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Founded in 1882 by a distinguished group of Cambridge scholars, the Society for Psychical Research was the first of its kind to examine allegedly paranormal phenomena in a scientific and unbiased way. Today the Society continues with its aim of understanding events and abilities commonly described as 'psychic' or 'paranormal' by promoting and supporting important research in this area. Through the publication of scholarly reports and the organisation of educational activities, it acts as a forum for debate and promotes the dissemination of information about current developments in the field. The interdisciplinary nature of the Society's subject matter is reflected in the interests of its former presidents, which include philosophers Henry Sidgwick, C.D. Broad, Henri Bergson and H.H. Price; Prime Minister A.J. Balfour; psychologists William James and F.W.H. Myers; physicists Sir William Crookes, Sir Oliver Lodge and Lord Rayleigh; physiologist and Nobel Laureate Charles Richet; classicist Gilbert Murray; zoologist Sir Alister Hardy; and parapsychologist J.B.Rhine.
Spirit Possession has been reported since ancient times. Is it real?
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JERUSALEM - Doctors treating Israeli Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon after his massive brain haemorrhage have said that he was still in a critical but stable condition.
A brain scan carried out on Saturday morning had shown a slight reduction in the swelling, Hadassah hospital director Shlomo Mor Yosef told reporters.
"According to the results of a the CT (computed topography) scan, there's a slight improvement in the oedema (swelling) in the brain," he said Saturday.
But the prime minister remained "still critical and stable", he added.
Mor Yosef said doctors would only be able to assess the full extent of the damage caused to Sharon by the haemorrhage he suffered on Wednesday night after they had woken him from a medically induced coma.
A decision on when to try to awaken the 77-year-old would be made on Sunday morning by his team of doctors.
"We'll be able to tell something about the meaning of this improvement only when we will slightly reduce the depths of the anaesthesia which we'll do in the next few days," the director said.
Mor Yosef said all Sharon's "other vital signs, including the intra-cranial pressure, the blood pressure, the urine output and the pulse are within normal limits."
In recent years, one phenomenon that directly impacts on Israel and our regional standing has become increasingly prevalent in the Arab world. It is the belief that anything bad that happens in the region is the result of an Israeli and Western conspiracy against Arab interests. The chief culprit is always Western and Israeli intelligence agencies, like the Mossad, the CIA or the British MI6.
One recent example of this is in the former chairman of the Jordanian Writers Union, Fakhri Qi'war, who claimed the Mossad was behind the fatal bombings in Amman in November. Anyone who happened to be in Sinai after the bombings there would have heard locals repeating the claim that Israel was responsible for the atrocities, since "Al-Qaida does not have a terror infrastructure in Sinai." Many even claim that Bin Laden and Zarqawi are fictions of Western intelligence agencies' imagination, created to take the blame for attacks carried out by the CIA. After all, they argue, if this were not the case, they would have been caught long ago.
Other examples are accusations that Israel was behind the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri because of his links to Syria, and the claim that the Mossad and the CIA were behind the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington, which, they claim, served American and Israeli interests.
In this context, the urban legend that Jewish employees of companies in the Twin Towers were tipped off about the attacks and did not go to work on September 11 is often repeated.
This phenomenon is prevalent among all levels of Arab society, including the educated classes. Among those who subscribe to the theory are officials, such as diplomats, army officers, academics and senior civil servants. After the death of Yasser Arafat, I was asked by one Arab diplomat, "What is the truth?" In other words, did Israel really murder him? And the phenomenon is not limited to the Middle East; it occurs among people of Middle Eastern descent now living in the West. That explains why Muslims living in the United Kingdom blamed Israel for carrying out the London bombings this summer.
What is the reason for the spread of these conspiracy theories, how should we deal with them, and do they affect Israel in any way? The phenomenon has a profound influence on the Arab world - so profound, in fact, that it has created a sort of alternative, parallel reality, perceived by many to be true.
Every conspiracy theory contains two elements: It is connected to a real event, and it aims to explain or interpret reality. In the age of open communication, Internet and the mass availability of information, the power of these conspiracies should have dwindled. But the opposite is true: Improved communications merely give these theories a wider audience. These theories appear to fulfill some psychological need - an explanation of the weakness of the Arab world against Israel and the West. Indeed, these theories are most often promulgated by the weaker side, which is looking for explanations for its weakness. Beyond this, there are extremists who spread these theories in order to harm relations between the U.S. and Israel and the Arab world.
These theories do, indeed, create fear, suspicion and hatred. Such emotions play into the hands of Arab extremists, who reject any compromise with Israel and refuse to improve ties with the West. In fact, these theories undermine Israeli efforts to broker peace deals with its neighbors and deter huge sections of the population in Arab countries from becoming closer to Israel and the West.
These theories cause the most harm to the Arab world itself, since they take responsibility for heinous acts away from the Arabs themselves and place it on outsiders. This is why the Arab world has not carried out the soul-searching that is so overdue. There are very few Arab voices speaking out against the phenomenon. One such voice is that of Qatari commentator and lecturer Dr. Abed al-Hamid al-Ansari, who recently called on the Arab world to stop blaming Israel for all the attacks in the Middle East.
And how should we relate to the phenomenon? First of all, we must be aware of it and understand its extent and its negative effect on the Arab world and on Arab states' relations with Israel and the West. Secondly, we must make our voice louder in the Arab world, just as the Foreign Ministry's Arabic division has done in the two years since its creation. This division has managed to get Israel's point of view into the Arab press and has provided a wide audience in the Arab world with reliable information. This has been achieved thanks to professional, Arabic-speaking staff and an Arabic-language Internet site. Beyond this, we must bear this phenomenon in mind when making decisions that have regional consequences. Many times, our thinking is different from that of our neighbors, and what seems to us to be our natural right could be perceived by the other side as a terrible conspiracy. An awareness of the extent of the phenomenon is an important part of understanding the region and our ability to exist here in peace and prosperity.
Comment: While the author suggests that all such conspiracy theories are the result of desperate attempts by a defeated Arab population to explain their weakness or the efforts of evil Arab terrorists to damage Israel and the West, he notes the perplexing conundrum that:
"in the age of open communication, Internet and the mass availability of information, the power of these conspiracies should have dwindled. But the opposite is true."
Indeed. And it is not just in the Arab world that such "conspiracy theories" are finding attentive audiences; more and more citizens of Western countries are beginning to understand such conspiracy theories as the most logical explanation for the otherwise inexplicable lack of progress that is being made towards a more peaceful world.
Western leaders cannot continue indefinitely to talk peace and make war. Before long, large numbers of citizens of Western nations will be forced to join with their Arab brothers in concluding that, far from desiring peace, people like Bush and Sharon, and those that control them, are the real aggressors, the real terrorists.
It makes perfect sense for the CIA to be attracted to Iran’s Baluchistan province. First, the area has well established drug smuggling routes — and the CIA has an insatiable hunger for profits to be gleaned from illegal drugs — and second Baluchistan is a neglected tribal backwater where Hanafi Sunni Islam has a foothold in contrast to Iran’s Shia majority. In other words, Iran’s Sistan Baluchistan province is a perfect place to stir up trouble and make some money for covert ops in the process.
As evidence the CIA has been busy at work in the province, back in 2002 the neocon-Israel friendly DEBKAfile reported "a CIA undercover unit has entered Iran through Zabul, in the Sistan Baluchistan province. Its assignment is to stir up dissent among the largest population in the area, the Baluchi tribes." Moreover, according to DEBKAfile, in December of 2001 "al Qaeda fugitives, including some 4,000 Saudis, began using these obscure [drug smuggling] routes on their way from Afghanistan and Pakistan to Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, Lebanon and other points in the Middle East. The CIA’s undercover unit has undertaken the tall order of closing this al Qaeda escape route, while gathering intelligence on its nefarious traffic." In other words, the CIA is working hand-in-glove with "al-Qaeda" (a term used to describe useful idiot Muslim fanatics and patsies), probably smuggling drugs and also importing "dissent" among the Sunni Baluchi tribes, who hate and distrust the Shia regime in Tehran.
Now the Khaleej Times reports "Iran on Sunday confirmed that nine of its soldiers were 'missing’ after a little-known Sunni Muslim rebel group said it had kidnapped them, the official IRNA news agency reported. On Saturday a caller speaking for the Jundollah (God’s Soldiers) told the Al Arabiya television station that the group wanted Tehran to release 16 of its jailed members in exchange for the soldiers." A Google search on Jundollah turns up little except a mention that the shadowy group is also active in Kurdish areas. As has been well-documented, Israeli "military and intelligence operatives are active in Kurdish areas of Iran, Syria and Iraq, providing training for commando units and running covert operations that could further destabilize the entire region," according to the Guardian, citing ace reporter Seymour Hersh. Of course, for the Straussian neocons and their Jabotinsky Zionist fellow travelers and mentors in Israel, the current "effort" in the region is all about destabilizing the entire region.
It is also well-known that the CIA and Israel’s Mossad share a special if murderous relationship and undoubtedly work together plotting and executing covert and black ops in the neighborhood. The CIA’s "ties with the Israeli Mossad date as far back as 1951," writes Dean Klovens for the Middle East Intelligence Bulletin. One of the more infamous collaborations between the two spook agencies occurred in 1986 when the La Belle disco was bombed in Berlin, killing two American soldiers and providing a handy pretext for Reagan to attack Libya, killing at least 30 civilians, including many children. In 1998, Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen (ZDF television) ran a documentary presenting "compelling evidence that some of the main suspects in the 1986 Berlin disco bombing worked for American and Israeli intelligence" a German correspondent writing for WSWS reported at time.
It is also assumed the CIA and Mossad, along with the Israeli military, collaborated on the assassination of the elected president of Lebanon, Bashir Gemayel, who was in fact a Phalange (fascist) stooge for the Zionist state (Gemayel’s assassination was pinned on Habib Tanious Shartouni, a member of the pro-Damascus Syrian Social Nationalist Party and an alleged agent for Syrian intelligence). It should be noted that former U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon, John Gunther Dean, had urged Gemayel "to stop seeing Israeli Mossad officers," according to the North Korea Times, and thus earned the wrath of the Zionist state. As a result, according to Dean, Mossad attempted to kill him and his family on August 27, 1980. Dean also blames Mossad for the assassination of Pakistan’s president, General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq (the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan and a U.S. general were also killed in the plane crash that claimed Zia-ul-Haq’s life).
For many Muslims, it is a no-brainer that the CIA-Mossad (and Britain’s MI6 and Australia’s Special Action Police) axis is behind the creation and spawning of Islamic terrorist organizations. "It is clear that the CIA and the Mossad have infiltrated such organizations and have done much more than that," Sayed Abdullah, who operates an intelligence service firm based on the Indonesian island of Maluku, told Kazi Mahmood of the IslamOnline website. Specifically, in regard to the first Bali bombings, Abdullah singles out Omar al-Faruq as a Mossad-CIA operative who infiltrated Jemaah Islamiyah, itself long ago compromised by Indonesian intelligence (see John Sidel, Cracking Down in Indonesia, the Jakarta Post). A.C. Manulang, a former Indonesian State Intelligence Coordinating Board chief, also accuses al-Faruq of working for the CIA. "Anti-Islam intelligence agencies committed the bombings in Indonesia. They have been trained for this and they are very organized," Manulang told Tempo Interactive.
It is interesting that at approximately the same time we learn of the "kidnapping" of Iranian border guards in Iran’s Baluchistan province by an little-known Sunni terrorist group, we also discover that "al-Qaeda," the Sunni Wahabbi wonder creation of the CIA (or the smoke and mirrors visage of a fearsome terrorist group), is busy at work in Gaza. "Al Qaeda operatives are establishing a base in Gaza for launching attacks against Israel and neighboring pro-American Arab regimes, current and former Israeli security officials say," the pro-Zionist Forward reports. "Officials in Jerusalem and Washington are following this development with concern, Israeli and American sources said. They see the move as part of Al Qaeda’s long-term plan to attack U.S. interests in the region. Using Gaza as a base of operations, Al Qaeda would be able to launch attacks against Israel, as well as against Egypt and Saudi Arabia, Israeli and American terrorism experts say." Of course, the conclusion is that the recent violence in Gaza by the Palestinians was instigated by al-CIA-duh. "They are already there to take advantage of the negative potential in Gaza: the instability, the chaos, the lack of Palestinian Authority control. They will use it to establish an operational base or to control, from there, Al Qaeda cells in the West Bank," retired Lt. Gen. Moshe Ya’alon told the Forward. Of course, the Forward does not bother to mention that the Israelis were caught red-handed in 2002 operating a fake "al-Qaeda" cell in Gaza, as Agence France-Presse reported at the time.
