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Mission in Progress

Alito: Bush nominee rejects 'bigot' charge Aljazeera 12 Jan 06 Samuel Alito, the US Supreme Court nominee, has faced more aggressive questioning from Democrats at his Senate confirmation hearing. At Wednesday's hearing, they accused him of evasive answers and challenged his stand on abortion and past membership in a conservative Ivy League alumni group. Shortly before the hearing recessed for the day, Lindsey Graham, a Republican senator from South Carolina, chided Democrats for their tactics and Alito's wife, Martha-Ann, tearfully left the hearing room, returning about an hour later to a seat behind her husband. "I'm not any kind of a bigot," Alito said after he had been pressed repeatedly about his membership 20 years ago of the alumni group that opposed efforts to admit more women and minorities to Princeton University. "I believe you," Graham said. "I am sorry that you've had to go through this. I am sorry that your family has had to sit here and listen to this." George Bush, the US president, has nominated Alito, 55, a federal appeals judge for 15 years, to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who has often been the swing vote on abortion and other social issues on the nine-member court. Election-year fight While Alito appeared headed for confirmation by the full Republican-led Senate later this month, several Democrats made clear that after a relatively gentle start to proceedings, they were waging an election-year fight. Richard Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, kicked off the third day of the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, saying he was troubled that Alito had not disavowed a 1985 memo in which he wrote that "the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion". "I'm concerned that many people will leave this hearing with a question as to whether or not you could be the deciding vote that would eliminate the legality of abortion," Durbin said. Alito, who wrote the memo as a Reagan administration attorney 20 years ago, has not said how he would rule if abortion came before him on the high court. But the nominee reaffirmed his vow to keep an open mind and respect legal precedent and noted that the landmark decision in 1973 that legalised abortion had been upheld repeatedly. Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat, said: "Judge Alito has responded, but he has not answered." Democrats continued to raise the abortion issue with Alito, having got no clear statement on whether he would vote to overturn the 1973 ruling. After effectively parrying the question the preceding day, Alito repeated earlier responses, increasing frustration for Democrats who fear that he will push the high court to the right if confirmed. Inconsistencies Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the committee's senior Democrat, said Democrats were also troubled by what they saw as inconsistencies in many of Alito's answers, from abortion rights to presidential powers to membership of the Princeton alumni group. Edward Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat, got into a dispute with Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, over committee access to records of the disbanded group called Concerned Alumni of Princeton, or CAP. By the end of the day, a bipartisan review of them had begun. Alito listed membership of the group in a 1985 application for a job in the Reagan administration. He told the panel that he had no recollection of any involvement with the group. Kennedy quoted a 1983 essay, In Defence of Elitism, from the alumni group's magazine that read, in part: "People nowadays just don't seem to know their place. Everywhere one turns, blacks and Hispanics are demanding jobs simply because they're black and Hispanic." Alito, a member since 199O of the 3rd US Circuit Court of Appeals, denounced the essay as offensive and said he did not know the group had promoted such positions. Bill Frist, a Tennessee Republican and the Senate majority leader, said: "As a Princeton alumnus, I had concerns about CAP, but I have no concerns about Judge Alito's credibility, integrity and his commitment to protecting the equal rights of all Americans." Comment: So Alito is not a bigot, or so he claims. The definition of bigot is: "One who is strongly partial to one's own group, religion, race, or politics and is intolerant of those who differ." Even back in 1984 Alito was a member of the political elite, so do you think that his comment during that same year that: "top officials should not be subject to lawsuits in any circumstances, including when they knowingly violated the law." could be reasonably construed as "strong partiality to one's own group, religion, race, or politics"? If so, then Alito is most definitely a bigot and has been for at least 20 years. Interestingly enough, the above quote comes from the final article of recently suicided New York Times retiree journalist, David Rosenbaum. Just about every mainstream news oulet is reporting the fact that Alito's wife left the hearing room in tears, which, we suppose, is evidence of just how hard the Democrats were pushing her husband, and how unfair all those accusations are. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and if the picture of Alito below and his "distressed" wife leaving the hearing tells us anything, it's that the ploy seems to have worked. Mission Accomplished

Alito: George Bush's rough justice Sidney Blumenthal Thursday January 12, 2006 The Guardian The career of the latest supreme court nominee has been marked by his hatred of liberalism "If the president deems that he's got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person's child, there is no law that can stop him?" "No treaty," replied John Yoo, the former justice department official who wrote the crucial memos justifying President Bush's policies on torture, detainees and domestic surveillance without warrants. Yoo publicly debated last month the radical notion of the "unitary executive" - that the president, as commander-in-chief, is sole judge of the law, unbound by hindrances such as the Geneva conventions, and has inherent authority to subordinate independent government agencies to his fiat. This is the cornerstone of the Bush legal doctrine. Yoo's interlocutor, Douglass Cassel, a professor at the Notre Dame law school, pointed out that the theory of the unitary executive posits the president above other branches of government: "Also no law by Congress. That is what you wrote in the August 2002 memo." "I think it depends on why the president thinks he needs to do that," said Yoo. The "unitary executive" is nothing less than "gospel", declared the federal judge Samuel Alito in 2000 - it is a theory that "best captures the meaning of the constitution's text and structure". Alito's belief was perhaps the paramount credential for his nomination by Bush to the supreme court. Alito's manner before the Senate judiciary committee's hearings has been prosaic and dutiful. He seems like an understudy for the part of Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman. But behind the facade of the supplicant who wants to be liked seethes a man out to settle a score. Few public figures since Nixon have worn their resentment so obviously as Alito. The son of a civil servant, he attended Princeton and Yale law school. "Both opened up new worlds of ideas," he testified. "But this was in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It was a time of turmoil at colleges and universities. And I saw some very smart and privileged people behaving irresponsibly." In his application to the Reagan justice department, Alito wrote that his interest in constitutional law was "motivated in large part by disagreement with Warren court decisions ... particularly in the area ... of reapportionment" - which established the principle of one person, one vote. Alito's law career has been a long effort to reverse the liberalism of the Warren supreme court. In the Reagan justice department, he argued that the federal government had no responsibility for the "health, safety and welfare" of Americans (a view rejected by Reagan); that "the constitution does not protect the right to an abortion"; that the executive should be immune from liability for illegal domestic wiretapping; that illegal immigrants have no "fundamental rights"; that police had a right to kill an unarmed 15-year-old accused of stealing $10 (a view rejected by the supreme court and every police group that filed in the case); and that it should be legal to fire, and exclude from funded federal programmes, people with Aids, because of "fear of contagion ... reasonable or not". Against the majority of his court and six other federal courts, he argued that federal regulation of machine guns was unconstitutional. He approved the strip search of a mother and her daughter although they were not named in a warrant, a decision denounced by fellow judge Michael Chertoff, now secretary of homeland security. And Alito backed a law requiring women to tell husbands if they want an abortion, which was overturned by the supreme court on the vote of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, On the supreme court, as O'Connor's replacement, he will codify the authoritarianism of the Bush presidency, even after it is gone. · Sidney Blumenthal, a former senior adviser to President Clinton, is the author of The Clinton Wars Comment: A poster to our forum wrote a nice piece on the word "liberal." Since we can't improve on it, we'll just quote it: I notice that the word "liberal" is used by some here almost as though it were a bad word - a nasty "label." I also notice that the word "nazi" has been flung at the SOtT staff. This is truly bizarre when you consider the fact that the real Nazis were rabidly "anti-liberal." They, too, used the term "liberal" as if it were a bad word. People often wonder how the Nazis actually came to power in a civilized and modern country when you consider that the Nazi regime was among the most criminal, barbarous and immoral that the world has ever witnessed. The fact is that the Nazis made huge efforts to present themselves as the defenders of conventional social and moral values. They presented themselves as guarantors of public decency and law and order. The Nazis suppressed homosexuals and pornography just as Bush and his coterie of Christocrats seek to do. The daily reality of the Third Reich was a complex mixture of fear and bribery, terror and concessions, barbarism and appeals to conventional moral values which were employed in order to gain and maintain a grip on German society. Does that sound familiar? Nazi activists gloried in violence and hate. Thousands of opponents of the Nazis were, indeed, rounded up and hanged as one poster has suggested ought to happen to the SOtT staff. Long before Germany was officially declared a one-party state, open political dissent had come to an end by virtue of the attacks of such individuals who had the power and support of the Nazis behind them. Another interesting thing about Nazis was their extreme hatred of Communists. The communists of Germany tried to protest the intensification of the Fascist dictatorship in the city of Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland) one morning. No sooner had the peaceful protesters assembled than about 500 Nazi Storm Troopers marched through the square. They tried to provoke the protesters to violence in ways similar to what the New York Police recently did to the anti-war protesters during the RNC. In Breslau, violence did erupt when the police began firing on the protesters, and this was used as a reason to ban the Communists and all rallies as a "threat to public order." That evening, the Nazis celebrated their victory over the Communists by staging a huge demonstration of their own. Over 50,000 people took part in the center of Breslau. The square of the largest city in Eastern Germany became a sea of swastika flags and marching columns of brown-shirted storm troopers. The Nazis didn't, at first, use direct state violence against their opponents. They used propaganda and [ordinary] people who later got a pat on the head and maybe a nice cushy position as a Storm Trooper - about the only place left where people had work and food. The term "Liberal" could be used to describe both the Leftists and the Communists of Germany. The Leftists of Germany were known as "Social Democrats." These were largely trade unions, worker's organizations and so on. There was encouragement by the government for the violence against the "Left." Leading members of the left-wing parties were arrested as the various police forces and Nazi formations began to coordinate their activities. Attempts by the Social Democrats or Communists to hold election rallies were broken up with growing frequency. The left-wing press was suppressed, and by the time of the elections in Germany, violence from such individuals as Brian and his ilk (in the guise of Brown Shirts, Storm Troopers), as well as police repression, had combined to drive the Left from public view. After the election, the Nazis turned their attention to rooting out and destroying the supporters of the now underground Left and Liberal parties. The once impressive supports of German Social Democracy, which had withstood Bismarck's attacks for fifty years, were destroyed piecemeal. The campaign against the Left and Liberals was all the more effective because of its ambiguous nature. There was no single, decisive confrontation. It was carried out both within and outside of the existing legal structure just as we see happening in the U.S. today. The Leftists and Liberals essentially faced what were "spontaneous" attacks from "marauding bands" of Nazis just as marauding bands of Bushistas roam the internet and the streets of the U.S. These types of attack are quite effective because, essentially, the power of the State stands behind them. Analysts suggest today that even if the Left and the Communists had been united, they would not have prevailed because once the Nazis and their conservatives controlled the State organs of power, as do Bush and his gang at present, the police and the army were used effectively to eliminate opposition. If the history of the Nazi seizure of power teaches us anything, it is that there is little the Liberals can do to stop a powerful Right Wing movement that has mass support, allies in powerful places (such as the media), and control of the repression apparatus of the State [including the judiciary]. Of course, the Liberals were not the only targets of the Nazis: there were the Jews. The assault of Germany's Jews took second place behind the attacks on the Left. The Third Reich was only able to establish and maintain itself by being in a perpetual state of emergency. And mostly, they targeted "Liberals." It seems that a liberal then and now is anyone who values human life even if that human is different. So, when you start flaming Liberals, Communists and the "Left," the only conclusion that can be drawn is that you are a Fascist - a Nazi.

Alito: Bush nominee 'believes in an all-powerful presidency' By Rupert Cornwell in Washington 11 January 2006 Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee accused President Bush's latest Supreme Court nominee of being far too deferential to executive power and invariably favouring the state over the rights of the individual. Edward Kennedy, the party's liberal standard bearer, told Judge Samuel Alito as the committee got down to serious questioning yesterday: "Your record shows you believe in the supremacy of the executive branch and an almost all-powerful presidency." To make his argument, Senator Kennedy cited several cases from Judge Alito's 15-year stint on the federal appeals bench in which, he claimed, the judge had sided with the state even when some of his conservative colleagues disagreed. Along with abortion, the issue of abuse of executive power and the judiciary's role as the last line of defence against such abuse, have emerged as a potential stumbling blocks to Judge Alito's confirmation. The row has been propelled on to the front pages by last month's revelation that President Bush has allowed the National Security Agency to conduct wiretapping without warrants against US citizens, bypassing a special domestic court that normally authorises such procedures. The White House, Mr Kennedy charged, was "abusing power, excusing and authorising torture and spying on American citizens." Judge Alito, he said, "has to speak out on his commitment to constitutional values and liberties". On abortion, Judge Alito sought to pacify his critics by indicating he would be in no rush to rule against the 1973 Roe v Wade decision upholding a woman's right to have an abortion. He had "an open mind" on the issue. These Supreme Court hearings are arguably the most important in a generation. Judge Alito would replace Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, frequently the key swing vote on the nine-member court. Democrats and civil liberties groups say his confirmation would tilt the body decisively to the right. Comment: If Alito "believes in the supremacy of the executive branch and an almost all-powerful presidency", then he is joining the right team. Bush needs all the ass-kissers he can find at the present moment.

Alito Turns Aside Democrats' Criticism By JESSE J. HOLLAND Associated Press 12 Jan 2006 WASHINGTON - Long hours of Senate questioning seem to have done little to alter Samuel Alito's prospects for a seat on the Supreme Court, with Republicans confident that the conservative jurist is well-suited for the job while skeptical Democrats warn that President Bush's nominee could help overturn abortion rights. In a contentious Day 3 of hearings Wednesday that at one point left Alito's wife in tears, the federal appeals court judge remained unflappable under persistent questioning by Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats who attacked his credibility. "Many people will leave this hearing with a question as to whether or not you could be the deciding vote that would eliminate the legality of abortion," Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois said during Democrats' grilling the nominee about whether he now believes, as he did in 1985, that the Constitution contains no right to an abortion. Alito, 55, tapped by Bush to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who has been a swing vote on issues such as abortion, affirmative action and the death penalty, refused to say. "I don't think it's appropriate for me to speak about issues that could realistically come up" before the courts, he said, falling back on a line also used by now-Chief Justice John Roberts and other Supreme Court members during their confirmation hearings. Unlike Roberts, who said during his confirmation hearing last year that he thought Roe v. Wade was "settled law," Alito said it was a precedent that should be respected. He would neither agree nor disagree that it was settled law when asked repeatedly by Durbin. Senators get one last chance at questioning Alito on Thursday before reviewing the FBI's background report on him in a closed hearing, and listening to public witnesses like the American Bar Association on Alito's qualifications to become the nation's 110th justice. Alito likely has the support of all 10 Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee, with at least half of them already declaring they will vote for his confirmation. His prospects for confirmation by the full Senate are also strong, although Democrats have not ruled out the possibility of a filibuster that could require supporters to post 60 votes in the 100-member chamber. "You're going to serve as an outstanding justice on the United States Supreme Court, and I will be supporting you here in the committee and on the floor," declared Sen. Sam Brownback (news, bio, voting record), R-Kan., a potential 2008 presidential nominee who is courting conservative activists. The committee's eight Democrats have not indicated how they would vote on the nomination, but most observers expect a partisan committee vote later this month. Democrats have said in the past that a partisan committee vote opens the possibility of a filibuster. While praising Alito's calm demeanor during a third long day — "You've retired the trophy on equanimity," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (news, bio, voting record), D-Calif. — Democrats attacked his decisions as a judge on the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and writings while a lawyer for the Reagan administration, and highlighted his membership in an organization that opposed the admission of women and minorities at Princeton University. Republicans were quick to jump to Alito's defense, with abortion triggering one incident. Durbin, who supports abortion rights, told Alito that his 1985 written view on abortion "does not evidence an open mind. It evidences a mind that sadly is closed in some areas." Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, saying he wanted to "razz" Durbin, soon noted that the Illinois Democrat had himself changed his mind on abortion. "If he has the ability to change his mind on something he wrote in 1989, certainly you have the ability to say something was inaptly put," Coburn said. While most of Wednesday's hearing followed the pattern of Democrats criticizing and Republicans defending, there were brief flashes of unscripted drama. Alito's wife, Martha-Ann Bomgardner, grew emotional near the end of the long day and briefly left the hearing room in tears. "Judge Alito, I'm sorry that you've had to go through this. I am sorry that your family has had to sit here and listen to this," said Sen. Lindsey Graham (news, bio, voting record). A moment earlier, the South Carolina Republican had offered Alito a chance to defend his integrity, asking whether he was a "closet bigot." "I'm not any kind of bigot, I'm not," Alito said. "No sir, you're not," Graham agreed. Alito's wife returned with him following a brief recess. Sen. Edward Kennedy (news, bio, voting record) also confronted the committee's chairman, Sen. Arlen Specter (news, bio, voting record), R-Pa., insisting that the panel subpoena Library of Congress records that might shed light on Alito's membership in the conservative group Concerned Alumni of Princeton. A testy exchange ensued during which Specter told Kennedy, "I'm not going to have you run this committee." Specter later announced the committee would have access to the records.

Abortion Not "Settled Law" Says Alito; Democrats Must Filibuster This Extremist Judge Before It's Too Late by Andy Ostroy 12 Jan 06 The eventual overturning of Roe v. Wade is more a reality than not if Samuel J. Alito Jr. is confirmed to the Supreme Court of the United States. President Bush, and hordes of drooling right-wing religious fanatics, will finally have their dream come true, and we as a nation will sadly see a reversal of over 30 years of social progress. At Wednesday's Congressional confirmation hearings, Alito flat out refused to agree that Roe v. Wade is "settled law," leaving the door open to the landmark abortion case possibly being overturned if he makes it to the high court. He acknowledged that the 1973 case was deserving of respect as a precedent of the court, one that's been reaffirmed several times in 30 years. But there's a huge legal difference between "settled law" and "precedent." Unlike recent appointee Chief Justice John Roberts Jr., Alito refused to go beyond precedent and state that Roe is "settled law of the land", which would mean that overturning it would be near impossible. Parsing his words in response to Sen. Richard J. Durbin's (D-Ill.) aggressive questioning, Alito said: "If 'settled' means that it can't be reexamined, then that's one thing. If 'settled' means that it is a precedent that is entitled to respect . . . then it is a precedent that is protected, entitled to respect under the doctrine of stare decisis." In Latin, stare decisis is traslated to "to stand by that which is decided." I cannot imagine a scenario more grave than a Supreme Court led by a majority of Alito, Roberts, Kennedy, Scalia and Thomas. The Democrats must grow a spine and filibuster this dangerous nominee. If they don't roll out the filibuster on Alito, what the hell are they saving it for? Alito's confirmation will lay a frighteningly conservative foundation on the high court for decades to come. These extremist judges will forever change and divide America. Alito must be prevented from ever sitting on that bench. My God, Democrats, are you listening? Andy Ostroy, theostroyreport@aol.com, a NYC-based 45-year-old entrepreneur and political commentator, is an aggressive counter to the Bush administration, the Republican Party and the powerful right wing media machine. Our mission is to do whatever possible to help Democrats take back the House and Senate in 2006 and win back the White House in '08. http://www.ostroyreport.blogspot.com/ Comments: Ladies! Gentlemen! Get on the phone, get on the computer, dial up the FAX machine. Contact your representatives and demand a filibuster and an investigation of the criminal acts of George W. Bush!

Alito's nod to executive power looms as dangerous By John Nichols The Capital Times No member of the Senate who takes seriously the oath they have sworn to defend the Constitution will vote to confirm judicial activist Samuel Alito's nomination to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. To a greater extent than any nominee for the high court in recent memory, and very possibly in the long history of the country, Alito has placed himself clearly and unequivocally at odds with the original intent of the authors of the Constitution and the incontrovertible language of the document. Alito is consistently on record as favoring steps by the White House to in his words "increase the power of the executive to shape the law." Twenty years ago, as a member of the Reagan administration, Alito was in the forefront of efforts to legitimize executive power grabs designed to allow presidents to take dramatic actions, sometimes in secret, without the advice and consent of Congress. In a 1986 draft memo that advised Reagan and his aides on how to ensure that their interpretations of official actions trumped those of the legislative branch, Alito acknowledged that his approach would put the White House at odds with the Congress. "The novelty of the procedure and the potential increase of presidential power are two factors that may account for this anticipated reaction," Alito argued. "In addition, and perhaps most important, Congress is likely to resent the fact that the president will get in the last word on questions of interpretation." The Reagan administration never fully embraced Alito's proposals, but the Bush administration has. And Alito has been cheering on the process of executive power enhancement, telling the Federalist Society in an address five years ago, "The president has not just some executive powers, but the executive power the whole thing." The "whole thing" approach adopted by George Bush and Dick Cheney has placed the current administration on a collision course with the Constitution. And it will be the Supreme Court that must sort through the wreckage. With the high court widely expected to rule on multiple cases involving questions about presidential war-making, the War Powers Act and domestic manifestations of the Bush administration's so-called "war on terror," the position of every justice on issues of executive authority becomes more significant. And potential changes in the court that might make it more deferent to an executive branch that appears to be bent on eliminating all checks and balances as the confirmation of Alito would surely do are, necessarily, the most consequential of matters. What is at issue here is not a gray area of legal interpretation. The authors of the Constitution were absolutely determined to prevent presidents from making war without the consent of Congress and from abusing a state of war to curtail domestic liberties. James Madison, the essential drafter of the Constitution who would go on to serve as the nation's fourth president, expressed the concern of the founders when he wrote: "Of all the enemies of true liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies and debts and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. "In war, too, the discretionary power of the executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds are added to those of subduing the force of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manner and of morals engendered in both. No nation can preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare." Madison added, "War is in fact the true nurse of executive aggrandizement. In war, a physical force is to be created; and it is the executive will, which is to direct it. In war, the public treasuries are to be unlocked; and it is the executive hand which is to dispense them. In war, the honors and emoluments of office are to be multiplied; and it is the executive patronage under which they are to be enjoyed; and it is the executive brow they are to encircle. The strongest passions and most dangerous weaknesses of the human breast; ambition, avarice, vanity, the honorable or venal love of fame, are all in conspiracy against the desire and duty of peace." Madison's view was confirmed by the Constitutional Convention of 1787, when delegates overwhelmingly approved a motion to deny presidents the power to "make war." That resolution was introduced by Connecticut delegate Roger Sherman, another key player in the shaping of the document, who explained, ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^"The executive should be able to repel and not to commence war." George Mason, the Virginia delegate to the Constitutional Convention who is often remembered as "the Father of the Bill of Rights," said at the time, "I am for clogging rather than facilitating war." John Marshall, a participant in the Virginia ratifying convention that approved the Constitution, would go on to serve as chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. In that capacity, he would be called upon to interpret the Constitution with regard to the exercise of war powers by the executive. Writing for a unanimous court in 1801, Marshall asserted, "The whole powers of war being, by the Constitution of the United States, vested in Congress, the acts of that body alone can be resorted to as our guides." Much has been done to undermine the system of checks and balances that the founders wrote into the Constitution to control against executive excess. But, as recently as 2004, the court reaffirmed the basic principle that the president must operate within strict constraints in a time of war. Ruling that the executive branch does not have the power to hold indefinitely a U.S. citizen without basic due process protections, the court rebuked the Bush administration's actions with an opinion that declared, "A state of war is not a blank check for the president when it comes to the rights of the nation's citizens." The author of that statement was Sandra Day O'Connor, the retiring justice whom Alito has been nominated to replace. Justice O'Connor, who could hardly be referred to as a strict constructionist, was not merely expressing an opinion with her defense of checks and balances on the executive. She was affirming the Constitution, and she was doing so in a manner that respected the intentions of the founders something Samuel Alito's record suggests that he is entirely incapable of doing.

