By WILLIAM SAFIRE, NYT.
May 23, 2002
WASHINGTON — Thirteen days after Sept. 11 Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, met with 21 leaders from the Duma and the Presidium of the State Council to determine Russia's response to America's war on terror.
"One of the participants advocated support for the Taliban," reports Grigory Yavlinsky, head of the democratic reform party, who was present, "while 18 participants proposed that Russia remain neutral in the fight between America and the terrorists. Only two said that Russia should participate in the antiterrorist coalition."
Putin sided with the two, which instantly became the majority. (For Yavlinsky's idealistic vision of how this could grow into a Russian-U.S. alliance, try www.eng.yabloko.ru/) Putin then seized the opportunity to abandon long-held strategic positions without humiliation and to gain a superpower ally in Russia's inexorable rivalry with China.
Remember last year's hand-wringing by France's Jacques Chirac and Germany's Gerhard Schröder about that cowboy Bush's insistence on a missile defense? Recall their panicky prediction that his withdrawal from the ABM treaty would surely start a new arms race? Then Bush abrogated, the Chinese hyperventilated, and Putin all but genuflected.
Remember the horror of our accommodationists at the East-West "collision course" sure to be caused by expansion of the NATO alliance to include nations flush against Russia's borders? Strange as it seems, many members of the old Soviet Warsaw Pact have already joined, and soon the three Baltic nations will be welcomed. Putin has been pacified with regular NATO consultation.
Remember the elite derision at how (yecch!) unilateralist it sounded when Bush said he would reduce the nuclear missiles we have deployed by two-thirds no matter what the Russians did? In Moscow this weekend, Putin will blandly go along with that cut, and in return for codifying both in a three-page treaty will not object to our keeping undeployed nukes in our attic.
Ordinarily, these happy developments would cause a paroxysm of gloating by hard-liners, but we are denied our deserved nyah-nyahing by the same device Putin used on his score of Russian naysayers: Sept. 11 reshuffled the deck. Diplomatic circumstances changed, and so mistaken predictions cannot be held against the muddled multilateralists.
No longer does Putin fear humiliation if he gives way on armaments he cannot afford. Russian pride was salved by the injury inflicted on the U.S. and our need for intelligence help in the terror war, as well as public buttering-up by an avidly trusting Bush. Putin's "turn to the West" — more to the U.S. than Europe — does not seriously undermine his popularity at home.
After welcoming Bush to Russia tomorrow and following the usual signing, embracing and cold-war-is-over effusion, the Russian will get to the point: His nation needs capital investment as well as entry into the World Trade Organization.
We know his population is down to half the U.S. size and his economy is half as big as that of Portugal, the poorest country in Europe. But Putin will remind us he is sitting on the world's largest oil and gas reserves, which could break the OPEC cartel.
Bush, one hopes, will stress the need for sanctity of contracts and the end of wholesale bribery to attract investors. He should tell Putin his stranglehold on the mass media makes a mockery of political freedom, and point out that a war on terror is not a free pass to continue to brutalize Chechen civilians.
Then to the big one. For a whopping fee, Russia is helping Iran construct a 1,000-megawatt nuclear reactor at Bushehr (a name George W. can easily remember) with a uranium conversion facility able to produce fissile material for nuclear weapons.
At the same time, hundreds of Russian technicians are helping Iran develop the Shahab-4 missile, range over 1,250 miles, to carry a nuclear or germ warhead anywhere in the Middle East and into Europe.
Iran's terrorist arm is Hezbollah. If its agents are armed with a weapon of mass destruction, and if that weapon is used against the U.S. (and our defeatist F.B.I. director tells us to get used to it), then we would have to retaliate against the terrorists' sponsors and suppliers. Thus for Russia to help Iran empower Hezbollah is hugely detrimental to Russia's interests.
Bush should make clear it would be the end of a beautiful friendship.
There will be no peace in this world until the threat to Israel from Iran's Nuclear program is ended.
Bush - The Ignored Warning That Will Come To Haunt Him
By Gordon Thomas
http://www.gordonthomas.ie/104.html
5-27-2
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon authorised the leak of sensitive documents which reveal America's spy agencies were warned about a terrorist strike weeks before September 11. The controversial move has now directly embroiled President George Bush in the 'how-much-did-he-know?' debate over the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Sharon's reaction is a calculated response to growing claims that Mossad has been running spy operations within the United States and also reveals a split in the special relationship between the two leaders.
Mossad chiefs insist the Israeli spy agency was tracking Osama Bin-Laden's terrorists in America before September 11 and that that the information was passed on to the CIA on Five separate occasions before the attacks on the WTC and Pentagon. As late as August 24, less than two weeks before the attacks, a Mossad warning, confirmed by German intelligence, BND, said that "terrorists plan to hijack commercial aircraft to use as weapons to attack important symbols of American and Israeli culture." The warning alert was passed to the CIA.
The warning was also passed to MI6. The agency made its own checks and also informed the CIA. Frustrated by its inability to alert the CIA to an impending attack, Mossad arranged on September 1, according to Tel Aviv sources last week, for Russian intelligence to warn Washington "in the strongest possible terms of imminent assaults on airports and government buildings." Mossad's fury at the failure of the US intelligence community to act has been compounded by the revelation that the Bush administration had ordered the FBI Only a Week Before the September attacks to curtail investigations on two of Osama Bin-Laden's close relatives living in the US state of Virginia at the time.
Sharon's decision to allow the story of Bush's prior knowledge of the attack to be leaked comes at a time when Israel is smarting over what Sharon sees as Bush pressurising the Jewish state into an accommodation with Arafat.
The feeling in Tel Aviv is that Bush's much hyped war on terrorism does not actually fit into the aggressive policy Israel wants to pursue.
Sharon has already suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of his archrival, former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as the central committee of their Likud Party ruled out the establishment of a Palestinian state last Sunday.
The party's decision, formalized in a resolution backed by Netanyahu, directly contradicted Sharon's own stated acceptance of a Palestinian state as the eventual conclusion of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. It came as Sharon faces mounting domestic and international pressure to find a way to stop more than 19 months of bloodshed and launch talks with the Palestinians.
The support he was expecting from America failed to materialise, said a source close to Mossad. "Ariel Sharon is furious because he thinks Bush has not supported him as fully as he could. His coalition is falling apart, Netanyahu has sneaked ahead of him and the Israelis are generally fed up of living in fear. Sharon is quite clear where the blame lies - in the White House. "Now he has really stirred things up by putting Bush right at the centre of this storm by actively allowing these sensitive documents to be leaked to the world. He feels he needs to teach Bush a lesson and this will certainly complicate America's peace efforts in the region," he said.
According to similar documents shown to the Sunday Express, Mossad was running a round-the-clock surveillance operation on some of the September 11 hijackers.
The details, contained in classified papers, reveal that a senior Mossad agent tipped off his counterpart in America's Central Intelligence Agency that a massive terrorist hit was being planned in the US. A handful of the spies had infiltrated the Al-Qaeda organisation while a staggering 120 others, posing as overseas art students, launched massive undercover operations throughout America.
Other documents leaked to the Sunday Express from several intelligence agencies including the Drugs Enforcement Agency show that two Mossad cells of six Egyptian and Yemeni born Jews, trained at a secret base in Israel's Negev Desert on how to penetrate Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network.
One team flew to Amsterdam and were under the control of Mossad's Europe Station. This is based at Schipol Airport within the El Al complex. They later made contact in Hamburg with Mohammed Atta, the lead hijacker on September 11. The second group flew directly to New York. From there they travelled South to Florida and infiltrated the Bin laden organisation. In August last year, the Mossad team in Europe flew with some of the Hamburg terrorists into Boston, a month before the attack on the twin towers.
By then the Mossad team had established an attack on the US was "imminent". It reported this to its Tel Aviv controller through the Israeli Embassy in Washington using a system of secure communications. In early September Mossad Chief Efraim Halevy sent a warning to the CIA of the possibility of such an attack. The warning was noted and acknowledged. But CIA chief George Tenet is understood to have described it as "too non-specific." The FBI was also informed. Halevy sent a second alert to the CIA that reached Washington on or around September 7.
A spokesman for the FBI refused to discuss specific details of the Mossad operation but said: "There are Congressional hearings with regard to possible intelligence failures arising from September 11. We can't verify your information because it is part of an ongoing investigation."
Neither the DEA or the CIA would comment on the record, but a senior US intelligence source said: "Anyone can be wise after the event but it was extremely difficult to act on a non specific threat given in a couple of tips from Israeli intelligence. It would be interesting to know if they could have been more specific with their information.
''Their surveillance teams must have observed Atta and his accomplices going to flying schools. I guess we might never know the real truth."
The spying operations first came to the attention of the DEA in January 2001 according to a classified 90-page dossier which has been seen by the Sunday Express. The names, passport details and other personal records of some of the Israeli-born spies are also detailed in the dossier.
http://www.gordonthomas.ie/104.html
May 26, 2002
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The CIA is preparing to send more personnel to help the FBI analyze information relating to terrorism, a U.S. official said Sunday.
The move appears to be the latest indication of closer FBI-CIA cooperation following the September 11 attacks.
According to the official, who asked not to be identified, a senior manager and about 25 analysts will be detailed to FBI headquarters in Washington to help set up "a robust, analytical intelligence-gathering capability." The official called it a "temporary assignment" that would last "many months."
Another group of CIA analysts will fan out to U.S. cities to review FBI terrorism cases to see whether intelligence clues have been overlooked.
The goal, said the official, would be to search FBI field office files for information which "may not leap out at [FBI agents] as significant" but would stand out to CIA personnel studying "the overall terrorist threat picture."
The official would not say whether those cities would include New York, Phoenix and Minneapolis, cities mentioned frequently in connection with the September 11 investigation and possible missed signals.
"You would expect them to go to the cities where they would be most fruitful," the official said.
The FBI refused to comment on the upcoming changes or any other aspect of the latest phase of the FBI's reorganization. A spokesman noted the FBI and CIA already have personnel working at each other's facilities on terrorism.
FBI Director Robert Mueller recently told Congress there would be increased cooperation with the CIA and other agencies. Mueller's announcement of plans on what the FBI calls phase two of its reorganization will likely be released this week, though no specific date has been set.
In the first phase of Mueller's sweeping changes announced earlier this year, he noted changes in the management structure that provide a more direct hands-on role for the FBI director.
The official said Mueller requested the additional CIA help and said CIA Director George Tenet had approved of the project.
Asked if FBI agents were likely to welcome CIA analysts in field offices, the U.S. official said the FBI might "welcome the opportunity to work with people with greater depth of experience" in terrorism cases.
The move comes as lawmakers in both parties questioned the two agencies' handling of information prior to the September 11 attacks.
Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pennsylvania, speaking on CNN's "Late Edition," repeated his call for public hearings into the matter.
"Basically, Americans do not understand the gravity of the oversights on what appears to be the case with both the FBI and the CIA," Specter said.
"And that's why I believe -- and I have seen with my experience in the Senate the value of public hearings -- when FBI Director Mueller has to answer these questions, when CIA Director Tenet has to answer why the president wasn't warned in the August 6 briefing about the tall buildings being in jeopardy, the White House and the CIA headquarters."