If we can be certain of anything, it is that the Straussian neocons and their Likudite allies, working together with the CIA and Mossad, who engineered the current virulent strain of Islamic terrorism, will continue to unleash violence in preparation for the Strausscon version of World War Four. The Baluchistan province incident is simply another small indication that the United States and Israel, working together on the Zionist master plan to destabilize the Muslim world, are chipping away at Iran’s border security as they prepare to attack the country and ultimately open the gates for the sort of chaos and violence required to splinter and balkanize the region into small tribal serfdoms malleable to rule by tribal clients who follow to the letter the diktat of Zionists and their neoliberal collaborators in Tel Aviv and Washington
Conal Urquhart in Jerusalem
Saturday January 7, 2006
The Guardian
Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister, yesterday underwent emergency surgery for the second time after doctors discovered evidence of new bleeding in his brain.
Doctors said they managed to stop the bleeding and reduce pressure in his brain after five hours of surgery but he remained in a critical condition with most medical commentators suggesting that his chances of survival remain slim.
Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, cancelled a planned trip to Indonesia out of concern for Mr Sharon's health. An official said she does not "want to be a long way from Israel should he die".
Dr Shlomo Mor-Yosef, the director of the Hadassah hospital in Jerusalem, said last night there was no bleeding in Mr Sharon's brain at the moment.
"By comparison with previous brain scans there has been a significant improvement in the appearance of the brain as interpreted by our neurologists," he said. "Despite the improvement the situation remains critical."
It was a dramatic day at the hospital after doctors first reported no change in the prime minister's condition overnight and then rushed him into the operating theatre after new complications were detected.
"The night passed without change," Dr Mor-Yosef told reporters shortly after 7am. "All the parameters that we are measuring ... are stable." He said then that pressure in Mr Sharon's brain was steady, adding: "This is again a positive sign."
But the situation was soon reassessed. The deterioration in Mr Sharon's condition was only noticed when doctors analysed the results of a brain scan taken earlier in the morning. They noticed new bleeding in the prime minister's brain as well as swelling in one area of the brain and an increase in blood pressure. The medical team decided to take Mr Sharon to the operating theatre again to stop the bleeding and reduce pressure on the brain.
Members of Mr Sharon's office rushed to the hospital and could be seen standing in the courtyard comforting each other.
The second bout of surgery followed a seven-hour operation on Thursday morning after he suffered a major brain haemorrhage on Wednesday night. Doctors said they had put him in a medically induced coma to give his body time to heal and added that it was impossible to assess the scale of brain damage until sedation was reduced, probably on Sunday.
However, several doctors quoted in the Israeli media said that at the very minimum Mr Sharon would suffer severe brain damage affecting his mobility and speech. They also noted that his chances of survival were slim.
Controversy has simmered in Israel over the prime minister's treatment since he suffered a minor stroke in December. Mr Sharon was treated with blood thinning drugs which reduce the risk of blood clots but increase the risk of a haemorrhage. Others questioned the wisdom of allowing the prime minister to spend time at his countryside residence on the eve of surgery and the decision to take him to hospital in Jerusalem rather than the nearer hospital in Beersheva which added 30 minutes to the journey.
Israelis yesterday continued to come to terms with Mr Sharon's departure from the political scene which he has dominated since he became prime minister in 2001. Ivor Neushotz, from Jerusalem, said it was difficult to imagine who could bring peace in the absence of Mr Sharon. "He is the person most capable of making peace with the Palestinians.This will put a stop on everything and I just hope he gets better."
But in Jerusalem's Zion Square, Meir Cohen was collecting money for the former settlers of Gush Katif.
"Don't forget your brothers," he called. However, he did not count Mr Sharon as a brother after giving up Jewish territory during the withdrawal from Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip. "I can't say that I am happy that he is not well. But I am very happy he will not be involved in government any more," he said. "My only concern is that he doesn't work any more, how it happens is less important."
Comment: We would like to propose that the technology exists whereby heart attacks etc. can be induced from a distance.
Sharon was certainly one of the most brutal and inhuman Israeli PMs ever to have blighted the stage of Middle East and international politics. What is most worrying however is that it seems likely that. from the point of view of the Powers That Be in Israel, the "butcher of Sabra and Shatila" was not cruel enough to conduct their planned, upcoming Middle East war.
While it is beyond doubt that Sharon would not have hesitated to ethincally cleanse the Palestinians and the Middle Eastern Arab peoples in general, as fiendish as he was, he may have balked at the idea of turning a blind eye to consigning the Middle East's Jews to a similar fate.
Sharon had to be removed therefore, and with his demise, the path is now clear for new Likud leader Netanyahu to take the reins and "bring on" the long-planned Middle Eastern conflgaration. Starting with an attack on Iran, perhaps precipiated by a faked (or real) attack on Israeli or American "interests".
Donald Neff in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs Aug/Sept 2001
In 1971, Sharon formed a special assassination unit to combat unrest among Palestinians living under Israeli occupation in the Gaza Strip. Sharon's antagonistic biographer, Uzi Benziman, an Israeli newsman, wrote that Sharon conducted “a reign of terror” against Gazans:[2] “On his orders, every adult male in Gaza was stopped and subjected to a thorough search. Periodically, curfews were imposed on the refugee camps, and all residents were assembled for hours on end for purposes of identification. Paths through the refugee camps were widened [by razing homes and businesses] and the population thinned out, to make it harder for terrorists to find refuge:”[3] In seven months, between July and February 1972, Sharon reported the deaths of 104 and capture of 742 terrorists.[4]
Such violent feats qualified Sharon to become Israel's defense minister in 1981. Sharon came to his powerful post with an ambitious plan. It was to completely destroy the Palestine Liberation Organization in Lebanon “in such a way that they will not be able to rebuild their military and political base,” as he told a group of Israeli officers.[5]
To accomplish his goals, Sharon in 1982 invaded Lebanon, tampered with Lebanon's politics to assure the election of pro-Israeli Maronite Christian Bashir Gemayel as president, and sought to evict the Syrian army from Lebanon.[6] He failed in all three objectives. The PLO remains a viable force, Gemayel was assassinated and the Syrians are still in Lebanon 19 years later. What is different is that thousands of Lebanese and hundreds of Israelis are dead.
The Israeli invasion of Lebanon began on June 6. Within a week Israeli troops reached Beirut and launched a merciless siege of the capital. Over the next nine weeks, Israeli planes, ships and guns, all of them made or financed by the United States, lobbed thousands of aerial bombs and 60,000 shells on the city of more than a half-million residents, indiscriminately killing and wounding thousands of Lebanese and Palestinians.7 Actress Jane Fonda proudly posed with the Israeli troops besieging Beirut while U.S. supporters of Israel defended the invasion. Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger declared at the time that the invasion opens up extraordinary opportunities for a dynamic American diplomacy throughout the Middle “East....Lebanon can be another testing ground for proving that radical Arab regimes and Soviet backing offer no solution to any of the central issues of concern in the area.”[8]
The Israeli army control of the Beirut area included two teeming Palestinian refugee camps, Sabra and Shatila. On Sept. 16, a company of 150 “special” Lebanese Christian Phalange fighters, who were working closely with Sharon and who hated the Palestinians, moved into the cramped and twisting streets of the Shatila Palestinian refugee camp. Darkness was falling and Israeli mortar units and airplanes dropped flares to aid the Phalangists' progress.[9] The Israelis knew the Phalangists were bloodthirsty. They were lusting for revenge because, only two days before, their leader, Israeli-backed President-elect Bashir Gemayel, had been assassinated.[10]
Now, on Sept. 16, as the massacres were about to begin, U.S. special envoy Morris Draper was told by Israeli Chief of Staff Rafael Eitan that “Lebanon is at a point of exploding into a frenzy of revenge. No one can stop them. They're [the Phalangists] obsessed with the idea of revenge.”[11]
Afterwards, Israeli leaders claimed they had no idea that violence was near.
Phalangists killed civilians indiscriminately in the camps. There were no PLO guerrillas, though Israel had claimed there were, so the women, children and old victims were defenseless. Whole families were gunned down or knifed to death. One infant was stomped to death by a man wearing spiked shoes. Another refugee was killed by live grenades draped around his neck.[12] Bulldozers were brought in, mass graves hastily dug and truck loads of bodies dumped in them. Throughout the night, the shooting and the screams did not stop.[13] The killing lasted until the morning of Sept. 18.
The official Israeli commission of inquiry into the massacres concluded that 700 to 800 persons had been killed in the two camps.[14] Non-Israeli estimates were considerably higher. The Palestine Red Crescent put the number at over 2,000, while Lebanese authorities reported that 762 bodies were recovered and 1,200 death certificates issued.[15]
When a horrified world demanded an explanation of Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, who himself had committed indiscriminate terror in his youth, he said without a word of regret: “Goyim kill Goyim and they blame the Jew.”[16]
A prepared cabinet statement said: “A blood libel has been perpetrated against the Jewish people.”[17]
Despite Israel's denials of responsibility, New York Times correspondent Thomas L. Friedman declared without qualification: “The Israelis knew just what they were doing when they let the Phalangists into those camps.”[18]
Sharon and seven other Israeli officials, including Begin, were found guilty the next year by an Israeli commission of “indirect responsibility” for the massacres. Sharon was also found to have “personal responsibility,” and he was ordered to resign or be removed as defense minister.[19] Sharon resigned, protesting his innocence, but he was allowed to stay in the cabinet as a minister without portfolio. He remained near the center of Israeli politics in the ensuing years.
Israelis gave him the country's highest prize in 2000 by electing him their prime minister. Beyond losing his post as defense minister, Sharon never received any punishment for the massacres. In fact, in the years since he has publicly proclaimed his innocence, acting as though the bloodshed was an internal Lebanese affair. A listless world seemed to agree with him and appeared content to forget the massacres.
The Belgian suit against Sharon is the first serious legal attack against him -- or anyone else, including the Phalangist killers -- for the massacres. It was brought by 28 survivors of Sabra and Shatila under a 1993 Belgian law that allows prosecution of non-Belgian citizens regardless of where or when the atrocity occurred.[20]
The Belgian suit was followed June 23 by a major human rights group calling for a criminal investigation of Ariel Sharon's role in the massacres. Hanny Megally, executive director of Human Rights Watch's Middle East and North Africa division, said: “There is abundant evidence that war crimes and crimes against humanity were committed on a wide scale in the Sabra and Shatila massacre, but to date, not a single individual has been brought to justice.” He added:
“'The Israeli government ...has a responsibility to conduct an investigation into the actions of its own high officials who knew ...that atrocities were likely to occur and did not act promptly to stop them once they knew the killing had started.”[21]
These actions come after a June 17 2001 showing by the BBC of a documentary on the massacres that examined the question of whether Sharon should be put on trial for war crimes. Several persons in the program suggested Sharon should be charged. One was then-U.S. envoy Draper, who flatly said Sharon should have anticipated the massacres, adding: “You'd have to be appallingly ignorant not to expect a bloodbath. I mean, I suppose if you came down from the moon that day, you might not predict it.”[22]
Israel's Foreign Ministry condemned the documentary as “distorted, unfair and intentionally hostile.” Raanan Gissin, a spokesman for Sharon, said: “There's anti-Semitism, there's deception, there's malice -- all put in one show with a sinister intent.”[23]
The Israeli condemnations of the BBC program almost sounded like Begin's old complaint that “Goyim kill Goyim and they blame the Jew.” The difference this time is that Ariel Sharon is officially charged in a court of law. If the Belgians do not buckle under Zionist pressure, he may finally some day have to account for his bloody actions in Sabra and Shatila.
FOOTNOTES:
1 Donald Neff, Warriors at Suez,* p. 49. 2 Uzi Benziman, Sharon, p. 118. 3 Ibid., pp. 115-16. 4 Ariel. Sharon, Warrior, p. 260. 5 Ze'ev Schiff & Ehud Ya'ari, Israel's Lebanon War,* p. 42. 6 lbid., p. 43. 7 George Ball, Error and Betrayal in Lebanon, p. 44. 8 Washington Post, 6/16/82. 9 "Final Report of the Israeli Commission of Inquiry into the Events at the Refugee Camps in Beirut," Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. XII, No. 3, Spring 1983, pp. 93-94. 10 Schiff & Ya'ari, p. 259. 11 Ibid., pp. 259-60. 12 Ibid.,p. 264. 13 Time, 10/4/82, p. 22. 14 Journal of Palestine Studies, p. 105. 15 Ball, p. 57. the Lebanese government reported by Jack Redden of United Press International on 10/13/82. Also see Carol Collins, "Chronology of the Israeli War in Lebanon," Journal of Palestine Studies, No. 2, Winter 1983, p. 116. 16 Eric Silver, Begin, p. 236. 17 Ball, p. 58. 18 Friedman, Thomas, From Beirut to Jerusalem,* 164-65. 19 Excerpts in New York Times, 2/9/83, and in "Final Report of the Israeli Commission of Inquiry," Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. XII, No. 3. Spring 1983, pp. 89-116. 20 Lee Hockstader, Washington Post, 6/25/2001. 21 Ibid. 22 Ibid. 23 Ibid.
