat, and Conrad Burns, a Republican, were the latest to return Abramoff-connected cash. Baucus returned $18,892, including $1,892 he had failed to report for use of Abramoff's skybox at a Washington, D.C., sports arena. Burns, who has been targeted by Democrats in November's election, gave back $150,000 in contributions before Christmas, reversing an earlier position that he would not return the money. ''The contributions given to my political committees by Jack Abramoff and his clients, while legal and fully disclosed, have served to undermine the public's confidence in its government," Burns said in a statement explaining his reversal. A Burns aide said the senator has not been implicated in any of the Abramoff investigations, and has not hired a lawyer to handle the case. Abramoff's dealings are the subject of a Senate probe and a criminal investigation. Among the deals being scrutinized are contributions from the tribes who hired Abramoff to politicians and political groups associated with him, and overseas trips paid for by Abramoff and involving Tom DeLay, former House majority leader and Republican of Texas, among other political figures. Capitol Hill sources have also suggested that Abramoff gave free meals and drinks at his restaurant to lawmakers, in violation of a congressional rule barring gifts worth more than $50. Some political strategists and congressmen believe it's not necessary to return campaign donations simply because the contributor is under investigation. Carl Forti, spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, said the committee has not recommend to GOP candidates that they return money from Abramoff or his clients. But on Capitol Hill, lawmakers are uneasy, worried that any connection to Abramoff could become a campaign liability that far outweighs the campaign help he may have given them. Senator Byron Dorgan, a North Dakota Democrat who, like Burns, sits on a congressional committee that oversees Indian tribes' issues, returned $67,000 in Abramoff-related donations a few days before Burns and Baucus gave back their campaign cash. ''Members of Congress try to hold onto as much money as possible, until it becomes politically distasteful to hold onto it," said David Donnelly, national campaigns director for the Public Campaign Action Fund. He predicted that lawmakers who accepted contributions from Abramoff may face serious questions from their constituents on the campaign trail. ''What it does is shine a very bright light on our campaign finance system," he said. Democrats intend to make ethics an issue against Republicans in next year's elections, using the indictments of DeLay on money-laundering charges unrelated to the Abramoff probe, and former vice presidential aide I. Lewis ''Scooter" Libby for allegedly lying to a grand jury, to paint the GOP as a party immersed in scandal. New Hampshire Democrats have hounded the state's GOP representatives, Charles Bass and Jeb Bradley, to give back contributions they received from a DeLay political action committee. Bradley has returned such campaign contributions; Bass hasn't, but has called for DeLay to be replaced as the House leader. Democratic strategists compare the current series of Republican ethics headaches to the House banking scandal in the early 1990s, when dozens of lawmakers were found to have repeatedly written bad personal checks on their House bank accounts, some racking up hundreds of thousands of dollars in overdrafts -- without penalties. Democrats believe the ensuing voter anger contributed to their loss of dozens of seats in 2004, giving control of the chamber to Republicans. The Abramoff and DeLay cases, Democrats believe, could help them pick up some seats next year and perhaps even regain majority control of the House. ''My sense of this is that voters are cynical and angry to start, and that more scandal just makes matters worse," said Peter Fenn, a veteran Democratic consultant and former congressional staffer. He noted that former House speaker Jim Wright, Democrat of Texas, was forced to resign from Congress in 1989 because lobbyists bought large quantities of his books, then handed them out at fund-raisers. The Abramoff case ''is clearly a much bigger scandal than the House bank or a book," Fenn said. But while DeLay limited his handouts to fellow Republicans, Abramoff spread his money around to lawmakers and candidates in both parties. According to an analysis prepared by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, Abramoff and his clients doled out more than $4.4 million to candidates since 2000, with $1.5 million of the money going to Democrats. While Democrats seek to taint Burns with the Abramoff scandal, the National Republican Senatorial Committee has gone on the offense, pointing out that Abramoff gave cash not only to Baucus, but to Harry Reid of Nevada, Senate minority leader and the Democrats' leader. Comment: So the rats are abandoning the sinking ship...

Bush Campaign to Give Away Abramoff Donations By PETE YOST Associated Press 4 Jan 2006 WASHINGTON President Bush's re-election campaign will give the American Heart Association thousands of dollars in campaign contributions connected to lobbyist Jack Abramoff, the White House said Wednesday, as the government pressed forward with a broad-ranging corruption investigation. White House press secretary Scott McClellan said Wednesday that Abramoff, his wife and the tribal associates that he helped win influence on Capitol Hill donated thousands to the Bush-Cheney '04 campaign. Donations to charities has been the policy in similar situations in the past, McClellan said. Abramoff raised at least $100,000 for President Bush's 2004 re- election effort, earning the honorary title "pioneer" from the campaign. It was unclear how much exactly the campaign would be giving to charity since McClellan referred questions about the matter to the Republican National Committee, which did not immediately return phone calls about it. McClellan said Bush does not know Abramoff personally, although it's possible that the two met at holiday receptions. Abramoff attended three Hanukkah receptions at the White House, the spokesman said. In a plea agreement with government prosecutors Tuesday, Abramoff has agreed to tell the FBI about alleged bribes to lawmakers and their aides on issues ranging from Internet gambling to wireless phone service in the House. The full extent of the investigation is not yet known, but Justice Department officials said they intended to make use of the trove of e- mails and other material in Abramoff's possession as part of a probe that is believed to be focusing on as many as 20 members of Congress and aides. "The corruption scheme with Mr. Abramoff is very extensive and we will continue to follow it wherever it leads," said Assistant Attorney General Alice Fisher, head of the Justice Department's criminal division. Court papers in Abramoff's case refer to an aide to then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay who helped stop anti-gambling legislation regarding the Internet. Abramoff, the papers state, paid the staffer's wife $50,000 from clients that benefited from the actions of the staffer, identified by a person close to the investigation as Tony Rudy, DeLay's former deputy chief of staff. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the probe is ongoing. Rudy did not return a phone call Tuesday at his lobbying firm. DeLay, R-Texas, voted against his party on the Internet anti-gambling legislation which was designed to make it easier for authorities to stop online gambling sites. DeLay attorney Richard Cullen said he believes that when the investigation is completed and the truth is known that the Justice Department will conclude that his client, who had risen to House majority leader before stepping down from the post last year, did nothing wrong. Abramoff pleaded guilty Tuesday to conspiracy, mail fraud and tax evasion, with his conduct outlined in court papers that refers to "a stream of things of value to public officials in exchange for a series of official acts and influence." On Wednesday, Abramoff was to plead guilty in Miami to criminal charges stemming from Abramoff's 2000 purchase of SunCruz Casinos, a case that touches on Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio. The political ramifications of the Abramoff probe were apparent, with minority Democrats intending to make ethics a campaign issue in this election year. House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said Abramoff's confession in court was "not a surprise because this Republican Congress is the most corrupt in history and the American people are paying the price." Some political consultants and analysts are comparing potential damage from the Abramoff investigation to the 1992 House banking scandal that led to the retirement or ouster of 77 lawmakers. Abramoff's cooperation has made lawmakers nervous. House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., became the most recent addition to the roster of politicians announcing plans to donate Abramoff's campaign contributions to charity. The court papers in the Washington case refer to Ney, saying that regarding SunCruz, the congressman placed a statement drafted by Abramoff partner Michael Scanlon in the Congressional Record. The statement, the court papers say, was calculated to pressure the owner of SunCruz to sell on terms favorable to Abramoff. Ney denies wrongdoing, saying that "at the time I dealt with Jack Abramoff, I obviously did not know, and had no way of knowing, the self-serving and fraudulent nature of Abramoff's activities." Abramoff and his former partner, Adam Kidan, are charged with concocting a false $23 million wire transfer making it appear they contributed a sizable stake of their own cash into the $147.5 million purchase of cruise ships. The court papers released Tuesday in Washington raised questions about Ney's former chief of staff, Neil Volz. The documents say the ex- staffer contacted the congressman on behalf of an Abramoff client that won a lucrative deal from Ney to improve cell phone reception in House buildings. Volz contacted his ex-boss within one year of leaving the congressman's staff, the court papers say, a possible violation of federal conflict of interest laws which impose a one-year lobbying ban. Volz referred questions to his attorney, who was not immediately available for comment. Abramoff was once a well-connected lobbyist able to command almost unimaginable fees: A Louisiana tribe once paid Scanlon and him more than $30 million over 26 months. Now facing up to 11 years in prison, Abramoff apologized after pleading guilty. "Words will not ever be able to express my sorrow and my profound regret for all my actions and mistakes," Abramoff said. "I hope I can merit forgiveness from the Almighty and those I've wronged or caused to suffer."

Secret services say Iran is trying to assemble a nuclear missile Ian Cobain and Ian Traynor Wednesday January 4, 2006 The Guardian The Iranian government has been successfully scouring Europe for the sophisticated equipment needed to develop a nuclear bomb, according to the latest western intelligence assessment of the country's weapons programmes. Scientists in Tehran are also shopping for parts for a ballistic missile capable of reaching Europe, with "import requests and acquisitions ... registered almost daily", the report seen by the Guardian concludes. The warning came as Iran raised the stakes in its dispute with the United States and the European Union yesterday by notifying the International Atomic Energy Authority that it intended to resume nuclear fuel research next week. Tehran has refused to rule out a return to attempts at uranium enrichment, the key to the development of a nuclear weapon. Article continues The 55-page intelligence assessment, dated July 1 2005, draws upon material gathered by British, French, German and Belgian agencies, and has been used to brief European government ministers and to warn leading industrialists of the need for vigilance when exporting equipment or expertise to so-called rogue states. It concludes that Syria and Pakistan have also been buying technology and chemicals needed to develop rocket programmes and to enrich uranium. It outlines the role played by Russia in the escalating Middle East arms build-up, and examines the part that dozens of Chinese front companies have played in North Korea's nuclear weapons programme. But it is the detailed assessment of Iran's nuclear purchasing programme that will most most alarm western leaders, who have long refused to believe Tehran's insistence that it is not interested in developing nuclear weapons and is trying only to develop nuclear power for electricity. Governments in the west and elsewhere have also been dismayed by recent pronouncements from the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has said that Holocaust denial is a "scientific debate" and that Israel should be "wiped off the map". The leak of the intelligence report may signal a growing frustration at Iran's refusal to bow to western demands that it abandon its programme to produce fuel for a Russian-built nuclear reactor due to come on stream this year. The assessment declares that Iran has developed an extensive web of front companies, official bodies, academic institutes and middlemen dedicated to obtaining - in western Europe and in the former Soviet Union - the expertise, training, and equipment for nuclear programmes, missile development, and biological and chemical weapons arsenals. "In addition to sensitive goods, Iran continues intensively to seek the technology and know-how for military applications of all kinds," it says. The document lists scores of Iranian companies and institutions involved in the arms race. It also details Tehran's growing determination to perfect a ballistic missile capable of delivering warheads far beyond its borders. It notes that Iran harbours ambitions of developing a space programme, but is currently concentrating on upgrading and extending the range of its Shahab-3 missile, which has a range of 750 miles - capable of reaching Israel. Iranian scientists are said to be building wind tunnels to assist in missile design, developing navigation technology, and acquiring metering and calibration technology, motion simulators and x-ray machines designed to examine rocket parts. The next generation of the Shahab ("shooting star" in Persian) should be capable of reaching Austria and Italy.