Bush will DEFY the law until stopped by the Supreme Court or Congress THE NEXT WEEK WILL DECIDE IF DEMOCRACY WILL SURVIVE The Pen USALONE 9 Jan 06 Bush is now completely and certifiably out of control. But to remove the last restraint on the creation of a new American dictatorship they must install one more lock down vote on the Supreme Court, in the person of Sam Alito. Despite Alito's extreme right wing voting record and lifelong ideological agenda, nobody expects him to show up at his hearing sporting a tail and horns wearing a red suit. Instead he will lie and evade like some Wal-Mart smiley face, just as he did when in his confirmation for the Court of Appeals he promised to recuse himself from cases involving his own investments. Then he fought to do precisely otherwise. He will make absolutely any misrepresentation of his views and his agenda to try to sneak past public accountability yet again, while his record shouts otherwise. And only your voices speaking out now can turn the tide against this judicial coup. We are planning a two-stage action. First with the action page we will build a consensus that ANY replacement for Sandra Day O'Connor must be no worse than a true moderate and centrist. Then after the conclusion of the hearings we will speak out AGAIN on specific question of the final vote in the Senate. Please submit every possible action page you can get your hands on, and keep speaking out until we prevail, just as we did on ANWR and the torture prohibition. But remember that Alito was the author of the tactic of Bush trying to spin acts of Congress with so-called "signing statements" in hopes that some future Supreme Court (including now guess who)would give them weight over the will of the people. And Bush did just that with the anti-torture bill, declaring that he really didn't consider himself bound at all. Every day from now on must be STOP Alito day, otherwise our democracy is doomed. Even if you have submitted something else recently, please go to the action page and take a moment to submit it. There are lots of good references in the arguments section below the form if you would like some additional support or ideas for your personal comments, or just cast your vote with one click and go. We have nearly 100,000 participants in our system and we are counting on at least 25,000 of you to speak out now. This battle must be won, there must be a filibuster, or all else will be ultimately lost. NEW UPDATED DESKTOP ACTION PROGRAM AVAILABLE NOW To help us get as close as possible to 100% submission yield on this question we have made many improvements on the Desktop Action program since its initial release last week. With this program you can speak out directly from your desktop with just one click! Based on your input we have set the program to always be minimized unless you expressly click on its icon, we have now made the interface draggable, and incorporated all of your other suggestions. Though it worked well for most people from day one, we have corrected all minor issues with contact setup and system reboots, and all these small fixes have been confirmed corrected. Even if you already have the program, please download the latest update (1.05) from the main index page at http://www.usalone.com RUN FOR OFFICE YOURSELF OR FIND US SOMEONE WHO IS We received many inquiries from candidates who want to win, and we are setting everybody up with their easy-to-use forms for creating action forms on your own campaign web site. The most important thing you can do is launch your own STOP Alito initiative to show your constituents how much you are out there fighting for them now, and not just talking about what you WOULD do if elected. Build your track record and prominence identified as someone out there fighting to protect the rights of the people. Contact us at once and we will set you up. There is no charge for any of our services ever. Please take action NOW, so we can win all victories that are supposed to be ours, and forward this message to everyone else you know. Comment: To help us get as close as possible to 100% submission yield on this question we have made many improvements on the Desktop Action program since its initial release last week. With this program you can speak out directly from your desktop with just one click! Download it today! http://www.usalone.com The Pen is mightier than the sword!

Bush insists he has power to order domestic eavesdropping AFP 12 Jan 06 President George W. Bush insisted he had the legal right to authorize a domestic eavesdropping program that has sparked outrage among civil liberty groups. "I have the right as a commander-in-chief in a time of war to take action necessary to protect the American people," Bush said during a discussion on the "war on terror" with citizens in Louisville, Kentucky. The revelation last month of the wiretap program run by the National Security Agency has sparked a debate about presidential powers, with civil libertarians contending that Bush overstepped his constitutional limits by authorizing it. Bush's 2002 order enabled the NSA to monitor, without court warrants, the international telephone calls and electronic mail of US citizens with suspected ties to Al-Qaeda. "It seems to me if somebody is talking to Al-Qaeda, we want to know why," Bush said Wednesday. "I understand people's concerns about government eavesdropping. I share those concerns as well," he said. "I had to make the difficult decision between balancing civil liberties and on a limited basis, and I mean limited basis, try to find out the intention of the enemy," Bush added. Before authorizing the program, he said, he made sure he had "all the legal authority necessary to make this decision as your president." Bush said the program was being scrutinized regularly to ensure it does not infringe on civil liberties. Congressional hearings are planned on the matter. "That's good for democracy," Bush said, "just so long as the hearings, as they explore whether or not I have the prerogative to make the decisions, doesn't tell the enemy what we're doing. That's the danger." Comment: What a liar! We are at war because of a "terrorist attack" in which Bush and his regime were complicit, and the war in Iraq is an illegal war, a war CRIME, in fact. "What no one seemed to notice was the ever widening gap between the government and the people. And it became always wider.....the whole process of its coming into being, was above all diverting, it provided an excuse not to think.... for people who did not want to think anyway gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about.....and kept us so busy with continuous changes and 'crises' and so fascinated..... by the machinations of the 'national enemies,' without and within, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us..... "Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, 'regretted,' that unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these 'little measures'..... must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing..... Each act is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. "You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join you in resisting somehow. You don't want to act, or even talk, alone ... you don't want to 'go out of your way to make trouble.' But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. "That's the difficulty. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves, when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. "You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things your father .....could never have imagined." Milton Mayer, They Thought They Were Free, The Germans, 1938-45 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955)

NSA spied on Powell Sidney Blumenthal The Guardian Thursday April 28, 2005 Excerpt: "The Bolton confirmation hearings have revealed his constant efforts to undermine Powell on Iran and Iraq, Syria and North Korea. They have also exposed a most curious incident that has triggered the administration's stonewall reflex. The foreign relations committee has discovered that Bolton made a highly unusual request and gained access to 10 intercepts by the National Security Agency, which monitors worldwide communications, of conversations involving past and present government officials. Whose conversations did Bolton secretly secure and why? Staff members on the committee believe that Bolton was probably spying on Powell, his senior advisers and other officials reporting to him on diplomatic initiatives that Bolton opposed." Click below to read the entire article... From the redoubt of his retirement, former secretary of state Colin Powell is beginning to exact revenge. His sterling reputation was soiled, having lost most of the important battles within the administration during the first term. While he lamented that he had been "deceived" into presenting false information before the United Nations to justify the Iraq war, he acted as the good soldier to the end, giving every sign of desiring to fade away. But now he has re-emerged to conduct a campaign to defeat President Bush's nomination of conservative hardliner and former undersecretary of state John Bolton as US ambassador to the UN. In seeking to prevent the bullying and duplicitous ideologue from representing the US before the international organisation, Powell is engaging in hand-to-hand combat with his successor. Secretary of state Condoleezza Rice's first true test has not arrived from abroad. Caught by Powell's flanking movement, she is trapped in a crisis of credibility, which she herself is deepening. Powell's closest associate, his former deputy Richard Armitage, is orchestrating much of the action. Wavering senators are directed to call Powell, who briefs them on Bolton's demerits. Powell's former chief of staff, Lawrence B Wilkerson, has surfaced to give an interview to the New York Times, declaring that Bolton would be "an abysmal ambassador". Other former foreign-service officers have queued up to provide ever uglier details of Bolton's career as a "serial abuser" and "a quintessential kiss-up, kick-down sort of guy", as Carl W Ford Jr, the former director of intelligence at the state department, described him before the Senate foreign relations committee. Rice's response to the seemingly endless stream of witnesses has been to order state department senior staff to stanch the flow of adverse stories. "This whole building knows how Bolton dealt with people," a dismayed senior state department official told me. "If she is sending a different signal than Powell sent that will be difficult. The muzzle is being put on, the damage is being done. To the extent it's buttoned up here, it's dangerous for the secretary. Powell and Armitage created an environment of accountability about treatment of the staff. Any kind of allegation that you did things like Bolton did was death in the foreign service. Persons were removed. Now she's trying to be a team player, trying to support someone Powell ostracised." Indeed, last year Powell and Rice had a confrontation over an allegation that a national security council officer close to Rice, Robert Blackwill, had physically assaulted a female foreign-service officer. Initially, Rice tried to protect him, but Powell and Armitage presented the evidence to her and told her that if she didn't discipline Blackwill the matter would be made public. Blackwill was forced to resign. And after Bolton attempted to coerce a state department intelligence officer to agree to an unfounded report about nonexistent Cuban WMD, Powell personally assembled the entire intelligence staff to instruct them to ignore Bolton. When the British foreign secretary Jack Straw complained to Powell that Bolton was obstructing negotiations with Iran on the development of nuclear weapons, Powell ordered Bolton to be cut out of the process, telling an aide: "Get a different view." The British also objected to Bolton's interference in talks with Libya, and again Powell removed Bolton. But as much as he may have wanted to, Powell could not dismiss him because of his powerful patron: Vice-President Cheney. The Bolton confirmation hearings have revealed his constant efforts to undermine Powell on Iran and Iraq, Syria and North Korea. They have also exposed a most curious incident that has triggered the administration's stonewall reflex. The foreign relations committee has discovered that Bolton made a highly unusual request and gained access to 10 intercepts by the National Security Agency, which monitors worldwide communications, of conversations involving past and present government officials. Whose conversations did Bolton secretly secure and why? Staff members on the committee believe that Bolton was probably spying on Powell, his senior advisers and other officials reporting to him on diplomatic initiatives that Bolton opposed. If so, it is also possible that Bolton was sharing this top-secret information with his neoconservative allies within the Pentagon and the vice-president's office, with whom he was in daily contact and who were known to be working in league against Powell. If the intercepts are released they may disclose whether Bolton was a key figure in a counter-intelligence operation run inside the Bush administration against the secretary of state, who would resemble the hunted character played by Will Smith in Enemy of the State. Both Republican and Democratic senators have demanded that the state department, which holds the NSA intercepts, turn them over to the committee. But Rice so far has refused. What is she hiding by her cover-up? Rice's rise has been dependent on her unwavering devotion to the president; in the Bolton case, she is again elevating loyalty to her leader above all else. Will Powell lose once more? But this episode points beyond the general's revenge, Rice's fealty, Bolton's contempt or even presidential prerogative, to a gathering storm over constitutional government. Comment: It really is wonderful when we get a little peek at the paranoia and infighting that dominates the world of organised psychopathic politcs.

NSA: Free Speech is a Weapon of Mass Destruction Wednesday January 11th 2006, 9:46 am Kurt Nimmo As further evidence the Bushcons are not interested in snooping “al-Qaeda,” and in fact there is no “al-Qaeda” threat in America, consider revelations that the NSA snooped the Pledge of Resistance-Baltimore, a Quaker peace group. “The National Security Agency has been spying on a Baltimore anti-war group, according to documents released during litigation, going so far as to document the inflating of protesters’ balloons, and intended to deploy units trained to detect weapons of mass destruction,” reports the Raw Story. “According to the documents, the Pledge of Resistance-Baltimore, a Quaker-linked peace group, has been monitored by the NSA working with the Baltimore Intelligence Unit of the Baltimore City Police Department.” Of course, it is completely absurd that the NSA and the Baltimore police would actually believe a small group of Quakers have weapons of mass destruction, that is unless they believe the Bill of Rights is a weapon of mass destruction. Last year, Pledge of Resistance-Baltimore “sent a letter to Lt. Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the director of the National Security Agency, requesting a meeting,” a press release reveals. “The letter raised three major concerns: 1] the agency’s involvement in Justice Department plans to monitor and gather data about US citizens; 2] its role in the war against Iraq; and 3] the eavesdropping on the diplomatic delegations from several United Nations Security Council nations [first reported March 2, 2003 in the London-based Observer]. Since there was no response to the letter, fourteen Pledge members went to the spy agency on Oct. 4, 2003 to seek a meeting with the director. Some forty security operatives blocked access to the visitor’s parking lot. After some dialogue about the Constitutional right of citizens to petition government officials, Marilyn Carlisle, Cindy Farquhar, Jay Gillen, Max Obuszewski and Levanah Ruthschild were arrested and charged with trespass. Later the antiwar activists were also charged with a failure to obey a lawful order.” In short, the NSA went after the activist group because they insisted the Bill of Rights means what it says. The Pledge of Resistance-Baltimore press release continues: Thus the Agency perceives Constitutionally-protected speech as some kind of threat. It is believed the NSA is monitoring the activities of the Pledge, which would explain the massive police presence on Oct. 4. This may be an attempt to intimidate those who question Agency operations…. At trial, scheduled for May 27, the defendants intend to bring out the NSA’s intimate involvement in the duplicitous efforts to promote war with Iraq. They expect to be found not guilty of both charges. All five Pledge members who were arrested at the NSA on Oct. 4, 2003 continue to be involved in risk-arrest actions protesting the war and the occupation. It should not be surprising the NSA and the Straussian neocons in control of the Bush White House and the Pentagon consider free speech a weapon of mass destruction and also consider a small group of Quakers a threat to national security (or a threat to their ability to invade and occupy small countries). Indeed, the “NSA’s intimate involvement in the duplicitous efforts” were used “to promote war with Iraq.” As declassified NSA documents reveal, “the Tonkin Gulf [so-called incident] confirms what historians have long argued: that there was no second attack on U.S. ships in Tonkin on August 4, 1964. According to National Security Archive research fellow John Prados, ‘the American people have long deserved to know the full truth about the Gulf of Tonkin incident. The National Security Agency is to be commended for releasing this piece of the puzzle. The parallels between the faulty intelligence on Tonkin Gulf and the manipulated intelligence used to justify the Iraq War make it all the more worthwhile to re-examine the events of August 1964 in light of new evidence,’” according to the National Security Archive. “President Johnson and Secretary of Defense McNamara treated Agency SIGINT reports as vital evidence of a second attack and used this claim to support retaliatory air strikes and to buttress the administration’s request for a Congressional resolution that would give the White House freedom of action in Vietnam.” This “freedom of action” resulted in the death of around three million Vietnamese and 58,000 Americans. As an example of the super-secret snoop organization’s respect for the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, consider the following: “The largest U.S. spy agency warned the incoming Bush administration in its ‘Transition 2001′ report that the Information Age required rethinking the policies and authorities that kept the National Security Agency in compliance with the Constitution’s 4th Amendment prohibition on ‘unreasonable searches and seizures’ without warrant and ‘probable cause,’ according to an updated briefing book of declassified NSA documents,” writes Jeffrey Richelson, senior fellow of the National Security Archive at George Washington University. “The NSA told the Bush transition team that the ‘analog world of point-to-point communications carried along discrete, dedicated voice channels’ is being replaced by communications that are ‘mostly digital, carry billions of bits of data, and contain voice, data and multimedia,’ and therefore, ’senior leadership must understand that today’s and tomorrow’s mission will demand a powerful, permanent presence on a global telecommunications network that will host the “protected” communications of Americans as well as targeted communications of adversaries.’” In other words, the NSA was telling the in-coming Bushites they have no respect for the founding document of this country and “adversaries” are both foreign and domestic (and as the Pledge of Resistance-Baltimore case reveals, mostly domestic). Meanwhile, in order to lower the heat focused on the NSA in the wake of the revelations Bush used the snoop agency as his own personal enemies monitoring network, the “National Security Agency’s inspector general has opened an investigation into the agency’s eavesdropping without warrants in the United States,” according to the Washington Post. “The Pentagon’s acting inspector general, Thomas Gimble, wrote that his counterpart at the NSA ‘is already actively reviewing aspects of that program’ and has ‘considerable expertise in the oversight of electronic surveillance,’ according to the letter sent to House Democrats who have requested official investigations of the NSA program.” Gimble’s letter appears to confirm that an internal investigation into the NSA’s domestic eavesdropping program, authorized in a secret order by President Bush after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, is under way. The Justice Department has opened a separate criminal investigation into the recent leak of the highly classified program’s existence. Of course, this will be about as useful as a bucket milking unit on a bull. The NSA works closely with the Department of Defense and is generally directed by a military officer—in other words, Thomas Gimble’s “investigation” will be something like the Mafia investigating improprieties in its prostitution or drug pushing operations. As an indication that any “investigation” will be about as useful as the aforementioned milking unit, consider the remarks of the NSA’s inspector general, Joel F. Brenner, who declared “that suggestions that any eavesdropping had been conducted for ‘domestic political purposes’ is false,” according to the New York Times. In other words, according to this factotum, when the NSA snooped the Pledge of Resistance-Baltimore it had nothing to do with politics. If you believe this, I have a bridge I want to sell you in Brooklyn. In fact, the NSA has long snooped Americans for political reasons and, as reported in December, it “conducted much broader surveillance of e-mails and phone calls without court orders than the Bush administration has acknowledged,” with plenty of help from your local telecom corporation. “The story [published in the New York Times] quoted a former technology manager at a major telecommunications firm as saying that companies have been storing information on calling patterns since the Sept. 11 attacks, and giving it to the federal government. Neither the manager nor the company he worked for was identified.” But don’t expect anybody to be held responsible because the NSA “destroyed the names of thousands of Americans and US companies it collected on its own volition following 9/11, because the agency feared it would be taken to task by lawmakers for conducting unlawful surveillance on United States citizens without authorization from a court, according to a little known report published in October 2001 and intelligence officials familiar with the NSA’s operations,” writes Jason Leopold. “NSA lawyers told the agency that the surveillance was illegal and that it could not share the data it collected with the CIA or other intelligence agencies.” Once again, if you believe this—the NSA destroyed many terabytes of perfectly good data and didn’t pass it on to its right hand, the CIA and other snoop agencies—then I have a second bridge to sell you in Brooklyn. It should be assumed from the start the NSA, CIA, DIA, FBI, etc., have long engaged in illegal and unconstitutional snooping against the American people, who are after all their primary target, not the phantom “al-Qaeda” or any number of CIA created terrorists. In a police state, the enemy is the people, who may rise up at any moment and throw off their shackles. Unfortunately, the vast majority of Americans do not realize they are clasped in shackles and if they do, most think there must be a good reason for it.

Swiss Investigate Leak to Paper on C.I.A. Prisons By DOREEN CARVAJAL, International Herald Tribune PARIS, Jan. 11 - Switzerland is conducting criminal investigations to track down the source of a leak to the Zurich-based newspaper SonntagsBlick of what it reported was a secret document citing clandestine C.I.A. prisons in Eastern Europe. The Sunday weekly published what it reported was a summary of a fax in November from Egypt's Foreign Ministry to its London embassy that said the United States had held 23 Iraqi and Afghan prisoners at a base in Romania. It also referred to similar detention centers in Bulgaria, Kosovo, Macedonia and Ukraine. "The Egyptians have sources confirming the presence of secret American prisons," said the document, dated Nov. 15 and written in French to summarize the contents of the fax. "According to the embassy's own sources, 23 Iraqis and Afghans were interrogated at the Mikhail Kogalniceau base at Constanza, on the Black Sea." The leaked fax, which the newspaper said was sent by satellite and intercepted by the Swiss Strategic Intelligence Service, was signed by Egypt's foreign minister, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, the report said. Christoph Grenacher, the newspaper's editor in chief, said that before the article was published, newspaper officials met with high-ranking Swiss government officials, who urged the paper to withhold the information. "We concluded that the discussion about so-called secret prisons is much more important than the interests of the secret service in Switzerland," he said. During those discussions, he said, no one contested the authenticity of the document. Egypt has not commented on the report, but it quickly reignited a political fury in Europe that began in the fall with news reports that said there were C.I.A. interrogation centers in Europe and that there had been secret flights through European countries transferring terrorism suspects for questioning. After the article was published on Sunday, Romania and Ukraine issued denials, and the Swiss criminal investigations were opened. Some European lawmakers seized on the information as evidence of dissembling by European Union members. "This is a piece of real evidence to back up the gut instinct many of us have that the denials of complicity we are hearing from E.U. member and candidate states cannot be relied upon," Sarah Ludford, a Liberal Democratic member of the British Parliament, said in a statement. The Swiss Army's chief prosecutor opened an investigation of Mr. Grenacher and two of his reporters to determine whether military secrets were exposed and to find the source of the leaks. The Swiss attorney general's office is also investigating the issue, adding another layer to its existing investigation of whether there were C.I.A. flights in Swiss airspace. Germany and Denmark are also examining accusations that the agency used their airspace to transport terrorism suspects. The United States has acknowledged flights but not the existence of prisons. A C.I.A. spokeswoman declined to comment on the report in the newspaper. Conceivably, the journalists could face five years in prison for revealing military secrets, although no one prosecuted under the law has ever served any prison time, the authorities said. Martin Immenhauser, a spokesman for the military prosecutor, said of the document: "Nobody has told us that it's not authentic. I think you can say that it's 99 percent certain that it's authentic." Comment: Yet again it is the issue of who leaked that is to be investigated NOT the existence of illegal prisons or the illegal detention of kidnap victims and their torture at the hands of the US and its lackeys. This certainly helps to show the singular nature of the New World Order. What sort of world is it when detention and torture are blithely accepted and the leaking of such criminal activity is attacked?