WASHINGTON - The head of the National Security Agency told employees last month that NSA officials had not violated U.S. law by participating in an agency program that eavesdrops on U.S. citizens without judicial oversight, newly released documents show.
"Media coverage surmises that administration and agency officials may have acted unlawfully -- notions I reject, categorically!" NSA Director Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander assured agency employees in a December 22 message.
He acknowledged that Congress may schedule hearings on the domestic spying program, which President George W. Bush authorized in 2002 to eavesdrop on Americans' telephone calls and e-mails without first obtaining warrants.
"Overall, we are not concerned," the NSA director said. "Our operations are carefully deliberated and measured; they are within the law; and they are nobly executed with strict oversight."
The December 22 message, and an earlier one in which Alexander cautioned staff not to comment to the media, were released by the NSA in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from The New York Times, which first reported the program's existence last month.
Copies of the documents were obtained from the NSA by Reuters on Friday.
A 1978 law, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, forbids domestic spying on U.S. citizens without the approval of a special court. In the wake of the September 11 attacks, Bush secretly authorized the NSA to intercept communications without court approval.
Critics of the administration warn that civil liberties could be jeopardized by government eavesdropping practices that avoid judicial oversight.
Rep. Jane Harman, ranking Democrat on the House of Representatives intelligence committee, has also accused Bush of violating the law by not allowing full congressional oversight of the program.
Administration officials have discussed the program only with a handful of lawmakers including congressional leaders and the top two members of the House and Senate intelligence oversight panels.
Rep. Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the Republican chairman of the House intelligence committee, forcefully rejected Harman's charge that the administration had violated requirements of the National Security Act.
"I anticipate the debate to continue well into the new year," Alexander told his staff. "We must not allow public discourse to distract us from our work: to protect and safeguard our nation."
By Paul Rieckhoff
GNN
Fri, 06 Jan 2006 03:05:20 -0800
You probably missed this, since that was exactly the point. Over New Years weekend the Bush Administration “took out the trash,” as they say in the business. And this was some particularly smelly garbage.
Remember last month when President Bush agreed to Sen. McCain’s legislation banning the use of torture on enemy prisoners?
Unfortunately, it now appears he didn’t really mean it.
Just as we all headed out for the long weekend, Bush released what’s known as a “signing statement,” which is basically the Presidential version of crossing your fingers behind your back when you make a promise. In the statement, the President says, in short, “Sure, we don’t torture people, unless I think we should.”
You can read the full statement here (sixth paragraph).
The President has basically written himself an exemption. If that tactic seems familiar, it should. It’s the same way he recently trampled a decades-old law forbidding domestic wiretapping.
This is ugly business. So ugly that the White House sheepishly released the document when everyone was distracted by the Holidays. So ugly that when the press picked up the story, they couldn’t find anyone in the White House willing to comment on the record. Instead, we’re left to interpret the wisdom of an anonymous “senior administration official.”
Apparently I can’t say this enough: It puts our troops in danger when the President takes anything less than an unequivocal stand against the use of torture. Period. Not incidentally, it’s also bad for national security. That’s why IAVA (Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America), stand behind the Torture is Not US campaign, which now looks like it’s more important than ever.
KANSAS CITY, Missouri - Vice President Dick Cheney on Friday was walking with the help of a cane because of what his spokeswoman said was a "re-occurrence of a pre-existing foot condition."
Cheney flew to Kansas City to tour a Harley-Davidson motorcycle factory, part of an effort by the White House to tout what officials see as upbeat economic news.
Cheney spokeswoman Lea Anne McBride would not give specifics of the vice president's ailing left foot but said the condition was being treated with rest and anti-inflammatory medicine.
As he toured the factory floor, he walked with a cane and wore a brown leather moccasin on the injured foot and a dress shoe on the other.
Cheney, 64, who has a history of heart problems, in September had surgery to remove aneurysms behind both knees. McBride would not say whether the foot problem was related to the aneurysm surgery.
WASHINGTON - A secret Pentagon study found that as many as 80 percent of Marines killed in Iraq from wounds to the upper body could have survived if they had had extra body armor, The New York Times reports.
"Such armor has been available since 2003, but until recently the Pentagon has largely declined to supply it to troops despite calls from the field for additional protection," the Times reported citing unnamed military officials.
"For the first time, the study by the military's medical examiner shows the cost in lives from inadequate armor, even as the Pentagon continues to publicly defend its protection of the troops," the report said.
The United States has "maintained that it is impossible to shield forces from the increasingly powerful improvised explosive devices used by insurgents in Iraq. Yet the Pentagon's own study reveals the equally lethal threat of bullets," the report stressed.
"Additional forensic studies by the Armed Forces Medical Examiner's unit that were obtained by The Times indicate that about 340 American troops have died solely from torso wounds," the report added.
Comment: US soldiers were - and still are - forced to purchase their own body armor, even though the Pentagon has known all along that supplying such armor to its forces could have saved lives. Who are the real terrorists?
"The apathy of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal and hasten the resurrection of the dead."
-- William Lloyd Garrison
The apathy of most of America is stunning and appalling to me. When I found this quote I was filled with wide-eyed wonder that there is one statue left in America complete with statue, or one grave or tomb still occupied.
On October 26th, as MoveOn.org was holding its candlelight vigils across the country to mourn the death of the 2000 th American soldier in Iraq, I, and two dozen others, were being arrested in front of the White House protesting the carnage done in our name by the illegitimate residents therein.
Now, counting the 11 American soldiers who were pointlessly killed in George's unconscionable and brainless war of terror in the Middle East, the American "official" death toll is up to 2193: 200 more families ruined in less than three months!
My son, Casey, was in the first 1000 to be killed in Iraq. We reached that dismal mark by September 2004. MoveOn.org conducted candlelight vigils for that occasion. Then a little over a year later, MoveOn.org conducted candlelight vigils to commemorate the 2000th soldier. If we don't get off of our collective apathetic and complacent backsides to stop the barbaric killing in Iraq, when will the next candlelight vigil be? George Bush and the evil neocons are killing our precious soldiers at the rate of 2.78 per day. By my calculations, we should be lighting our candles again and singing "Kum bah ya" by October.
This article is not intended to be an indictment of MoveOn.org which does some amazing work and were big supporters of Camp Casey. But my point is this, America: the longer we let the illegitimate pretender to the White House and his conniving and callous gang of co-conspirators to continue, the more our collective humanity is damaged. Apparently, candlelight vigils do very little to stop, or even slow down a little, the carnage committed by the war criminals in DC.
Then we have the unfortunate innocents of Iraq. I have heard reports of up to as many as 200 of them killed yesterday. So if 200 were reported, one has to really wonder what the true count was. Bill O'Reilly and George Bush define a terrorist as someone who "kills innocent men, women and children." Am I the only one who sees the irony and stunning hypocrisy in this statement? Who do Bill and George think are being killed in Iraq? Well-trained and an organized Army? Terrorists? We all know that is false. This is who is being killed in Iraq: living breathing human beings, identical to Americans, or any other human beings on earth, who are just trying to go about their lives trying to survive in a war torn country that was no threat to America or our way of life.
"I would say 30,000 more or less have died as a result of the initial incursion and the ongoing violence against Iraqis," said George on December 12, 2005. Even if one accepts this very low guess-ti-mate by George, his policies have been responsible for ten times the 3000 deaths on September 11, 2001. By his own admission, he is ten times the terrorist that Osama ever was. If George says 30,000…who knows what the truthful total is. It fills me with sorrow and hurts my heart to even contemplate the number.
America: this is what you are allowing your government to do in your name:
Detain and torture prisoners without due process. Use chemical weapons on other members of humanity. Spy on Americans without a court order (I hope my conversations put them in a coma of boredom). Carpet bomb cities filled with human beings like yourselves. Destroy the infrastructure of other countries. Destroy the infrastructure of American cities. Cut taxes on the rich while pouring money and blood into the thirsty sands of the Middle East. Decimate our treasury. Rape the environment. Et cetera, et cetera, ad nauseum.
Hillary Clinton told me that the "wheels of government grind slowly." This is a tired cliché and it is unacceptable blather while the war machine is grinding the bones of our children. It is time for us wide awake Americans to make our elected officials speed up the timetable for withdrawal from Iraq.
If I hear one more rendition of "We Shall Overcome" and then watch the vigilers or marchers go home and turn on their TV's and crack open a brewsky content in the fact that they have done something for peace that day, I am going to scream! We can't overcome unless we take the proverbial bull by the horns and overcome!
Hold your vigils and marches in relevant places: such as warmongering local Congressional offices. So many Senators and Congresspeople come to mind. Or in front of a recruiting station. Or Federal Buildings. Or military bases. Then instead of going home and cracking open a beer, or uncorking a bottle of wine, sit down and say "we aren't leaving until you call for an immediate end to the occupation of Iraq." Put your butt on the line for humanity.
Change will not happen until we make it happen. We can't make change happen by wishing or praying that it will happen.
Remarks prepared for Out of Iraq event in Washington, D.C., on day of 164 Out of Iraq Events around the country, Jan. 7, 2006.
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President Nixon famously said that if the President does it, it's legal. And he didn't think that up on his own – that's a way of thinking that has long had currency in America.
Today there are over 150 Out of Iraq events like this one happening around the country. A dozen members of Congress are taking part. Numerous candidates for Congress, local elected officials, and national leaders of the peace movement are speaking. Large crowds are gathering. We'll see what sort of job the media does of noticing. Thus far, progressive and rightwing radio have provided the most coverage. The event in New York will be broadcast on Air America / Nation Radio at 7 p.m. ET, as soon as this event is over.
When I spoke on a rightwing radio show yesterday, I heard from callers who would paraphrase Nixon thus: If the U.S. military does it, it's legal.
I tried to communicate that by all standards of international law, and of US laws that incorporate those standards, the attack on Iraq was illegal. This is not a war fought in self-defense – at least not by the Americans – and this is not a war authorized by the United Nations.
But there I ran headlong against both the vestiges of the lies that launched this war and the slander and scorn that have been heaped on the UN by the military-media complex.
So I tried to speak to the illegality of some of the conduct of a war that is, in its entirety, illegal. The list of crimes includes targeting civilians, using depleted uranium, using white phosphorous as a weapon, ghosting and renditioning prisoners, torturing, wiretapping without court approval, leaking a CIA agent's identity, exacting fierce retribution on numerous whistleblowers, lying to Congress, and sending Colin Powell to the U.N. with a basketful of lies about the UN's own work – a charade obviously aimed only at U.S. media outlets.
I tried to focus especially on the use of white phosphorous in Fallujah, where our military melted the skin off children and burned them to death.
A Marine called in to denounce me. "You know why those people get killed," he said. "It's because they're letting insurgents hide in their house."
Now, I've met quite a few American veterans of this war who are working hard to end it. It's possible to go through military training and not come out thinking that it's all right to burn families if they might be hiding someone you really want to kill. But it's not possible to listen to rightwing radio every day and not think that. Or if not think that, at least think there is a legitimate argument for avoiding thinking about it.
So, there is quite a leap for people who hear nothing but lies every day to make if they are going to see the war itself as a crime, and therefore every killing by the aggressor, the United States, as a murder.
But the line of thinking that allows that conclusion has long had currency in the United States as well. Our grandparents' generation played a large role in creating it for the world. And George W's father explained his decision not to invade Baghdad during the Gulf War in these terms:
"Trying to eliminate Saddam .. would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible ... We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq ...there was no viable 'exit strategy' we could see, violating another of our principles. Furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations' mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land."
http://www.thememoryhole.org/mil/bushsr-iraq.htm
The task that lies on our shoulders today is restoring the international legal standard that Bush the Elder referred to and that Bush the Younger has destroyed. If we are going to end this war, and if we are going to prevent the next ones, we must hold Bush, Cheney, and company accountable. And that means impeachment. And that means indictments.
The more effectively we expose the lies that launched the war, the fewer Americans will believe the lies that progress is being made and that withdrawal would create chaos. The fewer Americans who believe the latest ex post facto justifications of this crime, the sooner the Iraqi people will be free of the occupation that 60 to 80 percent of them want ended.
A majority of Americans also want this war ended. The polls show a majority of Americans wanting complete withdrawal within a year. They also show a majority of Americans wanting impeachment proceedings if Bush lied about the war. And a majority says he did lie.