Intelligence report says Iran seeks nuclear bomb: report Jan 3, 2006 Reuters LONDON - Iran is secretly trying to obtain technology and expertise needed to build a nuclear weapon, according to a leaked intelligence report that threatens to deepen a rift with the West over its nuclear program. Tehran's nuclear purchasing plans stretch from Europe to North Korea and the former Soviet states, Britain's Guardian newspaper said, citing a report by an unnamed European intelligence agency. The 55-page report, dated July 1, 2005, draws on material gathered by British, French, German and Belgian agencies and has been used to brief European government ministers, the newspaper said. The leaked report comes as Iran and the West remain locked in a standoff over Tehran's nuclear program. The United States and the European Union fear Iran's civilian nuclear power program is a cover for making nuclear weapons. Iran says it needs nuclear technology to generate electricity. The leaked intelligence report claims Iran has an advanced program designed to acquire nuclear expertise, training and equipment. It also says Syria, Pakistan and North Korea are part of a global black market in illicit weapons parts. The document says Iran has built a web of front companies, middlemen and academics whose job is to find the information and materials needed for nuclear, biological and chemical arsenals, according to the Guardian. "In addition to sensitive goods, Iran continues intensively to seek the technology and know-how for military applications of all kinds," the newspaper quoted from the report. 'MISSILE DEVELOPMENT' According to the Guardian, the document details Tehran's attempts to build a missile capable of reaching Israel and southern Europe. Iranian scientists are building wind tunnels, navigation technology and acquiring calibration devices needed for advanced missiles, the document says. It concludes that Syria and Pakistan have also been buying technology and chemicals needed to develop rocket programs and to enrich uranium, according to the Guardian. The report concludes that scientists in Tehran are shopping for parts for a new ballistic missile with "import requests and acquisitions ... registered almost daily", the Guardian said. The report's aim is to warn European Union companies from doing business with the front companies, the newspaper said. The report does not name Western firms or academics believed to have worked with Iran, North Korea, Syria or Pakistan. On Tuesday, Iran said it would resume atomic fuel research and development next week. That could lead to renewed calls from Washington and the European Union for the case to be referred to the U.N. Security Council, where Iran could face political or economic sanctions.

Flashback! Revealed: the Iraqi colonel who told MI6 that Saddam could launch WMD within 45 minutes By Con Coughlin (Filed: 07/12/2003) An Iraqi colonel who commanded a front-line unit during the build-up to the war in Iraq has revealed how he passed top secret information to British intelligence warning that Saddam Hussein had deployed weapons of mass destruction that could be used on the battlefield against coalition troops in less than 45 minutes. Lt-Col al-Dabbagh, 40, who was the head of an Iraqi air defence unit in the western desert, said that cases containing WMD warheads were delivered to front-line units, including his own, towards the end of last year. He said they were to be used by Saddam's Fedayeen paramilitaries and units of the Special Republican Guard when the war with coalition troops reached "a critical stage". The containers, which came from a number of factories on the outskirts of Baghdad, were delivered to the army by the Fedayeen and were distributed to the front-line units under cover of darkness. In an exclusive interview with the Telegraph, Col al-Dabbagh said that he believed he was the source of the British Government's controversial claim, published in September last year in the intelligence dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, that Saddam could launch WMD within 45 minutes. "I am the one responsible for providing this information," said the colonel, who is now working as an adviser to Iraq's Governing Council. He also insisted that the information contained in the dossier relating to Saddam's battlefield WMD capability was correct. "It is 100 per cent accurate," he said after reading the relevant passage. The devices, which were known by Iraqi officers as "the secret weapon", were made in Iraq and designed to be launched by hand-held rocket-propelled grenades. They could also have been launched sooner than the 45-minutes claimed in the dossier. "Forget 45 minutes," said Col al-Dabbagh "we could have fired these within half-an-hour." Local commanders were told that they could use the weapons only on the personal orders of Saddam. "We were told that when the war came we would only have a short time to use everything we had to defend ourselves, including the secret weapon," he said. The only reason that these weapons were not used, said Col al-Dabbagh, was because the bulk of the Iraqi army did not want to fight for Saddam. "The West should thank God that the Iraqi army decided not to fight," he said. "If the army had fought for Saddam Hussein and used these weapons there would have been terrible consequences." Col al-Dabbagh, who was recalled to Baghdad to work at Iraq's air defence headquarters during the war itself, believes that the WMD have been hidden at secret locations by the Fedayeen and are still in Iraq. "Only when Saddam is caught will people talk about these weapons," he said. During the Hutton inquiry into the death of Dr David Kelly, Sir Richard Dearlove, the head of MI6, said that the information contained in the intelligence dossier relating to the 45-minute claim had come from a single "established and reliable" source serving in the Iraqi armed forces. Privately British intelligence officers have claimed that they believe the original source was killed during the war. Dr Kelly killed himself last July after it was revealed that he was the source of a BBC radio report claiming that the Labour Government had included the 45-minute claim against the wishes of MI6 to "sex up" the intelligence dossier. Col al-Dabbagh, who spied for the Iraqi National Accord (INA), a London-based exile group, for several years before the war, said, however, that he provided several reports to British intelligence on Saddam's plans to deploy WMD from early 2002 onwards. The INA, which was made up of retired and serving Iraqi officers and Ba'ath party officials, is known to have enjoyed a close relationship with MI6 and America's Central Intelligence Agency. Dr Ayad Allawi, the head of the INA who is now a prominent member of the Governing Council in Baghdad, confirmed that he had passed Col al-Dabbagh's reports on Saddam's WMD to both British and American intelligence officers "sometime in the spring and summer of 2002". Apart from providing intelligence on Saddam's WMD programme, Col al-Dabbagh also provided details of Iraq's troop and air defence deployments before the war. Although he gave details of Iraq's battlefield WMD capability, he said that he had no knowledge of any plans by Saddam to use missiles to attack British bases in Cyprus and other Nato targets. In the build-up to the conflict, Tony Blair was criticised by intelligence officials for giving the impression that Saddam had developed ballistic missiles that could carry WMD warheads and hit targets such as Israel and Britain's military bases in Cyprus. But Col al-Dabbagh said that he doubted that Iraq under Saddam had this capability. "I know nothing about this. My information was only about what we could do on the battlefield." Col al-Dabbagh, who received two death threats from Saddam loyalists days after his interview with the Telegraph, said that he was willing to travel to London to give evidence to the Hutton inquiry. "I was there and I knew what Saddam was doing before the war," he said. An official close to the Hutton inquiry said: "What Mr Dabbagh has to say sounds very interesting and it is certainly new evidence that we will want to look at."

Flashback! Blair on Iraq rack as spy chief breaks cover 2003-09-16 China Daily "The 45-minute claim was the most dramatic element of the dossier that Blair used to counter widespread public opposition to joining a U.S. war against Saddam Hussein. "Blair's team denies it "sexed up" the dossier on the threat posed by Iraq. But five months after Saddam's overthrow, no banned weapons have been found in Iraq." Britain's secretive intelligence chief conceded Monday that criticism of a dossier setting out Prime Minister Tony Blair's case for war with Iraq was valid because its most sensational warning was "misinterpreted." Breaking with precedent, MI6 head Sir Richard Dearlove testified via audio-link to the judicial inquiry into the suicide of a weapons expert, which has raised questions about Blair's reasons for war and sent his trust ratings plunging. Dearlove said he stood by the intelligence in the September 2002 dossier but added that a contentious assertion that Iraq could deploy chemical or biological weapons at 45 minutes' notice was only meant to refer to short-range arms. "Given the misinterpretation placed on the 45-minutes intelligence, with the benefit of hindsight you could say that was valid criticism," said Dearlove, chief of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), better known as MI6. "The original (intelligence) report referred ... to battlefield weapons. What subsequently happened in the reporting was it was taken that the 45 minutes applied to weapons of a longer range," he said. The 45-minute claim was the most dramatic element of the dossier that Blair used to counter widespread public opposition to joining a U.S. war against Saddam Hussein. Blair's team denies it "sexed up" the dossier on the threat posed by Iraq. But five months after Saddam's overthrow, no banned weapons have been found in Iraq. Dearlove, his disembodied voice echoing in the courtroom during 40 minutes of testimony, insisted the 45-minutes' claim was "a well-sourced piece of intelligence." Scientist David Kelly killed himself in July after he was exposed as the source of a BBC report accusing the government of hyping up the case for war to win over skeptical Britons. Blair's public trust ratings have since evaporated. Although he will not have to testify again, his Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon and outgoing communications chief Alastair Campbell are recalled to be grilled by judge Lord Hutton next week. Hoon, Kelly's ultimate boss, has been portrayed as a potential fall guy lined up to take the rap and protect Blair. He faces questions over why he overruled advice to protect Kelly from a hostile public grilling just days before the scientist's death, and why concerns among defense intelligence staff over language in the dossier were not acted on. Fresh evidence of that concern emerged Monday when the inquiry was shown a letter from the Defense Intelligence Staff, sent just one week before Blair's Iraq dossier was published, saying some of its claims were put too forcefully. The judgment that Iraq had continued producing chemical and biological weapons was "too strong," the letter said. It also described the 45-minute warning as "rather strong since it is based on a single source." The government was rocked further at the weekend when a new book claimed that just days before Iraq was invaded, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw begged Blair not to go to war. Blair's spokesman said Straw was merely outlining a "Plan B" if parliament had voted against war, which it did not. "That is entirely different to expressing policy differences," he said. But author John Kampfner, an experienced political journalist, said his work was sourced to interviews with 40 key government figures and was confident about its authenticity. His report follows a revelation last week that Blair ignored warnings from spy chiefs that war would raise the risk of militants like al Qaeda acquiring weapons of mass destruction.

More than 50 killed in Iraqi violence Last Updated Wed, 04 Jan 2006 08:39:57 EST CBC News Multiple attacks in Iraq that included a suicide bombing at a funeral killed more than 50 people Wednesday in the deadliest day of violence since the Dec. 15 parliamentary elections. At least 32 Shia Muslims were killed and another 42 wounded when a suicide bomber detonated himself during the funeral for a relative of an Iraqi politician. The service was in Miqdadiya, 100 kilometres northeast of Baghdad. Mourners were first attacked by unknown gunmen armed with mortars and automatic weapons. The suicide bomber struck during the mayhem. The funeral was for the nephew of a local politician who was targeted in an assassination attempt on Tuesday. A bodyguard was also killed. In Baghdad, at least 12 people were killed and 25 wounded when two separate car bombs exploded, one at a busy commercial market in the Doura district. Roadside bombs and insurgent attacks around the country left another 10 dead, including eight civilians.

U.S. Airstrike on House Enrages Iraqi Officials By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. 01/03/06 "New York Times" -- -- BAGHDAD, Iraq, Jan. 3 - United States warplanes killed nine members of an Iraqi family, including women and young children, during a bombing strike Monday night that obliterated a home near the northern industrial city of Bayji, Iraqi officials said today. American officials said the warplanes were targeting insurgents who had been observed planting a roadside bomb and who then fled to the building that was destroyed. The attack enraged Iraqi officials in Bayji, about 150 miles north of Baghdad, who said the airstrike was unjustified and destroyed an innocent family. A preliminary investigation indicated the blast killed the wife of the home's owner, his daughter-in-law and seven children and grandchildren, including one son who worked for the police, said Maj. Muthanna al-Qaisi, a spokesman for the governor of the Salahaddin province. Three more family members were wounded, he said. "The owner of the house is a very simple man," said Major al-Qaisi. "The American forces did not provide us with any justification for the attack and the governor requires an investigation concerning this attack." The governor would meet with American officials on Wednesday to demand an explanation, Major al-Qaisi said. The home, located behind a mosque, was totally destroyed in the 10:30 p.m. attack, he added. A correspondent for Agence France-Presse in Bayji reported that eight corpses were pulled from the rubble along with three survivors - two unconscious women and an eight-year-old boy whose cry for help alerted rescuers. The news agency quoted a man it identified as the home's owner, Ghadban Hassan, as saying he was at a store 100 meters away when the bombs struck. "My house was destroyed and there was smoke everywhere," he said, adding that 14 family members had been inside. A Bayji police colonel, Sufyan Mustafa, told Reuters that the family members killed in the bombing did not include any insurgents. "There were no terrorists in this house," he said. American military officials said the bombs were dropped after an unmanned reconnaissance aircraft saw three men planting a roadside bomb about 9 p.m. Monday. The men "dug a hole following the common pattern of road-side bomb emplacement," the military said in a statement. "The individuals were assessed as posing a threat to Iraqi civilians and coalition forces, and the location of the three men was relayed to close air support pilots." The men were tracked from the road site to a building nearby, which was then bombed with "precision guided munitions," the military said. The statement did not say whether a roadside bomb was later found at the site. "We're now trying to determine, in coordination with Iraqi security forces in the area, exactly what casualties occurred, and why they occurred," said Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, a military spokesman in Baghdad. Separately, in Baquba, north of the capital, a suicide car bomber killed three Iraqi police and wounded 14 more today when he attacked a bus filled with police officers traveling to an academy in Sulaymaniyah in the northern Kurdish territories, the American military said. In Baghdad, officials from the Iraqi elections commission said it would take another week or two before final certified results from the Dec. 15 parliamentary elections are released. An international team of election monitors is evaluating complaints by Sunni Arab political groups that they were disenfranchised during the election. Iraqi election officials and United Nations observers have rejected calls for new elections, saying that while there were some cases of fraud the ballot was transparent and credible. In an interview today, the head of the Iraqi elections commission, Adel al-Lami, said that no more than 50 to 70 ballot boxes - out of 31,000 - will be canceled because of findings of fraud. He said he could not give a specific date when the final election results will be released.