On August 6, 2001, President Bush received an intelligence report that cited the possibility that Osama bin Laden might be involved in a plane hijacking. Some Democrats have said that the briefing information should be released to congressional committees.
Also appearing on "Late Edition," Carl Levin, D-Michigan, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he was unhappy with the performance of the FBI and the CIA.
"I'm dissatisfied with the failure to look into their own failures, and I think both of them have to be seriously looked into," Levin said.
"In many, many ways, they had a number of opportunities before the 11th. It's absurd to suggest that there weren't many signals that there could be an attack by an airplane on buildings in this country."
May. 25, 2002
ROME (AP) - A healthy 3-month-old girl who came into the world weighing just 9.97 ounces spent her first full day home from the hospital Saturday, and her doctors said they believe she is the tiniest human being on record to live so long.
Doctors at Careggi hospital in Florence sent the "miracle" baby home Friday weighing 4.4 pounds, saying she has a nearly 100 percent chance of enjoying a normal life.
"She really had the will to live, she was strong and lively," Margarita Psaraki, the pediatrician on the baby's medical team, said Saturday. "She was immediately lively, active. This helped us to help her."
Doctors said that at the parents' wishes, they were identifying neither the baby nor the parents, who live near Florence. The medical team nicknamed the girl "Pearl."
The baby was delivered by Caesarean section in early February during the 27th week of pregnancy. At that stage of prematurity, some babies do survive, but they have weighed much more at birth.
"We were completely taken aback. The weight is usually double that" at the 27th week, said Psaraki, interviewed by phone at her home after finishing her shift at the hospital.
Psaraki said the baby's survival "is an absolute record."
The previous record was set in the 1990s by a baby in Japan who weighed 10.5 ounces at birth, doctors said Friday at a news conference in Florence. A low birth weight is considered to be 2.5 pounds and under.
Early in the pregnancy, "Pearl's" mother was diagnosed as having a problem with arteries, and at one point was at risk of needing a leg amputated, the doctors said. That persuaded them to deliver the baby early but at a stage when survival is possible.
Dr. Firmino Rubaltelli, in charge of the medical team that cared for her, told reporters that the baby's survival was a "true and proper miracle." He predicted that her chances for having a normal life are "nearly 100 percent."
When doctors saw how little the baby weighed, they asked themselves: "Do we go on? and how do we go on?" with her care, Psaraki said in another interview, on Canale 5, a private TV network.
Many of the premature babies who do survive birth at the 27th week or even later go on to have serious physical or mental handicaps, and there is intense debate in the world of medicine and ethics over how much extraordinary intervention should be used in such cases.
"I was afraid of holding her," Psaraki told Canale 5. At birth, "she was 10 inches long. But that's when she was stretched out. Normally babies curl up and then she would fit right into your hand."
After delivery, the baby's weight dropped to 8.92 ounces, but she rebounded. Her mother was allowed to nurse when the baby reached 1.53 pounds.
Before that, the mother was only allowed to caress her child after donning sterile gloves.
"Her skin was so thin," said Psaraki, adding that the baby "was struggling to breathe" and had to be intubated at the beginning.
Doctors said that they asked a company to design special instruments, such as tubing, to help care for the baby because she was so small.
The parents, while shying away from publicity, wanted their baby's story told to inspire hope in other parents, doctors said.
May 25, 2002
(www.bakersfield.com)
Jacob M. Rosique is a big boy.
He entered the world Friday night at Mercy Southwest weighing in at exactly 15 pounds.
Proud dad Roul Rosique, 24, a Delano oil-field worker, said his wife Susana's Caesarean section delivery was decided on soon after they got to Mercy just hours before the 8:12 p.m. birth.
"We were kinda scared because the last time it was 11 pounds," he said.
The couple's older sons, Roul, 7, and Matthew, 4, weighed nine pounds and 11 pounds when they were born.
The delivery went well. Both Jacob and Susana Rosique, 24, were fine.
Mom Susana responded to the birth weight of her son with a muffled, "Oh, my," said nurse Allysa Casal.
"She's ecstatic," Casal said.
Dad Roul, however, was busy.
He had to run off to a Wal-Mart to buy diapers. Mercy doesn't carry any big enough for Jacob, Casal said.
Doctors expected the baby to be about 91/2 pounds. They were surprised.
"They made the right call," Casal said. "There was no way she could have delivered this baby."
Jacob's head measured 15 inches around and his chest was 17.5 inches, Casal said.
The majority of babies have measurements closer to 10 or 10.5 inches.
Respiratory therapist Alexis Cobar said the boy was one of the hospital's biggest babies ever.
"This kid is ready to go to first grade," he quipped
Fri May 24 2002
WASHINGTON (AP) - An FBI whistle-blower alleges FBI headquarters rewrote Minnesota agents' pre-Sept. 11 request for surveillance and search warrants for terrorism defendant Zacarias Moussaoui and removed important information before rejecting them, government officials said Friday.
Agent Coleen Rowley wrote that the Minnesota agents became so frustrated by roadblocks erected by terrorism supervisors in Washington that they began to joke that FBI headquarters was becoming an "unwitting accomplice" to Osama bin Laden's efforts to attack the United States, the officials said.
As new details emerged about the letter Rowley wrote to FBI Director Robert Mueller, key members of Congress sought to extend her whistle-blower protections and encouraged more agents to come forward.
And a joint panel of House and Senate members set the first hearings to examine what the government knew before Sept. 11 about terrorist threats and what mistakes it made.
"This (Rowley) letter documents exactly what headquarters knew and when, and how midlevel officials sabotaged the Moussaoui case before the attacks," Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said Friday.
Officials familiar with Rowley's memo said she alleged FBI headquarters terrorism supervisors rewrote the Minnesota office's warrant applications and affidavit and removed intelligence about Moussaoui before sending them to a legal office that then rejected them as insufficient.
She alleged that some of the revisions "downplayed" the significance of some intelligence linking Moussaoui to Islamic extremists, and blamed the changes on a flawed communication process.
"Obviously, verbal presentations are far more susceptible to mischaracterization or error," Rowley wrote in her 13-page letter, excerpts of which were obtained by The Associated Press.
The Minnesota office was concerned after arresting Moussaoui at a Minnesota flight school in August 2001 that he was seeking to hurt Americans and wanted to gather more information through national security and search warrants, including getting information off his computer.
Some of that information came from an associate of Moussaoui who told the FBI the flight student held extreme anti-American views. Other intelligence came from France linking Moussaoui to radical Islamic extremists in the region although not directly to al-Qaida, officials said.
The officials, who spoke only on condition of anonymity, said Rowley identified the warrant revision process as flawed, particularly complaining that Minnesota was never consulted about the changes that were made before the warrant applications were forwarded to the offices that rejected them.
Officials said Rowley in other parts of the memo attacked the public explanations that Mueller and other FBI senior officials have offered about why the FBI failed to connect the dots before Sept. 11.
Rowley wrote she had come to the "sad realization" that officials had skewed facts in the post-Sept. 11 accounts and were trying to "circle the wagons" to protect FBI headquarters from embarrassing disclosures.
She also criticized the culture of Washington headquarters, saying FBI higher-ups were too concerned with "petty politics" and too afraid to make tough decisions that could affect their career ascensions, the officials said.
Several times, Rowley complained in the letter that Minnesota had never been told of a separate memo written in July by a Phoenix FBI agent warning that Arab pilots in Arizona with ties to radical Muslims were training at flight schools.
FBI officials have repeatedly said the agency failed to connect the two matters before Sept. 11.
But on Friday, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy and fellow committee members Arlen Specter and Grassley questioned whether the head of the FBI's radical fundamentalist anti-terrorism unit in Washington may have handled both matters and been in a position to make the connection.
Officials said the unit chief was directly involved in the Moussaoui deliberations in August and was one of the first names copied on the Phoenix memo a month earlier.
But one government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the unit chief contends he never saw or was aware of the Phoenix memo being handled by his unit before Sept. 11 even though he was copied in on it.
"Please explain his role ... (and) what connection, if any, he or others drew between the two ongoing investigations; and whether he or others brought such a connection to the attention of higher level FBI officials," the senators wrote.
Separately, Grassley disclosed he has given Rowley "written assurance that she will be protected for her cooperation with the Judiciary Committee's investigation" and urged Mueller "to ensure there is no retaliation against Ms. Rowley."
And Rep. Porter Goss, R-Fla., chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said there were protections that could be extended to Rowley and others who brought potential wrongdoing to the attention of the intelligence committees.
"We encourage more of the same," he said.
Rowley emerged as a central figure this week after authoring a letter Tuesday to Mueller and senators alleging FBI headquarters erected a "roadblock" to the efforts to prove before Sept. 11 that Moussaoui was a terrorist.
After the attacks, Moussaoui was charged as the lone accomplice so far to bin Laden and the hijackers.
Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., and Goss, R-Fla., who are heading Congress' inquiry into U.S. intelligence and the attacks, said their first hearing will take place June 4 but will be closed to the public so they can discuss classified intelligence sources.
The committees' investigation is examining the U.S. intelligence response to terrorism since 1985, as well as looking into specific information that might have pointed to the Sept. 11 attacks.
The first hearings open to the public will be in late June, and CIA Director George J. Tenet and FBI Director Robert Mueller are expected to testify, Graham said.
(NYT)
2002/05/25
San Diego stock adviser who is accused of bribing an F.B.I. agent to give him confidential government information may have had prior knowledge of the Sept. 11 attacks, a federal prosecutor said yesterday. But a judge disregarded that contention and the adviser's lawyer called the allegation ludicrous.
In a court hearing in San Diego, Kenneth Breen, an assistant United States attorney, said the adviser, Amr Ibrahim Elgindy, tried to sell $300,000 in stock on the afternoon of Sept. 10 and told his broker that the stock market would soon plunge. "Perhaps Mr. Elgindy had preknowledge of Sept. 11, and rather than report it he attempted to profit from it," Mr. Breen said.
Mr. Breen, coordinator of the stock market unit of a government task force set up to investigate financing for terrorist groups, offered no other evidence that Mr. Elgindy had prior knowledge of the attacks.
A lawyer for Mr. Elgindy said the allegation appeared to be motivated by the fact that Mr. Elgindy is Muslim and was born in Egypt. Senior F.B.I. officials also said they had no evidence that Mr. Elgindy had prior knowledge of the attacks.
In the hearing yesterday, Mr. Breen asked Judge John A. Houston of Federal District Court in San Diego to hold Mr. Elgindy without bond. Mr. Elgindy, also known as Tony Elgindy and Anthony Pacific, recently moved $700,000 to Lebanon and is a serious flight risk, Mr. Breen said.
Judge Houston disregarded Mr. Breen's claims about Mr. Elgindy and Sept. 11. But the judge said there was enough other evidence that Mr. Elgindy might flee to justify detaining him at least until a June 6 hearing to determine whether he should be moved to New York for a trial.
Jeanne Geren Knight, a lawyer for Mr. Elgindy, said after the hearing that Mr. Breen's allegations were ludicrous and untrue. "The government, for lack of factual evidence, has decided to smear my client with terrorist innuendoes," Ms. Knight said. "This is smacking of racial profiling."