Congressman John Conyers has introduced a bill to create a select committee to investigate and make recommendations on impeachment. This parallels how the impeachment proceedings against Nixon began. Several cosponsors have already signed on, despite Congress being in recess. You can ask your Congress Members to contact Conyers' office and add their names to H Res 635. We're asking everyone to phone their Congress Member's district office this coming Monday.
http://www.pdamerica.org
Anyone here who lives in Congressman Jim Moran's district should thank him for having hosted an event like this one on Thursday with Congressman John Murtha, but question him about the remark he made there to the effect that impeachment is counter to the democratic process. Maybe someone could even deliver a copy of the US Constitution to Congressman Moran's office.
We should also thank Congressman Conyers for speaking at an event like this one today in Michigan, and Bobby Scott down in tidewater Virginia, and Diane Watson, Jim McDermott, Adam Smith, Bob Filner, Martin Sabo, Marty Meehan, and Jay Inslee. These members may or may not all be ready to join the majority of Americans in opposition to the war and support of impeachment, but they are willing to talk to their constituents, and that's more than you can say for most of their colleagues. And we should thank Mike Hersh and Christine Yorty and Karen Bradley, and Kevin Zeese, and everyone else who helped organize this event in Washington, and Andy Shallal for providing the location.
Before I close, let me just say one more thing about impeachment. All too often the response one hears to proposing it is "Well, yeah, but Cheney would be worse." Let me give you five reasons to stop worrying about Dick Cheney.
1. Cheney is running the show now backstage. We'd be better off with him up front as a walking advertisement for voting against Republicans.
2. Impeachment and removal from office are two separate things, one of which has never been done in U.S. history. The Republicans destroyed what was left of a Democratic Party by impeaching Clinton. They did not remove him from office.
3. An investigation into impeachment, as well as proposals for censure, serve an educational and political purpose in themselves and move us toward impeachment. Let's stop jumping five steps ahead of ourselves in order to fantasize about defeat.
4. It is impossible to investigate Bush or Cheney without incriminating the other.
5. If you cannot impeach for the highest crime imaginable, taking the nation to war on the basis of lies, then you can never impeach, or impeachment must be reserved for sex.
Washington University School of Medicine
2006-01-06
Comparing veterans deployed in the first Persian Gulf War and veterans deployed elsewhere at the same time has revealed veterans who served in the Persian Gulf have nearly twice the prevalence of chronic multi-symptom illness (CMI), a cluster of symptoms similar to a set of conditions often called Gulf War Syndrome.
To be diagnosed with CMI, veterans must have had symptoms for more than six months in two or three of the following categories: fatigue; mood symptoms or difficulty thinking; and muscle or joint pain.
However, the study also found CMI in veterans who did not serve in the gulf, suggesting that the Persian Gulf conflict isn't the only trigger for CMI.
"We're still not sure whether CMI is due to a single disease or pathological process," says lead author Melvin Blanchard, M.D., associate chief of medicine at the St. Louis Veterans Affairs (VA) Medical Center and assistant professor of medicine at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. "But this study has identified an intriguing association between CMI risk and diagnosis of depression and anxiety disorders prior to military service."
Other findings from the study include:
* Having CMI doubles the risk of developing metabolic syndrome, which is associated with increased risk of coronary heart disease, diabetes and cirrhosis of the liver.
* Veterans with CMI report much poorer quality of life, and poorer mental and physical functioning than unaffected veterans.
* Veterans with CMI utilize more healthcare services.
* Although CMI is still much more common among deployed Gulf War veterans, veterans may be recovering, since its prevalence appears to be declining as time passes.
Blanchard's study, published online by the American Journal of Epidemiology, is part of the continuing analysis of data collected in a large VA-sponsored study, the National Health Survey of Gulf War Era Veterans and Their Families. The data comes from physical evaluations of more than 2,000 veterans and their families conducted from 1999 to 2001. The study divided veterans into two groups: those who served in the Persian Gulf War, referred to as deployed veterans, and those who served elsewhere during the war, referred to as non-deployed veterans.
Among deployed veterans, CMI incidence was 28.9 percent; in non-deployed veterans, it was 15.8 percent.
"A key point is that 10 years after the first Gulf War, CMI was still much more prevalent among deployed than non-deployed veterans," Blanchard says. "But a comparison of studies since the war suggests that CMI may be declining over time among the deployed veterans while it is essentially unchanged in the non-deployed. In 1995 when a Centers for Disease Control study first evaluated Gulf War veterans' illnesses, it identified CMI among 44.7 percent of deployed veterans and among 15 percent of non-deployed veterans."
To help understand the nature of CMI, Blanchard and his colleagues reviewed the data looking for associations between CMI and a variety of other medical conditions. Of the conditions associated with CMI, all were based on symptoms rather than examination and laboratory test findings (fibromyalgia syndrome, chronic fatigue syndrome, upset stomach) except metabolic syndrome.
Fibromyalgia syndrome afflicts sufferers with persistent, widespread pain. Chronic fatigue syndrome leaves sufferers with a disabling loss of energy. While acknowledging that these conditions have serious effects on veterans' health and quality of life, Blanchard notes that they are both based on subjective symptom reports from the patient.
Diagnosis of metabolic syndrome, in contrast, is based on patients meeting at least three of five objective criteria: elevated blood pressure; high levels of triglycerides in the blood; low levels of HDL, also known as good cholesterol; elevated levels of blood glucose after fasting; and a large waist size.
In both deployed and non-deployed veterans diagnosed with CMI, the prevalence of metabolic syndrome was twice that of veterans not suffering from CMI. Metabolic syndrome is associated with several-fold risk of death from coronary artery disease.
"Physicians need to be aware of the potential manifestations of CMI and the need to treat them, and metabolic syndrome is a key example," Blanchard says. "There's quite a bit of literature on this condition, and there are steps physicians can encourage their patients to take, such as increased exercise, stress management and dieting to reduce abdominal fat, that can lessen its effects."
In addition, some of the individual health risk components of the metabolic syndrome can be treated with currently available medications.
Researchers also screened for factors prior to time in the service that affected CMI risk, looking at age, race, and other demographic factors, military characteristics, as well as medical and psychiatric history.
"History of psychiatric conditions prior to service appears to place veterans at a significantly increased risk of CMI," Blanchard says. "This should not be taken as an indication that CMI is all in the veteran's head: the condition has physical manifestations that are very real, including objectively defined conditions such as metabolic syndrome."
Blanchard and others suspect CMI may be connected to malfunctions in the body systems that respond to stress, such as the nervous system. Battlefield stress may help trigger the disorder in deployed veterans. Veterans who develop CMI without serving in the field of combat may be responding to other types of life stress, such as divorce, job pressure or a death in the family.
Blanchard currently is conducting a follow up study of 100 individuals with CMI and 100 without CMI. The study includes an extensive evaluation of participants' stress response systems.
Comment: Strangely enough, no mention is made of the effects of depleted uranium - used extensively in munitions in the Gulf War - on the human body.
A 21-year-old US navy sailor has admitted to killing a local woman near Tokyo, in a case likely to reignite controversy over the American military presence in Japan, police said.
Japanese investigators spoke to the serviceman at a US naval base in Yokosuka, at the mouth of Tokyo Bay, where he has been put in confinement, a media relations official at Kanagawa prefectural police said.
"The suspect has basically admitted to the murder when he spoke during the voluntary questioning," the official said, adding that the suspect is a black male crew member of the Yokosuka-based US aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk.
Japanese media reports have said that the serviceman has already admitted to US military authorities to killing the 56-year-old woman near the Yokosuka base on Tuesday.
Rear Admiral James Kelly, the top US Navy officer in Japan, visited the local municipal administrative office to "offer apologies for the incident," said Isao Anbai, a member of Yokosuka mayor Ryoichi Kabaya's office.
"When our side asked him about the sailor's identity, Kelly said he could not give his name but could identify that he is a 21-year-old seaman recruit and a crew member of the Kitty Hawk," Anbai said.
Under a US-Japanese accord the US military is not required to hand over suspects unless they are charged.
But after the rape of a 12-year-old girl by three US Marines in Okinawa in southern Japan in 1995, which sparked public outcry, Washington agreed to look favourably on requests for a transfer of custody in cases of serious crime.
Commander John Wallach, public affairs director for the US Naval Forces Japan, told AFP that there had been no request for a handover of the suspect yet.
The latest incident comes at a delicate time with Washington and Tokyo negotiating a realignment of US troops in Japan.
Japanese Minister of State for Defense Fukushiro Nukaga called on the US military to ensure its personnel remain within the law.
"The Japan-US alliance is built upon cooperation from communities (hosting bases). There has to be a complete system in which crimes are prevented," he told reporters.
The victim, Yoshie Sato, was found dead and bleeding from her head in the entrance of a building early Tuesday after apparently being attacked on her way to work in what may have been a robbery gone wrong, local media said.
The US Navy said it was offering its full cooperation to Japanese police.
"I offer my most sincere apology to the family and friends of Ms. Sato, and I wish them strength and comfort during this very difficult time," Rear Admiral Kelly said in a statement.
"I reiterate my deep regret and sadness over this tragic incident, and my promise of complete support and cooperation with all Japanese authorities remains firmly in place," he added.
US ambassador Thomas Schieffer expressed his "personal sorrow and outrage about the uncivilized behavior" that resulted in Sato's death.
The US military imposed a partial curfew in response to the death with restricted liberties for personnel assigned to Yokosuka and one other base as part of a "period of reflection" for Navy personnel throughout Japan.
"It's designed to get people thinking about their community relationship and the Japanese-American alliance," said Wallach. "It's a time for leaders to talk to sailors about the importance of that relationship."
As part of a security alliance the United States stations 40,500 troops in Japan, which is banned from having its own official military under the postwar pacifist constitution.
Many communities are reluctant to continue hosting US bases, largely because of crimes committed by soldiers and noise pollution.
There was also public outcry in November after Tokyo said that it had agreed to host a nuclear-powered US aircraft carrier for the first time in Yokosuka, the electoral district of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.
BERLIN - German Chancellor Angela Merkel, in an interview published days before her first visit to the United States, said Washington should close its Guantanamo Bay prison camp and find other ways of dealing with terror suspects.
"An institution like Guantanamo can and should not exist in the longer term," Merkel said in an interview with the weekly magazine Der Spiegel published on Saturday. "Different ways and means must be found for dealing with these prisoners."
Merkel has vowed to repair ties with the United States, severely strained over the U.S.-led Iraq invasion, which her predecessor Gerhard Schroeder strongly opposed.
But there was no sign she would hesitate to speak out on issues where disagreement exists. Asked about her comments at a news conference later in the day, she said: "That's my opinion and my view and I'll say it elsewhere just as I have expressed it here."
She said she would not demand the immediate closure of the detention center when she meets U.S. President George W. Bush on Friday. "My talks with leaders of other countries don't consist of my expressing demands but of exchanging views," she said.
There is widespread skepticism in Germany about the way the United States is fighting its "war on terror," compounded by the recent scandal over the CIA's abduction and detention of German citizen Khaled el-Masri -- later acknowledged to be a mistake.
Guantanamo Bay, the U.S. detention center in Cuba denounced by human rights activists and many governments, is deeply unpopular in Germany.
Merkel told Der Spiegel she expected to speak to Bush about the fight against terrorism. "But I want to accentuate that our relationship with the U.S. will not be reduced to talking about fighting terrorism and the Iraq war," she added.
NO FRIENDSHIP WITH RUSSIA
She also commented on relation with Russia and the
European Union. Merkel described relations with the United States as a "friendship," but said the term "strategic partnership" would be more fitting to describe Germany's ties with Moscow.
"I don't think we share as many of the same values yet with Russia as we do with the United States," she said. "But we have a huge interest in seeing Russia develop in a sensible way."
Merkel, who will meet President Vladimir Putin in Moscow days after her Washington trip, often criticized Schroeder when she was in opposition for forging "exclusive" ties with Russia at the expense of relations with smaller EU countries.
In the interview she said developments like the new law giving the Kremlin more control over non-governmental organizations worried her, while the recent row between Ukraine and Russia over gas prices, which has made Germans question their own heavy reliance on Russia for gas, had reinforced the need for stable relations.
"We need to do everything to save as much energy as possible and diversify our sources," she said, adding that Germany would avoid letting Russia be its only supplier.
Supplies to the 25-nation EU, which imports a quarter of its gas from Russia, were hit after Russian gas monopoly Gazprom cut deliveries to Ukraine on January 1 to push its demand for a fourfold price rise. The two neighbors reached a compromise 5-year supply deal earlier this week.
On the European Union, Merkel said the issue of the bloc's constitution could be tackled when Germany took over the EU presidency in 2007, though much groundwork was needed.
"We need to have an all-encompassing discussion again," Merkel said. "I think it would be good if Europe stayed with the thought of having a constitution. I will lobby for that."