Palestinian militants smash through Gaza border wall www.chinaview.cn 2006-01-04 23:25:26 GAZA, Jan. 4 (Xinhuanet) -- Discontented Palestinian militants smashed through part of the border wall between Gaza and Egypt by stolen bulldozers on Wednesday, Palestinian witnesses said. The militants, members of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade which is an armed wing of the dominant Fatah movement, demolished a concrete wall on the Gaza-Egypt border using stolen bulldozers, the witnesses said. The militants said they attacked the border wall in protest against the arrest of an al-Aqsa leader by Palestinian police and demanded his release, according to the witnesses. Earlier, the militants forced the key Rafah crossing on the Gaza-Egypt border to close and occupied several government buildings nearby.

Hamas vows wide-range reform if winning elections www.chinaview.cn 2006-01-04 22:32:35 GAZA, Jan. 4 (Xinhuanet) -- A prominent leader of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) said on Wednesday that the group would carry out wide-range reform in the Palestinian territories if it wins the parliamentary elections. Ismail Haneya, who leads the Hamas list for the legislative polls scheduled for Jan. 25, told reporters that Hamas had worked out a complete program to carry out reforms in the Palestinian political, economic, security and social fields if the group wins the parliamentary elections. "We are also thinking to form a special council across the Palestinian territories to tackle people's complaints," he said, lashing out sharp criticism against corruption and rising chaos in the Palestinian territories. He also said that Hamas was seriously considering establishing its own satellite channel. The senior Hamas leader also vowed to defend Hamas' right of resistance against the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian lands if the group succeeds in the parliamentary polls. "If Hamas enters the Palestinian Legislative Council (after the elections), it will work on protecting resistance and militants and stopping political arrests in the Palestinian territories," he said. In addition, Haneya asserted that Hamas sought political legitimacy and the protection of resistance through participating in the elections. Hamas, sworn to Israel's destruction, is widely expected to do well in the Palestinian legislative elections, its first bid for the legislature. The group has gained much street popularity through spearheading five-year-long violence against the Israeli occupation and running an extensive charity network. Hamas, promising a corruption-free government, has insisted on a timely ballot, but Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Monday that the elections would not be held if Israel does not lift the ban on votes in East Jerusalem.

Congressional Oversight 2006: Not Your Founding Fathers' Checks and Balances Arianna Huffington 01.03.2006 The NSA domestic spy program was allowed to flourish because of a lack of oversight and, unless the public stands up and makes a stink, the Senate's response to the scandal will be more of the same. Already, there are reports that the White House is trying to get the hearings on the legality of its actions moved out of Arlen Specter's Judiciary Committee and placed in Pat Roberts's Intelligence Committee, where the hearings could be more easily closed to the public (And Roberts has already proven himself to be a master at burying investigations that might prove problematic to the administration). Great news! For a while there, it looked like the Republican leadership in Congress had basically rolled over and ceded unprecedented power to George Bush. Well, rest easy, because Senator Mitch McConnell, the second ranking Republican solon in the Senate is on the case. As he said to Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday this week: "There's nothing wrong with congressional oversight." Wow, talk about checks and balances. Just the way our Founding Fathers designed it. Of course, the problem with the Republican leadership in the Senate and the House is that they clearly believe there's nothing too right with congressional oversight either. Why did the president think he could interpret the Joint Authorization for Use of Military Force as a green light for no-warrant domestic wiretaps? Because he was convinced he could get away with it. And with spayed and neutered watchdogs like Mitch McConnell in the Senate, it's easy to see why Bush believed he could do as he pleased. The NSA domestic spy program was allowed to flourish because of a lack of oversight and, unless the public stands up and makes a stink, the Senate's response to the scandal will be more of the same. Already, there are reports that the White House is trying to get the hearings on the legality of its actions moved out of Arlen Specter's Judiciary Committee and placed in Pat Roberts's Intelligence Committee, where the hearings could be more easily closed to the public (And Roberts has already proven himself to be a master at burying investigations that might prove problematic to the administration). Here's what McConnell said when Wallace asked him about the efforts to shift control of the hearings away from Specter, who has declared the White House's actions in the matter "no doubt…inappropriate": MCCONNELL: Well, look. Before getting to that, let's talk about the facts. The facts are that the president believes very, very strongly that he has the constitutional authority and that the resolution we passed in 2001 in the war on terror gives him the authority to do what he did. Go get 'em, tiger. As long as the President feels "very, very strongly" about it, it's probably fine. After all, when has the President ever been wrong about something he's felt "very, very strongly" about? I hear reports that there are, in fact, a few Republican senators who actually have a little pride in the institution, take its oversight duties seriously, and are disturbed by the precedent of this executive power grab. If so, it would appear that these hearings, or lack of them, will be something of a -- excuse my lack of Senatorial comity -- ball-check. We already know Senator McConnell's testicular status.

Bush could bypass new torture ban Waiver right is reserved By Charlie Savage Boston Globe January 4, 2006 WASHINGTON -- When President Bush last week signed the bill outlawing the torture of detainees, he quietly reserved the right to bypass the law under his powers as commander in chief. After approving the bill last Friday, Bush issued a ''signing statement" -- an official document in which a president lays out his interpretation of a new law -- declaring that he will view the interrogation limits in the context of his broader powers to protect national security. This means Bush believes he can waive the restrictions, the White House and legal specialists said. ''The executive branch shall construe [the law] in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President . . . as Commander in Chief," Bush wrote, adding that this approach ''will assist in achieving the shared objective of the Congress and the President . . . of protecting the American people from further terrorist attacks." Some legal specialists said yesterday that the president's signing statement, which was posted on the White House website but had gone unnoticed over the New Year's weekend, raises serious questions about whether he intends to follow the law. A senior administration official, who spoke to a Globe reporter about the statement on condition of anonymity because he is not an official spokesman, said the president intended to reserve the right to use harsher methods in special situations involving national security. ''We are not going to ignore this law," the official said, noting that Bush, when signing laws, routinely issues signing statements saying he will construe them consistent with his own constitutional authority. ''We consider it a valid statute. We consider ourselves bound by the prohibition on cruel, unusual, and degrading treatment." But, the official said, a situation could arise in which Bush may have to waive the law's restrictions to carry out his responsibilities to protect national security. He cited as an example a ''ticking time bomb" scenario, in which a detainee is believed to have information that could prevent a planned terrorist attack. ''Of course the president has the obligation to follow this law, [but] he also has the obligation to defend and protect the country as the commander in chief, and he will have to square those two responsibilities in each case," the official added. ''We are not expecting that those two responsibilities will come into conflict, but it's possible that they will." David Golove, a New York University law professor who specializes in executive power issues, said that the signing statement means that Bush believes he can still authorize harsh interrogation tactics when he sees fit. ''The signing statement is saying 'I will only comply with this law when I want to, and if something arises in the war on terrorism where I think it's important to torture or engage in cruel, inhuman, and degrading conduct, I have the authority to do so and nothing in this law is going to stop me,' " he said. ''They don't want to come out and say it directly because it doesn't sound very nice, but it's unmistakable to anyone who has been following what's going on." Golove and other legal specialists compared the signing statement to Bush's decision, revealed last month, to bypass a 1978 law forbidding domestic wiretapping without a warrant. Bush authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans' international phone calls and e-mails without a court order starting after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Article Tools * PRINTER FRIENDLYPrinter friendly * SINGLE PAGESingle page * E-MAILE-mail to a friend * RSS FEEDSNation RSS feed * RSS FEEDSAvailable RSS feeds * MOST E-MAILEDMost e-mailed * REPRINTS/PERMISSIONSReprints/permissions More: * Globe Nation stories | * Latest national news | * Globe front page | * Boston.com * Sign up for: Globe Headlines e-mail | * Breaking News Alerts The president and his aides argued that the Constitution gives the commander in chief the authority to bypass the 1978 law when necessary to protect national security. They also argued that Congress implicitly endorsed that power when it authorized the use of force against the perpetrators of the attacks. Legal academics and human rights organizations said Bush's signing statement and his stance on the wiretapping law are part of a larger agenda that claims exclusive control of war-related matters for the executive branch and holds that any involvement by Congress or the courts should be minimal. Vice President Dick Cheney recently told reporters, ''I believe in a strong, robust executive authority, and I think that the world we live in demands it. . . . I would argue that the actions that we've taken are totally appropriate and consistent with the constitutional authority of the president." Since the 2001 attacks, the administration has also asserted the power to bypass domestic and international laws in deciding how to detain prisoners captured in the Afghanistan war. It also has claimed the power to hold any US citizen Bush designates an ''enemy combatant" without charges or access to an attorney. And in 2002, the administration drafted a secret legal memo holding that Bush could authorize interrogators to violate antitorture laws when necessary to protect national security. After the memo was leaked to the press, the administration eliminated the language from a subsequent version, but it never repudiated the idea that Bush could authorize officials to ignore a law. The issue heated up again in January 2005. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales disclosed during his confirmation hearing that the administration believed that antitorture laws and treaties did not restrict interrogators at overseas prisons because the Constitution does not apply abroad. In response, Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, filed an amendment to a Defense Department bill explicitly saying that that the cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of detainees in US custody is illegal regardless of where they are held. McCain's office did not return calls seeking comment yesterday. The White House tried hard to kill the McCain amendment. Cheney lobbied Congress to exempt the CIA from any interrogation limits, and Bush threatened to veto the bill, arguing that the executive branch has exclusive authority over war policy. But after veto-proof majorities in both houses of Congress approved it, Bush called a press conference with McCain, praised the measure, and said he would accept it. Legal specialists said the president's signing statement called into question his comments at the press conference. ''The whole point of the McCain Amendment was to close every loophole," said Marty Lederman, a Georgetown University law professor who served in the Justice Department from 1997 to 2002. ''The president has re-opened the loophole by asserting the constitutional authority to act in violation of the statute where it would assist in the war on terrorism." Elisa Massimino, Washington director for Human Rights Watch, called Bush's signing statement an ''in-your-face affront" to both McCain and to Congress. ''The basic civics lesson that there are three co-equal branches of government that provide checks and balances on each other is being fundamentally rejected by this executive branch," she said. ''Congress is trying to flex its muscle to provide those checks [on detainee abuse], and it's being told through the signing statement that it's impotent. It's quite a radical view." Comment: Yes, he's a tricky devil, ain't he?