Insulting the Intelligence of America, Another Fake Event By George W. Bush by Anthony Wade January 11, 2006 It never ceases to amaze me how incredibly stupid George Bush thinks America is. I am seemingly never surprised anymore by the utter contempt he shows for the collective intelligence of this country he would be king over. The past five years has been replete with fake news, fake interviews, fake reporters, and fake questions to a man who cannot put a coherent sentence together with two hands and a thesaurus. Time and time again these staged events are further proof that this president simply cannot handle a real question. It does not even have to be a tough question per se, just a real question that does not start with the “average American” praising Bush before asking his “tough question.” Yet here we were today at another fake event staged by a fake presidency. President Bush went to Kentucky today to “talk to America” about his war on terror. Now Bush would just as soon never have to talk to anyone but his polling numbers are horrendous as people today are actually more approving of spying on US citizens than they are with the overall job performance of Mr. Bush. His numbers only get worse when the polls start asking questions about Iraq. So, faced with a country that has finally realized their children are being sacrificed on the altar of political subterfuge, Bush took to the stage to try and fumble his way through pre-arranged questions and a photo-op that at best, should be completely embarrassing to any American with a brainstem. I am not kidding, here are the questions asked by your average American at this event, followed by my observations: 1- “Q I'd like to ask, recently in the media, you've been catching a lot of flak about that National Security Agency thing.” For the uninformed reader, the “National Security Agency thing”, is the president’s unilateral decision to violate federal law and commit impeachable felonies, bypassing Congressional oversight to illegally wiretap US citizens. But, back to the “question”. “Q There's people in our states and there's people that are in D.C. that will take and jeopardize what I feel is our national security and our troops' safety today for partisan advantage, for political advantage. They're starting an investigation in the Justice Department about the -- looking into this, where these leaks came from. Is the Justice Department going to follow through and, if necessary, go after the media to take and get the answers and to shut these leaks up?” Karl? Is that you? Are you kidding me? This is the question on the mind of the average American when it comes to being illegally wiretapped by a president? First of all, the leaks come from Bush’s administration, secondly, it is the media’s job to keep precious watch upon governments which would abuse civil liberties, or at least it used to be. Why not ask him why he lied about it several times over the past few years, lying directly into the cameras, to the American people? Either way, is there anyone so stupid as to think this is not an obviously planted “question” designed to lob a softball at Bush? When I first read it, I assumed Jeff Gannon had moved to Kentucky. 2 – “Q Mr. President, we hear a common expert opinion all the time that the terrorists are going to attack us -- it's not a question of whether, it's a question of when. And, yes, that might happen. But the facts are that since 9/11 we haven't had any, so thank you.” A trademark of a fake Bush event, questions that start with praise for the President, wrapped up in a popular Bush talking point. This talking point is that because we have not had another 911, the war on terror must be working. That is patently silly and stupid argument. Ask the British. Either way, you can tell that this “average American” is going to continue to fake Q & A session in grand Bush style, back to the question: “And now to my question. You have said many a time to all those who will listen that the two major pillars of democracy are free and fair elections, and the separation of church and state. However, historically, and to date, a vast majority of the Islamists across nations do not believe in that simple fact of separation between church and state. Therefore, how can we help change their belief, that for democracy to succeed, certain elements must be in place? Thank you.” The purpose of this softball question was to allow Bush to start assuaging those who are correctly pointing out that we have replaced the only secular Islamic regime with another radical theocracy, which fundamentally are not very democratic. Time will still tell on this issue, but Bush seems to believe he can create a new type of Islam. Bush spoke about woman’s rights, but the jury is still out on that as well in Iraq. 3 – “Q We went for Christmas, to spend Christmas with my family in Mexico. And, you know, my family, friends, media, President Fox, they're talking about the wall that the United States wants to build across the border with Mexico. My question for you is, what is your opinion or your position about that wall? And, you know, when people ask me how can I justify the answer to build a wall, other than saying, we don't want you here, you know?” Shameless as ever, we have a transplanted Mexican-American, living in Kentucky, and lucky enough to toss this softball up to Bush, to allow him to speak about his immigration endeavors. This question allowed Bush to talk for five minutes about his worker program, his plans to build a wall at certain points, and basically shill his immigration plan. 4 – “Q Thank you. (Applause.) Right up there with national security I think is the issue of education of every single person in the United States. It's of crucial importance to our future. And given the challenges in the world, the fact that we have to keep this nation secure in the future, and that we have to deal with all sorts of threats -- many of which we don't know -- what do you think we need to do better in education to provide a well educated citizenry that will meet those challenges and keep us secure?” Wow, another generalized question which allows Bush to speak freely about the topic without addressing any shortcomings he may have in the specific area. What about the fact that No Child Left Behind is a miserable, under funded failure? Instead, Bush got to ramble about the NCLB, make generalized statements about minorities being shuffled through school systems, and completely misrepresent the job he did in Texas as Governor. 5 – “Q Hello, Mr. President. You just made a very poignant -- about math and science. I am a -- number one, I'd like to thank you for taking time to be here. I think all of us would reiterate that.” Shameless plug, lets get to the “question.” “I am a business owner and I am living the American Dream, and I would like to personally thank you for having a will that will not be broken. And the men and women of the armed forces that protect the freedoms that we have had and that we oftentimes take for granted and give us this way of life.” Oops, guess he was not done reminding us how much Mr. Bush has done for all of us. This is also a staple of the Bush fake town halls, a real American, living the “American dream”, made possible because of the freedom protecting cowboy from Texas. Is there a question anywhere in our future? “So as a business owner, though, my greatest challenge is, I worked 20 years in the civil engineering arena before starting my company. And the thing that is really frightening to me is our -- we have a true weakness, a wave that's coming in both the engineering arena, the sciences, as well as construction -- construction inspectors. There's going to be a huge -- these baby boomers that are starting to retire, that knowledge base that's getting ready to go away, and there is no one to replace it that's compelling enough. What could you suggest that corporate America can do to help in this deficit?” Apparently, this question was designed to allow Bush to pontificate about how great the economy is doing, wildly claiming the creation of 4.5 million jobs since April of 2003. Now, even if those numbers are accurate, and I am not entirely sure they are, what Bush omitted is he had to create that many jobs in that exact time frame just to keep up with new job seekers. This economy is a wreck, but undeterred, Bush also then launched into some bravado about the community college system, which has become far more expensive under the Bush Empire and he did not discuss the fact that he has reneged consistently on promises to increase federal student aid to specific levels. Next, because this fake question was so generalized, Bush went into urging Congress to make his tax handouts to millionaires permanent, because gosh, that is why this economy is doing so well. The more money millionaires have, the better the economy does, right? Finally, Bush used this question to remind people that social security is still a mess, when it really is not. 6 – “Q As a small business owner, like a lot of people in this room, we look at the dramatic cost increases that have been passed along, and that we all really struggle with how do we provide our employees with health insurance that's comprehensive? And we all view you as a very pragmatic problem solver, and we'd like you to take this one on, sir.” Shameless plug number 5 wrapped around another softball to set Bush up to chat about his ridiculous plans to ravage a failed healthcare system. Bush dragged back up his silly “Health Savings Accounts” idea, designed to force more Americans to have to buy “catastrophic” coverage, gambling against the likelihood of their lives being shattered and sheltering companies at the expense of real Americans. That aside, Bush then of course launched back into his tiring argument about liability. Bush is still pimping the ABSOLUTE LIE that healthcare costs are rising because of lawsuits. The truth is that medical liability lawsuits account for less than 1% of healthcare costs in this country. But you must realize that the purpose of this entire event was not the truth, but rather a fluff propaganda piece to allow Bush to sell his failed policies and vision to America, under the guise of a town hall meeting. 7 – “Q How can people help on the war on terror?” Awww, what a cute question to be asked by a SEVEN YEAR OLD! I kid you not America, the depths that the Bush administration will sink to knows no bottom. They actually had a seven year old boy ask this question. First of all, the notion that a seven year old would even ask this question is a telling admission for the administration. This has been their goal the entire time. They want fear and terror to simply be what we live and breathe every day. They want it on all of our minds, as we work, play, and live our lives. They want it so commonplace, that apparently we will not blink when a SEVEN year old child wants to know how he can help fight the war on terror. This is a frighteningly stark look into the sinister minds that run this country now and should provide a pause for all Americans. Bush then proceeded to use this seven year old child to criticize anyone who would dare question him and his war on terror, blatantly using the troops as well to shield himself from the criticism he certainly deserves. A truly disgusting point in American history. 8 – “Q Along with the seven-year-old, my question is, how is it that the people of Iraq when polled have more hope about their future than the rest of the -- than the rest of the world has, with regard to what we're doing in Iraq? How can we get the positive things that are happening in Iraq -- how can we get everybody to know what's happening out there?” Wow, what a way to end such a blatant shill session. This is more than a fake question. It is designed to wrap up two fake Bush talking points into an opportunity to have Bush wrap up this fake town hall meeting. Fake talking point number one is that Iraqis all poll positively about the US involvement in their country. Nonsense. In fact most polls actually reveal the opposite. The second fake Bush talking point is that somehow the “good news” of Iraq is being squelched. Nonsense again. This is war; people die in war, those deaths are reported. This is life. This fake “question” was designed to put some makeup on the pig that is the Iraq War and allow Bush to finish off his series of softball questions in style. Here is a telling quote in response from Bush to this “question”: “You don't want your government running your press. That would be the worst thing that could happen. That would mean we have just fallen prey to exactly that which we're trying to liberate people from in Iraq.” What??? Maybe we can get the seven year old to come back and ask a follow up question about how Bush would then explain his administration’s decision to plant propaganda in Iraqi newspapers. No chance of a real question today though. Bush wrapped up quickly by misstating how great things are in Iraq right now. One last shill opportunity for the master shill of them all. I am amazed, simply amazed. I cannot fathom how utterly stupid George W. Bush thinks America is. In these current days we have a president facing: 1) Illegally wiretapping US citizens 2) Downing Street Memos proving he lied this country into war 3) Administration officials under indictment for feloniously outing a CIA operative 4) Jack Abramoff and the rampant corruption with the president’s party 5) Attaching a rider to the new torture ban, circumventing it 6) Federal government negligence in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina 7) The death of New Orleans 8) Millions more Americans living in poverty Yet when presented with an opportunity to ask the president “anything”, we are supposed to believe that these “average Americans” decided to ask this collection of shill softball questions? Even the one that actually addressed a topical issue, the wiretap controversy, was framed as if the media and leakers were to blame for the illegal activities of this president! Mixed in with these fake questions were gushing compliment after gushing compliment designed to remind America how lucky we are to have a president who is willing to pretend to talk to us. After the “NSA thingy”, we see question after question designed to set up Bush to sell us his talking points on education, immigration and healthcare. The questions were all generalized and designed to highlight Bush’s agenda. To top it off, Bush then used a seven year old boy to sell his war on terror to us one more time. That is Bush’s legacy. A seven year old child asking a fake question of the president about what he can do to help fight terrorism. It should be a vivid reminder to us as we continue to hear this fake president sell us his failed vision. When asked fair questions, he hides behind the troops, either using them at staged events, or using them symbolically to choke off the right to dissent they are fighting to protect. When not using the troops, Bush uses our collective fears against us. At every turn invoking the memory of 911 to cower us. When not using the troops or fear, Bush has now proven he will leave no child behind in his war on the truth. Propping up his failed wars behind the fake question of a seven year old boy, George Bush continues to insult the collective intelligence of Americans. In direct response to the question from the seven year old, George Bush said: “Well, that's the hardest question I've had all day.” The sad thing is that it was the hardest question George Bush faced all day. While the president was joking however, America is no longer laughing at a leader who cannot answer a question that is not pre-screened. A leader who thinks it is acceptable to gather pre-selected people with pre-selected questions to afford him a pulpit to sell his failed vision, and pretend it is all happenstance. The absolute worst thing though, is a leader who thinks the people he represents are entirely too stupid to see thing strings moving when he speaks. Anthony Wade, a contributing writer to opednews.com, is dedicated to educating the populace to the lies and abuses of the government. He is a 37-year-old independent writer from New York with political commentary articles seen on multiple websites. A Christian progressive and professional Rehabilitation Counselor working with the poor and disabled, Mr. Wade believes that you can have faith and hold elected officials accountable for lies and excess. Anthony Wade’s Archive: http://www.opednews.com/archiveswadeanthony.htm Email Anthony: takebacktheus@gmail.com

How the US Press Squelches Bush Impeachment Drive: The Missing Polls, Inquiries and Bills... By DAVE LINDORFF 9 Jan 2006 There are now eight members of Congress who have put their names to a bill calling for a special committee of the House to investigate impeachable crimes by the Bush administration. To date, all of them are Democrats. So far, you'd be hard-pressed to know about any of this--including the very fact that Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), the ranking minority member of the House Judiciary Committee, had even submitted such a bill--as well as two companion bills calling for censure of both Bush and Cheney for abuse of power. Apparently in the editorial cloisters of our official Fourth Estate, where decisions as to what it is safe or appropriate for us in the public to know, it has been determined that we do not need to know that the notion of impeachment of the president is starting to grow. Most of the major corporate media have yet to let the public know that several respected polls have shown a majority of Americans to favor impeachment if Bush lied about the reasons for going to war against Iraq, which if combined with polls showing that two-thirds of Americans or more think he did lie about those reasons, tells you all you need to know about the public attitude on impeachment. The same paternalistic and pro-administration mindset was at work when the editor and publisher of the New York Times decided a year ago to squelch for a year a story they had about the NSA warrantless spying program. They felt that we the people didn't need to know about that story in a presidential election year, even if the target of that spying may well have been the administration's electoral opponents, just as it was in the 1972 Watergate spying scandal. There is a clear slide towards dictatorship taking place in America. The president, it turns out, has been signing executive letters along with many of the bills Congress passes, essentially asserting that as commander-in-chief in his fake "war" on terror, he reserves the right to ignore those bills. The latest such letter was signed by him as he signed the bill banning torture. In other words, he conceded to the bill, but then said he'll authorize torture anyway if he wants to, in his role as commander in chief. The beauty of this presidential scam is that, since the "war" on terror will never end, neither will his self-claimed draconian powers. And what is the limit of those powers? Well, basically the limit is whatever Congress and the courts tell him those limits are. And are we seeing Congress and the courts setting any limits? No. A major part of the problem is that the media that are supposed to inform the American public about what is happening are instead dropping the ball, or even hiding it. I write these words in Rome, where I am, among other things, looking into one dark corner of the administration's crimes--the forgery of documents designed to make it appear that Iraq had an active nuclear weapons program and was trying to buy uranium. An Italian parliamentary committee concluded this past fall that the forgeries were the work of long-time right-wing con-man Michael Ledeen--the guy who helped bring us the criminal Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages-and-stinger-missiles deal during the Reagan administration, along with Dewey Clarridge (another Iran-Contra veteran), convicted bank swindler Ahmed Chalabi and Frank Brookes, a PR man hired by the Pentagon to promote Chalabi's CIA-created Iraqi National Congress. That's another story that we didn't see in most of our corporate media, though, given that all those people are connected tightly to the White House and the Pentagon, it suggests strongly that top White House officials were behind the whole Niger document scam. If so, it would make Lyndon Johnson's Tonkin Gulf deception seem like child's play (and all by itself would be grounds for impeachment). I should note that Italy provides a good model of where the U.S. is heading. Here virtually the entire media--and certainly the entire electronic media-- are owned by the right-wing prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi. Except for some fortunately excellent independent newspapers, like La Repubblica, which did most of the investigative work into the Niger document forgery story, it's hard to get any information in Italy about what its government is doing. The one advantage Italy has is a genuine political opposition. Dave Lindorff is the author of Killing Time: an Investigation into the Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. His new book of CounterPunch columns titled "This Can't be Happening!" is published by Common Courage Press. Information about both books and other work by Lindorff can be found at www.thiscantbehappening.net. He can be reached at: dlindorff@yahoo.com

Bush's Con Jobs: Will the US Need an IMF Bail Out? By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS ICH 11 Jan 06 President George W. Bush has destroyed America's economy along with America's reputation as a truthful, compassionate, peace-loving nation that values civil liberties and human rights. Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard University budget expert Linda Bilmes have calculated the cost to Americans of Bush's Iraq war to be between one and two trillion dollars. This figure is 5 to 10 times higher than the $200 billion that Bush's economic adviser, Larry Lindsey, estimated. Lindsey was fired by Bush, because Lindsey's estimate was three times higher than the $70 billion figure that the Bush administration used to mislead Congress and the American voters about the burden of the war. You can't work in the Bush administration unless you are willing to lie for dub-ya. Americans need to ask themselves if the White House is in competent hands when a $70 billion war becomes a $2 trillion war. Bush sold his war by understating its cost by a factor of 28.57. Any financial officer any where in the world whose project was 2,857 percent over budget would instantly be fired for utter incompetence. Bush's war cost almost 30 times more than he said it would because the moronic neoconservatives that he stupidly appointed to policy positions told him the invasion would be a cakewalk. Neocons promised minimal US casualties. Iraq already has cost 2,200 dead Americans and 16,000 seriously wounded--and Bush's war is not over yet. The cost of lifetime care and disability payments for the thousands of US troops who have suffered brain and spinal damage was not part of the unrealistic rosy picture that Bush painted. Dr. Stiglitz's $2 trillion estimate is OK as far as it goes. But it doesn't go far enough. My own estimate is a multiple of Stiglitz's. Stiglitz correctly includes the cost of lifetime care of the wounded, the economic value of destroyed and lost lives, and the opportunity cost of the resources diverted to war destruction. What he leaves out is the war's diversion of the nation's attention away from the ongoing erosion of the US economy. War and the accompanying domestic police state have filled the attention span of Americans and their government. Meanwhile, the US economy has been rapidly deteriorating into third world status. In 2005 for the first time on record consumer, business, and government spending exceeded the total income of the country. Net national savings actually fell. Americans need to ask themselves if the White House is in competent hands when a $70 billion war becomes a $2 trillion war. Bush sold his war by understating its cost by a factor of 28.57. Any financial officer any where in the world whose project was 2,857 percent over budget would instantly be fired for utter incompetence. Bush's war cost almost 30 times more than he said it would because the moronic neoconservatives that he stupidly appointed to policy positions told him the invasion would be a cakewalk. Neocons promised minimal US casualties. Iraq already has cost 2,200 dead Americans and 16,000 seriously wounded--and Bush's war is not over yet. The cost of lifetime care and disability payments for the thousands of US troops who have suffered brain and spinal damage was not part of the unrealistic rosy picture that Bush painted. Dr. Stiglitz's $2 trillion estimate is OK as far as it goes. But it doesn't go far enough. My own estimate is a multiple of Stiglitz's. Stiglitz correctly includes the cost of lifetime care of the wounded, the economic value of destroyed and lost lives, and the opportunity cost of the resources diverted to war destruction. What he leaves out is the war's diversion of the nation's attention away from the ongoing erosion of the US economy. War and the accompanying domestic police state have filled the attention span of Americans and their government. Meanwhile, the US economy has been rapidly deteriorating into third world status. In 2005 for the first time on record consumer, business, and government spending exceeded the total income of the country. Net national savings actually fell. America can consume more than it produces only if foreigners supply the difference. China recently announced that it intends to diversify its foreign exchange holdings away from the US dollar. If this is not merely a threat in order to extort even more concessions from Bush, Americans' ability to consume will be brought up short by a fall in the dollar's value as China ceases to be a sponge that is absorbing an excessive outpouring of dollars. Oil producing countries might follow China's lead. Now that Americans are dependent on imports for their clothing, manufactured goods, and even high technology products, a decline in the dollar's value will make all these products much more expensive. American living standards, which have been treading water, will sink. A decline in living standards is an enormous cost and will make existing debt burdens unbearable. Stiglitz did not include this cost in his estimate. Even more serious is the war's diversion of attention from the disappearance of middle class jobs for university graduates. The ladders of upward mobility are being rapidly dismantled by offshore production for US markets, job outsourcing and importation of foreign professionals on work visas. In almost every US corporation, US employees are being dismissed and replaced by foreigners who work for lower pay. Even American public school teachers and hospital nurses are being replaced by foreigners imported on work visas. The American Dream has become a nightmare for college graduates who cannot find meaningful work. This fact is made abundantly clear from the payroll jobs data over the past five years. December's numbers, released on January 6, show the same pattern that I have reported each month for years. Under pressure from offshore outsourcing, the US economy only creates low productivity jobs in low-pay domestic services. Only a paltry number of private sector jobs were created--94,000. Of these 94,000 jobs, 35,800 or 38% are for waitresses and bartenders. Health care and social assistance account for 28% of the new jobs and temporary workers account for 10%. These three categories of low tech, nontradable domestic services account for 76% of the new jobs. This is the jobs pattern of a poor third world economy that consumes more than it produces. America's so-called first world superpower economy was only able to create in December a measly 12,000 jobs in goods producing industries, of which 77% are accounted for by wood products and fabricated metal products--the furniture and roofing metal of the housing boom that has now come to an end. US employment declined in machinery, electronic instruments, and motor vehicles and parts. 2,600 jobs were created in computer systems design and related services, depressing news for the several hundred thousand unemployed American computer and software engineers. When manufacturing leaves a country, engineering, R&D, and innovation rapidly follow. Now that outsourcing has killed employment opportunities for US citizens and even General Motors and Ford are failing, US economic growth depends on how much longer the rest of the world will absorb our debt and finance our consumption. How much longer will it be before "the world's only remaining superpower" is universally acknowledged as a debt-ridden, hollowed-out economy desperately in need of IMF bailout? Paul Craig Roberts has held a number of academic appointments and has contributed to numerous scholarly publications. He served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. His graduate economics education was at the University of Virginia, the University of California at Berkeley, and Oxford University. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions. He can be reached at: paulcraigroberts@yahoo.com

Confusion on the streets, solidarity in the regime as Iran chooses brinkmanship Robert Tait in Tehran Thursday January 12, 2006 The Guardian The heavy snowfall yesterday, compounding the thick blanket of pollution that habitually engulfs Tehran in the dead of winter, seemed emblematic of the confusion many Iranians now have over their government's decision to resume nuclear research activities in the face of fierce criticism from the west. The White House yesterday stepped up diplomatic pressure by saying that Iran had made a "serious miscalculation" by clearing the way to resume uranium enrichment, and that intensive diplomacy with European allies and others was starting over what to do next. In London, Tony Blair said it was likely that the US and Europe would agree to refer Iran to the UN security council. Conscious of the clamour from the west to refer Iran to the council, some people voiced mistrust of their country's nuclear ambitions and feared that the issue could escalate into military conflict. Others, more sympathetic to the Islamic regime, asserted Iran's right to nuclear energy, and even nuclear weapons, saying the nation was being singled out by Islam's enemies. It was a sharp division of opinion unlikely to be mirrored within the regime itself, said analysts. While the power structure is riddled with disagreements between the ultra-Islamist government of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and more traditional conservatives in parliament, senior regime figures are at one in backing the hardball approach on the nuclear issue. The reason is that the most sensitive nuclear decisions are in the hands of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, rather than with President Ahmadinejad. Tactical "There is no issue in which everybody in the regime is united, but in this special case there is more unity than on any other," said Saeed Leylaz, a political analyst based in Tehran. That was because the decision to break the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) seals to restart work at the Natanz nuclear facility came from the supreme leader, he said. "Nuclear issues are absolutely separate from the government and I don't believe this is Mr Ahmadinejad's decision." While western governments cast Tuesday's move as a serious step towards uranium enrichment and, ultimately, atomic weapons, analysts in Tehran argued that the regime's intentions were purely tactical. Mr Leylaz said: "This is not the beginning of enrichment. But diplomatically it's very aggressive and intended to gain advantage for the Iranian side. We've had two plane crashes in the past month caused by American economic sanctions against Iran. Those accidents are forcing Iran to take a more aggressive stance towards the sanctions. The regime wants to start real negotiations with the US, because it doesn't think the Europeans are authorised to negotiate properly. This move is aimed at breaking the circle and getting America's attention." Another analyst said: "This decision is about forcing the west to come up with something substantial and serious. Iran wants rewards for not turning its nuclear programme into a weapons programme. The Russians are saying, come and do uranium enrichment on our soil, but there's no reward for that. The regime is saying, if you want us to work with the Russians, there's a price - which is lifting the sanctions, security guarantees, economic incentives and recognition of Iran's role in the region." The image of a regime united over driving a hard bargain was exemplified by Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the former president and occasional opponent of Mr Khamenei, who accused the west of an "arrogant and colonial" attitude. "We will stand by our right to nuclear technology. They will regret creating any problems for us," he said in a sermon at Tehran University. But not all Iranians, on holiday for the Eid Ghorban festival, were so robust. Aidin, 26, a businessman and political science graduate, said: "The west and the IAEA are right to be tough with Iran. If Iran had any opportunity to turn itself into an international oppressor, it would do so through atomic weapons." A mechanical engineering student, Ali, 25, said: "I know the regime says it just wants to move to nuclear energy for electricity but they don't have the culture for that. Their first target would be to try to get weapons to destroy Israel. That's the impression they give everybody and it's not a good idea." Orkideh, 35, a housewife, said: "I'm not sure nuclear weapons are their objective but I do worry about ... military conflict. With ... Iraq, where they said it had weapons of mass destruction when it didn't, that could be our experience too. If we had a different type of government, one not Islamic, I don't think there would be a problem." Others were more bullish. Alaeddin Amiri, 43, a military employee, said: "If America has the right to nuclear weapons after dropping bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, why doesn't Iran have that right? Where's the evidence that Iran will use nuclear weapons? We are trying to protect ourselves. Iran is the heart of Islam and I believe it is Islam, and not just Iran, that is under attack." FAQ: nuclear states Has Iran the right to enrich uranium? Yes, under international rules. Iran is a signatory to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT). However it can only enrich for power generation, not for a weapons programme. What is the NPT? The 1970 treaty aims at preventing the spread of nuclear weapons while establishing the right of all states to develop nuclear energy. Non-nuclear states say the nuclear powers dictate who gets atomic weapons yet fail to move towards nuclear disarmament. Does the NPT apply to all? No. Russia, China, the US, France, and Britain have the nuclear bomb, are NPT signatories, and must, theoretically, disarm progressively. India, Pakistan, and Israel also have the bomb but did not sign the NPT. It is suspected North Korea has nuclear weapons but it abrogated the treaty three years ago. Iran could follow suit. Comment: Key to this issue is the following comment from the above article: "Iran wants rewards for not turning its nuclear programme into a weapons programme. The Russians are saying, come and do uranium enrichment on our soil, but there's no reward for that. The regime is saying, if you want us to work with the Russians, there's a price - which is lifting the sanctions, security guarantees, economic incentives and recognition of Iran's role in the region." The most important point is "Iran's role in the region". For many years Western nations (primarily the US in recent decades) in concert with Israel, have been carefully moulding several Middle Eastern countries to serve as the bogeymen, or "rogue states" that would facilitate American and Israeli expansionist plans. The plan involved the deliberate driving of a political, cultural and economic wedge between Western nations and the Middle East and in doing so, preventing the development of Middle Eastern countries. At the same time, through the use of the mainstream media, a decidely negative impression of Middle Eastern countries and their inhabitants was developed in the minds of western populations. The leaders of the Middle Eastern countries in question were and are well aware of this tactic and have frequently made demands similar to those of the current Iranian president - to be allowed back into the fold, as it were. It is entirely illogical to believe that there is any reason why the leaders of Middle Eastern nations (or any world nation) would want to ostracise themselves and their countries from the West. The simple fact is that leaders the world over crave personal power and wealth, and for many years now, governments of Western nations have been leading the field in terms of being the most corrupt and power hungry. Small wonder then that the Iranian leader, like so many others, is demanding that he be allowed the chance to have a piece of the action. Some might suggest that the fact that certain Middle Eastern political groups and individuals have embraced fundamentalist Islam and that this is the real source of the schism between Western and Middle Eastern nations. Nothing could be further from the truth. At the top level in the world of global politics (and religion) it is clearly understood that religion is a tool that is used to control the masses - the controllers themselves are not influenced by it in the way that it is used to deceive the people. The interesting thing about the Middle East is that Western governments and intelligence agencies have spent decades and billions of dollars trying to graft fundamentalism onto the Middle East region in general. As already mentioned, their goal in doing so is to create the reality of the Middle East as a rogue region dominated by dangerous Islamic fundamentalists and provide justification for wars that are, in reality, entirely unjustified.