Black Box Voting Forums
Thursday, January 05, 2006 - 05:49 am
Across the USA, citizens are waking up and insisting on oversight of their own elections. Two such citizens are Paul Malischke of Madison and John Washburn of the Milwaukee area.
A tough new law, helped by Malischke's efforts, very nearly enabled Washburn to get a look at the source code: Assembly Bill 627
SECTION 2. 5.84 (3): If a municipality uses an electronic voting system for voting at any election, the municipal clerk SHALL PROVIDE TO ANY PERSON, UPON REQUEST, at the expense of the municipality, THE CODING FOR THE SOFTWARE THAT THE MUNICIPALITY USES to operate the system and to tally the votes cast.
However, on November 3, 2005 the committee gutted the disclosed source requirement with a Assembly Substitute Amendment 1 (which deletes all of AB627 as introduced and replaces it with ASA1).
On November 10, that version was replaced in toto by Assembly Substitution Amendment 2.
A senate amendment was proposed but withdrawn and AB627-ASA2 the Senate as written on December 8, 2005
All the details are here in the legislative history of the AB627.
John Washburn has been working on voting machine issues for over two years, and has assisted activists throughout the country. He traveled to Cuyahoga County (OH) to help make a case against Diebold at a purchasing meeting on Oct. 17, 2005. Washburn has been an active volunteer mentor at the Black Box Voting site, where citizens ask for advice in the "1 on 1 Consulting Area." He recently wrote an informative article for VoteTrustUSA, and he has been very effective in Wisconsin, looking at a number of different manufacturer's systems.
Neither voting machine manufacturers nor public officials, it turns out, had the courage to allow Wisconsin citizen inspection of their source code. Although vendors have been required to submit their system to federal testing labs, it has recently been revealed that these labs did not inspect everything. In December, the state of California cited ommissions by the testing labs and refused to certify the Diebold TSx.
North Carolina has begun to require vendors to submit their computer code, thanks to efforts by citizens like Joyce McCloy of the NC Verifiable Voting Coalition. Diebold Election Systems decided to pull out of the state rather than disclose their code, even to the state, and even with restrictions on who could examine it.
"Public Source" vs. "Open Source"
Note that there is a difference between "public source" and "open source." Public source means that the public can examine the source code that drives the computerized voting system. Open source means the public can participate in submitting updates and changes to the source code. The quality of open source code is only as good as the team of individuals who review suggested code improvements from the public, choosing what to implement. "Open source" is heavily dependent on the license that defines who can give input and under what terms, combined with the quality of its reviewers and overseers. There are over 50 kinds of open source licenses, ranging from licenses that can hardly be considered "open" at all to very generous licensing terms.
The originally proposed Wisconsin law required, in effect, public source. This would allow vendors to maintain their own quality control and change management, while still allowing the public to examine the code.
The final version stripped voters of their right to know what's in the code. Like North Carolina, the law requires the vendor to escrow their code, giving a broad definition of what can be included in the escrow requirements.
All current vendors are required to escrow within 90 days (April 5, 2006). The bill gives the Wisconsin State Elections Board wide statutory authority to inspect software source code, wide discrection on whom to employ for the task.
In Wisconsin, candidates embroiled in recounts will also have the right to inspect the software, and counties will have the right to inspect.
North Carolina gives major political parties the right to inspect the code, but in North Carolina, only Democrats and Republicans qualify.
Fighting for your right to oversee your own elections
The key to trustworthy elections is citizen oversight. Wisconsin and North Carolina are inching towards more examine voting machine source code. Now it's up the citizenry to get the right for VOTERS to inspect it.
Citizen oversight areas that need work
The right to watch elections procedures and tallying is frequently violated in some jurisdictions. In California, the civil right to watch the tallying of the vote has been unlawfully withheld from citizens in Riverside, Los Angeles and San Diego Counties. If you can't watch what goes on in the tally room, including watching the screen on the computer, you won't know who was in there, what system was being used, whether it crashed or was manipulated, or even whether the results reports are from the same machine. As far back as 1996, citizens have been fighting for the right to watch the tallies, and this area needs stepped-up vigilance.
During the 2004 election, a large and well organized group called Election Protection helped watch the voting, but almost no one watched the counting. During the 2006 elections, all phases of the counting will need citizen oversight.
Public records! In the 2004 election, Black Box Voting launched a nationwide public records request for voting machine logs and other election-related records. During 2005, Black Box Voting did many more records requests, including a nationwide search for Diebold records related to the Hursti hack. Many of these requests, and their responses, are published in the Document Archive at Black Box Voting.
Current problems with public records access include:
- Destruction of election-related records (King County (WA), 2004 election, destruction of the Windows Event logs; King County, 2004 primary, destruction of a three-hour time block in the central tabulator audit log
- Nonresponsive behavior: A staggering number of jurisdictions provide the wrong records, submit records that were not asked for while ommitting those that were, misread the request, or otherwise obfuscate and delay records production. In elections, with very short recount and contest periods, such delay tactics effectively eliminate an important area of citizen oversight
- Misleading responses: Some jurisdictions misstate the law, intimidating citizens or forcing them to sue. Records requests by Black Box Voting in Colorado for copies of ballot images from Boulder County resulted in counsel for the secretary of state refusing, quoting a law which did not apply, listing components of the law that do not exist. Colorado, at least, has financial consequences for wrongful withholding of records. Many states have no consequences at all for flaunting public records law, forcing citizens to file expensive and time consuming lawsuits to gain access to their rights.
- Other locations are simply ignoring the requests altogether.
What to ask for:
- "Trouble reports" (defined various ways) which document anomalies in the running of elections
- Contracts with vendors and third parties
- Voting machine logs and reports
- Correspondence between elections officials and various other parties
- Invoices
- "Key logs" and access logs to ballots and voting machine areas
- Transcripts of public meetings
- Electronic files like the databases containing the votes
- Ballot image files (copies of digital photographs of optically scanned balltos)
- Copies of procedures
If you don't live in Wisconsin, now would be a good time to bring this new law to the attention of your own state officials.
In early November, the FBI and Houston police learned that six suspected members of Mara Salvatrucha, a violent Central American gang known as MS-13, were raiding a house on Liberty Street where a rival gang had stashed drugs.
MS-13 - the focus of a nationwide crackdown by FBI and federal immigration agents - has become known in recent years for home invasion robberies, drug dealing and machete attacks on its enemies. But what happened in Houston on Nov. 2, FBI and Houston police officials say, has heightened concerns that MS-13 could be far more dangerous than thought.
The MS-13 suspects swept through the house like a well-trained assault team, using paramilitary tactics including perimeter lookouts, high-powered weaponry (an AK-47 rifle was among the weapons recovered later), and a quick, room-by-room sweep of the house that was notable for its precision and sophistication, Houston police spokesman Alvin Wright says.
When the MS-13 suspects were challenged by authorities, the result was an intense shootout that killed two suspects, identified as Juan Antonio Bautista, 29, and Jose Antonio Pino, 33. The four others were arrested and face an array of state charges, including robbery and assault.
Bob Clifford, who directs the FBI unit created last year to combat MS-13, says the battle symbolized MS-13's development from a smattering of loosely organized cells across the nation to an increasingly efficient and dangerous organization that has become a significant threat to public safety.
"Our worst suspicions about MS-13 have been confirmed" by the Houston shooting and other recent gang-related incidents, Clifford says.
From low-income neighborhoods in Los Angeles, MS-13 has spread throughout the USA, largely following the migration patterns of immigrants from El Salvador and other Central American nations. With a membership that the FBI estimates could be as high as 10,000, MS-13 is most active in Los Angeles, the Mid-Atlantic, Rhode Island and Connecticut.
Routes for trafficking
Clifford says the group also has formed commerce routes across the nation for drug-trafficking operations that often include "theft crews" who steal over-the-counter cough and cold medicines from drugstores. Such medicines, which can be abused or used to make other drugs, are then sold to help finance MS-13 units, Clifford says.
In recent years, MS-13's reputation as a particularly brutal gang was cemented by a series of incidents, several of them in Northern Virginia. In one, a former MS-13 member who had become a police informant was fatally stabbed and her head almost severed. In another, MS-13 members used a machete to cut off several fingers of a rival gang member.
The Houston shootout, however, raised questions about whether the gang - whose original members in Los Angeles included people with paramilitary training who fled the civil war in El Salvador during the 1980s - is evolving into an organization that is in their image.
The Houston incident sparked an FBI investigation that has reached into El Salvador to try to determine whether MS-13 members are receiving formal training in weapons and military tactics before they come to the USA - often as illegal immigrants.
Raids of suspected MS-13 safe houses in Central America, Mexico and the USA by federal and international law enforcement officials resulted in more than 600 arrests and the discovery of gang "constitutions," the FBI said.
The documents, most of them crudely handwritten codes of conduct, listed a range of punishments - from death to severe beatings - for transgressions against the gang. The seizures marked the first time that such organizational records had been recovered in this country.
Federal agents and local police say that recent arrests of MS-13 members have shed light on how the gang is raising money in the USA.
Stealing from drugstores
Three months ago in Madison, Wis., local police and FBI investigators arrested three suspected MS-13 members who allegedly were involved in stealing tens of thousands of dollars' worth of over-the-counter medicines from 22 Walgreens drugstores throughout the Midwest.
Madison detectives and FBI investigators later determined that the medicines were being transported to a warehouse in Louisville to be resold.
"We had not seen evidence of their presence here before (the arrests) or since," says Mike Hanson, spokesman for the Madison Police Department. "Our understanding is they were passing through here. They knew the number of Walgreens stores and were familiar with the routes in and out of town."
In several cases, Hanson says, the suspects used a special bag that blocked the drugstores' electronic sensors from detecting items that were being stolen from the stores.
"The suspects researched Walgreens throughout the Midwest and on a routine basis averaged $45,000 to $55,000 worth of stolen merchandise per day," Hanson says.
Clifford says "it would be dangerous to look at MS-13 as just another street gang."
One of the greatest fears related to our teens is their propensity to use and abuse drugs and alcohol. “Just Say No” has been one of the most visible anti-drug campaigns yet has failed to live up to its logical hope: that it is easy for kids to simply refuse the call of altered consciousness. Ponder this: the US has spent more than $250 billion dollars in the past 20 years on drug prevention. In the past few years, I’ve yet to find one person who works with kids who thinks things are getting any better after such a hefty investment of tax dollars.
D.A.R.E., the most recent cornerstone of the anti-drug industry, has actually backfired. Study after study confirms that all D.A.R.E. has really accomplished is to expose our children to drugs at an early age, prompting more use and addiction than kids who never heard of the program. Think about it: would you rather your kids know everything about drugs, or nothing about them (like the 40’s and 50’s)? Personally, I want my daughter naïve enough so she can’t even spells ‘drugs.’ Why? She’s much less likely to engage in drugs if she knows little or nothing about them.
So why do these logical, common sense approaches backfire? The same reason Prohibition failed so miserably. They fail to take into account the universal propensity to alter one’s consciousness occasionally. Did the failure of Prohibition and subsequent birth of bootleg liquor and organized crime prove all Americans are alcoholics? Of course not! But Americans have an addiction rate 10 times higher than Italy or France, who allow their children moderate use of wine. Hmmm….Teens, as well as adults, have a driving need to alter their consciousness. This can be done in appropriate or inappropriate ways. Why do small kids roll down hills? Being dizzy is an altered state. So is a ride on a roller coaster, fresh powder, or going without sleep for too long. Much that we experience in life alters our consciousness.
A hundred years ago all drugs were legal in America, yet we had no epidemic of drug abuse. The paradox around drugs seems to be this: the more we try and control them, the less control we achieve. Compare what we’ve gotten out of our $250 billion investment to what Holland (and other countries) are doing. A while back Holland decriminalized heroin and simply quit trying to control marijuana. Our American mind recoils at this thought, but what happened was a 40% drop in national crime, fewer addictions to young users, and more people quitting. Imagine what the US could do with 40% of its crime expenditures used elsewhere. The average hard-core drug user commits 50 robberies and 85 burglaries per year.
The concept of punishing drug users has also failed miserably. The majority of prison convicts in America are for drug related charges. California is now the third largest prison system in the world, and the prison population has increased seven-fold since the 70’s. From 1984-1994, California opened 21 new prisons but only one new university. We simply have to ask ourselves if this approach has worked, and why we believe it will magically do so in the future. In 1998, the majority of California’s “3-Strike” offenders doing 25-years-to-life were for marijuana, not murder.
Another reason American teens use so many drugs and alcohol is to numb out their feelings of abuse, neglect and drama as the family system in the US continues to deteriorate. But remember, teens and all other children learn from watching adults. America leads the world with a $97 billion annual expenditure on prescription (legal) drugs. The top three types of drugs are anti-depressants, anti-ulcerants, and anti-psychotics. Is the mental health of adults getting better after all of this? Not that I can tell.