Loser McCain's Torture Amendment Gutted by Matt Stoller MyDD 3 Jan 2006 George 'I am the Law' Bush gutted McCain's torture amendment on Friday. Read Bush's signing statement, which is literally chilling. The executive branch shall construe Title X in Division A of the Act, relating to detainees, in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President to supervise the unitary executive branch and as Commander in Chief and consistent with the constitutional limitations on the judicial power, which will assist in achieving the shared objective of the Congress and the President, evidenced in Title X, of protecting the American people from further terrorist attacks. Further, in light of the principles enunciated by the Supreme Court of the United States in 2001 in Alexander v. Sandoval, and noting that the text and structure of Title X do not create a private right of action to enforce Title X, the executive branch shall construe Title X not to create a private right of action. In other words, I'm the President, and you can't enforce jack. And McCain got snowed. I've heard something else about McCain recently, having to do with his personality. Nancy Scola, a friend who I admire very much, says that McCain stands on principle more than most, and that as a progressive she admires that. I do too. But she also points out that he would be a horrible President. I think the problem with McCain is that he's a loser. I've been told that he's got an independent streak, and he's stubborn as a bull - a navy officer through and through. The problem is that he allow his hatred of lawyers to dominate his work, and so he won't negotiate on the details of political and legal issues. That's why he keeps getting destroyed on his reform agenda. Try to control campaign finance? Fine, we'll just go around you with 501c6's. Want to end torture? Fine, we'll make your amendment unenforceable and meaningless. And McCain loses patience, declares victory, and goes home. Like all Republicans who aren't tied into the extremist machine, McCain is a loser. He doesn't win. He doesn't get his work done. It might be arrogance, laziness, short-sightedness, whatever. But he loses, again and again and again.

Unauthorized secret surveillance may have occurred in US: documents www.chinaview.cn 2006-01-05 00:37:01 WASHINGTON, Jan. 4 (Xinhuanet) -- The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) acted on its own authority, without a formal directive from President George W. Bush, to expand its domestic surveillance operations in the weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, declassified documents showed. The documents released on Tuesday showed that the NSA operation prompted questions from a leading Democrat, Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, who said in an Oct. 11, 2001, letter to a top intelligence official that she was concerned about the agency's legal authority to expand its domestic operations, The New York Times reported Wednesday. "I am concerned whether and to what extent the National Security Agency has received specific presidential authorization for the operations you are conducting," Pelosi wrote. Pelosi's letter showed much earlier concerns among lawmakers about the agency's domestic surveillance operations than had been previously known. Similar objections were expressed by Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, Democrat of West Virginia, in a secret letter to Vice President Dick Cheney nearly two years later. The letter also suggested that the security agency, whose mission is to eavesdrop on foreign communications, moved immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks to identify terror suspects at home by loosening restrictions on domestic eavesdropping, the report said. Pelosi wrote to Lt. Gen. Michael V. Hayden, then head of the NSA, to express her concerns after she and other members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees received a classified briefing from Hayden on Oct. 1, 2001, about the agency's operations. Bush administration officials said on Tuesday that Hayden, now the country's No. 2 intelligence official, had acted on the authority previously granted to the NSA, relying on an intelligence directive issued by former President Ronald Reagan in 1981. In 2002, Bush signed an executive order specifically authorizing the security agency to eavesdrop without warrants on the international communications of Americans inside the United States who the agency believed were connected to Al-Qaida. The disclosure of the domestic spying program last month provoked an outcry in Washington, where Congressional hearings are planned. Comment: So Pelosi knew about this within a month of 9/11 and didn't do anything about it? No wonder the Democrats have had nothing to say about the constitutional abuses of the Bush administration.

US to request the dismissal of about 200 detainees' suits By Deborah Charles Reuters January 4, 2006 WASHINGTON -- The Justice Department will seek to dismiss more than 180 cases involving inmates at Guantanamo Bay who have challenged their detention, court documents showed yesterday. The department filed a notice to judges presiding over the cases at the US District Court in Washington to advise them that by the end of next week the Justice Department would file official motions to dismiss the cases. The notice was filed a week after President Bush signed legislation banning cruel and inhumane treatment of prisoners. The antitorture law also curbs the ability of prisoners being held at the US Naval Base in Cuba to challenge their detention in federal court. The legislation requiring the humane treatment of detainees was originally opposed by the White House. But Bush backed off on his original veto threats after Congress voted overwhelmingly to support the amendment, pushed by Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, who was a prisoner of war in Vietnam. In a concession to the White House, the bill limits prisoners from going to lower-level civilian courts for relief from confinement. They can go only to an appeals court once they have gone through a military court process. The United States has faced criticism at home and abroad for its treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo and for holding them indefinitely. Only nine of about 500 prisoners being held at the base have been charged. . Hundreds of prisoners have filed lawsuits in civilian courts to protest their confinement or conditions of confinement. The Center for Constitutional Rights, which represents many of the detainees, has criticized the antitorture law, saying it eliminates prisoners' access to the US judicial system.

Bush calls for renewal of anti-terrorism law www.chinaview.cn 2006-01-04 14:05:32 WASHINGTON, Jan. 3 (Xinhuanet) -- U.S. President George W. Bush called on the Congress again on Tuesday to renew the anti-terrorism Patriot Act, which, if not extended, would expire on Feb. 3. "I expect Congress to understand that we're still at war, and they've got to give us the tools necessary to win this war," Bush said during a meeting with federal prosecutors at the White House. "The enemy has not gone away -- they're still there," he said. Comment: True dat! Key provisions of the law were to expire on Dec. 31, but were extended till Feb. 3 amid a debate over whether the law had sufficient safeguards of civil liberties, allowing time for lawmakers to continue the debate. The Patriot Act was passed overwhelmingly by the Congress in 2001, with support from both parties, but "when it came time to renew the act, for partisan reasons, in my mind, people have not stepped up and have agreed that it's still necessary to protect the country," Bush said. Bush said he would speak to the American people over the next 30 days about the Patriot Act and would work with members of Congress to extend the law. In his speech, Bush also said the federal government would help West Virginia "any way we can to bring those miners out of that mine, hopefully in good condition." Thirteen coal miners were trapped in an explosion at a mine in West Virginia Monday morning. Comment: To protect the country or a floundering and illegal administration?

The Padilla Case and Enemy Combatants - Set limits on wartime powers Knight-Ridder 4 January 2006 While the nation has been transfixed in the last two weeks by news of President Bush's secret domestic spying program, there remains other serious, unfinished business on the civil-liberties front in the fight against terrorism. The Bush administration continues to claim a virtually unchecked power to detain citizens without charge whenever the President designates them as "enemy combatants." It's troubling enough to have overseas calls and e-mail to family and friends tapped, but imagine the outrage of being an American citizen tossed in jail and held for years incommunicado without charge. That's an awesome power for any president to claim - one that must be given a thorough review by the Supreme Court, and soon. As of yet, the Bush administration has avoided a full-blown legal showdown on this issue. Now Justice Department lawyers are seeking to put off once again a high court ruling in the most notorious case - that of alleged "dirty bomber" and al-Qaeda foot soldier Jose Padilla. Since his 2002 arrest, Padilla has been held in a U.S. Navy brig on allegations that morphed three times. First, he was alleged to have plotted with al-Qaeda to set off a radioactive bomb. Then he was credited with planning to blow up apartment buildings. Finally, in late November, a federal grand jury in Miami charged Padilla with planning overseas killings and aiding terrorists abroad. The criminal charges were timed curiously: just as Padilla's lawyers sought a full Supreme Court review. Whether or not the Bush administration hoped to scuttle a definitive ruling on the President's "enemy combatant" powers, a federal appeals court did the right thing two weeks ago. The three-judge panel in Richmond refused to transfer Padilla to the criminal justice system. Instead, the Fourth U.S. Court of Appeals urged the highest court to take the case. Amen to that. The government's changing rationale for holding Padilla cast serious doubt on the case for the former gang member's detention. But the wider concern is the need for clear legal direction on behalf of all Americans, whose protection from unwarranted detention supposedly is guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. Federal trial judges so far have given Bush wide leeway in designating "enemy combatants." But the Supreme Court in mid-2004 struck a better balance, declaring that war "is not a blank check for the President" regarding citizens' rights. Those rights will be honored if the court uses Padilla's case to temper presidential power by safeguarding citizens against open-ended detention.

Homeland security directive shocks local governments 12 major cities must submit single grant application Edward Epstein Chronicle Washington Bureau January 4, 2006 Washington -- San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose and nine other Bay Area cities of more than 100,000 people will have to fill a tall order within the next 60 days -- put aside their traditional rivalries and parochial interests and develop a single application that could mean tens of millions of dollars in federal homeland security funds. The surprise combination of the 12 Bay Area cities is part of a sweeping reorganization in the way the U.S. Department of Homeland Security will award $765 million in competitive grants to urban areas to address terrorist risks and vulnerabilities. Last year, when the Bay Area received $34.2 million under the urban area security grant program, San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose put in bids individually, each grouped with immediately surrounding areas. But department officials announced Tuesday they now believe that such balkanization of grants doesn't make sense in addressing terrorist threats that don't recognize political boundaries. "Our security is much too important to be determined by political or arbitrary formulas. We have to drive those decisions by where the risks are,'' Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said. In California, the new formula also threw together Los Angeles and Long Beach with nine other cities that ordinarily can be more competitors than cooperators. Chertoff warned the 35 metropolitan areas across the country eligible to apply that delays beyond the March 2 deadline aren't possible. "Regions are going to have to come together. Hopefully, they will figure out a way to allocate decisions among themselves. If they don't, we will,'' he said. Bay Area governments had no warning that the three big cities, Berkeley, Daly City, Fremont, Hayward, Palo Alto, Richmond, Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, Vallejo and governments representing territory in a 10-mile buffer extending from the cities will have to move quickly to devise an "investment justification'' that will tell the department how the Bay Area will spend the competitive grant money. David Vossbrink, spokesman for San Jose Mayor Ron Gonzales, was left searching for words after hearing of Chertoff's announcement. "You'll get a similar speechless response to everyone you talk to today,'' he said. "It's a tall order,'' Vossbrink said, for all the competing city governments to come up with a unified approach. "I don't know how you sort out the vulnerabilities of Oakland, San Francisco and San Jose. ... In the Bay Area, unique vulnerabilities exist. That will be our challenge, to set them down and sort them out.'' In a statement, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom said Chertoff's announcement raised many unanswered questions, leaving him wondering how the Bay Area will fare in the new competition. "We do not yet have a clear picture of the impact these changes will have on San Francisco, but we will continue working closely within the region to keep our communities safe,'' he added. It's not as if the Bay Area is starting completely from scratch in cooperating on terrorist and related natural disaster planning. In October, Newsom, Gonzales and Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown announced a united approach to disaster planning. Part of San Francisco's existing Homeland Security grant calls for developing a regional approach to dealing with a terrorist attack. But all that is far different from figuring out how to apportion money that is already getting scarcer in the Bay Area. In the last fiscal year, the Bay Area's grants under the federal program were cut 22.3 percent, to $34.2 million from $44 million, as the federal government gave big increases to a few metro areas, including New York City and Washington, D.C. Communities can use the money for a wide variety of law enforcement and emergency equipment, planning and operations. Chris Bertelli, deputy director of the California Office of Homeland Security, said that upon learning of the federal changes Tuesday, his office immediately contacted Bay Area officials to begin figuring out how to quickly formulate a proposal. "It's not as bad as it sounds,'' he said, "but it will definitely be a challenge." In all, 35 areas across the nation were declared eligible for the new grants, encompassing 95 cities of more than 100,000 people. In addition to the Bay Area and Los Angeles, the other designated California area is Anaheim-Santa Ana. Sacramento and San Diego were told that they were eligible for grants this year but not in future years, which Bertelli said the state will lobby to change. Fresno was dropped this year from the program. The amount of money available for the program this year has been cut from $855 million appropriated last year. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., has been trying, so far without success, to persuade Congress to change the way it allocates money under a larger Homeland Security grant program to the states -- believing California should receive more money, based on the risks to its bridges, ports, airports, high-tech plants and other vital infrastructure. Feinstein praised Chertoff's new formula for the urban grants because it provides "more consideration of the consequences of an attack or disaster so that the cost in human and financial terms, in addition to factors such as population, critical infrastructure, are considered when determining how much funding is given.'' Comment: On 17 June 1936, "for the uniformity of police duties in the Reich," the position of Chief of the German Police was established in the Reich Ministry of the Interior, to which was assigned the direction and protection of all police affairs within the jurisdiction of the Reich. By this law Himmler was appointed Chief of the German Police under Frick, the Reich Minister of the Interior, and was given the right to participate in the sessions of the Reich Cabinet as Chief of the German Police. [A Brief History of the Gestapo, Extracted from the Nurenberg Charges] The last step before martial law...