Mr. Elgindy and four other people, including one current and one former F.B.I. agent, were charged Wednesday with using confidential government information to manipulate stock prices and extort money from companies. Jeffrey A. Royer, who was an F.B.I. agent before joining Mr. Elgindy's stock advisory firm in December, accepted $30,000 from a partner of Mr. Elgindy's in exchange for providing Mr. Elgindy with information about current criminal investigations of companies, prosecutors allege.
Mr. Elgindy and his partner, Derrick W. Cleveland, sold short the shares of companies that they learned were under investigation, according to the indictment. (Short sellers borrow shares and sell them, hoping to buy them back later at a lower price and pocket the difference.) Then Mr. Elgindy publicized the negative information on two Web sites he ran, hoping that the companies' stocks would fall, prosecutors say.
At the hearing yesterday, Mr. Breen said that on the afternoon of Sept. 10, Mr. Elgindy contacted his broker at Salomon Smith Barney and asked him to sell $300,000 in stock in his children's trust funds. During the Sept. 10 conversation, Mr. Elgindy predicted that the Dow Jones industrial average, which at the time stood at about 9,600, would soon crash to below 3,000, Mr. Breen said. Mr. Elgindy was unable to sell the stock before markets closed Sept. 10, and it was instead sold Sept. 18, the first day that markets reopened for trading after the attacks, Mr. Breen said.
The Salomon Smith Barney broker contacted the F.B.I. after the attacks to report the conversation, Mr. Breen said. He did not identify the broker. A spokesman for Salomon Smith Barney confirmed that Mr. Elgindy was a client but said that Salomon did not comment on matters relating to its clients.
Mr. Elgindy also transferred more than $700,000 to Lebanon in the months after the attacks, Mr. Breen said. When F.B.I. agents raided Mr. Elgindy's home outside San Diego on Wednesday, Mr. Breen said, they found $43,000 in cash, as well as a loose diamond and faxes indicating that Mr. Elgindy had been tipped about the raid and had given his wife a power of attorney to liquidate his assets.
Ms. Knight, Mr. Elgindy's lawyer, denied that Mr. Elgindy had any prior knowledge of the attacks.
Mr. Elgindy's wife is from Louisiana, Ms. Knight said, adding that his mother was a pediatrician and his father a professor. "Tony isn't political at all," she said. "He's a capitalist. He's not going to move to a third world country."
Senior law enforcement officials said yesterday that investigators had no hard evidence that Mr. Elgindy had advance information about the Sept. 11 attacks. So far, they have not found anyone who had prior knowledge of the attacks, they said. But they said the investigation into why Mr. Elgindy tried to sell the shares in his children's trust accounts before Sept. 11 had raised questions that had not been fully answered.
Mr. Elgindy has been an active supporter of Muslim causes. In 1999, he arranged to bring 30 Muslim refugees from Kosovo to the United States, according to The Daily Herald of Chicago.
Mr. Elgindy said the violence in Kosovo, Serbia's southern province, appalled him, comparing it to the shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado. "Take Columbine, have it occur five times a day for a year, and that's Kosovo," Mr. Elgindy told The Daily Herald.
Mr. Elgindy's father and brother are also active in Arab and Muslim causes. His father, Ibrahim Elgindy, founded an umbrella group of Muslim organizations in Chicago and led a 1998 protest on behalf of Muhammad A. Salah, whose assets were seized that year after the United States government linked Mr. Salah to Hamas, the radical Palestinian group. Mr. Elgindy's brother, Khaled, has worked for several Arab political groups.
Neither Ibrahim Elgindy nor Khaled Elgindy has ever been linked to terrorism. Khaled Elgindy did not return calls yesterday. Ibrahim Elgindy could not be reached for comment.
Mr. Elgindy himself publicly criticized the Sept. 11 attacks. In a press release that day, his company, Pacific Equity Investigations, said, "We must seek, find, apprehend and destroy those who are responsible for this terrorist attack."
Two days later, Mr. Elgindy put out another press release, saying that he had forwarded to the F.B.I. and the Securities and Exchange Commission "many Internet posts and messages that may have relevance on this tragedy and the capture of the responsible parties behind it." He also asked that investors refrain from selling short the stocks of any United States companies or the United States dollar.
Mr. Elgindy sold the shares in his children's trusts five days later.
Wed May 22, 2002
By Ted Rall
The Beginning of the End for George W. Bush
NEW YORK-It only lasted a few seconds, but on May 17 George W. Bush had a Bill Clinton moment, and it was magical. "Had I known that the enemy was going to use airplanes to kill on that fateful morning," George W. Bush reassured us, "I would have done everything in my power to protect the American people." Did he realize how much he sounded like his prevaricating predecessor? Were the subject something other than the murder of 3,000 innocent people, such desperate dissembling would be absolutely hilarious.
In the circus of insolent hypocrites which is the Bush Administration, the best lines are reserved for the ringmaster. On that same day the creepy Dick Cheney (news - web sites) warned Democrats not to "seek political advantage by making incendiary suggestions...that the White House had advance information that would have prevented the tragic attacks of 9-11. Such commentary," Cheney emphasized, "is thoroughly irresponsible and totally unworthy of national leaders in a time of war."
First: what war? And when it comes to "political advantage," it's the Bushies, not the Democrats, who have taken advantage of 9-11 to further a partisan political agenda. They used the dead of New York, Pennsylvania and Washington to push such Republican platform planks as "fast track" signing authority on free trade agreements, Internet censorship, tax cuts for the super rich and drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. To be sure, there's a war going on: a PR war. And now that Democrats are finally scoring a few points of their own, the Bushies who have been slamdunking for months are screaming foul.
"Bush Knew," the New York Post screamed last week. Did he? Hell if I know. Here's a man who subverted constitutional law in order to seize the White House in a judicial coup d'état, who claimed while campaigning to be a "compassionate conservative" but turned into a Genghis Khan right-winger as soon as he took office, and who told us upfront after 9-11 that his administration would routinely lie for the sake of the "war on terror." No one can deny that the Bushies and their corporate sponsors benefited enormously from 9-11; the post-Taliban Afghan pipeline deal (closed March 7 in Islamabad) alone is worth billions of dollars. Under normal circumstances, even the suggestion that a president would deliberately stand idly by as his citizens were slaughtered en masse would be appalling. George W. Bush, however, tells Congress to go to hell whenever it requests documents or summons his staff to testify. Such a man is capable of anything.
There's no smoking gun-evidence that Bush was told about the exact specifics of 9-11-so far. But it's hard to escape an inevitable, disturbing conclusion that itself bears consideration: We are in the hands of liars, morons or both.
When Terrormemogate first hit the airwaves, the administration trotted out National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites), who serves as chief of Bush's Counterterrorism Security Group, to face the media. Rice repeatedly asserted that pre-9-11 threats of airplane hijackings had been so vague as to be useless. This is somewhat believable: any firefighter can tell you that false alarms outnumber real fires.
Given such a generalized threat, you'd order your Air Force to a state of high alert. "Traditional" hijackings, after all, tend to end badly. You'd keep planes in the air and many more on the ground, ready to scramble at a second's notice. Then, if and when the predicted hijackings materialized, you could track the planes and order them shot down if necessary. If months went by without any hijackings, you might decide to lower the nation's state of readiness.
On the morning of September 11th, though, just eight fighters were assigned to defend The United States of America's 3,618,770-square-mile air space. And they were piloted by weekend warriors, members of the Air National Guard. The jets weren't even in the air-they were sitting on the ground at the time of the attacks. Our state of readiness, despite the huge military defense budget that sucks millions away from starving children, compared unfavorably to Thailand's.
By Rice's own admission, the Bush Administration ignored the vague, imprecise threats of which Bush was informed during his month-long August vacation, simply because they didn't specify exact times and dates. To hear her tell it, our government-our safety-is in the hands of idiots.
"Administration officials insisted all last week that turning a plane into a suicide bomb was something that nobody had contemplated," Time magazine reports in its May 27th issue. "But that just isn't so. In 1995, authorities in the Philippines scuppered a plan-masterminded by Razmi Yousef, who had also plotted the 1993 World Trade Center bombing-for mass hijackings of American planes over the Pacific. Evidence developed during the investigation of Yousef and his partner, Abdul Hakim Murad, uncovered a plan to crash a plane into CIA (news - web sites) headquarters in Langley, Va. And as long ago as 1994, in an incident that is well known among terrorism experts, French authorities foiled a plot by the Algerian Armed Islamic Group to fly an airliner into the Eiffel Tower."
So Rice was either clueless or lying: everybody knew that Islamist jihadis had plotted suicide hijackings well before 9-11. Nevertheless, the Bushies did nothing to improve airline security. They did nothing to prepare for the possibility of hijackings, whether suicide or traditional. They didn't even tell the airlines what they knew. Then, after 9-11, they covered up the fact that they had received numerous warnings.
Moron Bush or Liar Bush-would one of you please resign?
(Ted Rall's new book, a graphic travelogue about his recent coverage of the Afghan war titled "To Afghanistan (news - web sites) and Back," is out now. Ordering and review-copy information are available at nbmpub.com.)
LONDON, May 24 (Reuters) - A limited nuclear war between India and Pakistan over the disputed territory of Kashmir would kill at least three million people, scientists said on Friday.
Millions would die in the immediate blast and fire and from radiation. Others would suffer from destroyed homes, lack of water and facilities and from disease years later.
Although the threat of war between the neighbouring South Asian countries eased somewhat on Friday, tensions were still high after a week of fighting and heavy firing overnight across the ceasefire line in Kashmir.
"It is imperative that the two countries not go to war, however limited in scale. Even the most local conflicts have the potential to escalate into a full-scale war, possibly nuclear," M.V. Ramana, of Princeton University in New Jersey, told New Scientist magazine.
Ramana and other nuclear researchers at the U.S. university have estimated that if only a tenth of the nuclear weapons of two countries were exploded above 10 of their largest cities, 2.6 million people would die or be injured in India and 1.8 million in Pakistan.
Their chilling calculations are based on what would happen if 10 explosions took place, similar in size to the one over Hiroshima in Japan in 1945, over some of India's and Pakistan's most populated cities.
Radioactive dust, if the bombs exploded on the ground, would kill people across hundreds of square kilometres (miles).
Estimates of the countries' nuclear arsenals are based on their stockpiles of weapons-grade plutonium and uranium, according to New Scientist.
"The Institute for Science and International Security in Washington suggests that India has about 65 warheads made from 310 kilograms of plutonium, while Pakistan has around 40 made from 690 kilograms of uranium," it said.
Diplomatic efforts to quell the crisis between India and Pakistan began in earnest with the arrival of European Union External Affairs Commissioner Chris Patten who met top Indian officials.
Other foreign dignitaries are expected to follow to try to broker peace.
The current crisis erupted after an attack on an Indian army camp in Kashmir. India accuses Pakistan of arming and sending militants into Kashmir where it has battled a Muslim rebellion for 12 years. Pakistan says it only provides moral and political support.
Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf have both said they do not want war.
5/20/02
LONDON (AP) - The British government said Monday that it would examine a video in which Osama bin Laden reportedly says that any country siding with Israel is a target for Islamic terrorists.