Then, we medicate kids in record numbers to moderate their behavior. Almost 5% of every American boy is on Ritalin or some other mood-altering prescription, and at the current rate fully 10% of all US children will be medicated by 2010!! The lunacy to this is that when our medicated children become teens, we then try desperately to teach them NOT to use drugs to moderate their behavior.
Teens are very adept at seeing the double standards of behavior (legal chemicals) we parents and adults model for them. What are they supposed to think, or how should they act, when they witness the fact that tobacco kills 500,000 annually; alcohol kills about 105,000 Americans yearly, including DUI’s; prescription drugs kill about 100,000 people each year; and aspirin causes more hospitalizations than illegal drugs?
People ask me all the time what the cure for drugs (or gangs) is. The answer, I’ve come to believe, is Prevention. I’ve spent most of my past columns trying to explain how a treatment approach isn’t working and we need to prevent the problems rather than always hoping we can fix them later. What would this look like?
For example, the $250 billion dollars mentioned above has failed to deliver as promised, and this year we’ll toss yet another $20 billion into “Just Say No” approaches. That same amount of money would pay for 80,000 - 150,000 youth to college or trade school; one year of out-patient treatment for 350,000 kids, or wages for 1,000,000 mentors or reading tutors at a few hours per week.
The final main reason teens use drugs & alcohol is due to extended adolescence, the fact we have no closure to adolescence and make them wait too long to join the grownup club. How many of us actually waited until we were 21 to drink, smoke or have sex? When teens were initiated into adulthood earlier than the present, they didn’t have to wait as long and were content with the setup.
Don’t read this wrong. I’m not a proponent for allowing our kids to use drugs. Kids using drugs inhibits their developmental growth, stagnates their emotional growth, and teaches them how to avoid dealing with reality sober. We need to find healthy ways of letting them experience altered states (sports, guided imageries, sweat lodges, etc.). Most native cultures also did not have addiction problems because they mostly used their medicine plants for ceremonial reasons, where in modern American we tend to use recreationally.
Mostly we need to quit hoping they’ll stop if we adults don’t. We need to quit wasting resources on models that obviously do not succeed. We need to prevent the problem rather than hoping we’ll solve it after it’s broken. If you recall Einstein’s definition of insanity, it goes like this: “Doing the same thing over and over again yet expecting a different outcome.” Why in the world would we practice insanity on our children?
Comment: Given that groups like the CIA use illegal drug sales to generate a large part of the enormous sums required to fund "black" projects, we might suspect that efforts like DARE don't work because they were never really designed to work.
By Myra P. Saefong
MarketWatch
4:18 PM ET Jan. 6, 2006
SAN FRANCISCO -- Gold futures closed above $541 an ounce Friday to log a gain of more than 4% for the week with a decline in the U.S. dollar driving investors toward precious metals as a hedge against potential losses.
Gold for February delivery closed at $541.20 an ounce on the New York Mercantile Exchange after touching an intraday high of $541.80. Prices haven't closed at a level this high since March 1981, though on an intraday basis, they touched $543 on Dec. 12 of last year. [...]
"China's announcement of wanting to diversify their foreign-exchange reserves holdings is going to have a profound effect on financial markets worldwide," said Peter Grandich, editor of the Grandich Letter.
"It's the death blow to the U.S. dollar, which had enjoyed a temporary reprieve in 2005, and another bullish factor for gold going forward," he said.
Also, "disappointing U.S. employment numbers spooked the dollar, and in turn boosted gold prices on its traditional inverse relationship," said Matthew Parry, an economist at Economy.com.
The dollar fell to its lowest against the yen Friday since mid-October.
"Diversifying away from dollars has become desirable -- retail investors returned to the precious metals arena in droves this week," said Jon Nadler, an investment products analyst at bullion dealers Kitco.com.
"Low yields on cash and negative real interest rates are adding fuel to this quest for adding gold and silver to one's portfolio," he said.
However, "it is still mostly the fundamental picture of sluggish supply and robust demand plus the prospects for weakness in the dollar that are the engines of this latest spike in prices."
Bullish outlook
Against this backdrop, the outlook for bullion is "very positive," analysts at Desjardins Securities said in a note to clients. "The main reason is that investment demand will continue to boost the gold price. Underlying nervousness with regard to the fundamentals for the U.S. dollar is underpinning investment in gold."
Economy.com's Parry said gold prices will remain supported above $500 in 2006, reflecting a weakening in the dollar tied to slower tightening in monetary policy by the Federal Reserve as well as continued tensions in the Middle East.
Analysts at Nacional Bank raised their forecasts for gold to $525 an ounce in 2006 and 2007 and $500 an ounce in 2008.
Speculation that central banks in countries including China, South Africa and Argentina will increase the portion of gold held as reserves is also keeping gold above $500 and fueling gains in gold equities, they said.
Most other metals were higher, with March silver closing up 30.1 cents at $9.173 an ounce -- up 3.2% for the week. January platinum ended at $1,004.60 an ounce, adding $13.10 for the session to close the week with a gain of 2.6%. March palladium rose $7.05 to close at $273.40 an ounce, up 4.4% from the week-ago close.
Copper's March contract tacked on 2.55 cents to finish at $2.086 a pound. It gained 2.2% for the week.
On the supply side, copper inventories rose 336 short tons to 7,762 short tons as of last Thursday, according to Nymex.
Gold stocks were unchanged at 6.91 million troy ounces, while supplies of silver were unchanged at 120.6 million troy ounces.
Indexes close higher
Metals-mining equities rose Friday, providing a lift to the benchmarks that track the companies and sending the Amex Gold Bugs Index to a fresh high.
The Amex Gold Bugs Index closed at 305.08, up 2.8%, after tapping a fresh record of 307.72. It was up 10.2% from the week-ago close.
The CBOE Gold Index rose 3.6% to close at 131.98 points to mark a gain of 10.2% for the week.
And the Philadelphia Gold and Silver Index closed at 139.86 points, up 3.3%. It gained 9.2% for the week.
NEW YORK - U.S. stocks extended their gains on Friday, pushing the Nasdaq index above 2,300 for the first time since May 2001, with rival Internet search companies Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. leading the way.
The Dow Jones industrial average was up 73.40 points, or 0.67 percent, at 10,955.55. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index was up 11.07 points, or 0.87 percent, at 1,284.55. The technology-laced Nasdaq Composite Index was up 26.66 points, or 1.17 percent, at 2,303.53.
Comment: All that remains is for someone to echo Yale economics professor Irving Fisher's infamous remark:
"Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau."
The next day saw the 1929 stock market crash that sparked the Great Depression.
Why are folks so pessimistic about our boom-boom American economy? Because for most of us, it's painful to live in.
The economy the cable news networks gush about is going gangbusters. We're hearing about 10 straight quarters of strong growth in gross domestic product, and jobs being created at a clip of over 2 million per year. Unemployment is down, and more Americans own their homes than ever before. And don't forget, Americans' net worth is at an all-time high! And all this prosperity, the corporate media will tell you, is thanks to five years of President George Bush.
But that's an economic picture you won't find hanging on the wall in any normal American house. Most of us know that we're not doing as well today as we were a few years ago. According to a recent Gallup Poll, almost two-thirds of those asked said the economy was "fair" or "poor," and almost six in 10 thought it was getting worse.
That disconnect has left many commentators -- especially on the right -- either scratching their heads with befuddlement or raging apoplectically at the bias of the "liberal media."
National Review author Victor Davis Hanson scolded those who read the New York Times for living "in an alternate universe where everything is supposedly going to hell." In "the real adult world," Hanson wrote, "the economy is red-hot, not mired in joblessness or relegating millions to poverty." But in fact, there are 5 million more Americans living in poverty today than there were four years ago.
Gerard Baker, the U.S. editor for Rupert Murdoch's Times of London wrote, "when it comes to economics, all but America's most fervent critics can still only marvel."
"Everything in the American garden is lovely," Baker continued, "So why the long face, buddy?"
I'll tell you why the long face: The economy most of us experience from day to day has been nothing short of painful over the past five years.
Consider these numbers from the Economic Policy Institute -- a left-leaning think-tank (this essay leans heavily on EPI's excellent research):
Salaries are still below where they were at the start of the recovery in November 2001. That, while productivity -- the growth of the economic pie -- is up by almost 15 percent. Meaning we're working harder, producing more, for the same money as five years ago.
Since the recession ended in 2001, 50 percent more of the growth in corporate income was sucked up as profits than after past recessions. That's left less for those of us who work for a living.
As a result, median household income has now fallen for five years in a row. It was 4 percent, or $2,000, lower in 2004 than it was in 1999.
That last figure means that Joe and Jane Average American -- the household smack in the middle of the booming go-go American economy -- have gotten a pay cut for five years in a row. Small wonder they're sporting long faces.
And that hasn't occurred in a bubble; health care costs for that same family (with kids) rose over 40 percent -- yeah, 40 percent --between 2000 and 2003.
Here's a brief guide for sorting out the economy we live in versus the one we're supposed to feel fuzzy and warm about.
Go-go GDP
It's not just that the growth in GDP over the past four years has been skewed towards investors -- it has -- it's that much of it is a chimera. Defense spending, consumer spending -- financed largely by debt -- and rising home values have been the growth engines for the current recovery. Author James Howard Kunstler estimates that from "2001 through 2005, consumer spending and residential construction had together accounted for 90 percent of the total growth in GDP." [italics mine]
That growth hasn't been free and isn't sustainable. U.S. household debt, adjusted for inflation, rose by more than a third over the last four years. Mortgage and consumer debt equals 115 percent of after-tax income, and the amount American families spend paying off those debts is at an all-time high of almost 14 percent of their paychecks. In other words Americans are all paying a hefty monthly debt tax to banks and creditors on top of what we already pay the government.
Wealth, wealth everywhere
The National Review's Jerry Bowyer blames the "mainstream media" for "obsessing over the level of debt of the average American family, which they only look at in a vacuum, [and] completely ignoring the growth of family net worth." If they were honest, he argues, they'd have to acknowledge "the highest level of household wealth in our nation's history."
But much of that newfound wealth is in our homes, and all signs point to a bubble in the sky-high housing market (although it varies widely by region). According to the Center for Economic Policy Research [PDF] -- a progressive think tank -- the current market "has created more than $5 trillion in bubble wealth, the equivalent of $70,000 per average family of four." Housing prices are way above their historic pattern when you look at demand, population and earnings. What's more, the price for home sales has been way out of step with the rental market -- something one wouldn't expect to see if the high prices were based on economic fundamentals. The estate might be real, but its value isn't.
Unemployment
The headline is that the unemployment rate is low and holding steady at around 5 percent. But it's a tricky statistic: people who give up trying to find a job aren't counted, nor are people who are underemployed. Private sector jobs have increased by only about 1 percent since the start of the current economic recovery. Four years into previous recoveries, private sector job growth had averaged almost 9 percent and it's never been less than 6 percent. According to EPI, "The percent of the population that has a job has never recovered since the recession and is still 1.3 percent lower than in March 2001."
The data tell the tale. While one can spin all day long according to his or her worldview and offer up grand theories about Americans' pessimism, the truth is that for about eight out of 10 people on American payrolls, the economy sucks.
Add in high fuel costs and large, highly visible rounds of layoffs in some of America's leading firms, especially in the auto industry. Then consider the latest tactic sweeping across corporate America: using bankruptcy to "seek relief" from pension and health care obligations. As the Wall Street Journal reported:
Whether an assembly-line worker or middle manager, an employee can no longer assume that promises made earlier -- health benefits or fully funded pensions -- will be there when he or she retires. The loss of security arising from Chapter 11 reorganizations has introduced a new element of anxiety into the lives of baby boomers who are approaching 60, not to mention younger workers just starting out in their careers.
That's just part of a growing trend. Of course, last year's bankruptcy reform bill will prevent most working families from enjoying similar "relief."
None of these issues are of any concern to people earning a couple of hundred grand to discuss the economy on Fox or MSNBC. Contra the right's liberal media conspiracy theories, the major media from across the spectrum are reporting the good news about America's booming economy with zeal.
That endless drumbeat comes with social costs.
First, it fuels the bubble mentality. If the economy's going gangbusters but you're struggling, of course you want to get in on the latest billionaire-creating wealth machine. That mentality infected anyone who bought tech stocks in 1999 hoping to become a "dot-com millionaire," just as it has them running around today buying houses at any price with the expectation that they'll get a 10 percent annual return. Alan Greenspan characterized the mindset as being one of "irrational exuberance." But what could be more rational than piling onto the latest bandwagon after watching a half-hour of CNBC's economic triumphalism?