Hamza: Patsy for the Clash of Civilizations Gang Wednesday January 11th 2006 Kurt Nimmo In an effort to scare the pants off the misinformed and a largely dim-witted television-gazing public, the prosecution in the trial in Britain of Abu Hamza al-Masri (formerly Mustafa Kamel Mustafa) told the court the Egyptian cleric at the Finsbury Park mosque “had a 10-volume terrorism manual at his home which was dedicated to Osama bin Laden and featured a list of targets including Big Ben, skyscrapers, airports and football stadiums,” even “large congregations at Christmas” would not be spared, according to the UK Telegraph. Prosecutor David Perry and the British government told the court Hamza’s home contained a veritable treasure trove of stereotypical Muslim hate materials, including “more than 2,700 audio tapes and 570 video tapes, some of them labelled ‘Jihad’… [and] boxes piled with blank tapes and others labelled ‘master’, suggesting they were being prepared for distribution.” It would appear Hamza was attempting to out-do the phantom al-Zarqawi in straight up psychopathic viciousness. In order to understand how far the Brits will go to portray radical Islam as a religion of serial murder and wanton butchery, it is best to quote the UK Telegraph article at length: Britain and Western nations were “100 per cent anti-Islam”, [Hamza] said in another tape, calling on his followers to spread Islam “by the sword” and adding: “European leaders only respect those that are strong.” He said: “Killing the kafir for any reason is OK, killing the kafir for no reason is OK,” and he specifically singled out those that granted licences for “wine shops”. Hamza added: “We like blood and are addicted to it. When they say they love Allah they must ask themselves how much fafir blood they have spilt for Allah.” Describing non-believers as “germs and viruses” in another tape he added: “There is no drop of liquid loved by Allah more than blood of Serbs, Jews or any other enemy of Allah.” In a speech about a terrorist attack in Egypt, which killed 58 people in November 1997, Hamza told his audience the tourist industry should be Islamised and added: “While children should not be killed directly, their killing is permissible if they are in the target area.” Asked if suicide bombing was permissible he said: “People call it suicide to put people off. It is not called suicide, it is called martyrdom.” The court heard Hamza was calling for a worldwide “caliphate” of Muslim Shariah law and for a Muslim ruler in the White House. Hamza claimed Jews were “blasphemous, traitors and dirty” and added that “Hitler was sent to torture and humiliate Jews”, the court was told. In short, Hamza was portrayed as the Charlie Manson of Islam. However, it should be remembered that MI6 and the CIA spent a lot of time and billions of dollars a few short years ago looking under rocks high and low for Charlie Manson-like Muslim nut jobs such as Abu Hamza for operations in Afghanistan and later in Kosovo and elsewhere. Hamza was associated with al-Muhajiroun, an offshoot of Hizb ut-Tahrir, a militant Islamic organization that draws its “middle leaders and lieutenants are from the old Muslim Brotherhood,” according to Misha Pozhininsky of Sobaka. It is well known that the Muslim Brotherhood was penetrated and co-opted by the CIA in the 1950s and 1960s (John Loftus, a former Justice Department prosecutor, believes British intelligence sponsored the Brotherhood even earlier, at the close of the Second World War and relocated many of its members from Egypt to Saudi Arabia in the 1950s). According to the Washington Post, “State Department and CIA officials have met with Brotherhood activists in Egypt, Kuwait, Jordan, the Palestinian territories and elsewhere to track currents within Islamic politics.” Moreover, according to Loftus, “back in the late 1990s, the leaders [of al-Muhajiroun] all worked for British intelligence in Kosovo. Believe it or not, British intelligence actually hired some Al-Qaeda guys to help defend the Muslim rights in Albania and in Kosovo. That’s when Al-Muhajiroun got started.” One of Hamza’s associates, Haroon Rashid Aswat, pegged as the July 7 London bombing “mastermind,” was a British intelligence asset. Of course, considering British intelligence hired out (for the tidy sum of £100,000) an “al-Qaeda” cell in a botched effort to kill Libya’s Qaddafi, this sort of revelation should come as no surprise (the allegation was made by former MI-5 officer David Shayler and corroborated by French intelligence). One look at Aswat and it is obvious he is little more than a mastermind at tying his shoes in the morning. It stands to reason the CIA and MI6 would naturally recruit the most vicious and demented of patsy terrorists for the long-term plan to discredit and slander Islam, as well as attempt to take out enemies such as Qaddafi and Slobodan Milosevic (and, as well, stir up trouble in Russia’s troubled Muslim republics, a scheme dreamed up by Zbigniew Brzezinski), thus the accusations against the misanthropic hatemonger Abu Hamza al-Masri are no surprise. No doubt MI6 went out of their way to find a dim bulb such as Hamza, one who could be easily and credibly associated with rooms full of hate material (obviously, a person residing in England or America with even the slightest lick of intelligence would not be associated with such material in the wake of nine eleven). As a set-up patsy, Hamza will now take a long and hard fall, providing the British government, the American Straussian neocons, and the Zionist master planners in Israel with even more grist for their total war mill. In the interim, we will be subjected to even more lurid details about Hamza and his confederates, details that fulfill the most rabid and hateful fantasies of the Muslim hating neocons, a small group of depraved sociopaths determined to spread chaos, suffering, and murder in the Middle East.

West has colonial mentality, Iran's Rafsanjani says AFP 12 Jan 06 Western opposition to Iran's nuclear programme is rooted in a "colonial mentality" and the Islamic republic will not back down to mounting pressure, top cleric Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said. Quoted by the official news agency IRNA, the former president said Iran had decided to resume sensitive nuclear work and "break the colonial taboos regarding our peaceful nuclear energy (programme) since the West's opposition to our peaceful nuclear energy is rooted in their colonial mentality." "They want to deprive Islamic nations of having nuclear energy knowledge and always keep them backwards," said Rafsanjani on Thursday, who served as Iran's president from 1989 to 1997 and now heads the Expediency Council, a top political arbitration body. Iran's nuclear programme, he asserted, was "the desire of our nation, we will pursue it." Iran broke the UN seals at its Natanz nuclear plant on Tuesday to resume research into uranium enrichment, prompting a strong reaction from world leaders who fear Tehran is trying to develop nuclear weapons. Iran insists its program is only for civilian purposes and only wants to enrich to make reactor fuel. But the process can be extended to military purposes. The British, French and German foreign ministers were to discuss a response on Thursday. The three European Union countries have been seeking a negotiated solution for over two years. But both Britain and the United States have warned that Iran was now likely to be referred to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions.

World powers threaten defiant Iran over nuclear crisis AFP 12 Jan 06 World powers threatened Iran with UN Security Council action, but a defiant Tehran vowed to press ahead with sensitive nuclear research. The British, French and German foreign ministers were to hold a meeting Thursday in Berlin to discuss a response. British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Iran would "likely" be refered to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions. The three European Union countries have seeking a negotiated solution with Tehran for two years. Iran caused renewed controversy on Tuesday when it broke the UN seals at its Natanz nuclear plant in order to resume research into uranium enrichment. There was a furious reaction from the United States and the European Union which fear Tehran is trying to develop atomic weapons. Iran insists its program is for civilian purposes. Enriched uranium used by some nuclear power stations but is also an essential element of atomic weapons. In Washington, Vice President Dick Cheney said referral to the UN Security Council would be the probable next step. "What would be probably the number one item on the agenda would be the resolution that could be enforced by sanctions, were they (the Iranians) to fail to comply with it," Cheney said in a US radio interview. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said: "It is more likely than ever that we are headed to the (UN) Security Council on this question." McCormack said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice conferred Wednesday by phone with British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and also with Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said he was "very concerned" over Iran's activity, but added that it was up to the IAEA to deal with the issue, according to spokesman Stephane Dujarric. Annan was "very appreciative" of the efforts the EU-3 and Russia to find a diplomatic solution to the crisis, Dujarric said, but felt that "at this point" the IAEA and the the EU members "remain clearly in the lead in this situation". Referral to the UN Security Council normally pass through the IAEA. Even Russia, a frequent ally of Iran, highlighted its concern at Iran's latest nuclear action. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called the breaking of the seals a "cause for concern," while Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov said the move "personally disappoints me and gives some cause for alarm." Rice spoke Tuesday with Lavrov, whose country has offered to house Iranian uranium-enrichment activities on its own soil as a control and confidence-building measure. US officials had privately made no secret of their skepticism over the EU's negotiating efforts, but now appear convinced that Washington's tactic of letting the talks run their course has borne fruit in highlighting Tehran's intransigence. A Western diplomat in Vienna said there was talk of a special board meeting of IAEA governors in about two weeks. US diplomats insist they have a majority of votes on the 35-member IAEA board to haul Iran before the Security Council, but it was unclear whether there was enough support for sanctions against Tehran. In Iran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad vowed not to be intimidated by the "fuss" and said he hoped atomic energy would soon "serve the progress" of the country. "I am telling all the powers that the Iranian nation and government, with firmness and wisdom, will continue its path in seeking and utilizing peaceful nuclear energy," he told supporters in the southern city of Bandar Abbas. "In the path of nuclear energy, we have started (nuclear fuel) research and God willing, in the near future this energy in its entirety will serve the Iranian nation." Former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, now head of Iran's top politicalarbitration body, was even more forthright. "With wisdom we will get our rights, and if they create any trouble for us, they will regret it in the end and Iran will emerge triumphant," he said. The crisis has hit world energy markets: light sweet crude for delivery in February hit a high for the day in New York trading of 64.80 dollars a barrel before closing at 63.94 dollars, up 57 cents. "I do think that the continued deterioration of the situation in Iran is having some impact on the market," AG Edwards analyst Bill O'Grady said. In London, the price of Brent North Sea crude also for February delivery was up 25 cents to 62.17 dollars a barrel. Comment: What is most interesting about the world's response to Iran and its nuclear program is that Israel has LOTS of nukes - and is out of compliance - and nobody is demanding resolutions to disarm Israel in order to stabilise the Middle East!

Russia Won't Block U.S. on Iran By Dafna Linzer Washington Post Staff Writer 12 Jan 06 The Bush administration, working intensely to galvanize international pressure on Iran, has secured a guarantee from Russia that it will not block U.S. efforts to take Tehran's nuclear case to the U.N. Security Council, American and European officials said yesterday. The commitment, made in a Tuesday night phone call between Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, will likely help the United States and its European allies win support from key countries weighing a tougher line in response to Iran's resumption of sensitive nuclear work. Vice President Cheney and British Prime Minister Tony Blair suggested yesterday that Iran now faces the possibility of U.N. economic sanctions if it does not halt nuclear enrichment research it began Tuesday. According to three senior diplomats who were briefed on the call, Lavrov told Rice that Russia would abstain, rather than vote against U.S. efforts to move the issue from the International Atomic Energy Agency to the Security Council. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack confirmed to reporters that Rice had spoken with Lavrov and other foreign ministers but did not divulge details. Russia's pledge was good only for when a vote takes place inside the IAEA. U.S. officials said they remain uncertain as to how Moscow, a traditional ally of Iran's, would react if the issue gets to the Security Council, where Moscow is one of five countries with veto power. Still, Bush administration officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity saw the Russian decision as a victory and said they would spend the next several weeks lobbying China for a similar commitment. "We spent much of our time working on the Russians, but we're now moving the focus to China," said one administration official who would only discuss the backroom diplomacy on the condition of anonymity. The White House is hoping the IAEA board will refer Iran's case to the Security Council before President Bush delivers the State of the Union address at the end of the month, according to two senior administration officials. Four years ago, in his annual address, Bush referred to Iran as a one of three "axis of evil" countries, along with Iraq and North Korea. But his administration has been criticized by friends and opponents for failing to come up with a strategy to curb Iran's nuclear program. The White House has been pushing for more than two years to bring Iran's case before the Security Council, but only now -- as a result of Iran's recent actions -- has it found a chance to win enough international support to do so. The timing is ideal, U.S. officials said. John R. Bolton, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, takes over the presidency of the Security Council for one month beginning on Feb. 1, giving Washington the opportunity to place Iran at the top of the council agenda. In an interview yesterday with Fox News Radio, Cheney said "the number one item on the agenda" at the Security Council would be a "resolution that could be enforced by sanctions." He cautioned that the process, still in flux, was "speculative at this point" but added, "that will be the next step once the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency meets and concludes that the diplomatic track they've been on isn't going to work." In London, Blair told parliament that sanctions are a serious option. "We don't rule out any measures at all," Blair said. "It is important Iran recognizes how seriously the international community treats it." The foreign ministers of France, Britain and Germany, who are now closely allied with Washington's position on Iran, are expected to call today for an emergency meeting of the IAEA board to vote on sending Iran's case to New York. They are assured of winning a majority of the votes from the board's 35 members. But diplomats from all three countries, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the meeting may not take place in time for Bush's speech, saying they may need several more weeks to lobby China and other influential board members, such as India. Undersecretary of State R. Nicholas Burns will travel to India next week to press for its support. "We expect the meeting will most likely take place around the beginning of February," one European official said. Robert Einhorn, who was assistant secretary of state for nonproliferation until 2001, said it would be best to press Russian and China for more than abstentions. "What we need to do now is get the Russians and Chinese to tell the Iranians they won't be in a position to help them out in the [Security] Council if they go forward with this work," he said. "If the Russians and Chinese told them that, it would have quite an impact in Tehran." Iran says its program is designed solely to generate electricity, but the Bush administration is convinced Tehran is using it as a pathway to a nuclear bomb. So far, the IAEA has not found proof of a weapons program, but Iran's cooperation with inspectors has been shaky, and many questions remain unanswered. © 2006 The Washington Post Company

Europe to call for IAEA emergency meeting AFP 12 Jan 06 Britain, France and Germany are to discuss calling an emergency meeting of the UN's nuclear watchdog at crisis talks in Berlin after Iran resumed sensitive nuclear activities, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said. It was "highly probable" that Tehran's case would end up being referred to the United Nations Security Council, a move that could lead to sanctions, Straw told reporters in London just before leaving for Germany. "At this meeting, top of the agenda will be the calling of an emergency meeting of the board of governors of the (International) Atomic Energy Agency and the question of whether we put before the board of governors the referral by the IAEA of Iran to the Security Council," Straw said on Thursday. In Berlin, the British foreign minister was to meet his counterparts from France and Germany, the EU countries also at the forefront of negotiations with Tehran over fears its nuclear programme may be hiding weapons development. Iran sparked a furious worldwide reaction on Tuesday when it broke UN seals at its Natanz nuclear plant to resume research into uranium enrichment. Enriched uranium can be used as fuel for nuclear power stations, but in its highly enriched form makes the explosive core for atomic weapons. "For two and a half years we've been working with Iran and the rest of the international community to bring Iran into compliance with its very clear obligations not to do anything that leads to suspicions that they are developing a nuclear weapons capability," Straw said. The decision to break seals "means that we have now to consider the next steps before us", he said. The IAEA could have referred Iran to the Security Council when Tehran was first deemed to be in breach of nuclear non-proliferation obligations, and "some say that it should have done", Straw said. "We suspended that action in return for Iran suspending its uranium enrichment activities. Iran has now broken the key part of that deal." Asked whether referral to the Security Council was now certain, Straw said it was "highly probable", while also noting that the decision to call an IAEA emergency meeting was officially "one for France, Germany, the United Kingdon and (EU foreign policy chief) Javier Solana combined". Straw noted that the "impetuous action" of Iran in breaking the seals had brought "almost universal criticism by the international community", but refused to discuss possible sanctions, saying: "I am not talking about sanctions at this stage." Comment: We seem to recall that most of Europe looked favorably on Iran's nuclear power aspirations BEFORE the Iranian president declared that Israel ought to be "wiped off the map" and that Europe ought to give land to Jews since Europe was guilty of the Holocaust. Since those remarks, however, Europe has taken a harder line...

Israel `can destroy` Iran nukes By Claude Salhani UPI 11 Jan 2006 WASHINGTON, DC -- Just a few days before Iran announced it was removing U.N. seals on its uranium enrichment equipment and resuming nuclear research, Israel`s Chief of General Staff Lt.Gen. Dan Halutz said Iran`s nuclear program 'can be destroyed.' He made the comments during a conference at Tel Aviv University, Israeli Army Radio reported. Halutz, however, stated Iran`s continued nuclear program 'it is not only Israel`s problem,' but said the ball was in Iran`s court. 'There is no doubt the Iranians are taking this to the brink,' he said. Binyamin Netanyahu, who replaced Ariel Sharon as the head of Likud, told United Press International last November much the same, that Iran was not only Israel`s problem. The possibility of Israel and the United States acting jointly to destroy Iran`s nuclear facilities has long been discussed in war rooms in Washington and Tel Aviv since word first leaked out that Iran was developing a nuclear program. If the decision is eventually taken to destroy Iran`s nuclear facilities, the odds, though, are that it will be Israel acting unilaterally. Any assistance from the United States will in all probability be limited to very discreet help provided by the U.S. intelligence community, such as offers of intelligence, satellite imagery and on the ground hum-int (human intelligence) data collected by opponents to the regime of the ayatollahs that finds it way to the CIA Headquarters at Langley, Va. With about 150,000 U.S. troops in Iraq -- and within easy reach of Iranian firepower, either in the form of direct rocket and artillery attack, or by Iraqi militia proxy, of which there is no shortage in Iraq -- it would be suicidal for the United States to attempt a direct attack on Iran. Reacting to Iran`s decision to resume nuclear fuel production research, Israel`s Foreign Ministry responded by issuing a statement saying, 'It is clear that this step calls for a grave and immediate international response -- sending the issue to the United Nations Security Council.' The Israeli Foreign Ministry said remitting the Iran dossier to the Security Council would 'send a clear message that the international community will not reconcile with Iran`s breaching its commitments.' Tehran denies it is developing nuclear fuel to produce weapons, saying its program is only to generate electricity. Before the issue can be referred to the Security Council, the board of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog based in Vienna, would need to take a vote on the matter. However, the 35-nation board at its last meeting in November put off a referral vote to allow diplomacy to take its course. Yet clearly the diplomatic track has gone nowhere. Alireza Jafarzadeh, president of Strategic Policy Consulting and a former Washington spokesman for Iran`s parliament in exile, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, said the dialogue between the European Union-3 (Britain, France, Germany) with Iran 'is dead.' Jafarzadeh added: 'The Iranian regime has made a conscious decision to acquire and impose a complete nuclear fuel cycle on the world community, which the regime mockingly describes as power diplomacy.' The aim of Tehran`s regime, says Jafarzadeh, is to proceed 'step-by-step, until the international community is faced with a fait accompli.' For Israel to carry out pre-emptive strikes against Iran represents a real challenge. Unlike the now legendary strike on Iraq`s Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981, when the Israeli air force destroyed Iraq`s sole reactor, and along with it Saddam Hussein`s dreams of joining the nuclear club, Iran`s reactor have been scattered all over the map. According to reports from the Mojahedeed-e-Khalq, a group opposed to the current regime in Tehran, Iran`s Revolutionary Guards, to whom the task has been assigned to defend the nuclear sites, has buried Iran`s nuclear facilities in deep underground bunkers, often underneath rock mountains. Additionally, unlike Osirak, where the Iraqis had built a single facility, the Iranian nuclear project is scattered around anywhere from 200 to 300 sites. It would be like searching for Waldo. On the other hand, given Ariel Sharon`s incapacitated state following a massive stroke, should Israel`s interim Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who is largely perceived as a lightweight by many Israeli voters, take it upon himself to order an attack on Iran -- and if it should prove to be successful -- it would almost guarantee Olmert and the new Kadima Party a win in next March 28 election. The date also coincides with the 'window of opportunity' intelligence experts say will then be closed. One diplomat speaking to United Press International on condition of anonymity, said there 'should be a tremendous sense of urgency because of the cascades Iran has put into place. This is it.' Still, the foreign diplomat said, 'Diplomacy is still the best outcome. The trick is to get China and Russia on board.' The question though is will China and Russia play ball? (Comments may be sent to Claude@upi.com.) Copyright 2006 by United Press International