The Al-Ansaar Islamic news agency, based in the English city of Birmingham, said Sunday that it was given the 40-minute video by a Pakistani security official in Islamabad about a month ago. It includes separate sections that seem to have been filmed at different times.
According to the news agency, the official said some sections of the film were shot in March in the southern Afghan town of Spinboldak, near the Pakistani border. But it said his claim was impossible to verify.
The chief editor of the Qatar-based Arab television station Al-Jazeera, which has aired videos showing bin Laden in the past, said Monday that people at the station had seen the same tape four months ago and believed it was recorded in October.
``This is the same tape that we had four months ago, which we didn't show because we didn't think it was newsworthy,'' said the editor, Ibrahim Helal. ``There was nothing new in it and seemed to be a PR stunt. We think it was recorded sometime in October.''
According to The Sunday Times newspaper, which obtained the video from Al-Ansaar, the section filmed most recently showed bin Laden sitting beneath a tree in a camouflage jacket, praising Allah and talking about holy wars.
In another section, The Sunday Times said bin Laden warned that any country siding with Israel would be a target. ``The war is between us and the Jews,'' the paper quoted him as saying on the tape. ``Any country that steps into the same trench as the Jews has only herself to blame.''
On Monday, Britain's Foreign Office said that security officials would examine the tape. Speaking on condition of anonymity, an official said the foreign office is aware of a general threat against Western interests and that the video did not increase that threat.
The first word from bin Laden after the Sept. 11 attacks came as the United States struck at his Afghan bases on Oct. 7. In a message taped before the U.S. strike but aired afterward on Al-Jazeera, bin Laden reveled in the fear the attacks had created. Wearing fatigues and clutching a rifle, he swore that America would not know security until its troops were out of Saudi Arabia.
Since then, he has appeared on several tapes released by Al-Jazeera, CNN or the Pentagon. Other al-Qaida tapes have surfaced carrying messages from bin Laden's deputies or images of al-Qaida training exercises.
(American Free Press)
5-25-2
34 US Sailors Murdered and 170 Seriously Injured by Israel in Israel's attempt to silence and sink the USS Liberty, a US Navy Electronics Surveillence Vessel.
Three admirals, an ambassador and a wounded survivor are demanding that Congress investigate the attack on the USS Liberty and subsequent cover-up.
Pressure on Congress to investigate Israel's deliberate attack on the USS Liberty on June 8, 1967, and the cover-up by Washington mounted when ranking military officers gathered in Washington May 14 to express outrage at the high-level whitewashing of the tragic assault.
Those who ìdemandedî a 'thorough investigation' of the attack and cover-up included Admiral Thomas Moorer, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Admiral Merlin Staring. Gen. Ray Davis endorsed the call but was unable to attend the news conference in Washington. James Akins, former ambassador to Saudi Arabia and an expert on the Middle East, joined in the call.
They announced the formation of Liberty Alliance, based in Front Royal, Va., to maintain pressure for an investigation in order to correct the historical record.
Evidence that Israel deliberately attacked the U.S. vessel with the intent to sink it and kill all aboard is beyond convincing - it is conclusive. This evidence was first disclosed in the court-killed Spotlight newspaper more than a quarter-century ago and subsequently in American Free Press.
"The press ran away from the Liberty story" in 1967, Moorer said. "What we're seeking is an agreement by Congress to investigate the incident, he said. "The mission of elected and appointed officials should be the straight-out bald truth."
Reporters were shown a film, Loss of Liberty,* documenting the treachery in which 34 Americans were killed and 172 wounded. Producer Tito Howard "put the true story on the film," Moorer said. "Every foot of it is true."
The late Yitzhak Rabin, who commanded the Israeli army, came to Washington after the three-day war "with orders for Secretary of State Dean Rusk," said Akins.
Rusk replied to the Israeli officer: "General, the United States is not a colony of Israel."
The late George Ball, under secretary of state under President John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson and long-time Bilderberg luminary, expressed outrage over the Israeli attack, Akins said. Ball wrote of the attack: "Israel knew it could get away with anything."
If Israel had succeeded in sinking the ship with all aboard, the attack would have been blamed on Egypt, Ball said. He referred to Israel "murdering Americans."
Getting an investigation is difficult, Akins said, because "Congress is Israeli-occupied territory."
Staring said he was given a copy of the official Navy report on the incident but was unable to find evidence justifying its conclusion that the attack was a mistake. The report was taken from him before he could comment.
Larry Weaver, a survivor who was extensively wounded, revealed a chilling experience. He went over the familiar details showing the attack was deliberateóthe flag was flying conspicuously and Israeli recon pilots flew so low that smiles and waves were exchanged.
Barely out of intensive care, Weaver was summoned by an admiral, who removed his stars and said they would talk as equals. The admiral, whose name Weaver was unable to recall, asked him to tell him what he knew about the Liberty attack. After hearing his response, Weaver said, the admiral told him:
"If you ever repeat that to anybody at any time, you will be put in jail and we'll throw away the key." The admiral has been identified by AFP as Isaac Kidd.
Like other crewmen, Weaver's military records were purged of his service on the Liberty.
"We are a ship without a country," Weaver said.
(Pravda)
2002-05-17
Jokes about blond girls are really very popular. It is traditionally believed, smoking ruins the health and intellectual facilities especially. However, recent researches rehabilitate blond-haired women and give hope to smokers.
Russia-on-Line reports results of investigation held by British television. Over 90,000 respondents took part in the poll, each was asked 70 questions to check knowledge of language, mathematics, logical and figurative thinking. Results were surprising!
Blond-haired people proved to be cleverer than red- and dark-haired people. People who are Aquarius by the horoscope have the highest IQ, as the investigation revealed. The lowest IQ is with Scorpio.
Smokers proved to be cleverer than non-smokers. Lefthanders are a bit ahead of right-handers. Blue-eyed people also turned out to be smarter than dark-eyed.
As regarding professional belonging, teachers proved to be the cleverest (average IQ is 104), restaurant owners and students revealed IQ of 102, constructors – 101, and celebrities have IQ of…97.
Average IQ of an Englishman is 100. If your IQ is between 90 and 110, be quite, you are clever enough. If it is over 110, you belong to the 25% who have got high IQs too. If by chance your IQ is 130 and above…why are you not yet a Nobel Prize winner?
By Associated Press, 5/18/2002 22:17
YONKERS, N.Y. (AP) Sodium nitrite, a preservative chemical that can be deadly in large quantities, was to blame for the sudden illness of six people in downtown Yonkers, a health official said.
''The food that the family digested was heavily contaminated with sodium nitrite,'' said Mary Landrigan, spokeswoman for the Westchester County Department of Health. ''In that quantity it can be deadly.''
Six victims were taken to St. Joseph's Medical Center Thursday night with severe breathing problems, a bluish pallor and an altered mental state.
Some emergency workers reported picking up a rash as they treated the patients, adding to concerns about potential chemical contamination.
One victim remained in critical condition Saturday; another was in critical but stable condition, hospital spokeswoman Joan Dupay said. The other victims have been released from the hospital.
Health officials said the victims, who were identified only as being adults of Egyptian heritage, had been at a dinner party featuring a dish with many ingredients, including a processed food that they had brought in from Egypt.
Officials narrowed their hunt for a cause Saturday to a substance, in a packet labeled in English and Arabic, that the victims said they had sprinkled on their meal.
''A sample from a packet labeled 'refined iodized table salt,' did not contain table salt it was 100 percent sodium nitrite,'' Landrigan said. ''This is not a household item. This is not a table salt that anybody should have in their kitchen.''
The Yonkers medical center was closed briefly Thursday and police, firefighters, hazardous-materials workers and even anti-terrorist agents streamed into the area. The mayor mentioned the possibility of cyanide poisoning and a decontamination shower was set up outside the victims' home in a Nepperhan Avenue apartment building.
Air tests in the building and at the hospital found no airborne contamination, however. When police learned that people in the apartment who had not eaten did not get sick, the investigation focused on the food.
Sodium nitrate is used in making potassium nitrate, fertilizers, SPAM and explosives.
Intelligence agents and health experts are scheduled to meet next month to discuss which medicines and therapies the United States should purchase for the national pharmaceutical stockpile. The officials will discuss how to prepare for bioterrorism, chemical or radiological attacks and regular diseases.
“Everything is up for grabs … We’ll review our entire formulary,” said Steven Bice, who runs the stockpile. The exact contents of the stockpile are kept secret due to security concerns.
The experts will discuss how to improve response to anthrax attacks, including which drugs should be stockpiled and prescribed in addition to Cipro (see GSN, Jan. 11).
Another issue is how to respond to hemorrhagic diseases such as Ebola, which has no proven cure. Doctors sometimes use a hepatitis drug called ribavirin, “but you need an intravenous drug, which is not yet licensed in the U.S. and is available only in short supply,” said University of Texas physician C.J. Peters.
Officials will also consider how much antitoxin to stockpile for botulism, which occurs naturally and could be used in a biological terrorist attack. Another question is if the United States should increase its small stockpile of cidofovir, which treats common AIDS complications and might help treat smallpox.
Beyond bioterrorism, experts will also discuss supplies to treat radiation and chemical exposure. For example, the United States has remedies such as amyl and sodium nitrate, which are antidotes to cyanide, but they can have negative side effects, so some experts have advocated using a B-vitamin substance called hydroxycobalamine. The British used 5 gm infusions of hydroxycobalamin (B-12) to successfully detox people with cyanide poisoning. The substance, however, is not currently approved in the United States due to lack of available research.
Officials could also discuss methods to distribute supplies to local authorities.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention established the national stockpile in 1999 at a cost of $150 million over the next three years. After the anthrax attacks, the CDC spent more than half a billion dollars to increase the stockpile, including buying Cipro to treat anthrax, smallpox vaccine (see GSN, Dec. 18, 2001) and potassium iodide (see GSN, Jan. 3) to help prevent thyroid cancer from radiation exposure (Lauran Neergaard, Associated Press/Yahoo.com, Jan. 14).
FBI is alerting apartment managers of possible terrorist threats.
(MSNBC)
INDIANAPOLIS, IN, May 20 - The White House, the Sears Tower, and the Statue of Liberty are all well known terrorist targets, but now the target may be an apartment on any street, in any city and in any state.
The FBI is alerting apartment managers across the country about the threat of terrorists renting apartment units and rigging them with explosives.
Lynne Moistner is the Executive Director of the Apartment Association of Indiana. Moistner sent out warnings to managers last Friday to report anything suspicious. ""We thought the best thing we should do was to alert our members across the state of this information."
Indiana Senator Richard Lugar spoke about the threat at the Speedway Sunday. "We're going to have this happen again and the American people understand that there is still a threat in this country. There are people who have not yet been questioned and we are still at work in a counter intelligence way."
The FBI says this is not an official alert because the information is not specific to any city or region.
The Indianapolis FBI Office says they haven't sent out the warnings to apartment managers yet, but it should begin sometime this week.
MOSCOW, May 18 (Reuters) - A former diplomat convicted of spying for Britain has been moved to a psychiatric hospital after tests proved his mental health had deteriorated in jail, the Kommersant daily said on Saturday.