Less easy to quantify is the psychic cost this has on us. The message we get all the time is that our unrivalled, dynamic economy affords opportunities for us all. So, if you're one of the majority who is not doing so well, it must be your fault. It is you, and not any external economic factor, that is keeping you from profiting from the Ownership Society. You are a loser.
A while back, I wrote an article about how the job outsourcing trend has happened at the same time, as deep cuts in transitional training and assistance came down from Washington. A reader sent me an email about how her middle-aged brother had been laid off by the aircraft parts manufacturer where he had worked for 20 years. "You know the hardest part," she wrote, "has been how he's internalized everything. He has such a low sense of self-worth."
Despite our great wealth, we're an unhappy people; we lead the world in mental health problems year in and year out. It's impossible to know to what degree that results from failing to live up to the economic expectations drummed into our heads every time we hear about the wonders of the American economy. But the message to all those families struggling to get by should be: You're not alone, it's all of us.
WASHINGTON – As it hunted down tax scofflaws, the Internal Revenue Service collected information on the political party affiliations of taxpayers in 20 states.
Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., a member of an appropriations subcommittee with jurisdiction over the IRS, said the practice was an “outrageous violation of the public trust” that could undermine the agency’s credibility.
IRS officials acknowledged that party affiliation information was routinely collected by a vendor for several months. They told the vendor last month to screen the information out.
“The bottom line is that we have never used this information,” said John Lipold, an IRS spokesman. “There are strict laws in place that forbid it.”
Washington state residents do not express a party preference when they register to vote. Residents of 20 other states and the District of Columbia have to provide a party affiliation when registering. Voter registration information is publicly available.
Murray said she learned about the problem from the president of the National Treasury Employees Union, Colleen Kelly. The IRS is part of the Treasury Department.
“This agency should not have that type of information,” Murray said in a telephone interview from Seattle. “No one should question whether they are being audited because of party affiliation.”
Kelly said Thursday that several IRS employees had complained to the union about the practice. She said IRS officials weren’t even aware of it until she wrote them in late December.
In a letter to Kelly, Deputy IRS Commissioner John Dalrymple said the party identification information was automatically collected through a “database platform” supplied by an outside contractor that targeted voter registration rolls among other things as it searched for people who aren’t paying their taxes.
“This information is appropriately used to locate information on taxpayers whose accounts are delinquent,” he said.
Murray and Kelly, however, remained skeptical. Kelly said the collection of such data was even more troubling because the IRS intends to start using private collection agencies later this year to go after back taxes.
“We think Congress should suspend IRS plans to use private collections agencies until these questions have been resolved,” she said.
According to Murray’s office, the 20 states in which the IRS collected party affiliation information were Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas, Utah and Wisconsin.
It will cost Americans 2 cents more to mail a letter starting Sunday. First-class postage rises to 39 cents for the first ounce.
The increase follows legislation requiring the Postal Service to place $3 billion in an escrow account this year. Another rate boost is likely next year to cover rising costs for the agency. Stamp prices last went up in June 2002.
Many rates, such as parcel post and advertising mail, vary by distance or whether the material is presorted. Rate changes taking effect, including some estimates for typical mailed items:
- Post card, and each additional ounce in first class, up 1 cent to 24 cents.
- Letter to Canada or Mexico, 1 ounce, up 3 cents to 63 cents.
- Letter to other foreign countries, 1 ounce, up 4 cents to 84 cents.
- Priority Mail, 1 pound, up 20 cents to $4.05.
- Express Mail, 8 ounces, up 75 cents to $14.40.
- Certified mail, up 10 cents to $2.40.
- Money orders up 5 cents to 95 cents.
- Delivery confirmation, up 5 cents to 60 cents.
- Weekly news magazine, 5.8 ounces, presorted, up 1 cent to 18.5 cents.
- Household magazine, 13.8 ounces, presorted, up 1.5 cents to 28.9 cents.
- Small nonprofit publication, presorted, up 1.4 cents to 28.3 cents.
By Doug Vakoch
Director of Interstellar Message Composition, SETI Institute
05 January 2006 06:33 am ET
The scenario is familiar from Hollywood blockbusters like Armageddon and Deep Impact. A massive asteroid—perhaps ten miles in diameter—is headed straight for Earth. An all-out effort to deflect it is mounted. If the mission succeeds, civilization as we know it will continue.
But if natural human reactions to threats interfere, the ending could be far from uplifting. If fear and denial postpone an adequate response, dust and debris could make the daytime sky look like night, the Earth’s surface could be razed by a global firestorm, and tsunamis could obliterate coastal cities.
In theory, threats from space may be detected far in advance of their arrival, giving plenty of time to deflect them or at least prepare for the aftermath. But that’s in theory. "What we may actually get," says psychologist Albert Harrison, "is an obsessive focus on a very constricted range of options, a refusal to consider or integrate new data, defensiveness that prevents decision makers from appreciating threats and developing alternatives, and panicky, ineffective last-minute choices."
The result would be devastating. "In some respects," Harrison suggests, "post-impact Earth may resemble an off-world destination: a dangerous place bombarded with harmful forms of radiation, a toxic atmosphere, and little or no useful vegetation." If some part of humanity survives, its future may be bleak. In the case of extreme destruction, Harrison says, "hopes generated by looking forward to emerging from shelter will be overpowered by the realities of living on a dead and barren planet."
The Human Response
As a social psychologist at the University of California at Davis, Harrison has long contemplated the impact of space, ranging from long-duration spaceflights to the societal implications of detecting life beyond Earth. His emphasis is squarely on the human factor, as is evident from the subtitles of several of his books, including Spacefaring: The Human Dimension and After Contact: The Human Response to Extraterrestrial Life. Recently, Harrison has turned his attention to a different sort of impact from space: the threat of a massive Near Earth Object (NEO) that could wipe out civilization as we know it. "If volcanic activity or a NEO strike were sufficiently energetic to produce the equivalent of a nuclear winter," Harrison says, "there would be no speedy return to normal."
At some level, we can anticipate life in a post-impact world by looking at other natural disasters. But the scale of destruction makes many comparisons irrelevant. We might expect to see heroic acts of altruism and charity following such a catastrophe, for example, but the magnitude of the devastation may limit the role that good intentions can play. "Following a major NEO impact," Harrison explains, "there may be no rich people to aid the poor."
But given our natural ways of coping with disasters, fear and denial may be the critical factors that threaten humanity’s very survival. Learning of an impending NEO impact might well lead to responses akin to those observed by psychiatric social worker Terrance O’Connor when people face environmental problems—or refuse to face them. "Avoidance reactions are common," he notes. "Most boil down to ‘I don’t want to hear about it,’ or ‘It’s not my responsibility.’ Some people convince themselves that ‘it’s not happening.’"
Clinical psychologist Sarah Conn describes a similar reaction to threats. "We feel either overwhelmed by or removed from what we learn about environmental deterioration," she suggests. "We become helpless or indifferent in the face of it, and unable to respond except with numbness and denial." In the face of an impending NEO impact, similar denial may have irreversible consequences.
Strategies for Survival
What then should we do if danger is upon us? The key, Harrison notes, is to remain open to new information that pours in during the weeks, months, and years following the first detection of a menacing NEO.
Such openness will be difficult to maintain in tense and ambiguous times. In spite of our natural tendency to choose quickly one plan of defense and stay with it, it will be critical to evaluate alternative strategies as updated information comes in.
At each step of the way, if we can anticipate our automatic responses, we can beware of their potential problems. For example, a natural tendency will be to focus on the view of the majority, excluding alternative solutions. And yet, innovative approaches that take into account new data or different perspectives may be the key to survival. But what, practically, can we do to promote more productive responses?
First, we need to be aware of our tendency to latch quickly onto one answer, even when subsequent information calls it into question. To guard against such uncritical acceptance of one position, some key decision makers may be selected to play the role of devil’s advocate. By sanctioning the role of dissident, unpopular but potentially vital alternatives can be explored, providing one safeguard against monolithic "groupthink."
"Of course the ultimate protection for our race," suggests Harrison, "is dispersal beyond our home planet." In tandem with preparations to protect the welfare of Earth-bound people, colonies might also be established on other planets. "Dispersal throughout the solar system will not necessarily protect us from all risks," he acknowledges, "but we would be far better protected from extinction than we are right now."
People laugh about the story of Chicken Little who cries out that the sky is falling. But a group of astronomers has warned that something like that may very well happen before this half-century is out. They have discovered an asteroid nearly a quarter-mile wide that they think might slam into the earth 30 years from now and are urging immediate action by governments around the world to start planning programs to avert that happening.
The group is made up of people who are experts in near-Earth objects, for which they make the acronym NEO. They had a conference in London recently and compared notes on their findings.
The asteroid in question was identified in 2004 and studied in 2005 for its trajectory. At first they were scared enough to believe that it could hit the earth in 2029. Then they did some more fine-tuning of their computer data and decided that it would come close to the earth in 2029, but wouldn't be on a possible collision course until 2036.
They're worried. As one of the conferees said: "It's question of when — not if — a near-Earth object collides with Earth."
The conference pointed out that the geologic record shows that an object a half-mile or more in width has collided with the earth every few hundred thousand years. An object three miles wide, which could cause mass extinction, has hit the earth every hundred million years.
Given the geologic record of the last time something like that happened, one scientist at the conference said: "We are overdue for a big one." [...]
PARIS - In 2006, Arnold Schwarzenegger will be re-elected governor of California, Internet giant Google will suffer a setback -- and Brazil will hang on to the World Cup.
If Earth doesn't get wiped out by a giant comet first, that is.
Maybe it will all come true and maybe not, but a legion of soothsayers -- from business gurus to Bible decoders -- is full of predictions for the year to come.
Some use elaborate computer programs like "Torah4U" to ferret out remarkably precise predictions allegedly hidden within the Hebrew text of the Old Testament and the Torah.
One Website complete with diagrammed excerpts from Holy scripture, exodus2006.com, foresees the November re-election of Schwarzenegger along with the re-establishment of a military draft in the United States.
It also predicts that August 3, 2006 will be a blood-drenched day -- yet just a mere shadow of the calamity that will befall us in 2010.
Annie Stanton, one of countless psychics plying her trade on the Internet, predicts that catastrophe will come this year in the form of a massive asteroid crashing into the planet. [...]
Comment: Anyone can make predictions. Not everyone collects data to demonstrate that the incidences of meteorites and other NEOs visiting the planet have been increasing recently. In any case, it is clear that the idea of a disaster involving a cosmic body slamming into Earth is being subtly brought to the attention of the masses.
Being home due to the holidays, I've seen a lot more tv than usual. Has anyone else noticed the increasing references to meteors and asteroids in weird places?
The most blatent one is a commercial for a new variety of garbage bag (Glad) which is more stretchy. It's got a lady emptying her kitchen trash while listening to a tv report of a meteor shower impacting the earth. The next scene is '50s style sci-fi kitsch with the meteors coming down on the earth and being caught in this super-stretchy strong new garbage bag. It then shows this gal taking her trash out to be collected and pulling a chuck of rock off the windshield of a car and putting in the bag. (Nothing to worry about here . . .)
The second weird reference was in a Discovery channel show, which was a "teen science challange". They got these teams of whiz kids together for a sort of science-under-pressure contest. The teams were presented with five types of natural disaster and had to come up with ways of accurately modeling them for study and ways to collect the data. Among the things they had to figure out was how to make a device to cause a wave tank to consistently model a tsunami. The talking head host mentions that tsunamis can be caused by earthquakes, underwater landslides, **asteroid strikes**, and volcanic eruptions.
These were both today. It just seems like there's a general uptick in the mentions of asteroids/meteors lately.
Officials confirmed that there was an earthquake in northeast Ohio Thursday night, NewsChannel5 reported.
Preliminary reports indicate that it was a 2.8 on the richter scale.
Residents in Mentor, Painesville and Madison reported feeling something at about 9:45.
"It felt like someone hit my house," said one resident.
"If it wasn't an earthquake then what was it? Shortly before 10 p.m. I was laying in bed watching TV and talking on the phone when I felt everything start shaking, while at the same time I heard a noise that sounded like someone had literally slid into my house," said Jason Stoddard, a Mentor resident. "Not like they crashed through it, but as if they just made contact with it. I looked out my window and saw nothing and just passed it off."
Stoddard said he later got several phone calls from friends who asked, "You didn't feel that?"
Area dispatchers also got several phone calls from concerned residents.
ROME - An estimated 11 million people in the Horn of Africa "are on the brink of starvation" because of severe drought and war, with some deaths already being reported in Kenya, the
United Nations said Friday.
People in Somalia, Kenya, Djibouti and Ethiopia need food aid, water, new livestock and seeds, the Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organization said in a statement.