Spurious attempt to tie Iran, Iraq to nuclear arms plot bypassed U.S. intelligence channels Larisa Alexandrovna Raw Story January 11, 2006 Update: Retired Paris CIA station chief Bill Murray confirms and corrects. Several U.S. and foreign intelligence sources, along with investigators, say an Iranian exile with ties to Iran-Contra peddled a bizarre tale of stolen uranium to governments on both sides of the Atlantic in the spring and summer of 2003. The story that was peddled -- which detailed how an Iranian intelligence team infiltrated Iraq prior to the start of the war in March of 2003, and stole enriched uranium to use in their own nuclear weapons program -- was part of an attempt to implicate both countries in a WMD plot. It later emerged that the Iranian exile was trying to collect money for his tales, sources say. By all credible accounts, the source of this dubious tale was Manucher Ghorbanifar, an Iranian arms dealer who used middle-men and cut-outs to create the appearance of several sources. Ghorbanifar played a key role in the Iran-Contra scandal that threatened to take down the Reagan administration, in which the U.S. sold arms to Iran and diverted the proceeds to Nicaraguan militants. While the various threads of the larger story of Ghorbanifar and his intelligence peddling began in December of 2001, meetings in Paris in 2003 are far more important in illustrating -- as a microcosm -- the larger difficulties faced in untangling the facts relating to global intelligence trafficking. Tall Tale of Uranium During the spring and summer of 2003, Congressman Curt Weldon (R-PA) made several visits to Paris to meet with a source believed to have important military intelligence information. Unbeknownst to Weldon, the informant, who he would dub simply "Ali," was already peddling a tale of stolen uranium traveling between Iraq and Iran that had been deemed false by most intelligence agencies. As reported by American Prospect and confirmed by intelligence sources, Ali is a pseudonym used to identify a former minister in the Shah's Iran, Fereidoun Mahdavi. Mahdavi himself is a secretary to Ghorbanifar, the originating source of the uranium fable. The American Prospect's reporters wrote, "'Ali' is actually a cipher for Manucher Ghorbanifar, the notorious Iranian arms dealer and accused intelligence fabricator -- and the potential instrument of another potentially dangerous manipulation of American policy in the Persian Gulf region." The Washington Post discusses Ali as follows: "'These secrets,' he says, come from 'an impeccable clandestine source,' whom Weldon code-names 'Ali,' an Iranian exile living in Paris who is a close associate of Manucher Gorbanifar. Gorbanifar is a well-known Iranian exile whom the CIA branded as a fabricator during the 1980s but who was used by the Reagan White House as a middleman for the arms-for-hostages deal with Iran." According to several intelligence sources on both sides of the Atlantic, the tale that "Ali" tells Weldon and others was as intricate as it was false. "Ali provided information that indicated Iranian intelligence had sent a team to Baghdad to extract highly enriched uranium (weapons grade) from a stockpile hidden by Saddam Hussein," one intelligence source said. Ali asserted that an Iranian intelligence team had infiltrated Iraq prior to the start of the war and stole enriched uranium to use in their own nuclear weapons program, sources say. Ghorbanifar said "the team successfully extracted the stockpile but on the way back to Iran contracted radiation poisoning," one source remarked. Upon learning this information Weldon says that he immediately notified then-CIA director George Tenet. "Tenet appeared interested, even enthusiastic about evaluating Ali and establishing a working relationship with him," Weldon wrote in his book, Countdown to Terror. "He agreed to send his top spy, Stephen Kappes, the deputy director of operations, along with me to Paris for another debriefing of Ali. "On the day of our scheduled second meeting with Ali in Paris, Kappes bowed out, claiming that "other commitments" compelled him to cancel," Weldon continued. "Later, the CIA claimed to have met with Ali independently. But I discovered this to be untrue... Incredibly, I learned that the CIA had apparently asked French intelligence to silence Ali." But according to the Prospect and several sources in intelligence abroad, the CIA did investigate, as did the Department of Defense. According to the Post, the agency tasked then-Paris station chief Bill Murray with investigating the claim, who ultimately found Ali to be a "fabricator." The CIA, understanding Ali to be Ghorbanifar, did not think him a credible source. Intelligence sources and a source close to the UN Security Council tell RAW STORY Murray took Ali (either Ghorbanifar or his agent) to Iraq in order to retrace the footsteps of the alleged mission in which the uranium was stolen from Saddam's own stockpile and taken back to Iran. In the end, sources say, the entire event proved a wild goose chase because Ali's earlier clarity all but evaporated. "Soon it became apparent that Ali and his sources were fabricators and were trying to extract large sums of money," one intelligence source said. Murray says he did meet with the source, but was not part of a trip to Iraq. "I did not make any such trip," Murray said. "I met with the source, found that he was not credible, forwarded the information he gave us to Washington, where it was thoroughly analyzed by many people and found not to add anything new to what we knew about Iran. The sensational charges that the source made could not be substantiated." Weldon's office declined to comment for the record after several extended conversations. RAW STORY delayed the article for a day to give Weldon's office a chance to comment. The neoconservative movement has long expressed an inherent distrust of the CIA. Many neoconservatives note that the agency undercounted Russia's nuclear stockpile in the waning days of the Soviet Union, and believe that it routinely underestimates foreign threats. Weldon, who had been led to believe the CIA never opened an investigation into the information he provided, took his case directly to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld then pressured the CIA to investigate further. "CIA reluctantly, after pressure from Rumsfeld, followed up by detaching one of their weapons experts from the team that was hunting WMD in Iraq," one former CIA officer who asked to remain anonymous said. Sources say that this second investigation resulted in another wild goose chase. The question of motive, however, seems to either have been entirely missed or simply glossed over. Weldon seen caught in web By all accounts, Weldon seems to be more of an innocent bystander taken in by an internationally known con-man and the lure of spook-like activities than an inside player with an agenda or material participant in these events. The Ali composite seems to have used Weldon as a conduit by which to provide the CIA with information. There was good reason to be cautious of Manucher Ghorbanifahr, who, along with his secretary, made up the "cipher" of Ali. The CIA had already had issued two burn notices against Ghorbanifahr as early as 1984 and his role in Iran-Contra as a middleman between the hardline neoconservative and another Iran-Contra figure, Michael Ledeen. In his book, Weldon said he met Ghorbanifahr after being approached by a Democratic congressman. "On March 7, 2003, a former Democratic member of Congress and my good friend Ron Klink called and asked to meet with me. . . . The source was Ali. My contacts with him were at first by telephone. Subsequently, Ali sent faxes to my home on a regular basis from different hotels in Paris, where he lives in exile. Eventually, as the information became more detailed and critical, I decided on a face-to-face meeting." (Countdown to Terror, p. 4). Why such highly important information would be provided to Klink and then Weldon as opposed to the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee remains unclear. Neoconservative Leeden explains meetings Ghorbanifahr has strong ties to Michael Ledeen, and both of them were involved in a controversial meeting in Rome of 2001. That meeting, whose purpose is unknown, included high level officials in Italian intelligence, Iranian nationals and Larry Franklin, a former Defense Department analyst who current pled guilty to charges of passing classified information to Israel and Iran. Also in attendance was Middle East expert Harold Rhode, also under investigation for charges of passing classified information to Israel and Iran. Both Rhode and Franklin worked for Feith in the Office of Special plans. Ledeen was consulting for OSP when all three were dispatched to Rome in 2001. He says the meetings had nothing to do with Iraq. "The Rome meetings had nothing whatsoever to do with Iraq, but with Iran and Afghanistan," Ledeen wrote in an email. "I don't think a single word was pronounced, by anyone, on Iraq." Later, in a phone conversation, Ledeen explained that the Rome meeting had to do with what his sources told him was going on on the ground in Afghanistan, namely that Iran was allegedly fueling the Afghan insurgency. "I reported this back," Ledeen said. "This information saved American lives." According to James Risen's New York Times article dated December of 2003, Ledeen was a paid consultant to the National Security Council at the time of the meeting. Risen reports that National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley was informed of the plans for the meeting and that Hadley expressed reservations given Ledeen and Ghorbanifahr's background. The Office of Special Plans, however, authorized the meeting without notifying any other agency, violating protocol. They did not notify the Rome CIA station chief or the U.S. Ambassador to Italy, Mel Sembler. Ledeen, however, says that Hadley had authorized the trip. This would also implicate Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, then-National Security Advisor. "Hadley authorized it and he could not have done so without reporting it to his direct superior," said Ledeen. Ledeen also denies that he had anything to do beyond that first meeting in December of 2001. "I was involved in one meeting, in Rome, in December 2001," Leeden said. "Period." Paris, Again The uranium story peddled to Weldon is strikingly similar to the story told to Ledeen. "I approached a variety of government officials, lots of them, and told them that I had a reliable source that told me about how and where the Iranians stole enriched uranium from Iraq," Ledeen said. Ledeen says his source then went on to explain that the "stash" was buried in an underground facility and recounted, much like Weldon did, that neither the CIA, the Defense Department or the State Department would listen to his concerns. Asked if his source was Ghorbanifahr, Ledeen said "No," but was unable to tell the identity of his source for fear said source might be "put in danger." Who arranged the meetings and their ultimate purpose remains unclear. One intelligence official, however, described the series of events and the market of intelligence trafficking as follows: "If you were going to launder intel to make up a war, you could easily send some fool on an errand."

Netanyahu faces Likud revolt Aljazeera 12 Jan 06 Israel's right-wing Likud party will face fresh turmoil before the forthcoming general election as cabinet ministers plan to rebel against an order from their leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, to quit the country's coalition government. Israeli media reports suggested that the four ministers - Silvan Shalom, the foreign minister, Limor Livnat, responsible for education, Yisrael Katz, the agriculture minister and the health minister, Danny Naveh - were seriously considering defying Netanyahu. Netanyahu was elected as Likud leader last month after Ariel Sharon, who helped found the party, split it by leaving to form his own centrist party, Kadima. He had been frustrated by criticism from the right of the party over his withdrawal from Gaza. Party pressure The walkout had been planned for earlier in the week but was postponed out of respect for the prime minister who suffered a stroke last week and is now in a critical condition in hospital. Netanyahu ordered the ministers to tender their resignations from the government on Thursday morning, shortly before voting begins to determine the list of Likud candidates to run in national elections on 28 March. One unnamed minister was quoted by the YNETnews website as saying: "We won't obey (Netanyahu's) orders to resign." The order was issued by Netanyahu on the eve of Likud's primary elections. The aim was to pressure ministers to follow through on his instructions or risk not winning a place on the party ticket. Ynet quoted a source close to the ministers as saying: "Netanyahu put a gun to our heads on the eve of the Likud primaries. The four cabinet ministers have decided that at this point they will not agree to his request." Kadima landslide Sharon's likely successor as head of Kadima, the interim prime minister, Ehud Olmert, received a pre-election boost when newspaper opinion polls predicted that the party would crush its rivals, even without Sharon. The polls suggest that Likud's current tally of 40 seats might drop to as few as 13 in the 120-member Knesset. The hawkish Netanyahu, a former prime minister, had hoped to increase Likud's chances by positioning himself as an experienced leader with a united party behind him. But in-fighting within the right-wing group might hamper these efforts. If the four Likud ministers resigned, Olmert would be able to appoint new ministers in his caretaker government until the elections.

Sharon still improving, doctors stunned by recovery AFP Wed Jan 11, 6:25 PM ET JERUSALEM - Ariel Sharon's chief surgeon said the Israeli leader had appeared aware of his younger son at his bedside, and expressed astonishment at his powers of recovery after a massive stroke. The 77-year-old prime minister, whose fate is crucial to Israel and the wider Middle East, remains in intensive care but doctors said they had been able to all but stop the drugs that had been keeping him in an artificial coma. His chief surgeon Felix Umansky told AFP it could take months to assess the full extent of the damage Sharon has suffered. But his progress so far had defied all expectations, Umansky said, amid suggestions by some of the prime minister's allies that he could even lead his new Kadima party at a March general election. The growing hopes that Sharon would win his fight for life prompted Israeli politicians to abandon the uneasy truce they had observed out of respect for the stricken premier. The right-wing Likud which Sharon quit last year announced it was pulling its remaining ministers out of the caretaker government while the centre-left Labour party declared its election campaign up and running. Umansky said Sharon was already moving "his four limbs" and showing stronger responses to stimulation. "He is a very strong person. If someone had told me this was going to happen a week ago, I wouldn't have believed it," he told AFP. Later in the day he said the prime minister had even appeared to respond to words of encouragement from his younger son Gilad. "Gilad spoke to him. He said: 'I'm by your side, how are you?' and I had the clear impression that there was a reaction," Umansky told Israeli television. Umansky stressed that the surgical team could not be too hasty in fully ending the prime minister's sedation, and only when that had been done could they begin to gauge whether he would fully recover his faculties. "The process is very slow and must be very well controlled. Nobody who is close to regaining consciousness likes feeling that he has a tube next to his windpipe or that he is immobilized," the Argentine doctor told AFP. As they try to rouse him from the coma, doctors have been conducting a series of tests to check Sharon's responses to pain and sound, but Umansky said it could be months before a full assessment of the damage could be made. "To evaluate his higher intellectual functions could take weeks or months, although other functions, such as speaking, will occur earlier," he said. Israelis and world leaders have prepared themselves for the end of the Sharon era, fearing his demise would spark new turmoil in a region struggling to find the path to peace after decades of conflict. However the more upbeat news emerging from Hadassah Hospital has prompted some of Sharon's allies to suggest he could lead Kadima into the March 28 election. "It will be wonderful if we really reach a situation in which he can function, communicate and be involved, and of course the minimum that we will want to do is to put him in his natural place," said Kadima's campaign manager Tzahi Hanegbi. Sharon's old right-wing Likud and the centre-left Labour parties both denounced as a "cynical" manoeuvre the idea of placing someone who may well not be able to return to work at the top of the list. Labour leader Amir Peretz told reporters that while he sympathized with Sharon, "the election is starting right now." At a press conference near Tel Aviv, Peretz attacked both Sharon's expected successor Ehud Olmert and Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu, pledging that only Labour could offer a genuine alternative. "Bibi (Netanyahu) and Olmert are twins regarding economic issues, regarding their agenda about peace. That makes them identical twins," he said. Netanyahu swiftly riposted with the announcement that he had ordered the Likud's four remaining ministers to quit the cabinet. He also took a swipe at acting premier Olmert for his government's readiness to allow residents of annexed east Jerusalem to vote in Palestinian elections on January 25. "Kadima is taking measures that mean that Jerusalem is going to be divided," he said. The decision, which was already been announced in principle by Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz earlier this week, had been due to be sealed at a cabinet meeting Sunday in which the four Likud ministers will now not take part. Meanwhile Sharon's fight for life has brought his long estranged, New York-based sister back in daily touch with his family, a report said Wednesday. Yehudit (Dita) Mendel, 80, now "maintains daily contacts with Gilad, Sharon's son, who continuously updates her on her brother's condition" by telephone to her home in Brooklyn, the top-selling Yediot Aharonot daily said.

How Quickly They Forget the Real Sharon: "Eating Palestine for Breakfast" By KATHLEEN and BILL CHRISTISON 11 Jan 2006 On the morning of the day Ariel Sharon had his stroke last week, Ha'aretz ran an analysis -- aptly titled "Eating Palestine for Breakfast" -- that captured the real Ariel Sharon. It may be the last honest analysis ever to see the light of day in the mainstream media, now that Sharon is being lionized so widely as a heroic peacemaker, a man "who could deliver real peace," and other such absurdities. The Ha'aretz article, elaborating on a prediction by a leading political commentator and an Israeli think tank, laid out a scenario said to be Sharon's vision for Palestine following his expected electoral victory in March. According to the scenario, Sharon would set Israel's borders and reshape the West Bank by formally annexing the major Israeli colonies there (colonies in Palestinian East Jerusalem have already been annexed) and establishing the separation wall as the official Israeli border. The major West Bank settlement blocs outside Jerusalem house approximately 80 percent, or about 190,000, of the West Bank settlers and are rapidly expanding. In addition, the nearly 200,000 Israeli settlers in East Jerusalem, whom no one in Israel intends to remove, would also remain in their colonies, under full and permanent Israeli control. Sharon would also annex a strip of land in the eastern West Bank along the Jordan River and would then dismantle the colonies remaining in between the two annexed areas, evacuating their 40,000-50,000 settlers. This scenario would incorporate into Israel 90 percent of the total of approximately 425,000 Israelis now living in occupied territories on confiscated Palestinian land. The result of this maneuvering would of course be the permanent end of any hope for true Palestinian independence in any kind of decent, defensible state. The areas left to the Palestinians would constitute perhaps 50 or 60 percent of the West Bank, plus Gaza -- something between ten and twelve percent of the Palestinians' original Palestine homeland -- and that small area would be surrounded on all sides by Israeli territory and broken up by Israeli fingers of land jabbing deep in to the West Bank. Other astute analysts have seen a similar scenario unfolding, most particularly Israeli activist Jeff Halper, whose article "Setting Up Abbas: Yet Another 'Generous Offer' from Sharon," appeared on CounterPunch October 8-9, 2005. According to the scenario, Sharon would have sought massive additional aid from the United States to pay for the costs of establishing a border and compensating the evacuated settlers. The scenario-writers, recognizing the Bush administration as a willing accomplice and paymaster in this naked expansionism and as the most supportive administration ever likely to come along, were operating on the assumption that, while Bush remained in office, Sharon would have a three-year window of opportunity to accomplish his plan to devour Palestine. Although Sharon will almost certainly either not be around, or will not have the faculties, to implement his vision, the major commentators and editorialists of the U.S. and Israel have already decreed that this plan to break Palestine, or something very like it, is the future for Palestine-Israel -- and either explicitly or by implication have pronounced their approval, bestowing on Sharon the mantle of peacemaker and savior of Israel. The adulation has been overwhelming: Sharon the warrior turned peacemaker, Sharon the war hero who dedicated his life to Israel's preservation, Sharon the bold pragmatist, Sharon the sensible compromiser, Sharon the man who sought reconciliation with the Palestinians and preserved Israeli security at the same time, Sharon the seeker after truth and justice. Never mind that Sharon has a history of quite literally massacring Palestinians, in numerous instances dating from the 1950s up at least through the refugee camp massacres in Beirut in 1982; that his military forces kill and steal from Palestinians daily; that he was until his last conscious thought planning a land theft in Palestine on a scale not previously seen; that he and his henchmen openly touted the small Gaza withdrawal as a means of facilitating the near-total absorption of the West Bank and the permanent demise of any prospect of genuine Palestinian independence. Never mind that, as he was eating his last actual meal, he was contemplating the prospect of eating Palestine for breakfast the next day. Most Israelis loved this, because Sharon made them feel secure. He was brutal and strong enough to keep them safe. He hated Arabs, as most Israelis basically do, and he wanted them gone -- out of sight, out of mind, out of Palestine -- as most Israelis essentially do. He had a voracious appetite that they knew would not be sated until he had packed away all of Palestine. This was fine with Israelis. Israeli novelist David Grossman, who usually comes from a leftist perspective, recently wrote describing Sharon as "much loved by his people," for whom he had become "a kind of big, powerful father figure whom [they] are willing to follow, with their eyes closed, to wherever he may lead them." Grossman himself, writing with no small measure of approval, seems to have fallen for the Sharon myth. Asserting that "we cannot but admire his courage and determination," Grossman contends that Sharon "set Israel on the road to the end of the occupation." Others, of varying political stripes, have similarly labeled Sharon "the best hope for peace" (Israeli historian Benny Morris); "the man who could deliver real peace" (Palestinian-American leader Ziad Asali); "a great statesman and leader [who] has brought new hope to the region" (leftist Israeli analyst Gershon Baskin); and the man who appeared to be pursuing "the one viable way" to bring peace "to Israel" (Tikkun's Michael Lerner). It all depends, of course, on what the definition of "is" is. What does Grossman mean by "occupation," a word Sharon used only sparingly and a concept he never truly recognized; as a matter of fact, what precisely does "end" mean -- complete, partial, half-hearted? And what does "peace" mean, or "real peace"? The kind of peace that Sharon and most Israelis and Americans imagine is quite different from the kind of peace Palestinians envision. Does it come with justice, and for whom? Will it give the Palestinians freedom, or only give the Israelis the safety from which to continue oppressing Palestinians? Would "peace" be a peace of conquest for Israel but of subjugation for Palestinians -- like the peace imposed on American Indians? Or would peace, in the Sharon conception, come with a real state for the Palestinians -- a genuinely independent, viable, defensible state with borders and an economy and a polity the Palestinians themselves could control? Not likely. You can call a sow's ear a silk purse, but it will always remain a sow's ear. There was no silk purse for the Palestinians on Ariel Sharon's political horizon. Aaron David Miller, a leading member of Bill Clinton's peace team, recently wrote that Sharon had abandoned the dream of Greater Israel, of ultimately extending Israel's writ over all of Palestine from the sea to the river. David Grossman claims that finally, in his eighth decade, Sharon came to realize that force is not a solution, that concessions and compromises are necessary. But this is all nonsense, the silly blather of otherwise sensible commentators who desperately wish it were true. In fact, like the pragmatist he was, Sharon had simply stopped talking about Greater Israel, stopped actively planning for it, in the hope that people like Miller and Grossman would be fooled. And he succeeded. None of the Indian reservations Sharon was in the process of creating, in either Gaza or the West Bank, would give the Palestinians any assurance of permanence or freedom from future interference. Ariel Sharon had become a comfort station for those who positioned themselves squarely in the middle on Palestinian-Israeli issues, those who tried to strike some kind of artificial "balance" between the two unbalanced sides -- people like Tikkun's Michael Lerner, who has espoused a "progressive middle path" as the best way to achieve Palestinian-Israeli reconciliation, as if moral right lies anywhere near the middle in this conflict. Sharon the pragmatist allowed these people in the middle to think he had joined them, to think that he wanted genuine peace for Palestinians as well as Israelis, and to think that they therefore did not need to press any further for justice or equity in Palestine-Israel. Because Sharon recognized that, at least for now, Israel had to trim its vision of exerting sovereignty and control over all of Palestine and therefore decided to shuck responsibility for administering Gaza and squeeze West Bank Palestinians into multiple small enclaves where Israel would have no responsibility for their daily needs, the Michael Lerners and others of the so-called progressive center have declared victory and shucked their own responsibility. Unable to see the utter futility, to say nothing of the immorality, of their effort to achieve "balance" between one helpless party with no power whatsoever and one all-powerful party holding all the cards and controlling all the territory, and unable therefore to achieve anything toward true peace and justice, Lerner had already turned away from activism on behalf of peace in Palestine-Israel and is concentrating his efforts on domestic politics in the U.S. His latest word on Sharon is a typical up-the-hill, down-the-hill Lerner effort: Sharon "has systematically ignored the humanity of the Palestinian people, violated their basic human rights," etc., etc. "Yet the loss of Sharon will be mourned by many of us in the peace movement because his current moves, insensitive as they were to the needs of Palestinians, seemed to be the one viable way to build an Israeli majority for concessions that might eventually create the conditions for a more respectful and mutual reconciliation with the Palestinians, thereby bringing peace to Israel." (Emphasis added.) In other words, Sharon was a bastard, but there is no one better in Israel, and because he was a pragmatist, he might, just might, someday have done something to satisfy the Palestinians, which we in the peace movement hope for because we so desperately want peace for Israel. Another centrist peace organization, Brit Tzedek, which espouses a position on what it calls the "moderate left," issued a statement after Sharon's stroke that is almost identical to Lerner's in tone and import. The overweening concern for Israel put forth in this position demonstrates clearly why, despite what the organization calls "deep disagreement" with Sharon's tactics, so many so-called leftists have embraced his overall strategy -- because ultimately it is, they think, good for Israel. Applauding Sharon for his "unwavering commitment to safeguarding the future of the Jewish homeland," Brit Tzedek accepts the myth that Sharon and his new political party intended "to bring the necessity of further withdrawals from the West Bank and the creation of a Palestinian state to the front and, more importantly, the center in Israel's political landscape." No one else in Israel "could have galvanized Israeli popular opinion" as Sharon did. And so the myth grows: Sharon may be a bastard but he is our bastard -- our American, our Israeli bastard -- and if he wants to eat Palestine for breakfast, so be it. As long as he preserves Israel's security, devouring Palestine is fine. We'll simply call it a silk purse. And if we're lucky, Mahmoud Abbas will go along, will capitulate to Sharon's kind of peace. He has little choice, after all. The United States, the EU, Israel, and now most of the U.S. peace movement are marching in unison, carrying out Ariel Sharon's legacy. Only Abbas' own Palestinian people object, but what power do they have? Ariel Sharon, at least at this emotional moment of his political incapacitation, when the myths about him are at their strongest, has come to be the standard bearer for the hypocrisy of much of the American peace movement, which is interested not in peace or justice for Palestinians in any objective sense, but only in peace and security for Israel. There are objective measurements of what constitutes justice for both Palestinians and Israelis, but the peace movement seems to care less than ever that neither Sharon nor any of his legatees have ever intended to come anywhere near meeting these standards. Today, the spread of myths about Sharon is the single most damaging factor for any prospect of achieving greater justice for the Palestinians. Kathleen Christison is a former CIA political analyst and has worked on Middle East issues for 30 years. She is the author of Perceptions of Palestine and The Wound of Dispossession. Bill Christison was a senior official of the CIA. He served as a National Intelligence Officer and as Director of the CIA's Office of Regional and Political Analysis. They can be reached at kathy.bill@christison-santafe.com.

Israel freezes ties with US evangelist Aljazeera 12 Jan 06 Israel has suspended contact with evangelist Pat Robertson for suggesting Ariel Sharon's stroke was divine punishment for withdrawing from the Gaza Strip, according to an Israeli minister. The decision, announced on Wednesday by Israeli officials, would only affect Robertson's Christian group and not other US missionaries, who are growing in ties in supporting the state of Israel. Abraham Hirchson, the Israeli tourism minister, said he gave instructions to "stop all contact" with groups associated with Robertson. Last week, Robertson implied that the Israeli prime minister's massive stroke on 4 January was a blow for "dividing God's land" with the withdrawal from Gaza and four West Bank settlements. But Hirchson said the order did not apply to "all the evangelical community, God forbid". Robertson is leading a group of evangelicals who have pledged to raise $50 million to build the Christian Heritage Centre in Israel's northern Galilee region, where tradition says Jesus lived and taught. Christian centre Under a tentative agreement, Robertson's group was to put up the funding, while Israel would provide land and infrastructure. Hirchson had predicted it would draw up to one million pilgrims a year, generate $1.5 billion in spending and support about 40,000 jobs. But the fate of the project is now in question, said Ido Hartuv, spokesman for the Tourism Ministry. "We will not do business with him, only with other evangelicals who don't back these comments," Hartuv said. "We will do business with other evangelical leaders, friends of Israel, but not with him." "You read the Bible and he says 'This is my land,' and for any prime minister of Israel who decides he is going to carve it up and give it away, God says, 'No, this is mine'" In Virginia Beach, Virginia, a spokeswoman for Robertson's ministry declined to comment on Israel's decision. "We have not talked to the Israelis on this topic," said spokeswoman Angell Watts. "We continue to maintain our long-standing commitment to the Jewish people and the state of Israel." Robertson's comments on Sharon drew condemnation from other Christian leaders and even George Bush, the US president. "God considers this land to be his," Robertson said on his TV programme, The 700 Club. Christian Zionists Robertson said: "You read the Bible and he says 'This is my land,' and for any prime minister of Israel who decides he is going to carve it up and give it away, God says, 'No, this is mine'." The Christian Zionist movement began to take shape in the 19th century, but in recent decades it has strengthened into a powerful force with deep pockets. These groups consider it their spiritual duty to support Israel as fulfilment of biblical prophecy, and for some as an essential step to bring Judgment Day. Israeli leaders have seen them as tireless lobbyists in Washington and elsewhere. US evangelists support Israel with millions of dollars each year The evangelicals have been funnelling millions of dollars each year to Jewish settlers in the West Bank and - before last year's pullout - the Gaza Strip. Some estimates place the annual figure of total evangelical aid to Israel at more than $25 million. But the Gaza withdrawal has become a new and potent rallying point. In October, a group of Gaza settlers received a standing ovation from more than 5,000 Christians at Jerusalem conference sponsored by the International Christian Embassy, a private agency that promotes Christian ties Israel. Robertson's Christian Heritage Center planned for 35 acres of rolling Galilee hills near key Christian sites such as Capernaum, the Mount of the Beatitudes, where tradition says Jesus delivered the Sermon of the Mount, and Tabgha - on the shores of the Sea of Galilee - where Christians believe Jesus performed the miracle of the loaves and fish. Door still open Israel was considering leasing the land to the Christians for free. Hartuv left the door open to continuing the project, but only with people who don't back Robertson's statements. "We want to see who in the group supports his (Robertson's) statements. Those who support the statements cannot do business with us. Those that publicly support Ariel Sharon's recovery ... are welcome to do business with us," Hartuv said. "We have to check this very, very carefully," he added. Comment: For the scoop on these strange bedfellows, read Laura Knight-Jadczyk's The Most Dangerous Cult in The World.