The tests showed Platon Obukhov, who was arrested in 1996 and charged with selling classified documents to Britain's MI6 intelligence service, was "of limited sanity" before his arrest but in jail his condition had worsened.
Obukhov, whose popular crime novels lampooned his superiors and earned him dismissal from the Foreign Ministry, spent several years behind bars while prosecutors and lawyers wrangled over his mental health.
He was convicted of spying and sentenced to 11 years in 2000.
Moscow's city court reaffirmed Obukhov's conviction on Friday and sent him for compulsory treatment at a mental clinic without prison guard.
Obukhov's lawyers initiated Friday's hearings. In 2001 they had sought a psychiatric examination to establish their client was mentally ill at the time of his dealings with MI6, and was therefore not liable to prosecution.
Obukhov's spying case was one of many to crop up in Russia after the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991. Security services say they are catching more spies than ever.
In one of the most high profile cases, President Vladimir Putin pardoned U.S. businessman Edmond Pope in 2000 after he was convicted of trying to obtain data on a secret underwater rocket.
more
Court Says Spy Was Mentally Ill
MOSCOW (AP) - A former Russian diplomat and author of spy novels was found guilty of spying for Britain on Friday, but the court declared he was mentally ill and not responsible for his actions.
Platon Obukhov was ordered sent to a mental hospital for a compulsory treatment, Russia's NTV television said.
Obukhov was first convicted of espionage two years ago and sentenced to 11 years in prison, but his lawyers appealed and Russia's Supreme Court ordered a new trial and psychiatric examination.
Obukhov's lawyers had argued that the evidence against their client was obtained illegally and insisted his confession couldn't be considered proof because of his mental illness.
Obukhov's family says he has been treated for mental problems since age 4.
Obukhov claimed after his arrest that he had been recruited and paid by Britain's intelligence service while he was a diplomat in Norway in the early 1990s. Russian investigators testified that he was paid $300,000 for his services, Interfax news agency reported.
Obukhov also wrote thriller novels while he worked in the Russian Foreign Ministry's United States and Canada desk. He was fired in early 1996 after giving a crime lord in one of his books the name of his department chief.
Neither Obukhov nor his family, who have long sought such a court decision, were present for the court session, NTV reported.
2012 Unlimited philosophy (2012.com.au)
1. Humanity and Planet Earth are currently going through a huge change or shift in consciousness and reality perception.
2. The Mayan civilization of Central America was and is the most advanced in relation to time-science knowledge. Their main calendar is the most accurate on the planet. It has never erred. They actually have 22 calendars in total, covering the many timing cycles in the Universe and Solar System. Some of these calendars are yet to be revealed.
3. The Mayan fifth world finished in 1987. The sixth world starts in 2012. So we are currently "between worlds". This time is called the "Apocalypse" or revealing. This means the real truth will be revealed. It is also the time for us to work through "our stuff" individually and collectively.
4. The Mayan sixth world is actually blank. This means it is up to us, as co-creators, to start creating the new world and civilization we want now.
5. The Mayans also say that by 2012-
- we will have gone beyond technology as we know it.
- we will have gone beyond time and money.
- we will have entered the fifth dimension after passing through the fourth dimension
- Planet Earth and the Solar System will come into galactic synchronization with the rest of the Universe.
- Our DNA will be "upgraded" (or reprogrammed) from the centre of our galaxy. (Hunab Ku)
"Everbody on this planet is mutating. Some are more conscious of it than others. But everyone is doing it" - Extraterrestrial Earth Mission.
6. In 2012 the plane of our Solar System will line up exactly with the plane of our Galaxy, the Milky Way. This cycle has taken 26,000 years to complete. Virgil Armstrong also says that two other galaxies will line up with ours at the same time. A cosmic event!
7. Time is actually speeding up (or collapsing). For thousands of years the Schumann Resonance or pulse (heartbeat) of Earth has been 7.83 cycles per second, The military have used this as a very reliable reference. However, since 1980 this resonance has been slowly rising. It is now over 12 cycles per second! This mean there is the equalivant of less than 16 hours per day instead of the old 24 hours.
8. During the Apocalypse or the time "between worlds" many people will be going through many personal changes. The changes will be many and varied. It is all part of what we came here to learn or experience. Examples of change could be- relationships coming to an end, change of residence or location, change of job or work, shift in attitude or thinking etc.
9. Remember, in any given moment we are making small and large decisions. Each decision is based on LOVE or FEAR. Choose love, follow your intuition, not intellect and follow your passion or "burning inner desire." Go with the flow.
10. Thought forms are very important and affect our everyday life. We create our reality with thought forms. If we think negative thoughts of others this is what we attract. If we think positive thoughts we will attract positive people and events. So be aware of your thoughts and eliminate the unnecessary negative or judgemental ones.
11. Be aware that most of the media is controlled by just a few. Use discernment! Look for the hidden agendas. Why is this information being presented to you? What is "their" real agenda? Is it a case of problemreactionsolution? Do "they" create a problem so that "we" react and ask for a fix, then "they" offer their solution? The "solution is what "they" really wanted in the first place.
12. Remember almost nothing happens by accident. Almost all "events" are planned by some agency or other. Despite this, it is a very exciting time to be alive!
The truth shall set you free!
Are you feeling the Quickening?
The Shift of the Ages has already begun!
Ancient prophecies predicted it. Indigenous traditions honor it.
Changes within the Earth are affecting our sleep patterns, relationships, the ability to regulate your immune system and your perception of time. We are living a process of initiation that was demonstrated over 2,000 years ago, preparing you to accept tremendous change within your body.
That change is happening now.
SOME POSSIBLE EFFECTS OF THE CHANGES
* Migraine headaches, tiredness
* Electrical sensations in the limbs and spinal column
* Cramps in the muscular networks
* Flu like symptoms
* Intense dreams.
* The human body will become more sensitive as a result of the new vibrations.
* The resonance of Earth (Schumann Resonance) has been 7.8Hz for thousands of years. Since 1980 it has risen to over 12Hz.
This means that 16 hours now equate to a 24 hour day. Time is speeding up!
* The physical body has already begun to change. A new light body is being created.
* Our DNA is being re-programmed from the Universe (as predicted in the Mayan Prophecy).
We are going from 2 strand back to 12 strand DNA.
* Greater intuitive and healing abilities will emerge.
* Eyes will become cat-like in order to adjust to the new atmosphere and light.
* All newly born children will probably be telepathic at birth.
* All plagues of the 90's, including AIDS will be gone.
May 23 2002— A paid FBI informant told ABCNEWS that three years before Sept. 11, he began providing the FBI with information about a young Saudi who later flew a hijacked passenger plane into the Pentagon.
Aukai Collins, the informant, said he worked for the FBI for four years in Phoenix, monitoring the Arab and Islamic communities there. Hani Hanjour was the hijacker Collins claimed to have told the FBI about while Hanjour was in flight training in Phoenix.
Twenty hours after ABCNEWS first requested a response, the FBI issued an "emphatic denial" that Collins had told the agency anything about Hanjour, though FBI sources acknowledged that Collins had worked for them.
FBI Special Agent Ken Williams wrote a memo last July 10, urging FBI headquarters to investigate Arab students in flight schools nationwide — and helped set off the furor over whether the attacks could have been prevented.
If Collins' claims are true, he would be another source who had advised the FBI to take a closer look at Phoenix, and maybe the first to identify a potential terrorist who later turned out to be one of the Sept. 11 hijackers
Collins said the FBI knew Hanjour lived in Phoenix, knew his exact address, his phone number and even what car he drove. "They knew everything about the guy," said Collins.
The FBI emphatically denies that Collins provided any information about Hanjour, but officials acknowledge they paid Collins for four years to monitor the Islamic and Arab communities of Phoenix because of his unusual background.
A self-styled Islamic holy warrior, Collins was born in the United States. After getting into trouble with police as a teenager, he says he found religion — Islam — and eventually went overseas to fight. In Chechnya, he lost his leg to a land mine.
Informant Says He Provided Basic Facts
Once in Phoenix, in 1996, the FBI asked Collins to focus on a group of young Arab men, many of whom were taking flying lessons, including Hanjour, Collins said.
"They drank alcohol, messed around with girls and stuff like that," Collins told ABCNEWS. "They all lived in an apartment together, Hani and the others."
Collins said he provided the FBI with basic facts and let the FBI take it from there.
"When I said there's this short, skinny Arab guy who's part of this crowd, drives such-and-such a car, I assumed that they would then, you know, start tracing him and see who his contacts were," he said.
FBI Never Saw Hijacker as Threat
The FBI in Phoenix either failed to monitor Hanjour's communications or Hanjour himself practiced extraordinary skill in hiding his intentions — because the FBI never regarded him as a threat.
Much to the dismay of the FBI, Collins has written a book about his exploits. Soon to be published, it is titled My Jihad.
The FBI was not alone in failing to predict Hanjour and his group were dangerous.
"I can't figure it out either," said Collins, "how they went from their back yard to flying airplanes into buildings."
Congress cannot figure it out either, as it continues to demand answers from the FBI.
WorldNetDaily.com
5-25-2
An Arab League think tank, the Zayed Center for Coordination and Follow Up, has hosted a lecture by the author of a book that says the U.S. military was responsible for the attacks on Sept. 11.
Theirry Meyssan, author of "The Appalling Fraud," spoke at the event on April 8.
A summary of the lecture and Arab media reports about the event were translated by the
According to the MEMRI translation, Meyssan asserted the following in presenting his argument:
* "Both Congress and the U.S. media covered up the truth by not investigating events;
* "It was not reported that the White House's Old Executive Building was bombed, as was a third building in Manhattan;
* "The 1,200 detainees held in the U.S. knew nothing of the attacks, and their names are kept secret so that they cannot be charged;
* "The American military to further its interest and hegemony over the world was responsible for the attacks;
* "It is a possibility that the planes of Sept. 11 were remote-controlled. For two hours before the attack, waves from a homing device were recorded transmitting from, and interfering with transmission from, the twin towers, and such a device could be used to direct airplanes. If the planes were controlled by remote, no hijackers were needed, thus the passenger lists were fake"; and
* "Bin Laden's involvement: 'This myth also does not stand analysis,' since he was a previous CIA agent who was visited by the head of the CIA in a Dubai hospital in July."
On April 10, says MEMRI, the Saudi government daily The Saudi Gazette ran a story on the lecture titled "U.S. military officials behind 9/11 attacks French author." The article detailed Meyssan's proposal that a United Nations panel be established to find those really behind Sept. 11 and that until this happens, all American military operations, including any against Iran or Iraq, should be considered illegal. The Saudi Gazette quoted Meyssan as stating, " & [T]hose who masterminded the operations and led them were American terrorists."
"The fact that [presidential] communication codes were decoded by the attackers proves that at least one of the masterminds of the attack was an American military official," the paper quotes Meyssan as saying.
Said the story, "Commenting on the assumption that American military officials had planned the attacks, [Meyssan] said that such an assumption could be true, as a similar thing happened in 1961 when the American command planned internal attacks against American citizens."