Top forecaster sees U.S. recession By Joshua Krongold Bloomberg News The U.S. bond market's most accurate forecaster, who plies his trade 500 miles from Wall Street, says yields are sending ominous signs about the economy. [...] Smith said the bond market is waving a caution flag on the economy. Two-year Treasury yields last week rose above those on 10-year notes, creating a so-called inverted yield curve for the first time since December 2000. An inversion preceded the past four U.S. recessions. "When the curve inverts, run for the exits," said Smith, who served as an economist for the Fed from 1975-77. "It will stay that way until the Fed realizes it caused a recession in 2007. Investors should start planning for a recession."

U.S. Faces Severe Worker Shortage in Future By JIM ABRAMS Associated Press Writer January 4, 2005 WASHINGTON - The United States faces a severe worker shortage in the near future, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said Wednesday in advocating better education for Americans and changes in immigration law to allow in more foreign workers. Chamber President and CEO Thomas Donohue, at a news conference outlining business prospects in 2006, said the country is ill-prepared to deal with the impending retirement of 77 million baby boomers. "We have yet to secure an adequate supply of working taxpayers to run a growing economy and support an explosion of retirees," he said in his organization's report on the state of U.S. business. Donohue said that working to pass new immigration law that includes a guest worker program will be among the Chamber's top legislative priorities in the new year. He said the Chamber opposed a bill passed by the House in December, which tightens border security and requires employers to verify the legal status of workers but does not address the guest worker issue. He dismissed as a "crummy argument" criticisms that the business community wants a guest worker program to secure access to cheap labor. "What American companies want is labor, and we are going to be significantly without it," Donohue said. The Senate is expected to take up the immigration issue next month, and Donohue said his group will be "working to obtain a bill that provides the workers and is in keeping without our legacy as a welcoming nation." Donohue said the Chamber has traditionally stayed out of school reform at the state and local level, but has changed its thinking in a global environment where China graduates eight times, and India five times, as many engineers as the United States. He said the Chamber plans to measure and rank the performance of state school systems, with the aim of helping businesses decide where to locate. The Chamber is also working with other business organizations to double the number of math, science and engineering graduates by 2015. Donohue said that among the business group's other legislative goals this year will be passing legislation to shore up pension plans, finding a solution to the asbestos litigation crisis, promoting health savings accounts and other new approaches to reducing the number of those without health insurance, and opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the Outer Continental Shelf to environmentally sound oil and gas exploration.

"Buy America" dropped from tanker program By MATTHEW DALY The Associated Press Wednesday, January 4, 2006 WASHINGTON - A defense bill approved by Congress would allow open competition for a multibillion-dollar contract to supply refueling tankers for the Air Force. President Bush is expected to sign the measure, squelching an earlier House-approved bill that would have helped Boeing by keeping the Pentagon from buying military equipment from the parent company of European jet maker Airbus. Boeing lost the lucrative tanker contract in 2004 amid an ethics scandal. "Buy America" language had been inserted by Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. However, Hunter agreed to remove the provision last month at the request of Senate leaders and administration officials, who said it could spark retaliatory measures by other countries and limit Pentagon flexibility. Congress voted final passage Dec. 21. Harald Stavenas, a spokesman for Hunter, said this week the lawmaker would fight for it in the future. Boeing lost the tanker deal in 2004, after revelations that it had hired a top Air Force acquisitions official who later admitted giving the company preferential treatment. The deal would have allowed the Air Force to buy or lease 100 Boeing 767 planes for use as tankers, but it was killed by Congress in the 2005 defense authorization bill. The Air Force has said it is likely to reopen the deal to competition, although no formal timeline has been set. George Behan, chief of staff to Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Bremerton, said withdrawal of the buy-America clause was expected. "There's no question there will be an open competition. The real question is whether the Pentagon will ever award the contract to a company that has a major European component, given the [U.S.] complaints about illegal subsidies the parent company is receiving," Behan said. The House bill would have barred the Pentagon from purchasing goods and services from foreign companies that receive government subsidies. While no companies were named, lawmakers said the amendment was aimed at disqualifying Airbus' parent company from bidding on the tanker contract. Airbus, which is 80 percent owned by European Aeronautic Defence & Space (EADS), has long received subsidies from European governments, sparking tension. EADS, which is based in France and Germany, has said it plans to team with Northrop Grumman to offer a tanker version of its Airbus A330 passenger jet to produce a new generation of aerial refueling tankers. The contract could be worth at least $20 billion. Boeing spokesman Doug Kennett said Tuesday that "Boeing welcomes fair competition and the opportunity to tender the best proposal possible." Randy Belote, a spokesman for Northrop Grumman, said the California-based company believes its partnership with EADS would produce an American-made product.

Alito's Extraordinary Circumstances by Paul Rogat Loeb Remember the "nuclear option" compromise? When the group of 14 Senators reached their agreement last May, they said they'd support a filibuster only under "extraordinary circumstances," presumably if Bush nominated Attila the Hun. I'd suggest these circumstances apply not only to Samuel Alito's track record but also to his nomination's entire political context. In threatening to end the Senate's ability to filibuster judges, Republican leaders talk much about high principle, the right of Presidents to have their nominees accepted or rejected without parliamentary obstructions. But the sole principle behind this proposed change is that of the power grab. The Republicans control the White House and Senate. They're attempting to consolidate control in every way they can, including trying to obliterate 200 years of Senate tradition on the filibuster. This threat isn't a moral stand: Republicans have filibustered nominees themselves. It's just one more in series of attacks on individuals and institutions that they've viewed as political obstacles, like Tom DeLay's mid-census gerrymandering, the leaking of Valerie Plame's identity, the jamming of Democratic phone banks, and the branding of political opponents as unpatriotic. Honorable conservatives used to warn against the raw power of the state. But the love of power has now become the political right's prime gospel, making the slightest notion of checks or balances heretical treason. Republican leaders work to end the filibuster not because they believe it violates some deep constitutional mandate, but because they believe they can get away with it. But maybe they can't anymore. When Republicans first floated the "nuclear option" threat in early 2005, Bush's polling numbers were as high as 57 percent. His support has dropped steadily since, in the wake of the Katrina disaster, the legal problems of DeLay, Bill Frist, Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, and Duke Cunningham, and an Iraqi quagmire that's inspired powerful challenges by Cindy Sheehan and Congressman John Murtha. Republicans have lost key electoral battles in Virginia, New Jersey and California. Bush's polls have dropped as low as 37 percent. With once-solid Republican Senate and House seats now seemingly vulnerable, those who vote to eliminate the filibuster and confirm Alito will be taking far more of a political risk than they would have just a year ago. Were Alito a reasonable Supreme Court choice, all this would be moot. But he isn't. He'll follow the script and evade specifics at his confirmation hearings, but he's still the candidate nominated to appease the political right because they deemed Harriet Miers insufficiently hard-line. Consistently opposing the federal government's right to address corporate abuses, Alito has argued for virtually unlimited executive power, including the government's right to intervene in the most intimate realms of personal life. He's endorsed the rights of police to shoot an unarmed 15-year-old who was fleeing after breaking into a house, defended the refusal of state employers to pay damages for violating the Family and Medical Leave Act, and said it created no undue burden if husbands could prevent their wives from getting abortions. Citizen groups, he's ruled, have no standing to sue convicted polluters under the Clean Water Act. The federal government, he's argued, has no right to pass national consumer protection legislation aimed at preventing odometer fraud or banning the sales of machine guns. Regarding the exclusion of blacks from juries in death penalty cases, he's called the statistical evidence as inconsequential as the disproportionate number of recent U.S. presidents who've been left-handed. In one case, Alito's Third Circuit colleagues said the federal law prohibiting employment discrimination "would be eviscerated if our analysis were to halt where [Judge Alito] suggests." Alito now downplays his membership in a Princeton alumni group so hostile to the admission of women and minorities that even Senate Majority Leader Frist condemned it. He dismisses as mere job-seeking his declarations, while applying to the Reagan-era Justice Department, that the Constitution does not protect a woman's right to choose an abortion, and that he disagreed with the Warren Court rulings that desegregated schools and expanded voting rights. He's trying to dismiss he memo he wrote, after getting the job, embracing the "goals of bringing about the eventual overturning of Roe v. Wade." He also minimizes the breaking of his pledge to recuse himself from cases involving his sister's law firm. It's precisely because Alito's presence on the Court is so potentially damaging that Democrats and moderate Republicans have a responsibility to challenge his nomination through every possible mechanism, including the filibuster. Republican leaders who try to eliminate it as a political option need to be branded, along with every Senator who supports them, as embodying a politics that believes in nothing except its own right to power. With Roberts, Senators could say they were replacing the equally conservative William Rehnquist. To support Alito, we need to make clear, is to alter the balance on the Court radically for the most dubious of political ends. It does no good to reserve the right to filibuster in theory. If our Senators aren't willing to risk using it in a situation this exceptional, it becomes practically meaningless. Senators accept a president's court nominations for three reasons: They respect the perspectives of their nominees; they believe a president should have the right to choose whomever they please as America's legitimately elected leader; or they fear the president's political power. But this administration has no moral standing to which Senators should automatically defer. Bush gained the presidency through the extraordinary interventions of his brother Jeb and the existing Supreme Court. He was reelected based on lies about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, ties between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaida, John Kerry's war record, and the true costs of his tax cut and prescription drug plans. And through Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell's elimination of 300,000 overwhelmingly Democratic voters from the Ohio rolls and the withholding of voting machines from key Democratic precincts. My friend Egil Krogh, who worked in the Nixon administration, hired G. Gordon Liddy, and went to prison for Watergate, told the sentencing judge that he and his colleagues had "almost destroyed democracy." The Bush people, he said to me recently, "are even more ruthless." Alito's nomination embodies that ruthlessness. If confirmed, his track record suggests he'd support the Republican consolidation of power at every opportunity. But maybe the capacity of that power to intimidate is finally beginning to wane. If the Senate can find the courage to block Alito's confirmation, they will draw a critical line on a choice whose effects could echo for the next forty years. They need to recognize the high stakes and extraordinary circumstances of our time. Paul Rogat Loeb is the author of The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear, named the #3 political book of 2004 by the History Channel and the American Book Association, and winner of the Nautilus Award for best social change book of the year. His previous books include Soul of a Citizen: Living With Conviction in a Cynical Time. See www.paulloeb.org To receive his monthly articles email sympa@onenw.org with the subject line: subscribe paulloeb-articles

70% would oppose Alito if he would overturn Roe RAW STORY While Americans are divided on the nomination of Judge Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court of the United States, 70% would oppose his confirmation if he were to vote to make abortion illegal, the Wall Street Journal reports today. Excerpts from the Journal's piece follow: Almost equal thirds of all adults believe that Judge Alito should be confirmed (34%), should not be confirmed (31%) or say they aren't sure (34%), according to the poll. A majority of Republicans (65% vs. 9%) favor his confirmation, the polls shows, while a plurality of Democrats (48% vs. 14%) oppose it, and Independents are split (34% for confirmation; 38% against). However, nearly 70% of those surveyed in the online poll of 1,961 adults would oppose Judge Alito's confirmation if they thought he would vote to make abortion illegal. That percentage rises among Democrats (86%) and Independents (74%), compared with 22% of Republicans. More than half of Republicans polled say they would support his confirmation if they thought he would vote to make abortion illegal, compared with 14% of Democrats.