Where's Eustace? Legendary conspiracy historian Mullins mysteriously disappears — worst feared John Kaminski Thu, 12 Jan 2006 Famous author/researcher says, "Israel actually plans to exterminate the entire Arab Muslim population in the world ..." and now he’s missing! Friends, associates, and admirers of renowned conspiracy author Eustace Mullins have gone into full panic mode over his mysterious disappearance. Mullins, 82, has been missing for seven days (as of 1/12/06) from his Staunton, Virginia home, where his cars are still parked and his mail and newspapers are piling up on the front porch. Local police say there's nothing they can do and are notoriously vague and nonchalant about his welfare or whereabouts, according to friends who have called them to express alarm over his sudden disappearance. Mullins, author of "Secrets of the Federal Reserve" and more than a dozen other well-researched tomes about who runs the world from behind the scenes, was scheduled to appear on an Internet radio show, Hesham Tillawi's Current Issues (currentissues.tv), on Thursday, Jan 5, but did not appear. Filmmaker Randy Atkins, who was scheduled to appear with Mullins and did actually participate in the show with Tillawi, has no idea where Eustace is, but noted it was very unlike the affable and professional Mullins to miss a scheduled appointment. Atkins recently created a new film about Mullins' perspective on world events, titled "Neo-Zionist Order: Who Rules Your Rulers." This DVD is available at http://www.arsenalofhypocrisy.com/ (a site named for an earlier Atkins film about the U.S. space weapons program that featured Noam Chomsky). Both Mullins and Atkins recently participated in a European talk show in which the methods of the international bankers who run the world from behind the scenes were extensively discussed. Mullins' longtime friend and webmaster, Wayne Blanchard of Staunton, is not only worried about the sudden disappearance, but furious at the nonchalance of public officials in the matter. "Both the sheriff's department and the police department gave me no cooperation," said Blanchard. "Eustace has lived there for 35 years. You'd think they'd be more concerned." But, Blanchard noted, such a meticulous researcher of sacred cows as Mullins has made his share of enemies over the years. "He's filed a lot of lawsuits" (and has one pending)," Blanchard noted. "Everybody tends to shy away from him" over his involvement with the hottest topics possible. The notorious bane of Patriots everywhere, Morris Dees of the Zionist-front organization Southern Poverty Law Center, wrote a hit piece on Mullins for the local Staunton newspaper several years, and because of Mullins' dedicated zeal in researching the sinister underpinnings of corrupt politics, he has made a lot of enemies. Nor does Mullins have a loving family to rely upon. According to Blanchard, when Mullins had a series of ministrokes three years ago, "his brother had him put in a nursing home, and tried to have him declared incompetent. I got him out." But serious damage to Mullins' health had been done, not by his illness, according to Blanchard, but by his family. "He lost everything," Blanchard explained. "His brother Bob proceeded to steal his assets, life insurance policy, and his silver collection worth $150,000." In addition, Blanchard said Mullins had a joint bank account with his grandnephew, Matt Mader, from which "$30,000 was stolen out of that account." Mullins later sued his brother, Blanchard said. Worse, brother Bob closed Mullins's post office box, which he had used for 35 years and from which he sold all his books. Mullins' prolific career as a conspiratologist began when he befriended the legendary poet Ezra Pound who had been jailed in a mental hospital for broadcasting against American corporate interests during World War II. Mullins wrote the only approved biography of Pound. According to the online Wikipedia, ... during Ezra Pound's period of incarceration in a mental institution following his arrest for making pro-Axis radio broadcasts on behalf of the Benito Mussolini government during World War II, Mullins was a regular visitor to him; he wrote about these visits in his book This Difficult Individual, Ezra Pound. Mullins' books include several critiques of the United States banking system. In a 1952 book, Secrets of the Federal Reserve, Mullins blamed Paul Warburg, Bernard Baruch, and other American Jews for drowning Americans in debt. According to Mullins, The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 put the nation's banking reserves in the hands of the "Jewish International Bankers" for the purpose of carrying out a plan for world dictatorship. The German edition of the book was burned in West Germany in 1955. It was the first book publicly burned in West Germany since the defeat of the Nazi government. Mullins' book A Writ for Martyrs is largely a verbatim transcript of Mullins' own FBI file obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. Mullins' book The World Order, which is about an alleged Illuminati conspiracy, was cited as a reference by Pat Robertson in his 1991 book The New World Order. Mullins is also the author of a number of tracts including "Jewish Television: Sick Sick Sick", "The Lindbergh Murders: Hauptmann Was Innocent", "Why General Patton Was Murdered", and "The ADL/FBI Conspiracy Exposed". In a 1955 article entitled, "Jews mass poison American children", Mullins claimed that the polio vaccine, invented by Jonas Salk, was a poison because it contains live polio germs. Other noteworthy books by Mullins, all of which he self-published, include "Secrets of the Federal Reserve," "The Curse of Canaan: A Demonology Of History," "Murder By Injection: The Medical Conspiracy Against America," "The Rape of Justice," "Education for Slavery," "The London Connection," and "Who Owns the TV Networks." Blanchard said "Secrets of the Federal Reserve" sold over 100,000 copies and insists it was later plagiarized by G. Edward Griffin in his popular book, "The Creature from Jekyl Island." "Eustace gave power of attorney to his brother Bob under duress," Blanchard explained. His brother Bob put him into a nursing home, saying Eustace suffered from the initial stages of dementia. Later tests at the University of Virginia determined Eustace competent, Blanchard said. "Bob was probably run by the ADL (the Jewish Anti-Defamation League)," Blanchard said. "Things just don't add up." Filmmaker Atkins recently posted a sensational video clip of Mullins on his website, arsenalofhypocrisy.com, in which Mullins makes a chilling prediction of what is in store for the world at this time. Quoting from the video clip which can be found at http://www.arsenalofhypocrisy.com/mulqt.asp "Israel actually plans to exterminate the entire Arab Muslim population in the world, and the Muslims know this ... Israel is interested only in genocide and exterminating all the Arab people or putting them under complete domination ... the Israelis are always exterminationists." Then Atkins asks: "Is the United States being used by Israel to create a Christian-Muslim war?" Mullins responds: Yes. It's all deliberate ... a billion Christians and a billion Muslims are now at a war to the death with each other, and the only victor will be the state of Israel. Atkins recounts the last time he talked with Mullins. "I talked to him that Monday (Jan. 2), reminded him of Thursday's interview. "He said he was looking forward to it." Whether that was the last public utterance of Eustace Mullins remains to be determined. Blanchard had a darker view. "I think the ADL probably snatched him and did away with him." John Kaminski is a writer who lives on the Gulf Coast of Florida whose Internet essays are seen on hundreds of websites around the world. His latest collection of essays, "Recipe for Extinction," will be available for sale in late February. For more information see http://www.johnkaminski.com/

US army in Iraq institutionally racist, claims British officer Richard Norton-Taylor and Jamie Wilson in Washington Thursday January 12, 2006 The Guardian A senior British officer has criticised the US army for its conduct in Iraq, accusing it of institutional racism, moral righteousness, misplaced optimism, and of being ill-suited to engage in counter-insurgency operations. The blistering critique, by Brigadier Nigel Aylwin-Foster, who was the second most senior officer responsible for training Iraqi security forces, reflects criticism and frustration voiced by British commanders of American military tactics. What is startling is the severity of his comments - and the decision by Military Review, a US army magazine, to publish them. American soldiers, says Brig Aylwin-Foster, were "almost unfailingly courteous and considerate". But he says "at times their cultural insensitivity, almost certainly inadvertent, arguably amounted to institutional racism". The US army, he says, is imbued with an unparalleled sense of patriotism, duty, passion and talent. "Yet it seemed weighed down by bureaucracy, a stiflingly hierarchical outlook, a predisposition to offensive operations and a sense that duty required all issues to be confronted head-on." Brig Aylwin-Foster says the American army's laudable "can-do" approach paradoxically led to another trait, namely "damaging optimism". Such an ethos, he says, "is unhelpful if it discourages junior commanders from reporting unwelcome news up the chain of command". But his central theme is that US military commanders have failed to train and educate their soldiers in the art of counter-insurgency operations and the need to cultivate the "hearts and minds" of the local population. While US officers in Iraq criticised their allies for being too reluctant to use force, their strategy was "to kill or capture all terrorists and insurgents: they saw military destruction of the enemy as a strategic goal in its own right". In short, the brigadier says, "the US army has developed over time a singular focus on conventional warfare, of a particularly swift and violent kind". Such an unsophisticated approach, ingrained in American military doctrine, is counter-productive, exacerbating the task the US faced by alienating significant sections of the population, argues Brig Aylwin-Foster. What he calls a sense of "moral righteousness" contributed to the US response to the killing of four American contractors in Falluja in the spring of 2004. As a "come-on" tactic by insurgents, designed to provoke a disproportionate response, it succeeded, says the brigadier, as US commanders were "set on the total destruction of the enemy". He notes that the firing on one night of more than 40 155mm artillery rounds on a small part of the city was considered by the local US commander as a "minor application of combat power". Such tactics are not the answer, he says, to remove Iraq from the grip of what he calls a "vicious and tenacious insurgency". Brig Aylwin-Foster's criticisms have been echoed by other senior British officers, though not in such a devastating way. General Sir Mike Jackson, the head of the army, told MPs in April 2004 as US forces attacked Falluja: "We must be able to fight with the Americans. That does not mean we must be able to fight as the Americans." Yesterday Colonel William Darley, the editor of Military Review, told the Guardian: "This [Brig Aylwin-Foster] is a highly regarded expert in this area who is providing a candid critique. It is certainly not uninformed ... It is a professional discussion and a professional critique among professionals about what needs to be done. What he says is authoritative and a useful point of perspective whether you agree with it or not." In a disclaimer he says the article does not reflect the views of the UK or the US army. Colonel Kevin Benson, director of the US army's school of advanced military studies, who told the Washington Post the brigadier was an "insufferable British snob", said his remark had been made in the heat of the moment. "I applaud the brigadier for starting the debate," he said. "It is a debate that must go on and I myself am writing a response." The brigadier was deputy commander of the office of security transition for training and organising Iraq's armed forces in 2004. Last year he took up the post of deputy commander of the Eufor, the European peacekeeping force in Bosnia. He could not be contacted last night.

Europe hatching Google alternative Aljazeera 12 Jan 06 Quaero is billed as Europe's answer to Google, but it has a lot to live up to. The awkward word - which means "to search" in Latin - is unlikely to flash across the continent's computer screens anytime soon. So far Quaero is just a scattering of top tech minds in labs across France and Germany, working on what they hope will be the world's most advanced multimedia search engine. Quaero epitomises European ambitions - especially for French President Jacques Chirac - of creating alternatives to US technological prowess. But facing off against super-rich, super-talented US companies may prove daunting for the cumbersome consortium of European companies and public agencies hatching Quaero. Tough challenge "We must meet the global challenge of the American giants Google and Yahoo," Chirac said in an address last week laying out his policy priorities for 2006. "Today the new geography of knowledge and cultures is being drawn. Tomorrow, that which is not available online runs the risk of being invisible to the world," he said. "Today the new geography of knowledge and cultures is being drawn. Tomorrow, that which is not available online runs the risk of being invisible to the word." Designers insist that Quaero will not just be a search engine but a set of tools for translating, identifying and indexing images, sound and text. The technology would work with all platforms - desktops, mobile devices and even televisions - and be sold to television companies, filmmakers, post-production facilities and anyone who creates or uses audiovisual content, according to France's electronics giant Thomson. "Yes, it's highly ambitious," said Jean-Luc Moullet, who oversees the Quaero project at Thomson. "There's nothing to compare it to." But details are scant. None of the key players - including Thomson, France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom - would comment on cost. Rivalling Google Quaero is hardly the first attempt to develop a compelling alternative to Google, which has emerged as one of the world's best known - and most valuable - companies just seven years after its inception in a Silicon Valley garage. Even US technology powerhouses like Yahoo Inc and Microsoft Corp haven't been able to erode Google's dominance, even after spending tens of millions of dollars to improve their search engines. Through November, Google held a 40% share of the US search market, up from 35% in the previous year, according to comScore Media Metrix. Google's lead outside the United States is believed to be even larger. Quaero is the latest in a string of largely French-led efforts to compete with America's dominance of the global marketplace, a theme of Chirac's foreign policy. French broadcasters are planning an international television network aimed at presenting a more French view of world events than CNN and the British Broadcasting Corp. The network, CFII, will broadcast in French and English to Europe, the Middle East and Africa beginning sometime in the next year. Europe launched a satellite last month aimed at rivalling the US Global Positioning System. France has also launched an effort to put libraries online, a response to an ambitious book-scanning project at Google. Techies are cautious about Quaero's prospects. "Europe has a lot of catching up to do," said Jerome Bouteiller, editor of the French online magazine Neteconomie.

Flashback: Google's Gag Order:An Internet Giant Threatens Free Speech Perrspectives 20 June 2004 Every once in a while in America’s consumer society, a company, product or service rises above its mere utility to achieve iconic status in the culture. Its very novelty, innovation, or just manufactured “cool” allow it to enter the daily American lexicon. As nouns, brands like Kleenex (facial tissues), Rollerblade (in-line skates), or Coke (any soft drink south of the Mason Dixon Line) are equated with an entire product category, eclipsing all competitors. Others achieve the even loftier status of verbs, as in “to Xerox.” Google has joined this elite group of culture-changing brands. Starting with excellent technology, the company nurtured a cult following into dominance of web searching, a daily task now common to most Americans. Its IPO has become one of the dominant business – and social – news stories of the year. Far more important to American society, Google's pervasiveness has given it a unique and privileged role as the information gatekeeper of the 21st century. “To Google” someone or something has become synonymous with using the Internet to find information, images or news. The New York Times has detailed the emergence of Google as an alternative to the traditional library for research. As individuals, businesses and publishers leverage its search, email and advertising tools to reach readers, sell products and assemble communities, Google is on the verge of becoming the Internet arbiter of the First Amendment. As I learned this week, however, Google may be playing a darker, more sinister role in American society: corporate censor. On June 15, the Google Adwords team informed me that it had discontinued all advertisements placed by Perrspectives.com due to “unacceptable content” on the site that includes “language that advocates against an individual, group or organization.” As we’ll see below, this may or may not be blatant bias against liberal viewpoints. There can be no doubt, though, that the current Google editorial guidelines, evenly applied, would bar almost any newspaper, magazine, opinion journal, political party, advocacy campaign or even religious organization from advertising on its site. And that puts Google dangerously at odds with core American values of free speech and assembly. Electronic Direct Marketing for the Masses? How did Google come to pose a clear and present danger to free speech in the nexus where opinion and Internet direct marketing meet? First, a little background. The Google Adwords program allows advertisers, large and small, to purchase and display small text advertisements in the right hand side of Google search results pages. On its face, Google Adwords is a godsend for direct marketers, allowing them to display customized ads when users enter a specific keyword or phrase. (Perrspectives.com, for example, has run ads when Google users enter terms such as “democratic party”, “Enron scandal”, “Richard Clarke” or “2004 election.”) Advertisers pay “per click” rather than “per impression”, which means they are only charged when a Google user actually clicks through to the advertiser’s site. Even the smallest advertisers can specify how much they are willing to pay per click-through, as well as their daily budget. Just as important, Google Adwords provides real-time reporting of results, so advertisers can quickly see which keywords and ads are most effective, and make immediate adjustments, if needed. Anti-Liberal Bias at Google? The cost-effectiveness of Adwords for online stores, non-profits, specialty sites and even bloggers is extremely attractive. Since March, Perrspectives.com has used Google Adwords to bring thousands of visitors to the site. This makes Google’s sudden decision to drop Perrspectives.com all the more disappointing – and disturbing. On June 15th, 2004 the Google Adwords Team sent me a notification that all of my four-line text ads had been discontinued due to “unacceptable content.” The ads involved included headlines such “The Liberal Resource”, “The Progressive Resource”, “Bill Clinton & More”, “The Real Enron Scandal.” The supporting text included expressions such as “analysis, commentary and satire”, “complete liberal resource center”, “caustic commentary”, and others. As I learned from Google on June 16th, the issue was not the content of my ads, but of the articles and features on the Perrspectives.com site itself: At this time, Google policy does not permit the advertisement of websites that contain "language that advocates against an individual, group, or organization". As noted in our advertising terms and conditions, we reserve the right to exercise editorial discretion when it comes to the advertising we accept on our site. I have reviewed your site and it contains language such as 'secretive, paranoid and vengeance-filled' which we will not allow to run on our site at this time. [Italics mine] In the same email, the Google representative graciously offered to provide me with help in censoring my own web site: I understand that you would like to promote specific political opinions on your site. We are happy to allow you to run so long as these opinions do not contain language that advocates against an individual, group, or organization. I suggest that you remove these references from your website in order to run on Google. [Italics mine] In response, on June 16 I told the Google rep that their decision to drop my ads had to be reversed due both to the specifics of my site and the broader issue at work. First, Perrspectives.com, while admittedly offering left-of-center content, is an independent, “equal opportunity” provider of analysis and commentary. For example, while the offending text cited by Google (“secretive, paranoid and vengeance-filled”) came from a piece harshly critical of President Bush (“The Smallness of King George”), other articles took on Democratic Party orthodoxy (“Identity Politics and the Threat from the Left"), John Kerry and John Edwards (“States’ Blights”), and Ralph Nader (“Unsafe and Any Speed”). Secondly, I noted that any assertions or claims made on the site, even ones using language as admittedly vitriolic as “secretive” and “paranoid”, were thoroughly supported in the text, usually with links to other articles, documentation or quotes. Just as important, readers are encouraged to provide feedback, even if it is negative. That Feedback link is on every page of the site More than any consideration specific to Perrspectives.com, though, is the larger issue of de facto censorship and threat to free speech which must inevitably result from the Google Adwords “language that advocates against” standard: The current Google Adwords editorial guidelines constitute selective censorship that cannot be justified or sustained. By these standards, virtually EVERY newspaper, opinion journal, political party/campaign and religious organization MUST be barred from advertising on Google. As of June 20, 2004, I have not heard back from Google support or PR representatives, as I had requested. The complete email thread of communications with the Google Adwords Support Team is available here. Arbitrary Guidelines, Selective Application, De Facto Censorship Given the recent flaps over the apparent double-standard in prime-time advertising at CBS (running virulently anti-Clinton ads by the right-wing Citizens United, refusing to air ant-Bush ads by MoveOn during the Super Bowl), I was immediately suspicious of anti-liberal bias by Google towards advertisers. Doing a quick check, I found no shortage of conservative advertisers currently on Google that made me seem like Mother Theresa in comparison. These following conservative sites, many of which are decidedly to the right of Attila the Hun, currently advertise using Google Adwords: * Value Watch. This site advocates against Democrats, liberals and progressives of all stripes, and calls out right-wing bogeymen Ted Kennedy and Michael Moore by name. It most assuredly uses “language that advocates against an individual, group or organization.” * Republican Gear. This site not only sells Republican political items, it sells items that "advocate against" individuals and organizations” including t-shirts with slogans like "Friends Don't Let Friends Vote Democratic", as well as one picturing Osama Bin Laden stating "I Want You to Vote for John Kerry.” * The Right Review. The Right Review also "advocates against" John Kerry, Democrats and the ACLU. It also includes a cartoon of John Kerry dropping his pants. * The Conservative Index. This site calls John Kerry “scary” and calls him “duplicitous.” Perhaps among conservatives, those expressions are terms of endearment. * Right Wing Conspiracy. This is apparently another home for right-wing fun and frolic. * Michael Moore Hates America. Sounds like a site that "advocates against an individual" to me. Yet the Google Adwords team confirmed to a Perrspectives reader that Michael Moore Hates America does NOT violate the same editorial guidelines by which it dropped Perrspectives.com. To give Google the benefit of the doubt, it should be noted that the Adwords Team does NOT review and approve ads prior to running them, instead checking them for after the fact for violations of its guidelines: Regarding your complaint that other advertisers are running similar campaigns, our AdWords Specialists review all of the ads in our program. However, ads may run on Google before we check them. Therefore, you may see some ads appear for a short time on Google that do not comply with our guidelines. We assure you that we are working diligently to apply the same criteria to all of our ads. This might explain why a large number of conservative, Bush-friendly ads appear on Google as well as the odd anti-Bush ad that appears. (It is worth noting, as we’ll see below, that Google similarly dropped the maker of the “Deck of Bush” playing cards parodying the Pentagon’s Iraq Most Wanted List.) This approach seems to suggest that Google is very susceptible to complaints, especially loud and organized ones, from its users. It might explain Google’s apparently inconsistent application of its own editorial standards. Then again, it might not. Regardless of any bias that may be at work, this process shows the obvious flaws in Google’s approach: the number of ads and advertisers will dwarf the ability of their “editors” to monitor them. This only exacerbates the failings – and dangers – of the Google “advocates against” standard. Size Matters Google may not necessarily have a conservative bias in filtering advertisers, but it would seem to be blatantly sizeist. That is, large organizations, well-known brands, big-spending advertisers, both political parties and other high-profile groups get a pass on the “advocates against” standard. Left or right, secular or sacred, size does matter: * The New York Times. In its June 15, 2004 issue, the Times published a column by Paul Krugman in which he called John Ashcroft "John Ashcroft is the worst attorney general in history." While music to my ears, that certainly is "language that advocates against an individual." * National Review. This conservative magazine, which is advertised for sale on Google, has a section ("Kerry Spot") dedicated to attacking John Kerry in addition to its usual liberal-bashing fare. * Republican Party. Search for “republican national convention” and you’ll that the Republican Party advertises for contributions using Google Adwords. GOP.com contains entire sections attacking John Kerry. No doubt the Democratic web site has mirror image content. * John Kerry for President. The John Kerry campaign is also a Google advertiser. What is a generally a positive site advocating for John Kerry also debunks the Bush record and has video of anti-Bush ads. * The American Conservative. Pat Buchanan’s magazine is another Google conservative print advertiser. One of the magazine covers shown on the site depicts George Bush, Dick Cheney, Condi Rice, and Donald Rumsfeld as "Pinocchios" with long noses. The cover article ("Pinocchio Presidency") uses the following language advocating against individuals and groups: “The Bush administration lied America into war, and the damage to our credibility will be long-lasting and grave." * Christianity Today. This magazine has articles that, for example, attack gay Americans and pro-choice advocates. For an example, see "Sowing Confusion" by Watergate felon turned prison preacher Charles Colson. * Washington Post and National Public Radio. Do a search for "Ronald Reagan". You'll find Google ads from both the Washington Post and NPR displayed. Both contain content and commentary not particularly flattering to the late President Reagan. The implication for Google is clear. The even, consistent and fair application of its “language that advocates against” standard would mean the immediate removal of dozens of these and similar advertisers. That’s not good for Google, for the Internet or for us. We Are Not Alone Complaints about Google are not new. Most have concerned the impact of changes to Google search algorithms on the order in which search results are displayed. Getting bumped “below” the fold or to page 2 of search results can have a dramatic and adverse effect on visits, leads and sales. As real as those issues are, though, they do not touch on a core societal value like free speech. As it turns out, Perrspectives.com is by no means the first advertiser to run afoul of Google’s editorial guidelines. Ironically, a quick Google search of "censorship google adwords" revealed many others. Not all involved the same “advocates against” standard. Google Adwords ads from a gun dealer and a vendor of Nazi memorabilia were shut down, in a replay of the discussion over offensive or dangerous material eBay earlier lived through. Interestingly, while sites offering firearms and Nazi trinkets were dropped, some porn sites apparently passed muster with the Google Adwords editorial board. Several others Google advertisers suffered the same fate as Perrspectives.com. Nitestar, which offers the “Deck of Bush” joke playing cards, had its ads terminated on the same grounds of “advocating against” some person or group. In May, they issued a press release ("Google Adwords Censors Ad Campaign Critical of President Bush"); as of this writing, they are still unable to resume advertising on Google. An independent filmmaker also had ads dropped, as did a web poet. The Body Shop founder Anita Roddick had a run in with Google over commentary regarding actor John Malkovich. Workers trying to unionize at Wal-Mart had a similar experience. The site Unknown News had its ads restored by Google, only after a long correspondence establishing that their views against the Iraq war were not inherently against any person or group. An Unworkable Standard From the above, it is clear that Google Adwords’ editorial guidelines are having a chilling effect on free speech. Intended or not, Google is stifling free expression and imposing de facto censorship with its dangerously vague “advocates against” standard. By definition, Google’s standard is unevenly and unequally applied, as ads are reviewed only after the fact and on an ad hoc basis. Thousands of web sites are foreclosed from using a tool that competitors and perhaps more ideologically acceptable alternatives can leverage to reach customers and readers. Google has a well-earned reputation as a progressive and friendly brand. To maintain it in this case, it would seem Google has two options: (a) drop hundreds of current advertisers through the consistent application of its rigid and overly broad prohibitions, or; (b) revise its standards to limit only those advertisers advocating violence, whose products are inherently dangerous or whose content appeals to prurient interests. Political opinion of any stripe would be protected; ads regarding guns, terrorism, or pornography would not. (For a complete proposal, see "Don't Be Evil: A Google Freedom of Information Act." Of course, Google is not the government; as a commercial entity, it does not have the obligation to respect all speech constitutionally protected under the 1st Amendment. Google is, however, one of those rare corporate brands that cross the world of business into mainstream culture. That status brings both precious commercial benefits and real social responsibilities. Google has simply become too central to Americans' ability to speak out, recruit the like-minded, sell products and build businesses. One role Google must not be allowed to assume is that of 21st century censor. Help save free speech and help save Google – from itself. Contact Google today! UPDATE (7/26/04): The Google Adwords Team has reversed course and restored Perrspectives ads. Perrspectives, however, will not resume its Adwords ads until there is clarification as to whether the Google "advocates against" editorial standard has been revised.