(NYT)
For example, a bomb made with a single footlong pencil of cobalt from a food irradiation plant and just 10 pounds of TNT and detonated at Union Square in a light wind would send a plume of radiation drifting across three states. Much of Manhattan would be as contaminated as the permanently closed area around the Chernobyl nuclear plant. Anyone living in Manhattan would have at least a 1-in-100 chance of dying from cancer caused by the radiation. An area reaching deep into the Hudson Valley would, under current Environmental Protection Agency standards, have to be decontaminated or destroyed.
Frank von Hippel, the Princeton physicist, has reviewed the data, and he pointed out that this is a bit less alarming than it sounds. ''Your probability of dying of cancer in your lifetime is already about 20 percent,'' he said. ''This would increase it to 20.1 percent. Would you abandon a city for that? I doubt it.''
Indeed, some large portion of our fear of radiation is irrational. And yet the fact that it's all in your mind is little consolation if it's also in the minds of a large, panicky population. If the actual effect of a radiation bomb is that people clog the bridges out of town, swarm the hospitals and refuse to return to live and work in a contaminated place, then the impact is a good deal more than psychological. To this day, there is bitter debate about the actual health toll from the Chernobyl nuclear accident. There are researchers who claim that the people who evacuated are actually in worse health over all from the trauma of relocation, than those who stayed put and marinated in the residual radiation. But the fact is, large swaths of developed land around the Chernobyl site still lie abandoned, much of it bulldozed down to the subsoil. The Hart Senate Office Building was closed for three months by what was, in hindsight, our society's inclination to err on the side of alarm.
There are measures the government can take to diminish the dangers of a radiological weapon, and many of them are getting more serious consideration. The Bush administration has taken a lively new interest in radiation-detection devices that might catch dirty-bomb materials in transit. A White House official told me the administration's judgment is that protecting the raw materials of radiological terror is worth doing, but not at the expense of more catastrophic threats.
''It's all over,'' he said. ''It's not a winning proposition to say you can just lock all that up. And then, a bomb is pretty darn easy to make. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure about fertilizer and diesel fuel.'' A big fertilizer bomb of the type Timothy McVeigh used to kill 168 people in Oklahoma City, spiced with a dose of cobalt or cesium, would not tax the skills of a determined terrorist.
''It's likely to happen, I think, in our lifetime,'' the official said. ''And it'll be like Oklahoma City plus the Hart Office Building. Which is real bad, but it ain't the World Trade Center.''
EXCEPRT2:As I neared the end of this assignment, I asked Matthew McKinzie, a staff scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, to run a computer model of a one-kiloton nuclear explosion in Times Square, half a block from my office, on a nice spring workday. By the standards of serious nuclear weaponry, one kiloton is a junk bomb, hardly worthy of respect, a fifteenth the power of the bomb over Hiroshima.
A couple of days later he e-mailed me the results, which I combined with estimates of office workers and tourist traffic in the area. The blast and searing heat would gut buildings for a block in every direction, incinerating pedestrians and crushing people at their desks. Let's say 20,000 dead in a matter of seconds. Beyond this, to a distance of more than a quarter mile, anyone directly exposed to the fireball would die a gruesome death from radiation sickness within a day -- anyone, that is, who survived the third-degree burns. This larger circle would be populated by about a quarter million people on a workday. Half a mile from the explosion, up at Rockefeller Center and down at Macy's, unshielded onlookers would expect a slower death from radiation. A mushroom cloud of irradiated debris would blossom more than two miles into the air, and then, 40 minutes later, highly lethal fallout would begin drifting back to earth, showering injured survivors and dooming rescue workers. The poison would ride for 5 or 10 miles on the prevailing winds, deep into the Bronx or Queens or New Jersey.
SANGATTE, France, May 24 (Reuters) - It is pitch black and all that stands between Afghan refugee Ghulam Alizadeh and the life he dreams of in Britain is a barbed-wire fence, a line of baton-wielding police and a 20-minute train ride.
After a tough trip across Europe, plus a commando-style crawl more fitting to his own war-scarred land than the rolling countryside of northern France, he seems so close and yet so far.
For two months, Alizadeh has made the dash several times a day from the controversial Sangatte refugee camp near the French end of the Channel Tunnel to try and sneak on to trains headed for Britain. He is caught every time.
Lured by friendly British immigration rules, thousands like him play a bizarre cat-and-mouse game with police, who night after night foil assaults on freight trains near the tunnel opening and round up all but a lucky few on to a shuttle bus and back to the camp.
Undeterred, the 1,500 refugees from Asia, Eastern Europe and the Middle East -- France will not send them back to high-risk countries -- cramp into the centre to sleep for a few hours before starting their bid to outwit police again.
"If I could just get past the police it would only be 20 minutes on the train and I'd be in England, where life is good," Alizadeh told Reuters as he wriggled through long grass to dodge the glare of police flashlights just outside Calais.
"I try three times every day. They keep stopping me but I'll keep trying until I get there. What else can I do?"
The Red Cross camp, originally set up to house throngs of refugees sleeping rough on the streets of Calais, stoked tension between France and Britain after London said French security was inadequate and Paris lashed out at lax British immigration laws.
GIGGLING
Just hours after France's "crime-busting" Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy visited Sangatte to tell residents the new interim government aimed to shut the camp, Alizadeh and his friends set out for their final attempt of the day.
Dusk falls as a trail of refugees amble down a main street and suddenly somone yells, "Police."
For many of them it even seems like a game. The gang charge across a field and hurl themselves into the grass giggling. Five minutes later someone whistles the all-clear and there is a collective sigh of relief.
Pleas from Britain that France should do more to halt the stream of immigrants has prompted French police to try to stop refugees before they even reach the freight train depot.
"I hope you can sprint -- there will be lots of police around tonight," Iraqi refugee Hussein Jabbar told Reuters. "We're like commandos aren't we?" quipped the jeans-clad 20-year-old.
Others were getting weary.
"I spent 20 days getting here, stuck in the back of one of those," said 22-year-old Afghan Nelam Salanga, pointing at a passing truck before belting across the road and catapulting himself into a ditch.
"Many of us have family back home with no bread -- we need to get to England so we can send them money."
BARBED WIRE
Eventually, Alizadeh's group of six Afghans make it to the electric barbed wire rigged up to keep them away from trains.
"I know a hole near here," whispered one.
Masked by darkness, the men, many still teenagers, creep into the site and begin to zigzag across the tracks.
French railway company SNCF says police stop some 300 refugees nightly. By 1.00 a.m. (2300 GMT) on Friday at least 70 were crouched in a ditch less than 100 metres (yards) from officers.
Alizadeh once almost made it on to a train but fell and broke his leg.
"We try to hide in containers, or under the train."
Jobless in Afghanistan, he said he paid human smugglers $7,000 to bring him to France, and, despite the fall of the Taliban, is not tempted to go home. "Maybe one day. I love my country but I'm 24 and we've been at war for 23 years."
Conditions in a corrugated iron hangar, barely equipped to house 200, are dire, but many prefer the Sangatte camp to the poverty they left behind.
Despite evidence to the contrary, they insist it will not be long before they are strolling through London.
"Maybe I'll go back to the camp in the bus again. But then again maybe tonight is my lucky night," grinned Alizadeh.
It wasn't. Moments later gendarme police swooped. Some tried to scramble over the fence, but police dogs were waiting.
Most shrugged their shoulders and settled down for the ride home. Alizadeh was philosophical. "Oh well -- maybe tomorrow," he said.
Of course, if Al Quaeda get their way life in Britain might not be so good
BERLIN (Reuters) - Taliban and al Qaeda guerrillas have been smuggled into Europe in the last few months and are on their way to Britain, a German newspaper reported Wednesday, citing a letter from Interpol to the German police.
"A warning letter ... based on information gathered two months ago by Interpol and Europol, says that more than 30 'important people from the Taliban and Al Qaeda' are in Bulgaria, Slovakia, Czech Republic and Austria on the way to Britain, where they want to regroup and plan possible action," wrote German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair's official spokesman said he was unaware of the report.
"We do keep all perceived threats under review, but I don't recognize that particular story," the spokesman said.
The newspaper said Interpol and Europol, the European Union's police agency, had given German federal and state security services the names of 31 suspected extremists.
A spokesman for Brussels-based Europol said the agency had sent a "threat assessment" on Islamic extremists to all member states, but declined to give further information.
"We drafted a threat assessment on Islamic terrorists ... right after the September 11 attacks ... and this has been updated," the spokesman said. "However, this is confidential and we cannot disclose any further information."
Interpol declined to make any immediate comment.
GERMAN SLEEPERS
President Bush is due to begin a 20-hour visit to Berlin later Wednesday. The United States blames Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network for the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Germany became a focus of the investigation into al Qaeda after it emerged that three of the hijackers who flew planes in the attacks had lived in the northern port city of Hamburg.
The government has said members of the Qaeda network of Saudi-born militant Osama bin Laden or similar Islamic groups might still be operating in Germany, warning that "sleepers" could be lying in wait ready to conduct new attacks.
The German federal criminal office (BKA) reiterated Wednesday that police were on alert for attacks against American, Jewish and Israeli targets.
"If we were to receive such information (from Interpol) we would not comment on it, but we would factor it into our analysis of the danger," BKA spokesman Dirk Buechner said. "We don't want to inflame any rumors."
A spokesman for Germany's federal prosecutors told Reuters they had evidence that people were illegally entering the country from the Afghan region, but said they did not have enough details to take legal action.
But a spokeswoman for Germany's domestic intelligence service doubted that al Qaeda was attempting to smuggle large numbers of operatives into Europe.
"Al Qaeda operates on a highly professional level. Mass smuggling is not their modus operandi," she said.
5/25/02
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) - The al-Qaida terrorist network is trying to establish a safe haven in Pakistan, and the United States will deal with it when the time is right, the U.S. Army's second-in-command said Saturday.
Gen. John M. Keane said the United States and its coalition allies have denied Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida network the use of Afghanistan as a base and removed the Taliban as the government supporting them. What few al-Qaida fighters remain, he said, have been reduced ``to small groups hiding in the mountains.''
``We have broken their will and they are trying to establish another safe haven now in Pakistan, and we will deal with that. When the time is right, we will deal with that one as well,'' Keane said during an address to members of the 101st Airborne Division based at Kandahar airport in southern Afghanistan.
``The only way we can protect the American people ... is to kill those who would kill them. There is no other way to do it.''
U.S. officials believe some al-Qaida and senior Taliban officials have fled across the porous border with Pakistan, where they are trying to reorganize.
``There is no longer a safe haven for the al-Qaida in Afghanistan. There is no longer a government that they can use to support them. There are no base camps left, there are no training camps left,'' Keane said during his one-day visit.
Keane told troops their objective in Afghanistan was the eradication of al-Qaida, and he lauded the 101st's participation in Operation Anaconda, the March offensive in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan to surround and destroy al-Qaida fighters.
``We got one thing here (and that) is to kill these'' people, Keane said. ``And that's what we are going to do, and we are going to keep doing, and keep doing, and keep doing it until we finish this thing on our terms.''
Since the collapse of the Taliban in December, fewer than 100 bodies of al-Qaida and Taliban fighters have been recovered. U.S. officials say others have been incinerated by bombs, buried in collapsed caves or dragged away by their compatriots.