Ukraine, Russia reach gas deal Last Updated Wed, 04 Jan 2006 08:15:01 EST CBC News Ukraine has agreed to pay nearly twice last year's cost for natural gas from Russia, ending a bitter dispute that threatened supplies to Europe. The agreement is being heralded as a victory for both sides. Russia's state monopoly Gazprom initially demanded Ukraine pay $230 US per 1,000 cubic metres of natural gas, a nearly four-fold increase over last year's price. Russia cut off supplies for two days when Ukraine refused. Russia accused Ukraine of illegally siphoning off gas bound for Europe, and argued Ukraine had been getting cheap supplies for years and should be paying market value. The cutoff to Ukraine resulted in a sharp two-day drop in gas deliveries to Europe. Gazprom supplies one-quarter of Europe's gas needs, and about 80 per cent of that is delivered via a pipeline that goes through Ukrainian territory. The EU welcomed the five-year pact but leaders were concerned that Russia was using gas as a geopolitical weapon to punish Ukraine's pro-Western president, Viktor Yushchenko, who was swept to power in the Orange Revolution of 2004. Moscow's hardball tactics reflected a new assertiveness on the part of President Vladimir Putin. Officials from the EU's 25 member states met in Brussels to discuss the gas crisis and how to deal with potential future supply threats. Neither Russia or Ukraine attended.

Koizumi defends visits to war shrine www.chinaview.cn 2006-01-04 20:57:24 TOKYO, Jan. 4 (Xinhuanet) -- Japan's Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi defended on Wednesday his visits to a war shrine honoring Japanese war dead, saying again that it is "a spiritual issue." Koizumi made the remarks in a televised press conference when asked how he will try to mend fences with his neighboring countries. "I don't understand why foreign governments step into a spiritual issue and try to make it a diplomatic issue," the premier said on his first working day of 2006. Since taking office in April 2001, Koizumi has visited five times the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, which honors over two million Japanese war dead including 14 top war criminals responsible for Japan's aggression against its Asian neighbors in World War II. His annual visits to the war shrine have strained relations between Japan and neighboring countries that were victims of Japanese wartime atrocities.

Ruler of Dubai Dies While in Australia By LARA SUKHTIAN Associated Press Wed Jan 4, 9:56 AM ET DUBAI, United Arab Emirates - The emir of Dubai, Sheik Maktoum bin Rashid Al Maktoum, one of the world's most prominent owners and breeders of thoroughbred horses, died Wednesday during a visit to Australia. He was 62. Sheik Maktoum, who also was vice president and prime minister of the United Arab Emirates, died at the exclusive Palazzo Versace hotel on the Gold Coast, a resort in eastern Queensland state, Queensland police spokeswoman Chelsea Roffey said. The emir arrived in Australia on Dec. 28, apparently for a world-renowned yearling sale known as the Magic Millions. Authorities in Dubai would not give a cause of death. Australian police would only say the emir did not die of suspicious causes. Australian media speculated that Sheikh Maktoum died of a heart attack, while Arab broadcaster Al-Jazeera said he was believed to have "previously suffered from heart problems." The emir immediately was succeeded by his younger brother, the crown prince, Sheik Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, who is the defense minister of the United Arab Emirates and a high-flying businessman and breeder of race horses, said Deputy Information Minister Ibrahim Al Abed. The succession was automatic under the constitution. The new emir, Sheik Mohammed, is known as the intellectual architect of Dubai's building boom. Sheik Maktoum's foremost interest was horse racing, and he and his younger brother worked to put Dubai on the world racing map. They founded the British-based Godolphin Racing, one of the world's most successful stables, and frequently said they aim to win the Kentucky Derby. He owned top flight thoroughbreds such as Breeders Cup Turf winner Fantastic Light, English 2,000 Guineas winner Shadeed and Shareef Dancer, which won the Irish Derby. "Sheik Maktoum made a hugely significant contribution to the sport of horse racing and British thoroughbred racing and breeding in particular," said Julian Richmond-Watson, senior steward of the Jockey Club in Britain. Authorities at Australia's Brisbane Airport scrambled to prepare the emir's private Boeing 747 jet to fly his body home in time for a Muslim burial within 24 hours of his death. His funeral will be Thursday, with burial at Umm Hurair cemetery in Bur Dubai. Dubai declared 40 days of mourning, with government offices shutting down for seven days beginning Wednesday. The stock exchanges in Dubai and Abu Dhabi ceased trading, and many shops and businesses closed. Dubai TV interrupted its programs to show a picture of the sheik smiling with the voice of a Muslim cleric reading verses of the Quran, Islam's holy book. "The United Arab Emirates today lost a historical leader who devoted his life to establishing the United Arab Emirates and enhancing its structure and the welfare of its people," the government said. The secretary general of the Arab League, Amr Moussa, expressed his condolences, praising Sheik Maktoum for his "defense of Arab and Islamic causes." Sheik Maktoum was born in the family home in Shindagha, near the mouth of Dubai Creek, and educated at a British university. He succeeded his father in October 1990 as ruler of Dubai, one of the seven constituent emirates of the UAE. He tended to leave the day-to-day government of Dubai to his younger brother, but he took an active interest in the Emirates' foreign policy. He often represented the country abroad during the years when the former president, Sheik Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, was ailing. When Sheik Zayed died in November 2004, Sheik Maktoum became acting president for a few hours until the new leader, Sheik Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, was proclaimed president. Deputy Information Minister Al Abed said the country's Supreme Council, which comprises the rulers of the seven constituent emirates, will meet to choose a vice president to replace Sheik Maktoum. The president then will nominate a new prime minister who, after being approved by the council, will form a new Cabinet.

Fires Burn Hundreds of Thousands of Acres By SHEILA FLYNN Associated Press Writer 3 Jan 2006 Firefighters faced windier, warmer weather Tuesday as they battled fast-moving blazes that have virtually destroyed some small towns and charred hundreds of thousands of acres of drought-stricken Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico. Since Dec. 27, flames racing across grassland and farmland have destroyed more than 250 buildings. Four deaths were reported last week in Texas and Oklahoma. On Monday, authorities went house to house in a search for victims in burned-out Texas towns including Ringgold. A weekend blaze destroyed most of the ranch-and-cattle community of about 100 people near the Oklahoma line. Fifty other homes and 40,000 acres were torched as wind swept the fire 13 miles from Ringgold to Nocona. Coylee Grimsley and her two sons watched their home burn just hours after she had cooked a large meal to celebrate the new year. "We was enjoying it, and here come the flames," she said. "If you'd been there, you'd have thought the world was going to end." One of two major fires near San Angelo in West Texas _ a 40,000-acre blaze in Sterling County _ had been contained, authorities said. Fifteen structures were destroyed and two people suffered minor injuries. The other major blaze in the San Angelo area, a 50,000-acre fire with a 50-mile perimeter in nearby Irion and Reagan counties, was about 70 percent contained Tuesday. No damages or evacuations were reported. A 35,000-acre blaze near the small towns of Carbon, Gorman and Desdemona had been beaten back by late Monday to just a few hundred acres of mostly open ranch land, said Mark Pipkin of the Eastland Fire Department. All major wildfires in Oklahoma were declared under control late Monday thanks to calmer wind and higher humidity, but crews were preparing for the worst. Highs up to 80 were possible Tuesday with only 10 to 20 percent humidity and wind up to 25 mph, the National Weather Service said. "We will make sure that all the hot spots and smoldering areas are put out for the simple fact that if the wind picks up, we'll be in trouble," said Dan Ware, spokesman for New Mexico's state Forestry Division. The weather service issued a "red flag warning" for Texas on Tuesday because of the expected heat, low humidity and wind. Computer models showed no rain soon, said Jesse Moore, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Fort Worth. He said the region's last appreciable rain was about a quarter-inch on Dec. 20. Oklahoma is more than a foot behind its normal rainfall of about 36 inches for this time of year. "We're not out of danger yet," said Oklahoma Gov. Brad Henry. "We can't let our guard down." Since the rash of wildfires began in Texas, more than 200,000 acres of land has been charred, 250 homes destroyed and three people killed, the Texas Forest Service says. Four fires in southeastern New Mexico had blackened more than 53,000 acres of grassland and burned 11 houses and two businesses near Hobbs. The flames forced the evacuation of 200 to 300 people on the city's fringe _ including about 170 from two Hobbs nursing homes. All but about 50 had returned home by midday Monday, authorities said. Since Nov. 1, Oklahoma wildfires have covered more than 331,000 acres and destroyed 220 homes and businesses, said Albert Ashwood, Oklahoma's emergency management director. One person was killed. With his grandparents' Oklahoma City home in smoldering ruins, 10- year-old Cameron Batson found something to be thankful for: He pointed out the basketball goal in the driveway that remained intact after the three-level brick home was turned into ashen rubble. "We had some good times here," the boy said Monday, his voice cracking with emotion. "It was a pretty house." ___

Australia notches up hottest year on record in 2005 Jan 04, 2006 AFP Last year was the hottest on record in Australia, official figures show, forcing the government to defend its refusal to ratify the Kyoto Protocol aimed at reducing global warming. The annual mean temperature in 2005 was 1.09 degrees Celsius (1.96 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than the average between 1961 and 1990, the Bureau of Meteorology said in its annual climate summary. This made it "the warmest year since reliable, widespread temperature observations became available in 1910." Warmer-than-normal temperatures were not confined to Australia in 2005, with many other regions reporting an exceptionally warm year, the bureau noted. "According to a preliminary estimate released by the World Meteorological Organization on December 15, the global mean temperature for 2005 was about 0.48 degrees Celsius above normal, putting 2005 amongst the four warmest years globally since records commenced in 1861," the bureau said. The government agency pointed out that scientific studies have linked global temperature increases to the greenhouse effect, in which gases such as those emitted by burning coal and oil trap heat in the atmosphere. The 1997 Kyoto Protocol legally commits 39 industrial nations and territories to trim their output of six greenhouse gases, but Australia and the United States have refused to ratify the accord. In response to the weather bureau's report, Environment Minister Ian Campbell said while "climate change is alarming", the Kyoto agreement was not the answer because it did not commit developing nations to cutting emissions. "Kyoto excludes most of the emissions in the world. It only covers just over a third of the countries of the world and we need something that includes all countries of the world," he told national radio. Australia and the United States last year joined China, India, Japan and South Korea in plans for a new non-binding compact to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The inaugural meeting of the "Asia-Pacific Clean Development and Climate Partnership" will be held in Sydney next week, on January 11-12. It will bring together foreign, energy and environment ministers from the six partner countries.

Landslide buries Indonesian village, 200 feared dead www.chinaview.cn 2006-01-04 13:41:12 JAKARTA, Jan. 4 (Xinhuanet) -- A rain-triggered massive landslide swept through a village in the Indonesian province of Central Java just before dawn Wednesday, burying more than 100 houses and raising worries that some 200 villagers may die in the disaster. "The landslide hit Banjarmangu district in Banjarnegara regency at 03:00 a.m. At least four neighboring complexes were completely buried by the mud. We worried that some 200 residents were killed by the landslide," Zulaikha, a public relations staff with the local government, told Xinhua over telephone. Jakarta-based Metro TV reported at least five bodies have been evacuated from the scene, located some 350 km east of Jakarta. At least 13 people were injured in the disaster. "The landslide was massive and unprecedented. We witnessed 102 houses in Cijeruk village completely buried by the landslide," local government official Cipto Hartono told the television. "We estimated about 2,000 cubic meters of soil have swept through the area. It is unbelievable because the landslide had rolled down two kilometers before reaching the village," he added. Most of the victims were buried when they were asleep or performing the pre-dawn Muslim prayer. Hartono said heavy machines have been sent to the area for evacuation work. Local authorities deployed a joint evacuation team comprising 150 soldiers and police officers. Earlier on Monday, two days of torrential rain sent a flash flood and unleashed a landslide in the East Java town of Jember, leaving at least 60 people dead.