"Millions of people are on the brink of starvation in the Horn of Africa due to recent severe droughts coupled with the effects of past and ongoing conflicts," the agency said.
FAO economist Shukri Ahmed said the region's dry season had begun and the rains forecast for March and April are not expected to be significant.
Normally, the herdsmen of the area would move from place to place for water and food for their livestock, but the recent drought had covered too large a swath of territory for them, Ahmed said.
"The whole area is affected," he said. "The situation is deteriorating."
The FAO is calling for domestic food purchases in areas where harvests are expected to be favorable and food aid imports elsewhere, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said at U.N. headquarters in New York.
The World Food Program is now feeding 1.2 million drought victims, "but fears this figure could more than double to 2.5 million," Dujarric said.
The food situation in Somalia and eastern Kenya is particularly serious, the FAO said. Ahmed said local newspapers, citing Kenyan medical officials, have reported at least 30 famine-related deaths.
The government of Kenya has said its efforts to distribute food to famine-stricken areas in its north have been hampered by the nation's nomadic culture and poor infrastructure. President Mwai Kibaki has declared a national disaster.
In Somalia, the secondary rainy season from October to December failed in most of the eight agricultural regions in the south, "resulting in widespread crop failure" that could be the worst in a decade, the agency said.
The country of 7 million that has not had an effective government since clan-based warlords overthrew dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991. Warlords then turned on each other.
Nearly 150,000 people in Djibouti — or almost a fifth of the population — are believed to be facing food shortages because of drought, FAO said.
In Ethiopia, food shortages have been reported in the east and south, even though the prospects for the current harvest were favorable, the agency said. It said more than $40 million in aid was needed to stave off starvation.
About 3,000 U.N. soldiers guard the frontier between longtime enemies Ethiopia and Eritrea after a two-year war ended in 2000. Tensions have risen in recent weeks, with both countries massing troops along border and Eritrea restricting peacekeeping activities.
The World Food Program has said Somalia needed 64,000 tons of food aid through June, but only 16,700 tons had been donated.
A WFP emergency assessment team will travel to drought-hit areas in eastern and northern Kenya to determine how many people there require food aid, Dujarric said.
The agency recently added 200,000 students to a school meal program in northern Kenya, pushing the total number of Kenyan children receiving the free meals to 1.3 million, he said.
Elsewhere, he said, WFP has been forced to cut rations to Angolan and Congolese refugees in Zambia in half because of a shortage of funds.
French children are catching up to their US counterparts in the obesity stakes, a group of French pediatricians said.
The scales are tipping towards obesity at a rate of five percent per year since 1997 in France, the same rate as seen on the other side of the Atlantic, the AFPA association said.
"This regular increase is especially worrying and, if nothing is done, it suggests there will be a minimal difference between the two countries within 15 years," it said in a statement.
The association made the warning on the eve of an obesity-testing operation it was to carry out Saturday in 83 French towns and villages.
Its first such operation, carried out last year, showed that 61 percent of children tested carried more weight than should be healthy for their size.
"These percentages show that parents are becoming aware too slowly and aren't concerned enough about their child's 'baby fat'," one of the organisers, Brigitte Virey, said.
According to the paediatricians, obesity can start appearing from around age two, with children aged from seven to 12 the most affected.
Two-thirds of children who are obese carry that condition into adulthood, along with its associated risks of cardio-vascular problems, diabetes and poor self-image.
France's state National Statistics Institute released a study last November showing that 40 percent of French adults are overweight.
GREAT FALLS, Mont. - A cow that escaped a slaughterhouse dodged vehicles, ran in front of a train, braved the icy Missouri River and took three tranquilizer darts before being recaptured six hours later. News of the heifer's adventures prompted a number of people to offer to buy the animal.
The black, 1,200 pound heifer jumped a gate at the packing plant at around 5 a.m. Thursday and apparently wandered through residential areas. Police received reports at about 9:30 a.m. that it was in the middle of a busy intersection.
Police tried to catch the cow, and had her wedged between a stock trailer and a fence, but the heifer barreled through the fence toward the river, nearly being hit by a Chevrolet Suburban.
It was the first of many near-death experiences.
With the police in pursuit, the cow ran toward the railroad tracks and darted in front of an oncoming locomotive, briefly giving the police the slip again.
Crossing another road, the cow was nearly struck by a semi tractor-trailer.
"By then it was a madhouse," said police officer Corey Reeves. "People were coming out of the woodwork to see."
When police, animal control officers and slaughterhouse workers surrounded the cow in a park near the Missouri River, the cow jumped into the icy water.
As she swam to the west bank of the river, Reeves said she sank lower in the water and was being swept downstream. But the cow found a sandbar near the river's west bank and walked to shore.
"I was totally amazed she was able to swim the river," said Del Morris, the slaughterhouse manager.
As police scrambled to head off the cow on the other side of the river, a veterinarian with a tranquilizer gun was called.
Pursuers again believed they had the cow cornered at a chain link fence, but the heifer ran through a perimeter set up by officials.
The chase began to slow as the cow ran up against several strong fences. Dr. Jennifer Evans of Big Sky Medical Center shot the cow with a tranquilizer dart.
It had little effect.
Two darts later, the heifer showed no signs of going down. Slaughterhouse workers created a makeshift pen with metal panels that led to a stock trailer.
The heifer walked into the trailer at 11:45 a.m.
The cow was taken back to the slaughterhouse, where it was put in a pen — with a stronger fence — and given food and water.
HONOLULU -- Something is killing hundreds of catfish in the Manoa Stream. The mysterious fish killing has prompted officials with the state Health Department and the Department of Land Natural Resources to begin testing the water and the fish.
People who live along the Manoa Stream began noticing the dead fish along the banks this week.
"We got a call from a resident two days ago, and he reported a large number of dead catfish. So, we did go out and check," DLNR aquatic biologist Mike Yamamoto said.
Officials found hundreds of dead or dying fish scattered in the stream running along Kaimuki High School and stretching as far up as Koali Street in lower Manoa.
There are dozens of catfish rotting along the streambed and even more in the water clearly in distress.
State biologists said the exotic species of armored catfish established themselves in the stream about 20 years ago. While there have been fish kills in the stream before, biologists have not been able to pinpoint the cause.
"This time we were called early and so we were able to find fish that were still alive, but were sick. So, the veterinarian did collect fish. If anything, we have a better chance to find our what happened," Yamamoto said.
DOH is testing the water and so far has turned up evidence only of a certain fish parasite that is not a threat to humans. However, officials can't say for sure if the parasites are the primary cause of death.
Officials said it is puzzling why only one species is affected. The native Gobi fish seem fine and the other water life, including the ducks in the area, all appear OK, investigators said.
Officials warned that people should stay out of the stream and don't eat the fish.
CHICAGO -- It's not your imagination if you've walked outside and noticed a rusty colored dust sprinkled all over your car.
The strange rusty powder appeared on cars in the Chicago area this week.
Angelo Mavaraganes, who runs a car repair shop on the Northwest Side, said he has seen it on at least 30 cars the last few days.
"One came from Crystal Lake, and one was from Mount Prospect, and another one from Homewood/Flossmor," Mavaraganes said.
The Illinois Environmental Protection Agency sent a field agent to collect evidence of the powder.
"He and myself together, we collected a sample," Mavaraganes said. "We scraped together some, I was able to amass maybe a teaspoon full in a cup, and he took it with him."
Cars at the police parking lot at Belmont and Western have the rusty powder all over them, too.
NBC5's Mary Ann Ahern said a lot of people in Chicago want to know what the stuff is that has fallen all over their cars.
"Where is this coming from? What effects is it going to have on us?" Mavaraganes asked.
Some suggested the rusty powder came with the recent rain, dirt from the southwest part of the U.S. Lab tests will tell more.
A spokesman for the Illinois EPA said the lab results on the mysterious powder should be in early next week.
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
Friday, January 6, 2006
Boulder, Colo. -- A laboratory method developed for making and analyzing cold, concentrated samples of a mysterious "floppy" molecule thought to be abundant only in outer space has revealed new data that help explain the molecule's properties.
The advance, described in the Jan. 6 issue of Science,[*] is a step toward overcoming a decades-old challenge in chemistry -- explaining reactions that occur within very cold clouds among the stars, and perhaps for developing new chemical processes. The paper combines experiments performed by David Nesbitt and colleagues at JILA, a joint institute of the Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and University of Colorado at Boulder, with theoretical predictions made with Joel Bowman at Emory University in Atlanta, Ga., and Anne McCoy at The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio.
Most molecules have a rigid three-dimensional (3D) structure. The subject of the new study is "protonated" methane, which contains one carbon atom and five hydrogen atoms, one of which is ionized, leaving nothing but a proton (a particle with a positive charge). The five protons from the hydrogen atoms scramble for four bonds around the molecule as if playing a continuous game of musical chairs. In the process, the molecule classically vibrates and rotates in a bizarre manner, morphing between several 3D structures with nearly identical energy levels. (Animation available here) Chemists have spent decades trying to explain why and how this occurs, a challenge that has seemed insurmountable until recently.
Protonated methane is a so-called "super acid." This class of molecule has been shown to be more than a million times more powerful than conventional acids and is more effective in inducing reactions that produce solvents and many other important industrial products.
Many theories have been published on the puzzling behavior of this charged molecule (or ion), but experiments must be done to match the ion's energy characteristics with its physical motions, and such data are difficult to collect and understand. In particular, scientists are interested in how the molecule absorbs different wavelengths of infrared (IR) light, which provides clues about nuclear motion and chemical bonds and structures.
The JILA method generates concentrated amounts of the ion at cold enough temperatures to simplify the complex IR spectrum so it can be analyzed. The data strike a balance between detail and simplicity, providing useful information that is still challenging but easier to understand than ever before. This enabled the authors of the Science paper to match predicted changes in energy to specific vibrations and partially characterize the ion's structure and dynamics. For example, they were able to correlate one intense spectral feature to a transition between two 3D structures with equivalent energy levels.
Previously published spectra of this molecule have either been too low resolution to "see" this motion, or too hot (and therefore too complex) to analyze.
"The experiments have provided the first jet-cooled, high-resolution spectrum of this highly fluxional molecule," says Nesbitt, a NIST Fellow who led the JILA experimental team. "This has been among the most sought-after IR spectra since the first appearance of this molecule in mass spectrometers over 50 years ago. This is a problem that has occupied many careers; every piece helps."
The JILA method involves making methane gas at high temperature and pressure, and expanding it into a vacuum to cool the molecules to 10 K (-442 degrees F). The cold molecules then file through an opening just 1 millimeter wide, where they are hit with a "lightning bolt" of electrical current that generates high concentrations of highly reactive ions. The key to mass production is to surround the molecules with enough electrons to make the entire gas mixture neutral in charge, Nesbitt says.
For the analysis step, JILA scientists shine an infrared laser on the cold ions, and detect the light that passes through. The light that is lost, or the small amount absorbed by the molecules, is analyzed to obtain a pattern of absorption at different wavelengths. The technique is very sensitive, thanks to methods for detecting trace absorption of the laser light and manipulating the electrical discharge to maximize the ion concentration levels.
Future and ongoing studies will focus on matching the ion's IR absorption characteristics with its rotational structure, including end-over-end tumbling. "Protonated methane still has a few tricks up its sleeve," Nesbitt cautions.
The research was supported in part by the National Science Foundation, Office of Naval Research, and Air Force Office of Scientific Research.
OSLO - A contrite Frenchman who stole a relic from a Norwegian museum 42 years ago has returned the item, but art experts are now scratching their heads over what the obscure object is and where it came from, the Norwegian embassy in Paris said.
"For 40 years I have enjoyed this rare tool in my home. In my old age ... I have now decided to return it to the descendants of those who imagined it, built it and used it," the anonymous thief wrote in a typed letter sent to the embassy just before Christmas.
The letter was posted from Biarritz in southwestern France and signed by "an ex-thief who was less a thief and more a man passionate about authenticity and real life".
Sent with the letter was a mysterious carved wooden object with curlicues measuring about 10 centimeters (almost four inches) and fitted in an iron base.
The Norwegian embassy's first secretary, Bjoern Erik Brustad, said the sender must be "a person who is fairly old and maybe Catholic" who is seeking redemption.
Brustad said he had "no idea" what the object was.
The repentant thief called it a "scratcher", a word he then crossed out and replaced with "Sami fleshscraper" followed by a question mark. Sami refers to the indigenous people of northern Europe, also known as Lapplanders.
Museum officials in northern Norway, where the Frenchman said the theft took place, said they were unable to identify the object.
Norwegian authorities will not take legal action, Brustad said.
OSLO - A contrite Frenchman who stole a relic from a Norwegian museum 42 years ago has returned the item, but art experts are now scratching their heads over what the obscure object is and where it came from, the Norwegian embassy in Paris said.