Keane said U.S. troops in Afghanistan have an unprecedented level of support at home.
``All those other years, going all the way back to World War II, it's always been about somebody else's people; some other nation where some thug has imposed his will on them. This time it is all about the American people and they are here for us,'' he said.
The United States can't rely on security measures alone, he told cheering troops, but must bring the fight to the terrorists.
``We can't defend an open democratic society of 285 million people. The only way we can protect Americans is to kill those who would kill them. And that's what you are here for and we're doing that,'' Keane said.
By K. Subrahmanyam Times Of India
5-25-2
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Articleshow.asp?art_id=10950554
NEW DELHI - The missile tests by Pakistan could indicate that the Americans have taken charge of the country's nuclear warheads.
President Prevez Musharraf, in his speech on September 19, had said if he did not join the US alliance, Pakistan's strategic assets - nuclear warheads and missiles - would be under threat.
The tests have been done for domestic reasons. The country is under tremendous world pressure to climb down on its policy on terrorism vis-a-vis India. And the government would want to demonstrate to the people that it is not yielding.
It is, therefore, compensating a possible climbdown through more tests.
The tests, themselves, are superfluous. Ghauri and Shaheen are already tested and proven Chinese and North Korean missiles. The fact that they are being tested over land and inhabited areas proves the point further.
The Americans, meanwhile, cannot trust Pakistan with both missiles and nuclear warheads. Given the Pakistani hatred for them, they fear the weapons may be turned against them, to attack their bases in Afghanistan and aircraft carriers in the region.
The US counter-proliferation policy would be totally meaningless if the US forces deployed there permit Pakistan to use nuclear weapons.
The US media and analysts have been silent so far on this issue. The US is engaged in information warfare, trying to frighten India and Pakistan away from war.
It has, however, refrained from discussing the possibility of Pakistan s nuclear weapons being turned against it.
But the US is not to be blamed for that. India has not asked the right questions.
5/20/02
LONDON (AP) - The British government said Monday that it would examine a video in which Osama bin Laden reportedly says that any country siding with Israel is a target for Islamic terrorists.
The Al-Ansaar Islamic news agency, based in the English city of Birmingham, said Sunday that it was given the 40-minute video by a Pakistani security official in Islamabad about a month ago. It includes separate sections that seem to have been filmed at different times.
According to the news agency, the official said some sections of the film were shot in March in the southern Afghan town of Spinboldak, near the Pakistani border. But it said his claim was impossible to verify.
The chief editor of the Qatar-based Arab television station Al-Jazeera, which has aired videos showing bin Laden in the past, said Monday that people at the station had seen the same tape four months ago and believed it was recorded in October.
``This is the same tape that we had four months ago, which we didn't show because we didn't think it was newsworthy,'' said the editor, Ibrahim Helal. ``There was nothing new in it and seemed to be a PR stunt. We think it was recorded sometime in October.''
According to The Sunday Times newspaper, which obtained the video from Al-Ansaar, the section filmed most recently showed bin Laden sitting beneath a tree in a camouflage jacket, praising Allah and talking about holy wars.
In another section, The Sunday Times said bin Laden warned that any country siding with Israel would be a target. ``The war is between us and the Jews,'' the paper quoted him as saying on the tape. ``Any country that steps into the same trench as the Jews has only herself to blame.''
On Monday, Britain's Foreign Office said that security officials would examine the tape. Speaking on condition of anonymity, an official said the foreign office is aware of a general threat against Western interests and that the video did not increase that threat.
The first word from bin Laden after the Sept. 11 attacks came as the United States struck at his Afghan bases on Oct. 7. In a message taped before the U.S. strike but aired afterward on Al-Jazeera, bin Laden reveled in the fear the attacks had created. Wearing fatigues and clutching a rifle, he swore that America would not know security until its troops were out of Saudi Arabia.
Since then, he has appeared on several tapes released by Al-Jazeera, CNN or the Pentagon. Other al-Qaida tapes have surfaced carrying messages from bin Laden's deputies or images of al-Qaida training exercises.
May 15, 2002:
MEDICAL JOURNAL EXPOSES CUBA’S BIOTERRORISM LINK
May Have Been Source of West Nile Virus, Producing Anthrax-Like Toxins
Washington -- Iraq may have unleashed the West Nile Virus in the United States via Cuba through the release of migratory birds infected with the virus, and may be producing antiobiotic-resistant toxins for future attacks, according to two articles published in The Medical Sentinel, The Official Journal of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (Volume 6, Number 4).
In the first, "West Nile Virus - Is Castro’s Bioterrorism Threat Being Ignored," author Ernesto F. Betancourt, Castro’s Washington Representative in the ‘50s and former Director of Radio Marti, outlines the possible Cuba-Iraq link.
He cites ornithologist, Carlos Wotzkow, who was fired from Cuba’s Institute of Zoology after objecting to the creation of the "Biological Front," an effort to develop viruses that could be carried by host birds or other means into the U.S.
A second article, "Cuba, Castro and Bioterrorism," by Agustín Blazquez, a documentary producer, outlines his claims that "... we clearly see that Castro has used this time to develop weapons of mass destruction in our backyard to be used against us."
Mr. Blazquez cites a previously ignored paper by Dr. Manuel Cereijo, a professor at Florida International University. "In 1992, the [Castro-controlled] Institute of Oceanographic Studies conducted an experiment with the Academy of Sciences to find out which places on the Cuban coast were the best to let bottles and containers reach the United States coast line fastest and most effectively," writes Dr. Cereijo. Further, Dr. Cereijo claims that there are at least 12 Cuban centers producing bacteriological agents located around Havana, and that the U.S. government has had knowledge of these capabilities. He describes the newest and most notorious, La Fabriquita ("Little Factory") located across the street from the former Naval Hospital. Disguised as an "Animal Feed Plant," one must pass through a station of the Cuban Armed Forces to enter. Dr. Cereijo believes the plant has the capability to produce A-232, an agent more toxic that previous nerve agents, and that La Fabriquita could be producing an anthrax-like toxin totally resistant to antibiotics. Concludes Mr. Blazquez, "The blackmail potential that this represents renders the U.S. and its people in grave danger and in an almost impotent situation."
May 29 (WSJ) — Cooling off after their workouts in Smyrna, Ga., Lisa Mozer and Bobbie Hall are discussing how much water they should drink each day.
“EIGHT GLASSES,” declares Ms. Mozer, a 42-year-old meteorologist, gulping from a bottle of Aquafina. “All the nutrition stuff we read says that.”
That “nutrition stuff” may be wrong. Everyone from women’s magazines to Colon Health Network and the Georgia Rural Water Journal extols the virtues of drinking at least eight, eight-ounce glasses of water a day. Bottled-water makers heavily market their products based on this theory — so commonly held that nutritionists refer to it simply as “eight-by-eight.” The industry’s trade group even has a “hydration calculator” on its Web site (www.bottledwater.org/public/hydratio.htm) for people to determine whether they need even more than that.
But a growing number of health experts say the advice may not hold water.
Researchers who have tried to pinpoint the origin of the eight-by-eight rule have come up dry. “This idea is being promoted terrifically by the bottled-water industry, but I have found no scientific evidence that supports the claim,” says Heinz Valtin, a kidney specialist at Dartmouth Medical School. Later this year, the American Journal of Physiology is expected to publish the results of nine months of research by Dr. Valtin that led to that conclusion.
The National Academy of Sciences, one of the perpetuators of the eight-by-eight wisdom, recently formed a panel to develop new guidelines. They’re due out in March. “We need to look at it again,” concedes Allison Yates, director of the academy’s Food and Nutrition Board.
The upshot: We may not be as dehydrated as bottled-water makers would have us believe. The only studies researchers have found that bolster the eight-by-eight rule were performed on soldiers at high altitude, hospitalized patients, and others in “nontypical environments,” says Ann Grandjean, a nutrition specialist at the University of Nebraska and a consultant to the U.S. Olympic Committee. For the average American adult who rarely breaks a sweat and works in a climate-controlled office, eight-by-eight may be more than enough.
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For most people, the consequences of drinking too much water are simply extra trips to the bathroom. But for a few, excessive amounts can be harmful, even fatal. Some diabetics and others take a high dose of an antidiuretic hormone to prevent the body from losing water. If such individuals consume too much liquid, they can develop “water intoxication”: The excess water can dilute sodium in the blood, causing a swelling of cells that in extreme cases can lead to seizures and death.
No one disputes that drinking plenty of water is a good idea. A study published this month in the American Journal of Epidemiology asserts that drinking water can help reduce the risk of fatal heart attacks.
SIX GLASSES DURING A WORKOUT?
But for bottled-water makers, hydration translates into sales. On a Web site for its Dasani brand (www.dasani.com), Coca-Cola Co. urges people who exercise to “consume at least 16 ounces of fluid [two glasses] before you start your activity and then five to eight ounces every 15 minutes while you’re working out.” The label of Zephyrhills, a Nestle SA water brand, urges consumers to “drink a 24-oz. Zephyrhills Brand Sport-Pack [three glasses] two hours before you exercise.” (The company says hydration tips are being phased out on packaging, in favor of graphics and wording that promotes its brand.)
The International Bottled Water Association, which represents the $6.4 billion bottled-water industry in the U.S., has a “hydration calculator” on its Web site that recommends a 140-pound person drink 70 ounces, about 8 1/2 glasses, of water on a day in which he or she doesn’t exercise. An hourlong workout raises the recommended daily intake to 110 ounces — nearly 14 glasses. The association cites the National Academy of Sciences as well as hydration experts and various studies as the sources of its hydration tips.
“Americans still aren’t drinking enough water,” says Stephen Kay, a spokesman for the bottled water association. While water isn’t the only source of hydration, it’s the healthiest, he argues. “It’s caffeine-and calorie-free.”
TRY LETTUCE AND WATERMELON
How much is enough actually depends on the individual, nutritionists say. People who exercise need more liquids than couch potatoes to help replenish the fluids they’ve lost. The average adult loses about two liters of fluid a day but about half of that amount can by replaced through a healthy diet and the body’s own metabolism, nutritionists say. Lettuce is 98% water; other vegetables and fruits contain sizable amounts of water, too. (Foods heavy in fat and oils contain the least.) Nutritionists are even questioning whether coffee and cola are dehydrating, as commonly thought.
In fact, after much thought, nutritionists have come up with this guideline for determining hydration needs: Drink enough so you don’t get thirsty.
16 May 02
NewScientist.com
Huge dumps of toxic waste from old Soviet uranium mines are threatening to contaminate the water supplies of millions of people in Central Asia. Up to 23 dumps along the Mailuu-Suu river in southern Kyrgyzstan are at risk of leaking because of landslides and flooding in recent weeks.
Over two million tonnes of uranium wastes were left behind by a mining and milling complex which fuelled the Soviet nuclear programme between 1945 and 1968. Tipped into piles or dropped into holes, it has long been "an accident waiting to happen", according to experts from the World Health Organization.
Kubanychbek Monolbaev, a Kyrgyz environmental health scientist with the WHO in Bonn, says that the area is prone to earthquakes, as well as landslides and floods. Downstream is the Fergana Valley, home to over six million people from three countries, as well as major rice and cotton plantations.