Bird flu outbreak reported in Sichuan www.chinaview.cn 2006-01-04 08:09:30 BEIJING, Jan. 4 -- China Tuesday confirmed an outbreak of the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu in Southwest China's Sichuan Province. The 1,800 poultry which died in a village in the Dazhu County were confirmed to have H5N1, the Ministry of Agriculture said on its website. Some 12,900 poultry in the vicinity of the affected area have been culled to contain spread, the ministry said. H5N1 is the bird flu virus that scientists fear may mutate into a strain that can spread easily among people, unleashing a human pandemic that could kill millions. The H5N1 virus has killed more than 70 people in Asia since late 2003 and is endemic in poultry flocks across parts of the region. China, along with Vietnam, has suffered numerous outbreaks in poultry since October and Beijing has launched sweeping measures to stop the virus spreading and infecting more people, including a campaign to vaccinate all domestic poultry.

Global warming 55 million years ago shifted ocean currents AFP Jan 04 1:50 PM US/Eastern An extraordinary burst of global warming that occurred around 55 million years ago dramatically reversed Earth's pattern of ocean currents, a finding that strengthens modern-day concern about climate change, a study says. The big event, the Palaeocene/Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), saw the planet's surface temperature rise by between five and eight degrees C (nine and 16.2 F) in a very short time, unleashing climate shifts that endured tens of thousands of years. Scientists Flavia Nunes and Richard Norris of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California explored how these warmer temperatures might have affected ocean currents. They measured carbon-13 isotopes from 14 cores that had been drilled into the deep floor in four different ocean basins, taking samples from sediment layers deposited before, during and after the PETM. These isotopes are considered to be an indicator of the nutrients deposited by the water at the time. The higher the isotope value, the likelier that the source came from the deep ocean, the prime source for nutrients. With a painstaking reconstruction, Nunes and Norris found that the world's ocean current system did a U-turn during the PETM -- and then, ultimately, reversed itself. Before the PETM, deep water upwelled in the southern hemisphere; over about 40,000 years, the source of this upwelling shifted to the northern hemisphere; it took another 100,000 years before recovering completely. What unleashed the PETM is unclear. Most fingers of blame point to volcanic eruptions that disgorged gigatonnes of carbon dioxide, or coastal reservoirs of methane gas, sealed by icy soil, that were breached by warmer temperatures or receding seas. The huge temperature rise may have occurred within just few thousand years, but as Nunes and Norris point out, the effects were enduring and the lesson for mankind today is clear. "Modern CO2 input to the biosphere from fossil fuel sources is approaching that estimated for the PETM, raising concerns about future climate and circulation change," they warn. "The PETM example shows that anthropogenic (man-made) forcing may have lasting effects not only in global climate but in deep-ocean circulation as well." The study, which appears on Thursday in the British journal Nature, comes on the heels of research published in November which suggests that global warming is slowing the Atlantic current that gives western Europe its mild climate. The suspected reason for this is an inrush of freshwater into the northern Atlantic, caused by melting glaciers in Greenland and melting sea ice, and higher flow into the Arctic from Siberian rivers caused by greater rainfall. The influx brakes the conveyor belt in which warm surface water is taken up to the northeastern Atlantic from the tropics before returning down to the southern hemisphere as cool, deep-sea water. In 2001, the UN's top scientific authority on global warming, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), estimated that there would be a temperature rise of 1.4 to 5.8 C (2.5 to 10.4 F) from 1990-2100. The increase was predicted according to scenarios of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2), ranging from 540 to 970 parts per million (ppm). That compares with 280ppm for pre-industrial times and around 380ppm today, which is already the highest concentration of CO2 for 650,000 years. The higher the level, the greater the risk that a vicious circle of global warming could be unleashed, inflicting potentially irreversible damage to Earth's climate system, scientists say.

Global warming 55 million years ago shifted ocean currents 4 January 2006 AFP An extraordinary burst of global warming that occurred around 55 million years ago dramatically reversed Earth's pattern of ocean currents, a finding that strengthens modern-day concern about climate change, a study says. The big event, the Palaeocene/Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), saw the planet's surface temperature rise by between five and eight degrees C (nine and 16.2 F) in a very short time, unleashing climate shifts that endured tens of thousands of years. Scientists Flavia Nunes and Richard Norris of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California explored how these warmer temperatures might have affected ocean currents. They measured carbon-13 isotopes from 14 cores that had been drilled into the deep floor in four different ocean basins, taking samples from sediment layers deposited before, during and after the PETM. These isotopes are considered to be an indicator of the nutrients deposited by the water at the time. The higher the isotope value, the likelier that the source came from the deep ocean, the prime source for nutrients. With a painstaking reconstruction, Nunes and Norris found that the world's ocean current system did a U-turn during the PETM -- and then, ultimately, reversed itself. Before the PETM, deep water upwelled in the southern hemisphere; over about 40,000 years, the source of this upwelling shifted to the northern hemisphere; it took another 100,000 years before recovering completely. What unleashed the PETM is unclear. Most fingers of blame point to volcanic eruptions that disgorged gigatonnes of carbon dioxide, or coastal reservoirs of methane gas, sealed by icy soil, that were breached by warmer temperatures or receding seas. The huge temperature rise may have occurred within just few thousand years, but as Nunes and Norris point out, the effects were enduring and the lesson for mankind today is clear. "Modern CO2 input to the biosphere from fossil fuel sources is approaching that estimated for the PETM, raising concerns about future climate and circulation change," they warn. "The PETM example shows that anthropogenic (man-made) forcing may have lasting effects not only in global climate but in deep-ocean circulation as well." The study, which appears on Thursday in the British journal Nature, comes on the heels of research published in November which suggests that global warming is slowing the Atlantic current that gives western Europe its mild climate. The suspected reason for this is an inrush of freshwater into the northern Atlantic, caused by melting glaciers in Greenland and melting sea ice, and higher flow into the Arctic from Siberian rivers caused by greater rainfall. The influx brakes the conveyor belt in which warm surface water is taken up to the northeastern Atlantic from the tropics before returning down to the southern hemisphere as cool, deep-sea water. In 2001, the UN's top scientific authority on global warming, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), estimated that there would be a temperature rise of 1.4 to 5.8 C (2.5 to 10.4 F) from 1990-2100. The increase was predicted according to scenarios of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2), ranging from 540 to 970 parts per million (ppm). That compares with 280ppm for pre-industrial times and around 380ppm today, which is already the highest concentration of CO2 for 650,000 years. The higher the level, the greater the risk that a vicious circle of global warming could be unleashed, inflicting potentially irreversible damage to Earth's climate system, scientists say.

Whales Found to Speak in Dialects Bjorn Carey LiveScience Staff Writer LiveScience.com Wed Jan 4, 10:00 AM ET Some whale species sing in different dialects depending on where they're from, a new study shows. Blue whales off the Pacific Northwest sound different than blue whales in the western Pacific Ocean, and these sound different than those living off Antarctica. And they all sound different than the blue whales living near Chile. "The whales in the eastern Pacific have a very low-pitched pulsed sounds, followed by a tone," said David Mellinger of Oregon State University. "Other populations use different combinations of pulses, tones, and pitches." Using newly developed underwater microphones called autonomous hydrophones, Mellinger and his colleagues recorded the cacophonous symphony of whale clicks, pulses, and calls throughout the Pacific Ocean. The hydrophones—which can be deployed independently rather than the Navy's Sound Surveillance System—were developed to listen for earthquakes. But researchers soon realized that they were picking up the sounds of right whales from 25 miles away, and even farther if the water is shallow and the terrain is even. Researchers also heard the calls of critically endangered North Pacific right whales and sperm whales in the Gulf of Alaska. Many of the sperm whales were detected during the winter—nearly twice as many as in the summer—indicating a surprisingly active "off-season" population that scientists had never known. "There are a handful of records of people spotting sperm whales in the region—and they're all in the summer," Mellinger said. "The Gulf of Alaska is not a place you want to be in the winter. But apparently, sperm whales don't mind." Researchers don't know why whales around the world sound differently. "The difference is really striking, but we don't know if it is tied to genetics, or some other reason," Mellinger said. "We don't know if they are part of a common ‘language' that different populations of whales use to communicate with each other, or if they come from a confused juvenile who hasn't completely learned the complexities of communicating." The researchers plan to deploy three more hydrophones near a series of long-duration NOAA moorings in the Bering Sea this spring. They plan to analyze possible connections between the appearance of whales and current conditions. The results from this and other acoustic surveys could help produce more sophisticated surveys that could allow scientists to provide data in near-real time. The research is detailed in the January issue of the journal BioScience.

Mo. Researchers Find Largest Prime Number By GARANCE BURKE Associated Press 3 Jan 2006 KANSAS CITY, Mo. Researchers at a Missouri university have identified the largest known prime number, officials said Tuesday. The team at Central Missouri State University, led by associate dean Steven Boone and mathematics professor Curtis Cooper, found it in mid- December after programming 700 computers years ago. ... The number that the team found is 9.1 million digits long. A prime number is a positive number divisible by only itself and 1 _ 2, 3, 5, 7 and so on. The number that the team found is 9.1 million digits long. It is a Mersenne prime known as M30402457 _ that's 2 to the 30,402,457th power minus 1. Mersenne primes are a special category expressed as 2 to the "p" power minus 1, in which "p" also is a prime number. "We're super excited," said Boone, a chemistry professor. "We've been looking for such a number for a long time." The discovery is affiliated with the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search, a global contest using volunteers who run software that searches for the largest Mersenne prime.

DNA database continues to swell Wednesday, 4 January 2006, 17:36 GMT BBC NEWS The number of samples held on the DNA database will rise to 4.25 million within two years, the Home Office says. There are three million samples held at the moment, with some of the expansion due to law changes in 2001 and 2004. Suspects arrested over any imprisonable offence can have their DNA held even if they are acquitted. The database includes 139,463 people never charged or cautioned with an offence, separate Home Office figures obtained by the Liberal Democrats show. Matches using newly-lawful DNA samples have been made to 88 murders, 45 attempted murders, 116 rapes and 62 sexual offences. More than 198,000 samples are held that would have had to be destroyed under the old law. In all, 7,500 of these have been matched to 10,000 offences. The Home Office report showed that 5.24% of the UK population now has a DNA profile held on the database. This compares with an EU average of 1.13% and 0.5% in the US. The number of crimes solved through DNA technology has quadrupled over the past five years. There has been a 74% rise in the number of crimes where potential DNA material is collected, and a 75% increase in the number of matches of suspects to crime scenes. Police can now track down offenders by matching samples with other family members who may be on the database. The number of samples on the database has trebled in the last five years - beyond the target set by the Home Office. It includes more than 15,000 volunteers, including victims of crime, who gave samples in response to police appeals. Liberal Democrat home affairs spokeswoman Lynne Featherstone said: "There is no purpose or justification for keeping the DNA record of anyone who is not charged with an offence. "This is an intolerable infringement of liberty and personal privacy. "We cannot be absolutely certain that there will be no misuse of the DNA database. "There are no real safeguards in place to control it. "With the growing concern about racial profiling and disproportionality in criminal investigations, the need to keep innocent people on the DNA database is questionable." Shadow Home Office minister Damian Green said: "If the government wants a database that has the details of everyone, not just criminals, they should be honest about it. But he added that a DNA database was essential "to reverse the trend of rising crime in Britain". In a case last November, a 50-year-old builder was found guilty of a murder and rape he committed in Essex 27 years ago. He was stopped for drink driving in 2004 and his DNA matched a sample on the database taken from the original crime scene. Several English forces have also been testing a mobile laboratory which cuts the time taken to produce DNA matches. However, police identifying the bodies of victims of the Asian tsunami found samples can degrade, noting that it may not always be possible to identify people from their DNA.