BP to make biggest profit in UK history despite hurricanes Terry Macalister Thursday January 12, 2006 The Guardian BP has taken a billion-dollar battering from US hurricanes in the fourth quarter but is still on track to announce annual profits of over $21bn (£12bn) next month - the biggest in British corporate history. The oil and gas group disclosed yesterday that it would take a $400m charge at its Texas City refinery alone but its 2005 profits would still be around a quarter better than in 2004, on the back of soaring oil prices. BP's profits in total could pay off a third of Britain's latest budget deficit and would be equal to the entire gross domestic product of Iraq in the latter days of Saddam Hussein. The fourth quarter trading statement was seen as a mixed bag by the City, allowing the company's shares to tread water at 643p. But Britain's biggest company by market capitalisation felt the continuing aftermath of Katrina and other hurricanes with output down on a year ago. BP produced an average of 4.01m barrels of oil equivalent per day in the latest quarter, compared with 4.09m during the same period 12 months earlier. That was at the lower end of the 4.0m to 4.2m which had been expected by equity analysts and meant the average production for last year would be 4m barrels per day, below the 4.1m to 4.2m targeted by the company. The Texas City refinery had been partly put out of action by an explosion for which BP took responsibility, but the hurricanes knocked it out completely with flood damage. The cost to this plant alone was $400m in the fourth quarter. BP said yesterday that the total cost of hurricane damage across its facilities, in terms of lost profits and repairs, would amount to over $1bn in the three months. Barrels lost in the Gulf of Mexico hit the company particularly hard because they are among the most profitable in BP's global portfolio. There was no statement on when the Texas City plant would restart and some analysts believed it would not be before April. While upstream production of crude and gas was lower than expected, there was also a disappointing performance from its downstream refinery division with oil product prices clattering downwards after a post-Katrina spike. Fuel marketing margins improved. But BP will argue that its profits on the UK forecourt remain wafer thin, heading off potential criticism next month from motorists angry at the scale of group profits. Neither will BP have been able to benefit from soaring UK spot gas prices in recent weeks because the company sells its gas wholesale on long-term contracts. BP will have to take a $1.3bn accounting charge on these gas contracts because of the way they are treated under the IFRS accounting rules now adopted by BP. The company also plans to take a $400m charge in the fourth quarter to deal with restructuring of its European downstream operation. Bruce Evers, analyst with Investec Securities, described the trading statement as a "mixed bag" but said the overall performance of BP remained strong. "The likely profit figures certainly put into perspective Gordon Brown's latest windfall tax on the oil industry," said another analyst in a reference to the November statement from the chancellor which will cost BP an extra £350m annually. The £2bn hit on Britain's North Sea operators brought a furious reaction from the UK Offshore Operators Association, which represents BP and others. The association said the move was unjustified and would chase investment away from Britain.

Peru, Venezuela in renewed war of words AFP 12 Jan 06 Lima and Caracas engaged in a renewed war of words after Peru's President Alejandro Toledo accused his Venezuelan counterpart Hugo Chavez of "destabilizing Latin America." Toledo revived last week's accusations that Chavez was interfering in Peru's internal affairs ahead of its April 9 presidential elections, and Caracas promptly responded by calling the Lima government a "huge failure." The angry exchange came barely one week after Peru withdrew its ambassador from Venezuela to protest what it considered expressions of support by Chavez for one of the presidential hopefuls. "Let us be clear: Hugo Chavez is president of Venezuela, he is not president of Latin America, and I believe that all his petrodollars do not give him the right to destabilize the region," Toledo said Wednesday. His remarks came after Peruvian media quoted Chavez, a former military officer, as saying conservative presidential hopeful Lourdes Flores "is the candidate of Peru's oligarchy, and she doesn't like us soldiers." Toledo said the comments were "unacceptable," and claimed the leftist Chavez was "committing grave errors." Flores also expressed outrage over what she called "interference" by Chavez. "We will not tolerate in any way that a foreign leader should tell Peruvians how to vote," she said. Venezuelan Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel angrily dismissed the accusations. "The Venezuelan government does not destabilize, but rather it stabilizes the region by tackling social problems," Rangel said in a statement. "One can see the Peruvian leader lacks good judgment, and his political opinions must be clouded by the huge failure that marks his administration," Rangel said. Chavez had already caused a stir last week when he publicly hailed Peruvian candidate Ollanta Humala, a former officer who led a military uprising in 2000. Flores and Humala are tied at the head of opinion polls. Peru last week recalled its ambassador from Venezuela to protest what it called interference by Chavez, who praised Humala during a photo-opportunity in Caracas with the Peruvian candidate and Bolivia's president-elect Evo Morales. Toledo said the spat appeared to have been resolved a few days ago, but that Chavez "went back on the offensive yesterday in an excessive manner that makes little sense." Chavez said earlier it was a coincidence that Humala showed up in Caracas the same day as Morales, but analysts believe the meeting reflected the common ideological ground shared by the three. Critics have claimed for some time that Humala had close ties to Chavez, but the presidential candidate has repeatedly denied the Venezuelan leader funded his campaign. Meanwhile, police in Lima clashed with about 150 supporters of former president Alberto Fujimori who demanded that electoral authorities allow the jailed ex-leader to take part in the elections. Electoral authorities on Tuesday rejected Fujimori's candidacy, pointing out that Congress barred him from seeking public office for 10 years when he fled to Japan and resigned the presidency in 2000 at the height of a corruption scandal. Fujimori, 67, who led Peru for a decade, has been held in Chile on a Peruvian extradition request since he showed up unexpectedly in Santiago in November.

Chile's Pinochet stripped of immunity for 'Caravan of Death' trial AFP 12 Jan 06 A Chilean court stripped former dictator Augusto Pinochet of legal immunity in a human rights case, but also ruled that he could be released on bail from house arrest pending trial in another case. Pinochet, 90, can now be put on trial for responsibility in two murders by the "Caravan of Death," a band of soldiers who conducted extrajudicial killings in the months after the 1973 coup that brought him to power. In 2002 the Supreme Court dropped an earlier attempt to try Pinochet on the "Caravan of Death" case, arguing that mild dementia hindered his ability to defend himself. But on Wednesday, the appeals court voted 17 to six to approve a request to remove Pinochet's immunity in the case and allow him to be tried for the killings of two political prisoners -- Wagner Salinas and Francisco Lara -- detained in Curico on September 11, 1973, the day of the military coup. Both were taken to Santiago and were shot dead on October 5, according to an attorney for the men's families, Hugo Gutierrez. The immunity that Pinochet enjoyed as a former president had already been lifted on four previous occasions, including an investigation of the 1975 "Operation Colombo" in which 119 leftists disappeared and are thought to have been killed. The Santiago appeals court also upheld a lower court ruling that Pinochet could be released on bail from house arrest pending trial in the "Operation Colombo" case. Pinochet's lawyer at first said that his client could not post the 19,230-dollar bond since most of his funds have been frozen in an investigation of secret bank accounts in which he allegedly accumulated 27 million dollars. But by the afternoon Pinochet came up with the cash, posted bail and drove out to his estate on the central Chilean coast, said retired general Guillermo Garin, one of his close aides. Pinochet has been under house arrest since November 23. At least 3,000 opponents of the military government are thought to have been killed during the 1973-1990 dictatorship, and many more were jailed and tortured.

Bush attacker gets life sentence Aljazeera 12 Jan 06 A Georgian man accused of attempting to kill George Bush by lobbing a hand grenade towards him at an outdoor rally in the ex-Soviet republic of Georgia last May has been sentenced to life in prison. The defendant, Vladimir Arutyunyan, "is sentenced to the highest form of punishment - life in prison", the presiding judge in his trial said on Wednesday. "He was found guilty on eight charges from the criminal code and four of them demand the highest form of punishment," Judge David Dzhugeli said. Attempted assassination was one of the four charges calling for a life sentence, the judge said in pronouncing the sentence. The others included the killing of a police officer, terrorism and treason. Arutyunyan said he would appeal the sentence. "I don't consider myself a terrorist, I'm just a human being," he said after Dzhugeli read the sentence. "I will appeal to all the international courts and organisations." Arutyunyan was arrested last July in Tbilisi. He was accused of throwing a live hand grenade that police found unexploded near a platform where George Bush and Mikhail Saakashvili, the Georgian president, were standing to address a crowd of tens of thousands of people on a public square. His arrest was preceded by a shootout that left the Georgian interior ministry's top anti-terrorism official dead. Artyunyan's sentencing on Wednesday came after forensic investigators from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation provided DNA evidence last month linking him to the failed attack on Bush and Saakashvili. DNA match The investigators said DNA found on a handkerchief in which the grenade was wrapped matched that of Arutyunyan. One of the FBI investigators, Brendan Shea, told the court: "The probability that a match could occur at random is one in 24 quadrillion." Another FBI investigator echoed the findings of Georgian investigators who said a handkerchief wrapped around the hand grenade may have prevented its detonation by slowing the device's trigger. The rally in May was the highlight of the first visit by a serving US president to Georgia.

Turk who tried to kill pope John Paul released from jail AFP 12 Jan 06 Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turk who attempted to kill pope John Paul II in 1981, was freed after almost 25 years in Turkish and Italian prisons to reactions of both protest and joy. Clad in jeans and a blue sweater, Agca, 48, emerged from the main building of Kartal jail on the Asian shore of Istanbul, surrounded by about a dozen armed soldiers. He climbed into a white car just inside the main gates of the prison and was driven out of the facility as far-right sympathizers pelted the vehicle with red and yellow flowers, an AFP correspondent reported. Agca was taken straight to the Pendik military recruitment office because, to the Turkish authorities, he is just another draft dodger who still owes his country the compulsory military service all Turkish males over 18 must perform. His lawyer has said that he would ask for an arrangement under which Agca will pay a hefty sum in lieu of military service, or ask to be exempted on health grounds. Agca emerged from the building in about half an hour, amid ovations from a group of far-right activists, brandishing a large Turkish flag. "We came here to show our support for him and we are very happy," one of them, Ozcan Toramanoglu, said. "Agca served more than enough in jail." He climbed on a black luxury car this time, waving to the crowd. He was taken to the distant Istanbul suburb of Tuzla, home to one of Turkey's major infantry training camps, to undergo a check-up at a medical facility there, an AFP photographer following Agca reported. Agca served 19 years in Italian prisons for his most notorious act -- the May 13, 1981, attack on John Paul II in St. Peter's Square, whose motives remain to this day shrouded in mystery. He was pardoned by the Italian authorities and extradited to Turkey in June 2000 and was serving time for two bank robberies committed in the 1970s and for the 1979 murder of Abdi Ipekci, a popular liberal newspaper editor and columnist with the daily Milliyet. He would have served 36 years, but he was released under reductions that accompanied amnesty laws and European Union-inspired reforms to the Turkish penal code that cut prison terms for the crimes he was found guilty of. Agca was a 23-year-old militant of the notorious far-right Grey Wolves organization, on the run from Turkish police, when he opened fire on the pope as the pontiff drove to an audience in an open vehicle. John Paul II was seriously wounded in the abdomen and Agca spent the next 19 years in Italian prisons. The pope later met him in prison and forgave him, but why Agca acted as he did remains a mystery. He has claimed it was part of a divine plan, and charges that the Soviet Union and then-communist Bulgaria were behind the assassination attempt were never proven. Agca himself has given often contradictory statements, frequently changing his story and forcing investigators to open dozens of inquiries. The late pope wrote in his last book, "Memory and Identity", that he was convinced the assassination attempt was planned and commissioned and that Agca was a mere puppet. Many see Agca as deranged -- he has often claimed to be a "second Messiah" -- while others believe he is a sly operator only playing the fool. In his latest pronouncement, published Wednesday in the Turkish daily Vatan, he said he was "the first universal spokesman of God" and to have declined an offer from the Vatican "to climb to the head of the Holy See" provided he converted to Roman Catholicism. His release has sparked protests by the lawyer of the Ipekci family, who argues that Agca's release is based on a miscalculation of the reductions foreseen in Turkish law. Former justice minister Hikmet Sami Turk, who oversaw Agca's extradition to Turkey in 2000, has said he should not have been released until 2012. "A day of shame," headlined the liberal Milliyet, the newspaper of his first victim, Abdi Ipekci, while the mass circulation Hurriyet blared: "The most notorious murderer is free."

Germany's cannibal back on trial for eating Internet volunteer AFP 12 Jan 06 The retrial of a self-confessed cannibal began in Germany as prosecutors sought a murder conviction for the man who killed and ate an apparently willing victim he met on the Internet. In a lurid case that shocked the country, Armin Meiwes is being retried after a federal judge threw out a January 2004 manslaughter conviction on the grounds it was too lenient, despite the victim's purported "death wish". Cannibalism in itself is not outlawed in Germany but if it can be proven Meiwes killed to fulfill sexual desire or in order to commit another crime, in this case "disturbing the peace of the dead", he could face life in prison. Meiwes, wearing a dark suit and a black dress shirt, was led into the courtroom wearing handcuffs and carrying a thick binder. He greeted his three-member legal team with a broad smile and handshakes, then listened impassively as state prosecutor Marcus Koehler made his opening statement. "The defendant stands accused of murder for sexual gratification," Koehler told the three-judge panel before describing the grisly events of a night in March 2001, which Meiwes captured on videotape. A 43-year-old Berlin engineer, Bernd Juergen Brandes, met Meiwes after replying to an Internet advertisement for "young, well-built men aged 18 to 30 for slaughter". He was one of more than 200 volunteers. Brandes, who had a will, bought a one-way rail ticket to Meiwes's storybook hometown of Rotenburg, where his host picked him up at the station and took him to his rambling half-timbered farmhouse. The two men had sex and after Brandes downed sleeping pills and whiskey, Meiwes cut off the man's penis, which they planned to eat together but found it was inedible "even when fried". After a while, Brandes became unconscious. "Driven by sexual lust, he laid him on a bench to be slaughtered," Koehler said. Meiwes, now 44, stabbed Brandes and hung his body from a hook on the ceiling of his kitchen. He dissected the corpse, slicing off 30 kilograms (66 pounds) of flesh which he stored in a freezer. He later ate two-thirds of it, often with accompaniments such as pepper sauce or a wine sauce and potatoes. The case did not come to light until an Austrian student spotted another Internet advertisement by Meiwes seeking new victims and alerted the police. The computer service technician was sentenced to eight and a half years in prison. Meiwes, who could take the stand as early as Thursday afternoon, told the court during his first trial that he saw the encounter as the fulfillment of a shared fantasy. "I saw the killing as helping him, helping him to die, helping him to kill himself," he said. "That is a taboo for which I must justify myself before God and the whole world." Meiwes's case has blown the lid open on a underground scene of sex and extreme sado-masochism that the defendant told investigators is thriving. The so-called "cannibal of Rotenburg" had 16 computers and 2,000 disks full of information about the secret world. State prosecutors have argued that it is crucial the German justice system ensure that a "highly dangerous defendant" is not eligible for release as early as 2008. A verdict is expected in March. Ahead of the trial, Meiwes filed requests with US and German courts for an injunction to block the release of a US feature film he claims is based on his case, saying the movie could prejudice his retrial. Meiwes is reportedly working with a television production company on a documentary about his life.

Taiwan breeds green-glowing pigs By Chris Hogg BBC News, Hong Kong 12 Jan 06 Scientists in Taiwan say they have bred three pigs that glow in the dark. They claim that while other researchers have bred partly fluorescent pigs, theirs are the only pigs in the world which are green through and through. The pigs are transgenic, created by adding genetic material from jellyfish into a normal pig embryo. The researchers hope the pigs will boost the island's stem cell research, as well as helping with the study of human disease. The researchers, from National Taiwan University's Department of Animal Science and Technology, say that although the pigs glow, they are otherwise no different from any others. Taiwan is not claiming a world first. Others have bred partially fluorescent pigs before. But the researchers insist the three pigs they have produced are better. They are the only ones that are green from the inside out. Even their heart and internal organs are green, they say. To create them, DNA from jellyfish was added to around 265 pig embryos which were implanted in eight different pigs. Four of the pigs became pregnant and three male piglets were born three months ago. Green generation In daylight the researchers say the pigs' eyes, teeth and trotters look green. Their skin has a greenish tinge. In the dark, shine a blue light on them and they glow torch-light bright. The scientists will use the transgenic pigs to study human disease. Because the pig's genetic material is green, it is easy to spot. So if, for instance, some of its stem cells are injected into another animal, scientists can track how they develop without the need for a biopsy or invasive test. But creating them has not been easy. Many of the altered embryos failed to develop. The researchers say they hope the new, green pigs will mate with ordinary female pigs to create a new generation - much greater numbers of transgenic pigs for use in research. Comment: It should not be lost on the reader that the name of the author of this article is "Hogg."

NTSB Solves Riddle of Small Plane Crash in '02 By Sara Kehaulani Goo Washington Post January 11, 2006 The federal government said yesterday that it has solved the three-year-old mystery of a small plane crash in Alabama that, at least initially, appeared to have been the result of an in-flight collision with an unexplained object. The nighttime crash in October 2002 of the single-engine Cessna cargo plane killed the pilot, the plane's only occupant, and launched UFO and government-conspiracy theories on Web sites, pondering what it might have collided with. Red scuff marks were found on pieces of the wreckage after it was pulled from a swamp. Some pilots theorized that the Cessna was struck by a stray unmanned drone, many of which are painted red or orange, that are flown by the military at a nearby Air Force base. The investigation so frustrated the dead pilot's sister that she spent weeks combing Big Bateau Bay for clues. After taking the unusual step of moving the aircraft to Washington and sending the red paint marks to four laboratories for testing, the National Transportation Safety Board concluded that the pilot became disoriented while flying through cloud layers and crashed the plane probably after seeing a large plane coming near him. Tests from the labs, one at the FBI, found that most of the red-marked pieces were similar to materials inside the cargo plane, including baseball caps, audiotape packaging, a fire extinguisher, a tow bar and a Priority Mail envelope. The Wright Patterson Air Force Laboratory said that red color on the wreckage did not match the polyurethane coating on the exterior of the drone it used from Eglin Air Force Base. "Wreckage examinations . . . revealed no evidence of an in-flight collision or breakup, or of external contact by a foreign object," the NTSB's report said. The red scuff marks on the wreckage did not appear in a pattern that suggested a collision, the report said. The safety board's simulation of the accident revealed that the pilot, Thomas J. Preziose, was flying between cloud layers when he was notified of a FedEx DC-10 flying in the area. Even though the DC-10 was 2,400 feet higher and more than a mile away, it probably appeared much closer to the pilot, the report indicated. The pilot's "view of the DC-10 moved diagonally across the windscreen from his left to straight in front of the Cessna while [appearing to triple] in size" in just seconds, the report said. If a pilot is distracted and does not have a view of the horizon, as in this case, it is easy to become disoriented, said John Clark, head of NTSB's Office of Aviation Safety. "It's quite insidious if you're between layers of clouds; you can get screwed up," he said. "If you start moving your head or moving up and down, you can screw up your inner balance." Still, a lawyer who said he represents two sons of the pilot, said he does not believe the safety board's conclusion and that he plans to press ahead in federal court with a lawsuit that blames the weather, air traffic control and other factors. "I don't think the board's got it straight," Tony B. Jobe said. "The plot is thickening."

Pilgrims killed in Hajj stampede BBC News 12 Jan 06 More than 100 Muslim pilgrims have been killed in a crush in the stone-throwing ritual during the Hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia, officials say. A BBC correspondent at the scene in Mina saw dozens of bodies lined up on the ground. Doctors warned that the death toll could reach 300. The ritual has been marred by deadly stampedes in the past. After a crush in 2004, the authorities built barriers and deployed thousands of stewards in a bid to improve safety. Bridge surge The stampede took place at the foot of the bridge of Jamarat, where pilgrims hurl stones at three pillars representing the spot where the devil is said to have appeared to Abraham. An interior ministry spokesman, Maj Gen Mansour al-Turki, told the Associated Press news agency that the stampede happened after pieces of luggage spilled from moving buses in front of one of the entrances to the bridge, causing pilgrims to trip. More than two million people were thought to be performing the rite, at the time. Witness Abdullah Pulig, an Indian street-cleaner, described a scene of carnage. "I saw people moving and suddenly I heard crying, shouting, wailing. I looked around and people were piling on each other. They started pulling dead people from the crowd," he was quoted by AP as saying. Ambulances and police cars streamed into the area, as security forces tried to move people away from the scene of the accident. The pilgrims were returning via Mina after performing the Tawaf al-Wada, a farewell ceremony that involves walking around the Kaaba - a cube-like building in the centre of Mecca's Great Mosque - seven times. The Tawaf al-Wada is performed after the Hajj has finished. The stoning is the riskiest ritual of the Hajj, as worshippers jostle to try to target the stones, often causing weaker pilgrims to fall under foot. In 2004, more than 200 pilgrims were trampled to death while performing the same ceremony. The latest deadly stampede come days after more than 70 people died when a hostel for pilgrims collapsed in the Saudi city of Mecca. The Hajj is one of the five pillars of Islam and every able-bodied adult Muslim is obliged to perform it at least once in their lives.