Recent reports from Kyrgyzstan suggest that, following six weeks of rain, a large landslide on Sunday blocked the Mailuu-Suu river and caused widespread flooding. "This is dangerous", says Monolbaev, who inspected the region in 1995, because none of the dumps have any engineered defences.
Chemically toxic
They contain uranium tailings, which are radioactive and chemically toxic, as well as arsenic and perhaps other heavy metals. Gerhard Schmidt, a German researcher who has studied the area's mining legacy, warns that leaks from some of the waste dumps could make water in the Fergana Valley unfit to drink.
There are two dumps near the river which contain "relatively high" levels of uranium decay products, he says. These include thorium 230, radium 226 and lead 210, which have the potential to cause serious long term pollution.
After visiting the area in 1998, Schmidt, who is based at the Oko Institute in Darmstadt, called for these two dumps to be moved to a safer place. The government of Kyrgyzstan has been appealing for financial help from other countries to help tackle the problem.
Earlier this week, the Kyrgyz deputy prime minister, Nikolai Tanaeyev, said that landslides around the Mailuu-Suu river were potentially very hazardous. If the uranium dumps were washed away, he pointed out, "it would represent an ecological catastrophe for the whole region".
(Associated Press)
May 19, 2002
NEW YORK –– Security at city water facilities fails to meet federal and state guidelines, making them potentially vulnerable to biological or chemical attacks, according to a report released Sunday.
The report, compiled by the New York State Assembly Committee on Oversight, Analysis and Investigation, found that security at the facilities failed more than half of the federal Environmental Protection Agency and state Department of Health guidelines.
"I'm not trying to be an alarmist, I'm not trying to create fear. I'm simply saying that something as important as the security of our water system has to be handled in a very, very careful manner," Assemblyman Jeff Klein, the committee's chairman, told reporters.
New York City's water system serves nine million people in the city's five boroughs and the city's northern suburbs.
The committee's findings were based on several months of analysis using a 21-point security checklist at eight water facilities within the region. The report detailed what was found at the five facilities in the city, but did not disclose their specific locations.
The list included checking windows, doors, fencing and site construction. A general category examined such things as whether restricted access signs were clearly posted with phone numbers, so that suspicious activity could be reported.
"Unfortunately, what we found was very startling," Klein said.
Not one was in complete compliance with federal standards regarding fencing, the report said. In some cases, fences had holes or gates were unlocked. In others, fences were vulnerable to intruders climbing over or under them.
At some sites, doors were found with hinges on the outside, where determined vandals with hammers and screwdrivers could remove them.
At two facilities, members of the team were able to gain access and photograph the interior of buildings without being questioned.
Perhaps most alarming, Klein said, was the ease with which information about the facilities, including detailed maps, could be gathered from public records and on the Internet.
Charles Sturcken, chief of staff of the city's Department of Environmental Protection, which oversees the water supply, said the agency has been working with federal and local experts since 1998 to improve security.
"We have strengthened our police forces and are spending $35 million on improving security systems for the water supply and will continue to do so," he said. "In fact the federal EPA has told us we are years ahead of other municipal water systems."
Sturcken said he could not comment on the specifics of the report, because the locations of the facilities were not disclosed, and because a detailed copy had not been delivered to the agency.
He said that on several occasions, the department offered to brief Klein on its security measures.
The report recommends the city make several changes, including supporting neighborhood watch groups to monitor activity around facilities. The report also suggests the city ask Web operators to remove sensitive information.
A call to Mayor Michael Bloomberg's office was not immediately returned Sunday, but Ed Skyler, a spokesman for the mayor, said Saturday that the city department of environmental protection takes "every conceivable precaution" to protect the water supply.
Sat May 18, 9:52 AM ET
LONDON - British troops infected by a fever in Afghanistan (news - web sites) are suffering from the "winter vomiting" bug, defense officials said Saturday.
Scientists at the Public Health Laboratory Service have made several positive diagnoses of the virus, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Thirty eight British soldiers stationed at Bagram air base north of Kabul have fallen sick in the last week with symptoms including fever, vomiting and diarrhea.
Several of the most seriously ill were evacuated to Britain and to a U.S. military hospital in Germany. They are now recovering and out of danger, officials said.
Officials said they believed 25 of the troops had caught the winter vomiting virus — officially known as Norwalk-like virus, after the Ohio town where it was first identified — with the rest suffering from more common diarrhea bugs.
The virus is not usually life-threatening, but can diarrhea and projectile vomiting. In January, the virus infected hundreds of patients and staff at hospitals in Britain.
A Ministry of Defense medical expert said the virus was "virtually identical" to the one in January's outbreak, but said it was unlikely the troops had taken the disease to Afghanistan with them.
He said the symptoms seen in Afghanistan were more severe than usual, probably accentuated by the country's heat and humidity.
The virus is airborne and can pass from person to person with ease. It is often found in hospitals and schools.
Officials said the outbreak was now being contained. One Royal Marine has fallen ill in the last 24 hours but he was not believed to be suffering from the winter vomiting bug.
The outbreak centered on Britain's 34 Field Hospital at Bagram. The base is home to several thousand international troops.
(technologyreview.com)
May 10, 2002
Saddam Hussein has not been seen publicly for the past year. He did not attend his recent 65th birthday celebration, despite the fact that young girls were dressed as suicide bombers—a sight that he must have hated to miss. But he has good reason to fear the outdoors. A Predator may be lurking there, patiently waiting for its intended prey—him.
The Predator, with a capital P, is a new weapon in the United States arsenal, although it is based on nearly a century of development. It is revolutionary, not because it is new, but because of a combination of technologies that has suddenly transformed a supplementary system, previously used for target practice and spying, into what may be the U.S. weapon of choice for the 21st century. In fact, such "weapons of precise destruction," as I call them, could fundamentally change the nature of war—along with many of our assumptions about homeland security.
Unmanned air vehicles (UAVs), also called drones, have a long history. During World War I, the celebrated inventor Charles F. Kettering developed an unmanned biplane that flew at 88 kilometers per hour for 64 kilometers. He called it an "aerial torpedo." After a prescribed time, the wings fell off, and 80 kilograms of high explosives crashed to the ground. It was the predecessor of the German V-1 buzz bomb used in World War II and of today's cruise missile.
UAVs are more highly developed than most people realize. As far back as November 1969, the U.S. launched a supersonic "Tagboard" drone to spy on the Chinese Lop Nor nuclear test site. Its credentials are impressive even by today's standards: it flew above 24,000 meters at faster than Mach 3.3. But it didn't return safely; it probably crashed. Drones used to be unreliable. Hence their limited use.
UAVs have made steady progress ever since. In the last week of the Gulf War, five Iraqi soldiers waved white flags at a U.S. Pioneer UAV. Some called this the first time in history that someone tried to surrender to a robot. But, strictly speaking, the Pioneer was not a robot. It had a pilot, even though he was several hundred miles away—and on the ground.
The salient event occurred over Afghanistan early this year. A Predator UAV, remotely operated by the CIA, carried technology that is virtually a table of contents of the high-tech world. It imaged with both side-scanning radar and cameras. In the infrared it could see human thermal emission even in total darkness. Snow on the ground didn't hurt; it only made warm people stand out better. The Predator communicated with its pilot by broadcasting over a wide range of frequencies simultaneously.
This method, called spread spectrum, is impossible to read and almost impossible to detect unless you know the encryption key that determines the spreading pattern. A satellite was used as a relay, so the Predator could fly low and use high frequencies (and high bandwidth) to send back real-time video--critical for the remote pilot. The Predator always knew where it was, by passive analysis of signals from GPS satellites. If it ever lost communications, tiny onboard computers would guide the vehicle back home to a fully automatic landing. The Predator was small and quiet. It flew at 135 kilometers per hour for a range of 640 kilometers, with a ceiling of 7,600 meters and a loiter time of up to 40 hours, and it carried two Hellfire-C missiles under its wings.
On February 8, it was following something very interesting. Several sport utility vehicles, not the sort of auto that even well-to-do Afghans could afford, were driving in the remote Zawar Khili region, near caves where Osama bin Laden was suspected to be hiding. The convoy stopped, and (according to news accounts) three men dressed in robes got out of the most heavily guarded vehicle. One was considerably taller than the others. Osama bin Laden? They stopped (to relieve themselves, presumably). The Predator pilot maneuvered to within eight kilometers, aimed a guide laser, and fired along its beam a missile powerful enough to blow up a tank.
The missile obliterated the men and the tree under which they stood. Bad weather hampered a U.S. effort to get to the site and collect DNA samples, and the eventual results, if any, have not been disclosed. But anticipation was high. Had Osama bin Laden been destroyed?
Probably not. I think it unlikely that the tall person was bin Laden—but only because I believe that he was already dead, prior to February 8. The most compelling evidence was the absence of new video tapes. With al Qaeda in disarray and many of bin Laden's men in custody, those still at large must be in desperate need of instructions and encouragement from their charismatic leader. Yet he has not resurfaced—perhaps because he was killed in the Tora Bora bombings, or perhaps because, as is suspected, he was suffering from kidney disease and the attacks damaged his dialysis equipment. Al Qaeda did recently did release a new tape, but bin Laden was silent, and the footage was probably old. It emphasized other leaders—just as you would expect, if a replacement were necessary.
So who were the three who died? Maybe it was his associate Ayman al-Zawahri, who is also tall. Maybe, as some local villagers claimed, it was just local farmers who were gathering scrap metal from the recent battle. But the Predator has made a good impression on General Tommy Franks, commander of the military operations in Afghanistan, who called it "my No. 1 sensor for tracking down al Qaeda." U.S. production will triple this year, adding 25 new Predators to the arsenal of 75. Predators are already being sold to our allies. Use of the Predator (and other UAVs) has just begun.
Saddam is smart enough to be impressed too. Can he be sure that a Predator, perhaps with added stealth, isn't already flying over Baghdad? Already the U.S. public is forgetting bin Laden; already Saddam is returning to his position in U.S. government rhetoric as the personification of evil. Saddam would like us to believe that if he is killed, someone just as bad will replace him. But he must be worried.
The Bush administration is publicly advocating a change in government in Iraq. But how do we force that, short of war? We attempted to kill bin Laden, Mullah Omar and Muammar Khadafi. The U.S. may have played a role in the assassination of the drug lord Pablo Escobar. I sense that there is movement toward making assassination of "evil" leaders into an acceptable part of U.S. foreign policy. That prospect is horrifying. Yet—if the alternative is war?
If the U.S. does turn to the Predator and other weapons of precise destruction as the perfect assassination machines—perhaps using them to force changes in Iraq—then we had better be prepared to defend ourselves against the same kind of attack. Advances in technology may one day bring Predator-like weapons into the arsenals of rogue nations and terrorists, endangering in yet a new way our vulnerable homeland. Are we, to paraphrase Macbeth, teaching bloody instructions, which, being taught, will return to plague the inventor?
Richard A. Muller, a 1982 MacArthur Fellow, is a professor in the Physics Department at UC-Berkeley where he teaches a course entitled, "Physics for future Presidents". He is also a faculty senior scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
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