Did Jesus exist? Italian court to decide By Phil Stewart Reuters January 4, 2005 ROME - Forget the U.S. debate over intelligent design versus evolution. An Italian court is tackling Jesus -- and whether the Roman Catholic Church may be breaking the law by teaching that he existed 2,000 years ago. The case pits against each other two men in their 70s, who are from the same central Italian town and even went to the same seminary school in their teenage years. The defendant, Enrico Righi, went on to become a priest writing for the parish newspaper. The plaintiff, Luigi Cascioli, became a vocal atheist who, after years of legal wrangling, is set to get his day in court later this month. "I started this lawsuit because I wanted to deal the final blow against the Church, the bearer of obscurantism and regression," Cascioli told Reuters. Cascioli says Righi, and by extension the whole Church, broke two Italian laws. The first is "Abuso di Credulita Popolare" (Abuse of Popular Belief) meant to protect people against being swindled or conned. The second crime, he says, is "Sostituzione di Persona," or impersonation. "The Church constructed Christ upon the personality of John of Gamala," Cascioli claimed, referring to the 1st century Jew who fought against the Roman army. A court in Viterbo will hear from Righi, who has yet to be indicted, at a January 27 preliminary hearing meant to determine whether the case has enough merit to go forward. "In my book, The Fable of Christ, I present proof Jesus did not exist as a historic figure. He must now refute this by showing proof of Christ's existence," Cascioli said. Speaking to Reuters, Righi, 76, sounded frustrated by the case and baffled as to why Cascioli -- who, like him, came from the town of Bagnoregio -- singled him out in his crusade against the Church. "We're both from Bagnoregio, both of us. We were in seminary together. Then he took a different path and we didn't see each other anymore," Righi said. "Since I'm a priest, and I write in the parish newspaper, he is now suing me because I 'trick' the people." Righi claims there is plenty of evidence to support the existence of Jesus, including historical texts. He also claims that justice is on his side. The judge presiding over the hearing has tried, repeatedly, to dismiss the case -- prompting appeals from Cascioli. "Cascioli says he didn't exist. And I said that he did," he said. "The judge will to decide if Christ exists or not." Even Cascioli admits that the odds are against him, especially in Roman Catholic Italy. "It would take a miracle to win," he joked.

Pete Townshend Warns IPod Users 4 January 2006 AP LONDON Guitarist Pete Townshend has warned iPod users that they could end up with hearing problems as bad as his own if they don't turn down the volume of the music they are listening to on earphones. Townshend, 60, guitarist in the 60s band The Who, said his hearing was irreversibly damaged by years of using studio headphones and that he now is forced to take 36-hour breaks between recording sessions to allow his ears to recover. "I have unwittingly helped to invent and refine a type of music that makes its principal components deaf," he said on his Web site. "Hearing loss is a terrible thing because it cannot be repaired. If you use an iPod or anything like it, or your child uses one, you MAY be OK ... But my intuition tells me there is terrible trouble ahead." Referring to the increasingly popular practice of downloading music from the Internet, Townshend said: "The downside may be that on our computers _ for privacy, for respect to family and co-workers, and for convenience _ we use earphones at almost every stage of interaction with sound." The Who rock group was famous for its earsplitting live performances, but Townshend said his problem was caused by using earphones in the recording studio.

11 of 12 Miners Reported Alive Are Dead By ALLEN G. BREED Associated Press Writer 4 Jan 2006 TALLMANSVILLE, W.Va. - Jubilant family members celebrated news early Wednesday that 12 miners were pulled alive from the scene of an underground explosion, only to learn nearly three hours later that they had been misled and just one miner actually survived. The chief executive of the mine blamed the stunning error on a misunderstood conversation overheard between rescuers and the command center overseeing rescue efforts. Families learned of the deaths from mine officials more than three hours after Gov. Joe Manchin said he had been told 12 of the miners survived the disaster. The sole survivor of the disaster was hospitalized, a doctor said. International Coal Group Chief Executive Officer Ben Hatfield told the families that only one miner, Randal McCloy, survived the explosion. Hatfield told the families gathered at the Sago Baptist Church that "there had been a lack of communication, that what we were told was wrong and that only one survived," said John Groves, whose brother Jerry Groves was one of the trapped miners. At that point, chaos broke out in the church and a fight started. Hatfield said the erroneous information spread rapidly when people overheard phone calls between rescuers and the rescue command center. In reality, rescuers had confirmed finding 12 miners and were checking their vital signs, he said. "The initial report from the rescue team to the command center indicated multiple survivors," Hatfield said during a news conference. "That information spread like wildfire, because it had come from the command center. It quickly got out of control." Hatfield said the company waited to correct the information until it knew more about the rescue. On Tuesday, mine officials found extremely dangerous levels of carbon monoxide in the part of the mine where the men where believed to have been. The odorless, colorless gas can be lethal at high doses. At lower levels, it can cause headaches, dizziness, disorientation, nausea, fatigue and brain damage. Rescue crews found the body of a 13th miner earlier Tuesday evening and said they were holding out hope that the others were still alive, even as precious time continued to slip away. International Coal Group Inc. never confirmed that the 12 other men were alive. A relative at the church said a mine foreman called relatives there, saying the miners had been found. A few minutes after word came, the throng, several hundred strong, broke into a chorus of the hymn "How Great Thou Art," in a chilly, night air. There were hugs and tears among the crowd outside the Sago Baptist Church near the mine, about 100 miles northeast of Charleston. The miners had been trapped 260 feet below the surface of the mine since an explosion early Monday. The body was found about 700 feet from a mine car, and it appeared the employee was working on a beltline, which brings coal out of the mine, said Ben Hatfield, chief executive officer for ICG of Ashland, Ky. Michelle Mouser of Morgantown said her family believed the dead miner was her uncle, Terry Helms. The mine car was empty, which led rescuers to believe the others may have been safe somewhere else in the mine.

Officials knew in minutes info on miners' safety was wrong Last Updated Wed, 04 Jan 2006 12:22:32 EST CBC News Mine officials knew 20 minutes into a three-hour celebration by townspeople who believed trapped workers in West Virginia were safe that the information was wrong and the men had died, a mine executive said Wednesday. Now, the U.S. government is promising to investigate the stunning reversal of information that mistakenly raised people's hopes that the miners were alive. The latest turn of events came as the community of Sago reeled from the overnight events that made headlines around the world. Twelve of the 13 trapped men perished in the coal mine, which is in the central part of the state, about 160 kilometres from Charleston near the town of Tallmansville. They had been trapped about 80 metres below the surface of the mine since an explosion early Monday. Rescue crews found the first victim earlier Tuesday evening. Later that night, word spread that the other missing men had been found safe and alive. "It was just a horrible miscommunication," West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin told CBC News on Wednesday. "I heard the ecstatic clapping and cheering and I said 'What's going on?'" There was a huge celebration by the families and friends of the miners, who had gathered at a local Baptist church. Church bells rang Church bells were ringing and joyous people took to the streets shouting, "They're alive!" An ambulance was seen driving away, but people did not realize that only one person had made it out alive. Then the scene turned ugly and violent. Ben Hatfield, CEO of the International Coal Group Chief, which owns the mine, told the families there had been a mistake. Hatfield later said he and his officials withheld correct information until they had verified what had really happened. "Let's put this in perspective. Who do I tell not to celebrate? I didn't know if there were 12 or one (who were alive)," Hatfield said. "Until we had people who could measure the vital signs...we didn't want to put the families through another roller coaster," Hatfield said. Earlier on Wednesday in a tense early morning news conference, Hatfield said an initial report from the rescue team to the command centre indicated multiple survivors. "That information spread like wildfire, because it had come from the command centre. It quickly got out of control." Hard questions David Dye, who heads the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration, said his organization will be looking at "how emergency information was relayed about the trapped miners' conditions." Hatfield said the mistaken information spread when people overheard phone calls between rescuers and the rescue command centre. In fact, all the rescuers said was that 12 miners had been found and their vital signs were being checked. Hatfield said the miners were found together behind a barrier they created to try to block carbon monoxide gas in the mine. They were discovered not far from an air hole drilled Tuesday. "We can confirm with certainty the miners survived for a certain amount of time, but we have no way of knowing exactly how long," Hatfield said. Sole survivor The only known survivor of the accident, Randall McCloy Jr., 27, is in a local hospital in critical condition. Doctors said he may have survived because he is among the youngest in the group caught in the accident. "Youth always has its advantages," said Dr. Lawrence Roberts, who treated McCloy at Ruby Memorial Hospital in Morgantown, W. Va. At a news conference on Wednesday, Roberts said McCloy was brought to hospital suffering from dehydration and in shock. "In many other ways, he was relatively uninjured," Roberts said. At a midday news conference in Washington, U.S. President George W. Bush extended his condolences to the miners' families, and acknowledged the rescuers' hard work. "May God bless the good people of West Virginia," he said.

Three men held over toddler 'rape' Staff and agencies Wednesday January 4, 2006 Detectives are questioning three men in connection with the alleged kidnap and rape of a three-year-old girl from Cardiff, police said today. The child was allegedly abducted from her home in the Rumney area of Cardiff on Monday evening. The car in which she was travelling crashed close to the Wiltshire/Berkshire border following a police pursuit early yesterday. The girl was airlifted to hospital in Swindon, where she was reunited with her family and is being treated for "significant" injuries, South Wales police said. A 26-year-old man was arrested around 1am after his vehicle was followed by police along the M4 and on to the A4 between Marlborough, Wiltshire, and Hungerford, Berkshire. Another two men, aged 34 and 47, were arrested in Wales. Officers began following a Ford Escort after it was spotted jumping a red light with its headlights turned off, police said. "Our attention was drawn to a grey Ford Escort travelling with no headlights," said Chief Inspector Charlie Dibble of Wiltshire police. "The vehicle passed through a red traffic light and did not stop. Officers followed the vehicle eastbound along the M4, then off at junction 15 heading south. "Mid-way between Marlborough and Hungerford on the A4, the driver of the Escort lost control of the vehicle which then crashed. The male was arrested by traffic officers and the child was taken by the police helicopter to Great Western hospital in Swindon for medical examination. "He [the man] has now been handed over to South Wales police, as the substantive offences took place there." Police described the girl's abduction as "shocking". Detectives have been carrying out house-to-house inquiries in the Rumney area and have appealed to anyone with information about the incident to contact them. "This is an extremely rare event which makes it all the more shocking," Superintendent Josh Jones said yesterday. "Rumney is a close-knit community and we ask the residents to work closely with us in providing any information that they can. We will continue to provide a very visible police presence in the area." The three-year-old's mother, who cannot be named for legal reasons, yesterday told the South Wales Echo newspaper: "I'm just in shock and want to take [the girl] home. She was on her way to bed. You don't expect this to happen to you. The police had everybody out looking for her. They were brilliant." Comment: Some facts about sexual abuse from the book Predators: Pedophiles, rapists, and other sex offenders, Anna C. Salter, Ph.D.: "Research has not been slow to document how frequently sexual assaults occur in this country. We have just been slow to pay attention. Researchers beginning in 1929 documented rates of sexual abuse of female children that ranged from 24 percent to 37 percent. Research on males has been rarer, but what research there has been found alarming rates, somewhere between 27 percent and 30 percent. "...[In a study done in the 80's by Dr. Gene Able] results stunned the professional community. Two hundred and thirty-two child molesters admitted attempting more than fifty-five thousand incidents of molestation. They claimed to have been successful in 38,000 incidents and reported they had more than 17,000 total victims. All this from only 232 men. "...Dr. Abel also analyzed the data for all kinds of sexual offenses, including exhibitionism, voyeurism, and adult rape as well as child molesdtation. This larger sample of 561 offenders admittted to more than 291,000 sexual offenses of all kinds and more than 195,000 victims." "...Despite the astounding figures, most of these offenses had never been detected." p. 11.

Survey shows rise in attackers' use of weapons Martin Wainwright Tuesday January 3, 2006 The Guardian Government crimefighting initiatives were dealt a blow yesterday by figures showing an increase in the use of weapons in violent assaults. The British Crime Survey, based on thousands of interviews about experiences of crime, shows that knives, clubs, guns, stones, glasses or bottles were used in 24% of all violent incidents in 2004-05, compared with 21% the year before. Weapons were used in 26% of common assaults, up from 20%; robberies saw a two-point rise to 24%; domestic attacks with weapons rose by three points to 11%; and muggings by two points to 18%.

Ark's Quantum Quirks SOTT January 4, 2005

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