When Satan came to town BBC 9 Jan 06 In 1990 the Devil came to Rochdale. Families woke up to every parent's worst nightmare when, with no warning, police and social services came to take their children away. Social services believed that they had uncovered evidence that the children were being forced to take part in ritual devil worship. It was the most notorious of a series of similar claims made against families across the country. Catalogue of mistakes Allegations ranged from the sacrifice of human babies and robed devil worship to locking the children in cages and caves. None of the claims were ever proved. It was Britain's Salem Witch Hunt. This programme reveals the real story of how, at the end of the 20th Century, hysteria swept through our social services. This was a total failure of "due process" and common sense with horrific results. Sixteen children were kept in care without any contact with their parents for months and it took 10 years before the last child was released from care back to his family. Children sue in false abuse claim Because the children at the heart of the story were made wards of court it has not been legally possible to identify them. Only now that they are adults can the story be told - and they are telling the BBC exclusively. Lost years of 'Satanic panic' children BBC wins removed children ruling The corporation has challenged Rochdale Council through the family courts and has obtained video evidence of the interviews with the children taken at the time, as social workers desperately tried to prove their unfounded theory that the families had been worshiping the devil and abusing their children. They show the catalogue of mistakes and manipulations of the truth by social workers that resulted in the enormous personal cost to the families caught up in this satanic panic. This year, the children take Rochdale council to court in an attempt to get an apology for one of the biggest mistakes ever made in social work. When Satan Came To Town: The Real Story - BBC ONE on Wednesday 11 January at 2100 GMT.

Global warming: blame the forests Alok Jha, science correspondent Thursday January 12, 2006 The Guardian They have long been thought of as the antidote to harmful greenhouse gases, sufferers of, rather than contributors to, the effects of global warming. But in a startling discovery, scientists have realised that plants are part of the problem. According to a study published today, living plants may emit almost a third of the methane entering the Earth's atmosphere. The result has come as a shock to climate scientists. "This is a genuinely remarkable result," said Richard Betts of the climate change monitoring organisation the Hadley Centre. "It adds an important new piece of understanding of how plants interact with the climate." Methane is second only to carbon dioxide in contributing to the greenhouse effect. "For a given mass of methane, it is a stronger greenhouse gas, but the reason it is of less concern is that there's less of it in the atmosphere," said Dr Betts. But the concentration of methane in the atmosphere has almost tripled in the last 150 years, mainly through human-influenced so-called biogenic sources such as the rise in rice cultivation or numbers of flatulent ruminating animals. According to previous estimates, these sources make up two-thirds of the 600m tonnes worldwide annual methane production. Frank Keppler, of the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics, who led the team behind the new research, estimated that living plants release between 60m and 240m tonnes of methane per year, based on experiments he carried out, with the largest part coming from tropical areas. David Lowe, of the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research in New Zealand, said the new work, published in Nature, is important for two reasons. "First, because the methane emissions they document occur under normal physiological conditions, in the presence of oxygen, rather than through bacterial action in anoxic environments," he wrote in an accompanying article. "Second, because the estimated emissions are large, constituting 10-30% of the annual total of methane entering Earth's atmosphere." Yadvinder Malhi, a specialist in the relationship between vegetation and climate at Oxford University, said the plant source of methane had probably been missed in the past because scientists have a poor understanding of the way methane circulates in the atmosphere. "There are a variety of sources and sinks of methane and there are huge error bars on those terms," he said. "What's been uncertain is where the methane is coming from and where it's going. Unlike carbon dioxide, methane is much more dynamic; it lasts about 10 years in the atmosphere." Biogenic methane has traditionally been assumed to come from organic materials as they decompose in oxygen-free environments. But Dr Keppler found plants emit the gas even in normal, oxygen-rich surroundings: between 10 and 1,000 times more methane than dead plant material. When the plants were exposed to the sun, the rate of methane production increased. "Until now all the textbooks have said that biogenic methane can only be produced in the absence of oxygen," Dr Keppler said. "For that simple reason, nobody looked closely at this." The discovery sheds further light on the complex relationship between greenhouse gases and the environment. "If you're after predictions of global average temperature, it won't make a huge amount of difference," said Dr Betts. "But it shows how complicated it is to exactly quantify reforesting or deforesting in comparison with current fossil fuel emissions." It will also intensify debates on whether targets in climate change treaties such as the Kyoto Protocol should be based entirely on carbon emissions, which are easily measured, or also take sinks into account, which remove carbon from the atmosphere but are more difficult to measure. For climate scientists, the new work clears up a few unexplained features in the environment. "The rate of methane increase in the atmosphere has slowed down in the last 10 years and there was no really convincing explanation of why that's been going on," said Dr Mahli. "This paper argues that tropical deforestation may be a factor there." In addition, the new research could help to explain the source of plumes of methane observed by satellites over tropical forests. "The sheer biomass of the forest may be a factor there," said Dr Mahli. The fact that plants produce methane does not mean that planting forests is a bad idea, however. "Putting a tree where there was no tree before locks up a lot of carbon and this [new research] perhaps reduces the overall benefit of that by a fraction," said Dr Mahli. Some mysteries remain: how and why plants produce methane is unclear. Dr Keppler's team said the search for an answer is likely open up a new area of research into plant biochemistry. Other surprise results Tree planting Researchers in North Carolina found that planting trees to soak up carbon dioxide can suck water and nutrients from the ground, dry up streams and change the soil's mineral balance Aerosols A recent study in Nature found cutting air pollution could trigger a surge in global warming. Aerosols cool the Earth by reflecting radiation back into space. Scrapping them would have adverse consequences Global dimming In 2003 scientists noticed levels of sunlight reaching the Earth's surface had dropped by 20% in recent years because of air pollution and bigger, longer-lasting clouds

Global warming: Today's news of the world By Steve Connor, Science Editor 12 January 2006 Global warming has triggered the decline of hundreds of species of frogs and toads by helping a deadly skin infection to spread across the world. Scientists believe they have found the first clear proof that global warming has caused outbreaks of an infectious disease that is wiping out entire populations of amphibians. The dramatic decline of the 6,000 species of amphibians was first identified in 1990 and one theory for the loss was the spread of a devastating skin infection caused by a fungus. A study by an international team of researchers has now linked the spread of a species of chytrid fungus called Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis with a rise in tropical temperatures associated with global warming. The scientists believe the average temperatures of many tropical highland regions, which are rich in endemic species of frogs and toads, have shifted to become perfect for the growth of the fungus. Arturo Sanchez-Azofeifa of the University of Alberta in Canada, one of the authors of the study, published in the journal Nature, said the analysis firmly linked climate change with the demise of many frogs and toads. "With this increase in temperature, the fungus has been able to increase its niche and wipe out large populations of amphibians," he said. The rapid loss of amphibians - frogs, toads, newts and salamanders - has led to about one- third of them, some 1,856 species, being classified as threatened. Hundreds more face extinction. Scientists believe the chytrid fungus is behind the disappearance of the golden toad of Costa Rica and at least 67 per cent of the 110 species of brightly coloured harlequin frogs that have vanished from the tropical forests of South and Central America over the past 17 years. Alan Pounds of the Monteverde Cloud Forest Preserve in Costa Rica, and the lead author of the study, said the higher average air temperatures in the region were responsible for the spread of the fungus. "Disease is the bullet killing frogs, but climate change is pulling the trigger. Global warming is wreaking havoc on amphibians, and will cause staggering losses of biodiversity if we don't do something fast," Professor Pounds said. He said that rising temperatures enhanced cloud cover over tropical mountains leading to cooler days and warmer nights, both of which favoured the growth of the fungus. The discovery helps to overcome a paradox that puzzled scientists because warmer air temperatures should not in fact favour the spread of the fungus, which thrives best in cooler, damper conditions. It was known that the fungus killed frogs mostly in cool highland regions, implying that low temperatures made it more deadly. The study found that the chytrid fungus was vulnerable to extremes in temperature and anything that moderated these extremes could unleash it.

Polluters vow no sacrifice of growth in climate fight AFP 12 Jan 06 Some of the world's worst polluting nations pledged new tactics to fight global warming, but said they would not sacrifice economic growth while trying to cut back on greenhouse gases. The strategy was outlined at the end of a two-day conference here bringing ministers from the United States, Australia, Japan, China, India and South Korea together with more than 100 top executives from big business. The six nations of the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate said at the end of their inaugural meeting that "at the core of (our) vision is our conviction of the urgent need to pursue development and poverty eradication. "By working together we will be better able to meet our increased energy needs and associated challenges, including those related to air pollution, energy security and greenhouse gas intensity." The six countries account for almost half of the world's gross domestic product, energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions and population. Scientists blame greenhouse gases, produced mainly by the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and oil, for causing increasing temperatures worldwide. "We recognised that fossil fuels underpin our economies, and will be an enduring reality for our lifetimes and beyond," the statement said. "It is therefore critical that we work together to develop, demonstrate and implement cleaner and lower emissions technologies that allow for the continued economic use of fossil fuels while addressing air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions." The group said it also recognised that renewable energy and nuclear power would represent an increasing share of global energy supply. They viewed climate change as a "serious problem" and said the partnership would complement but not replace the Kyoto Protocol, which commits developed countries to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Two of the major countries in the partnership, the United States and Australia, have refused to ratify the protocol saying it would unfairly burden their economies. The US accounts for 25 percent of carbon emissions while Australia produces more carbon dioxide per person than any other country, but they say the Kyoto pact is unfair as it does not commit developing nations to reducing emissions. Australian Prime Minister John Howard told the conference "the idea that we can address climate change matters successfully at the expense of economic growth is not only unrealistic but also unacceptable". The statement said the involvement of the private sector was vital to efforts to combat climate change, reiterating a position that was a central theme of the conference. "We view the private sector as critical to this effort, and we will marshall considerable financial, human and other resources both from the public and private sectors," it said. Howard pledged an additional 100 million dollars (75 million US) for green projects over the next five years, with five million going to the partnership. US Energy Secretary Sam Bodman said US President George W. Bush had agreed to contribute 52 million to the partnership in the US budget for 2007. The group announced the establishment of eight "public-private sector task forces" covering cleaner fossil energy, renewable energy, power generation, steel, aluminium, cement, coal mining and buildings and appliances. The task forces would study anti-pollution technologies and develop action plans "for cooperation, and wherever possibile, ambitious and realistic goals". The six nations will also consider establishing an Asia Pacific energy technology cooperation centre to develop an energy audit programme, the statement said. Critics have charged that the conference was simply a smokescreen designed to divert attention from the US and Australian refusal to ratify Kyoto.

Disaster Planning: Norway builds a 'doomsday vault' By Steve Connor, Science Editor 12 January 2006 Norway has revealed a plan to build a "doomsday vault" hewn out of an Arctic mountain to store two million crop seeds in the event of a global disaster. The store is designed to hold all the seeds representing the world's crops and is being built to safeguard future food supplies in the event of widespread environmental collapse. "If the worst came to the worst, this would allow the world to reconstruct agriculture on this planet," Cary Fowler, the director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, told New Scientist magazine. The Norwegian government is planning to start work on the seed vault next year when construction engineers will drill into a sandstone mountain on the island of Spitsbergen, part of the Svalbard archipelago, about 600 miles from the North Pole. Permafrost will keep the vault below freezing point and the seeds will be further protected by metre-thick walls of reinforced concrete, two airlocks and high-security, blast-proof doors. To survive, the seeds need to be frozen. The plan is to replace the air inside the vault each winter, when temperatures on Spitsbergen fall to minus 18C. "This will be the world's most secure gene bank by some orders of magnitude," said Dr Fowler. "But its seeds will only be used when all other samples have gone for some reason. It is a fail-safe depository, rather than a conventional seed bank." The £1.67m facility will not be permanently manned but "the mountains are patrolled by polar bears". The proposal is backed by Norway, which outlined a similar project in the 1980s that was thwarted at the time by the Soviet Union's access to Spitsbergen. Wera Helstroem, a spokeswoman for Norway's foreign ministry said: "Norway is seen as a good place, because it has a stable society and democracy." The number of seeds and types of plants would be determined by the countries wishing to use the seed bank, which would be operated as if it were a bank vault, she added. "It is like a bank box. We own the vault, but other countries own what is in it. They can put things in and take them out whenever they want to."

Alaskan Volcano Erupts Associated Press 11 January 2006 ANCHORAGE, Alaska - A volcano on an uninhabited island erupted early Wednesday, spewing ash about five miles into the sky and prompting air traffic authorities to warn planes to steer clear of the cloud. The ash from Augustine Volcano was not expected to reach Anchorage, the state's most populous city nearly 200 miles to the northeast, meteorologists said. Flights was restricted temporarily in a five-mile radius around the volcano and for 50,000 feet above it, said Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Mike Fergus. The ash can clog jet engines. Cargo or passenger traffic from Asia usually fly through the area to Anchorage but could be easily rerouted, Fergus said. ``It's not posing any significant traffic problems,'' he said. The cloud, moving at about 20 mph, appeared to have low concentrations of ash, said Bob Hopkins of the National Weather Service office in Anchorage. Residents on the Kenai Peninsula, east of the volcanic island, reported seeing ash, said geologist Jennifer Adleman of the Alaska Volcano Observatory. The few residents in the area were warned to reduce outdoor activity, keep windows and doors closed, and avoid outdoor exercise. The 4,134-foot volcano last erupted in 1986. Ash from a seven-mile-high column drifted over Anchorage and forced flights to avoid the skies over Cook Inlet. A web cam and earthquake count graphic are available here.

Battle On High Seas: Japan's target is to kill 935 whales By Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor 12 January 2006 This year, the Japanese intend to kill 935 minke whales and 10 endangered fin whales, despite the international moratorium on commercial whaling which has been in force for 20 years. The Japanese hunt is carried out under the guise of "scientific research" - but the resulting whale meat ends up on sale to consumers. Greenpeace activists confronted the Japanese whaling fleet in the Southern Ocean yet again yesterday as part of their continuing protest against Japan's annual whale hunt. Volunteers based aboard two Greenpeace vessels, the Esperanza and the Arctic Sunrise, succeeded in obstructing the whaling fleet's factory ship so that no whales could be transferred to it. In the afternoon, the fleet started to hunt again, and the activists changed tactics, trying to prevent them from making kills. For most of the afternoon, using rigid inflatable boats, they hampered the harpoons, but then mechanical problems meant they had to return to the ship. For the past three weeks, Greenpeace has been trying to disrupt the whaling fleet, which is hunting in an area which has been an official whale sanctuary since 1994. The whalers have responded to the activists' efforts by deploying fire hoses on them. This year, the Japanese intend to kill 935 minke whales and 10 endangered fin whales, despite the international moratorium on commercial whaling which has been in force for 20 years. The Japanese hunt is carried out under the guise of "scientific research" - but the resulting whale meat ends up on sale to consumers. More whales are likely to be killed this year than at any time since the moratorium of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) came into force. More than 2,000 animals are likely to be hunted by the three countries - Norway, Iceland and Japan - defiantly continuing whaling. Norway, which is openly hunting on a commercial basis, has raised its self-awarded quota of minke whales by 250 animals to 1,052. Iceland, following the Japanese down the alleged "scientific" route, is likely at least to match the 39 whales it took in 2005. Japan and its allies are trying hard to secure a voting majority in the IWC, and may well get it at this June's meeting in St Kitts and Nevis in the Caribbean. Although a simple majority would not enable them to scrap the moratorium - a 75 per cent majority is needed for that - it would let them bring in changes which would help towards that goal.

Library Books Bound with Human Skin By M.L. Johnson Associated Press 10 January 2006 PROVIDENCE, R.I.--Brown University's library boasts an anatomy book that combines form and function in macabre fashion. Its cover--tanned and polished to a smooth golden brown, like fine leather--is made of human skin. In fact, a number of the nation's finest libraries, including Harvard's, have such books in their collections. The practice of binding books in human skin was not uncommon in centuries past, even if it was not always discussed in polite society. At the time, the best libraries belonged to private collectors. Some were doctors who had access to skin from amputated parts and patients whose bodies had gone unclaimed. In other cases, wealthy bibliophiles acquired skin from executed criminals, medical school cadavers and people who died in the poor house. Nowadays, libraries typically keep such volumes in their rare book collections and do not allow them to circulate. But scholars can examine them. Brown's John Hay Library has three books bound in human skin--the 1568 anatomy text by the Belgian surgeon Andreas Vesalius, and two 19th-century editions of “The Dance of Death,” a medieval morality tale. One copy of “The Dance of Death” was rebound in 1893 by Joseph Zaehnsdorf, a master binder in London. A note to his client reports that he did not have enough skin and had to split it. The front cover, bound in the outer layer of skin, has a slightly bumpy texture, like soft sandpaper. The spine and back cover, made from the inner layer, feel like suede. “The Dance of Death” is about how death prevails over all, rich or poor. As with many other skin-bound volumes, “there was some tie-in with the content of the book,” said Sam Streit, director of the John Hay Library. Similarly, many of the volumes are medical books. The College of Physicians of Philadelphia has some books bound by Dr. John Stockton Hough, who diagnosed the city's first case of trichinosis. He used that patient's skin to bind three of the volumes. “The hypothesis that I was suggesting is that these physicians did this to honor the people who furthered medical research,” said Laura Hartman, a rare-book cataloger at the National Library of Medicine in Maryland and author of a paper on the subject. In most cases, universities and other libraries acquired the books as donations or as part of collections they purchased. It is not clear whether some of the patients knew what would happen to their bodies. In most cases, the skin appears to have come from poor people who had no one to claim their remains. In any case, the practice took place well before the modern age of consent forms and organ donor cards. While human leather may be repulsive to contemporary society, libraries can ethically have the books in their collections if they are used respectfully for academic research and not displayed as objects of curiosity, said Paul Wolpe of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania. “There is a certain distancing that history gives us from certain kinds of artifacts,” Wolpe said, noting that museums often have bones from archaeological sites. “If you had called me and said these are books from Nazi Germany, I would have a very different response.” The Boston Athenaeum, a private library, has an 1837 copy of George Walton's memoirs bound in his own skin. Walton was a highwayman--a robber who specialized in ambushing travelers--and left the volume to one of his victims. The Cleveland Public Library has a Quran that may have been bound in the skin of its previous owner, an Arab tribal leader. Decades ago, the Harvard Law School Library bought a 1605 manual for Spanish lawyers for $42.50 from an antiquarian books dealer in New Orleans. It sat on a shelf unnoticed until the early 1990s, when curator David Ferris was going through the library catalog and found a note saying it was bound in a man's skin. DNA tests as to whether it is human skin were inconclusive--the genetic material having been destroyed by the tanning process--but the library had a box made to store the book and now keeps it on a special shelf. “We felt we couldn't set it just next to someone else's law books,” Ferris said.

Americans Find Being Fat Not Unattractive By CANDICE CHOI Associated Press 11 Jan 2006 Thin is still in, but apparently fat is nowhere near as out as it used to be. A survey finds America's attitudes toward overweight people are shifting from rejection toward acceptance. Over a 20-year period, the percentage of Americans who said they find overweight people less attractive steadily dropped from 55 percent to 24 percent, the market research firm NPD Group found. With about two-thirds of U.S. adults overweight, Americans seem more accepting of heavier body types, researchers say. The NPD survey of 1,900 people representative of the U.S. population also found other more relaxed attitudes about weight and diet. While body image remains a constant obsession, the national preoccupation with being thin has waned since the late 1980s and early 1990s, said the NPD's Harry Balzer. Those were the days when fast food chains rushed to install salad bars. In 1989, salads as a main course peaked at 10 percent of all restaurant meals. Today, those salad bars have all but vanished and salads account for just 5 1/2 percent of main dishes. "It turns out health is a wonderful topic to talk about," Balzer said. "But to live that way is a real effort." Fewer people said they're trying to "avoid snacking entirely" — just 26 percent in 2005, down from 45 percent in 1985 — while 75 percent said they had low-fat, no-fat or reduced fat products in the last two weeks, down from 86 percent in 1999, according to the survey. At 5-feet-6 and 230 pounds, Lara Frater likes her body just fine and turns up her nose at trendy diets. "I don't beat myself up if I have a piece of cake," said Frater, a 34-year-old New Yorker and author of "Fat Chicks Rule." The survey's findings aren't that surprising, as attitudes about weight constantly shift, said John Cawley, associate professor at Cornell University's College of Human Ecology. While heavy women were idealized at times — think "Rubenesque," a term born of 17th century painter Peter Paul Rubens' full-figured women — corseted women with tiny waists were preferred in other eras. "I don't think we're going to go back to worshipping obese women, but it's interesting to see how attitudes change as more people become overweight," Cawley said. Others argue that people are merely becoming more politically correct and that bias against fat people is actually growing sharper. "These studies don't pick up on implicit, unconscious bias," said Kelly Brownell, head of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University. "It's like if you asked people around the country if they had racial bias. There's a difference between what people say and what actually happens," Brownell said. Researchers at Cornell also found that negative attitudes about obesity persist. The NPD study results may simply be a sign of "resignation from overweight people," Brownell said, noting that it's likely a majority of survey respondents are overweight. The survey, to be published in February in the journal Rationality and Society, also found obese boys and girls were half as likely to date as normal weight kids. At an obesity doctors meeting in 2003, a University of Liverpool study indicated that just standing next to a large woman can be bad for a guy's image. The study had young women look at one of two pictures: One of a trim young man standing next to a svelte woman, and the other showing the same man next to a heavy woman. When the man was shown standing by the large woman, he was rated 22 percent more negatively by the study volunteers than when he was next to the thin woman. When seen with the large woman, he was more likely to be described as miserable, depressed, weak and insecure. Marilyn Wann, board member of the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance, said fat people are the target of a witch hunt in a fitness-obsessed nation. "Everyone thinks it's OK to make fun of fatties," said Wann, who won't use the word "overweight" because she says it's judgmental. Even if people say they are more accepting of overweight people, many still yearn to be thin. The NPD survey shows the number of people who said "I would like to lose 20 pounds" jumped from 54 percent in 1985 to 61 percent last year. Comment: Necessity is the mother of invention, but so is acceptance it seems. After all it's harder to take some care over what we put into our bodies than to simply pretend that everything is fine, god is in his heaven and our government leaders would never deliberately "spike" our food to make us ill.

Henan Man Impossible to Photograph The Epoch Times 9 Jan 2006 On January 6, 2006, Henan Province's Dahe Daily newspaper reported that the local police department was unable to take an ID photo of Ye Xiangting from Yelou Village in the Yangzhuang Township of Wugang City, Henan Province. No image of Ye Xiangting showed up in the computer photos, and there is still no clear explanation for the result. Ye Xiangting told the reporter about his recent visit to the Yangzhuang police station to get a photo taken for a new ID card. He sat in front of the camera, but no image of him would show up in the photo. The staff checked the camera very carefully, but found no problems. He retook photos of Ye Xiangting, but no photos of Ye Xiangting was found on the computer images. The staff had Ye Xiangting carefully check his clothes to be sure he did not carry anything that would interfere with the equipment. Finally, Ye sat in front of the camera and was photographed from every angle. The staff still failed to get any images of him. The staff could not find a reason. They took images of Ye Xiangting with other people. They were stunned when the other people showed up in the computer images, but not Ye. Ye Xiangting seemed to have "disappeared" from the photos. In the end, the staff had to give up. Ye Xiangting said that he has never encountered this kind of problem before. Normally, he could be photographed. The police station chief told the reporter they have encountered two similar cases. They are unclear about the cause and hope the experts can offer an explanation.

Ark's Quantum Quirks SOTT January 12, 2006

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